sensual pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how
few are there to be found who would exchange such a scene for the woods
and wildernesses of America, and pass the flowery years of youth in
unprofitable danger and hardship! but such is the fact. When the
war ended, and he was on the point of taking his final departure, he
presented himself to Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate
farewell the Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words:
"May this great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to
the hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count
Vergennes to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but never
could obtain his consent. The fact was that Count Vergennes was an
aristocratical despot at home, and dreaded the example of the American
Revolution in France, as certain other persons now dread the example of
the French Revolution in England, and Mr. Burke's tribute of fear (for
in this light his book must be considered) runs parallel with Count
Vergennes' refusal. But to return more particularly to his work.

"We have seen," says Mr. Burke, "the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people
has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant." This is one among a thousand other instances, in
which Mr. Burke shows that he is ignorant of the springs and principles
of the French Revolution.

It was not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of
the Government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their
origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back:
and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean
stables of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed
by anything short of a complete and universal Revolution. When it
becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul should go
into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and
there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to
act at all. The king was known to be the friend of the nation, and this
circumstance was favorable to the enterprise. Perhaps no man bred up in
the style of an absolute king, ever possessed a heart so little disposed
to the exercise of that species of power as the present King of France.
But the