volution called
out his detestation, the mistakes and incapacity of the new legislators
excited his contempt. He condemned a _compulsory_ paper currency,--not a
paper currency, but a compulsory one,--and predicted bankruptcy. He
ridiculed an army without a head,--not the instrument of the executive,
but of a military democracy receiving orders from the clubs. He made
sport of the legislature ruled by the commune, and made up not of men of
experience, but of adventurers, stock-jobbers, directors of assignats,
trustees for the sale of church-lands, who "took a constitution in hand
as savages would a looking-glass,"--a body made up of those courtiers
who wished to cut off the head of their king, of those priests who voted
religion a nuisance, of those lawyers who called the laws a dead letter,
of those philosophers who admitted no argument but the guillotine, of
those sentimentalists who chanted the necessity of more blood, of
butchers and bakers and brewers who would exterminate the very people
who bought from them.

And the result of all this wickedness and folly on the mind of Burke was
the most eloquent and masterly political treatise probably ever
written,--a treatise in which there may be found much angry rhetoric and
some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius on every page,
which coruscates with wit, irony, and invective; scornful and sad
doubtless, yet full of moral wisdom; a perfect thesaurus of political
truths. I have no words with which to express my admiration for the
wisdom and learning and literary excellence of the "Reflections on the
French Revolution" as a whole,--so luminous in statement, so accurate in
the exposure of sophistries, so full of inspired intuitions, so
Christian in its tone. This celebrated work was enough to make any man
immortal. It was written and rewritten with the most conscientious care.
It appeared in 1790; and so great were its merits, so striking, and yet
so profound, that thirty thousand copies were sold in a few weeks. It
was soon translated into all the languages of Europe, and was in the
hands of all thinking men. It was hailed with especial admiration by
Christian and conservative classes, though bitterly denounced by many
intelligent people as gloomy and hostile to progress. But whether liked
or disliked, it made a great impression, and contributed to settle
public opinion in reference to French affairs. What can be more just and
enlightened than such sentiments as