ontent
will diffuse itself around; and if the Government take not
warning in time, it is alone answerable for all the burnings
and all the plunderings and all the devastation and all the
blood that follow.'

Who can deny the justice of these observations? It was the Government
alone that was justly chargeable with the excesses committed in this
early stage, and, in fact, in every other stage, of the Revolution of
France. If the Government had given way in time, none of these
excesses would have been committed. If it had listened to the
complaints, the prayers, the supplications, the cries of the
cruelly-treated and starving people; if it had changed its conduct,
reduced its expenses, it might have been safe under the protection of
the peace-officers, and might have disbanded its standing army. But it
persevered; it relied upon the bayonet, and upon its judges and
hangmen. The latter were destroyed, and the former went over to the
side of the people. Was it any wonder that the people burnt the houses
of their oppressors, and killed the owners and their families? The
country contained thousands upon thousands of men that had been ruined
by taxation, and by judgments of infamous courts of justice, 'a
mockery of justice'; and, when these ruined men saw their oppressors
at their feet, was it any wonder that they took vengeance upon them?
Was it any wonder that the son, who had seen his father and mother
flogged, because he, when a child, had smuggled a handful of salt,
should burn for an occasion to shoot through the head the ruffians who
had thus lacerated the bodies of his parents? Moses slew the insolent
Egyptian who had smitten one of his countrymen in bondage. Yet Moses
has never been called either a murderer or a cruel wretch for this
act; and the bondage of the Israelites was light as a feather compared
to the tyranny under which the people of France had groaned for ages.
Moses resisted oppression in the only way that resistance was in his
power. He knew that his countrymen had no chance of justice in any
court; he knew that petitions against his oppressors were all in vain;
and 'looking upon the burdens' of his countrymen, he resolved to begin
the only sort of resistance that was left him. Yet it was little more
than a mere insult that drew forth his anger and resistance; and, if
Moses was justified, as he clearly was, what needs there any apology
for the people of France?

It seems at first si