and menaced with the prospects of new ones,
is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked
for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage; yet the greatest is that which
himself has committed. His book is a volume of outrage, not apologised
for by the impulse of a moment, but cherished through a space of ten
months; yet Mr. Burke had no provocation--no life, no interest, at
stake.

More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their opponents: but
four or five persons were seized by the populace, and instantly put to
death; the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris, who was
detected in the act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon, one of the
new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law, who had accepted the office
of intendant of Paris. Their heads were stuck upon spikes, and carried
about the city; and it is upon this mode of punishment that Mr. Burke
builds a great part of his tragic scene. Let us therefore examine how
men came by the idea of punishing in this manner.

They learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate the
punishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon
spikes, which remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in
the horror of the scene from those carried about upon spikes at Paris;
yet this was done by the English Government. It may perhaps be said that
it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but
it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or
hardens their hearts, and in either case it instructs them how to punish
when power falls into their hands.

Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is
their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. In England the
punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering;
the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the
populace. In France, under the former Government, the punishments were
not less barbarous. Who does not remember the execution of Damien, torn
to pieces by horses? The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited to
the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge; and by the
base and false idea of governing men by terror, instead of reason,
they become precedents. It is over the lowest class of mankind that
government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it
operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough to feel they are
the