precedent which France will have
set. Let us look, therefore, calmly, for a few moments, at the very
interesting question of the probable stability and success of this
revolution.

Those of us who remember the revolution of 1789, are forcibly reminded
of it by the late event, and from the catastrophe of the former
struggle, are apt to draw a mournful presage of the present. It is not
for human penetration to foretell, with certainty, the ultimate issue
of such a movement. In a case so dependent on the capricious passions
of man, there are too many contingencies that may arise to darken
the fairest prospect and disappoint our hopes. But there seem to be
fundamental points of difference between the two cases which forbid
us to reason from the one to the other, and justify, now, the hope
of a happy result. Let us attend for a moment to these points of
difference.

In the first place, the state of political information in France, and
in Europe at large, is widely different now from that which existed in
1789. France was not prepared for that revolution: nor were the people
of Europe prepared to understand it, to second it, and to turn it to
the best account. This is a grand and over-ruling distinction between
the cases.

With regard to France, her people had been buried, for ages, in the
night of despotism, and had no idea of the meaning of political
liberty. I speak of the great body of the people. On the upper
classes, it is true, that day had recently broken from the writings
of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Raynal. But thick darkness
still rested upon the lower classes. Their faculties were benumbed by
its influence, and their spirits enslaved and debased by the habit of
subjection. The condition of things which they saw around them, and
which had been immemorially transmitted from father to son, seemed to
them to be the natural condition, and they considered themselves born
for the use of their prince and his nobles.

Such, too, was the general state of things in Europe. As to political
rights, the body of the people were all in Egyptian darkness. The
yoke had been fixed and locked upon them in far distant ages, of which
they had no knowledge; they had borne it, time out of mind, and their
necks had became so callous and accustomed to its pressure, that it
never entered into their imaginations to question the right.

In this state of habitual subjection and inveterate ignorance, the sun
of liberty suddenl