objects aimed at; and they inflict in their turn the examples of
terror they have been instructed to practise.

There is in all European countries a large class of people of that
description, which in England is called the "mob." Of this class were
those who committed the burnings and devastations in London in 1780, and
of this class were those who carried the heads on iron spikes in Paris.
Foulon and Berthier were taken up in the country, and sent to Paris,
to undergo their examination at the Hotel de Ville; for the National
Assembly, immediately on the new ministry coming into office, passed a
decree, which they communicated to the King and Cabinet, that they (the
National Assembly) would hold the ministry, of which Foulon was one,
responsible for the measures they were advising and pursuing; but the
mob, incensed at the appearance of Foulon and Berthier, tore them from
their conductors before they were carried to the Hotel de Ville, and
executed them on the spot. Why then does Mr. Burke charge outrages
of this kind on a whole people? As well may he charge the riots and
outrages of 1780 on all the people of London, or those in Ireland on all
his countrymen.

But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and derogatory
to the human character should lead to other reflections than those
of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some claim to our
consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of mankind as are
distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob,
are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we ask ourselves
this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as an unavoidable
consequence, out of the ill construction of all old governments in
Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly exalting
some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out
of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the
back-ground of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare,
the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a
revolution, those men are rather the followers of the camp than of the
standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.

I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I
then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here lay
down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of the French
Revolution, as much as any one