"

"There is no God." Thus in 1793, by solemn enactment of the Terrorists,
was the Deity legislated out of existence. There is no God! What sayest
thou now, Robespierre? Dost thou say so, _now_? How likedst thou thy
brief space of usurpation? A few brief months of power--night and day
with loaded pistols at thy side--no food till some one else had tasted
from thy dish, lest it be poisoned. And then another scene in that same
legislative hall, the hall of thy own great terrifying power. A vote
ordering thy arrest! Vain are thy shrieks--a detachment of thy own
soldiers forces its way into the room--a pistol shot rings out, and thou
with shattered jaw, a ghastly spectacle, facest thy end. Thou fallest,
and some spit upon thy prostrate form, others stab thee with their
knives. Still living, thy body is hurried before the tribunal thou
thyself didst form, and thence to the guillotine. O Robespierre,
thinkest thou now there is a God?

License, not liberty. Mania, not reason. How fared the spirit of
Lafayette during this debauchery in the name of freedom?

V

A brief interval of less than ten years intervened between the closing
scenes of the American Revolution and the opening scenes of the French
Revolution. Democracy in America was a victor, and the republic had been
established. Democracy in France was just entering upon its cyclonic and
hideous struggle for the right to live.

The government of France was at that time an absolute despotism. The
king was the supreme arbiter of its destinies. He was the head of the
army. He appointed his own ministers, made his own laws, levied and
raised taxes at his pleasure, and lavished his treasures as he pleased.
The common people were more like cattle than men. They tilled the ground
and bore the yoke; the king and the aristocracy wielded the whip. Years
of suffering ignorance for the many--years of riotous profligacy for the
few!

True democracy is world-wide. It knows no nationality. All mankind are
its countrymen. When at the close of the American war Lafayette returned
to France, he hung in his house a copy of the American Declaration of
Independence upon one of the walls, leaving the corresponding space on
the opposite side vacant. "What do you mean to place here?" asked one of
his friends. "A Declaration of Rights for France," he replied.

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, the first giant of the
Hohenzollerns and the fountain head of modern Prussian autocrac