ation.

All was thus blind, except the Revolution itself. The virtue of the
Revolution was in the idea which forced these men on to accomplish it,
and not in those who actually accomplished it; all its instruments were
vitiated, corrupt, or personal; but the idea was pure, incorruptible,
divine. The vices, passions, selfishness of men were inevitably doomed
to produce in the coming crises those shocks, those violences, those
perversities, and those crimes which are to human passions what
consequences are to principles.

If each of the parties or men, mixed up from the first day with these
great events had taken their virtue, instead of their impulses as the
rule of their actions, all these disasters which eventually crushed
them, would have been saved to them and to their country. If the king
had been firm and sagacious, if the clergy had been free from a longing
for things temporal, and if the aristocracy had been good; if the people
had been moderate, if Mirabeau had been honest, if La Fayette had been
decided, if Robespierre had been humane, the Revolution would have
progressed, majestic and calm as a heavenly thought, through France, and
thence through Europe; it would have been installed like a philosophy in
facts, in laws, and in creeds. But it was otherwise decreed. The holiest
most just and virtuous thought, when it passes through the medium of
imperfect humanity, comes out in rags and in blood. Those very persons
who conceived it, no longer recognise, disavow it. Yet it is not
permitted, even to crime, to degrade the truth, that survives all, even
its victims. The blood which sullies men does not stain its idea; and
despite the selfishness which debases it, the infamies which trammel it,
the crimes which pollute it, the blood-stained Revolution purifies
itself, feels its own worth, triumphs, and will triumph.

BOOK II.

I.

The National Assembly, wearied with two years of existence, relaxed in
its legislative movement: from the moment when it had nothing more to
destroy, it really was at a loss what to do. The Jacobins took umbrage
at it, its popularity was disappearing, the press inveighed against it,
the clubs insulted it; the worn-out tool by which the people had
acquired conquest, it felt the people were about to snap it asunder if
it did not dissolve of its own accord. Its sittings were inanimate, and
it was completing the constitution as a task inflicted on it, but at
which it was discourage