tion of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob,
are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we ask ourselves
this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as an unavoidable
consequence, out of the ill construction of all old governments in
Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly exalting
some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out
of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the
back-ground of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare,
the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a
revolution, those men are rather the followers of the camp than of the
standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.

I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I
then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here lay
down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of the French
Revolution, as much as any one thing he could have asserted. These
outrages were not the effect of the principles of the Revolution, but
of the degraded mind that existed before the Revolution, and which the
Revolution is calculated to reform. Place them then to their proper
cause, and take the reproach of them to your own side.

It is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris that,
during such a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the control
of all authority, they have been able, by the influence of example
and exhortation, to restrain so much. Never were more pains taken to
instruct and enlighten mankind, and to make them see that their interest
consisted in their virtue, and not in their revenge, than have been
displayed in the Revolution of France. I now proceed to make some
remarks on Mr. Burke's account of the expedition to Versailles, October
the 5th and 6th.

I can consider Mr. Burke's book in scarcely any other light than a
dramatic performance; and he must, I think, have considered it in the
same light himself, by the poetical liberties he has taken of omitting
some facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery bend to
produce a stage effect. Of this kind is his account of the expedition to
Versailles. He begins this account by omitting the only facts which as
causes are known to be true; everything beyond these is conjecture, even
in Paris; and he then works up a tale accommodated to his own passions
and prejudices.

It is to be observed t