f mankind. M. Guizot has, in one of his
admirable pamphlets, happily and justly described M. Laine as "an honest
and liberal man, discouraged by the Revolution." This description, at
the time when M. Dumont's Memoirs were written, would have applied to
almost every honest and liberal man in Europe; and would, beyond all
doubt, have applied to M. Dumont himself. To that fanatical worship
of the all-wise and all-good people, which had been common a few years
before, had succeeded an uneasy suspicion that the follies and vices
of the people would frustrate all attempts to serve them. The wild and
joyous exaltation, with which the meeting of the States-General and the
fall of the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place
was dejection, and a gloomy distrust of suspicious appearances. The
philosophers and philanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign
produced? Philosophy had brought with it mummeries as absurd as any
which had been practised by the most superstitious zealot of the darkest
age. Philanthropy had brought with it crimes as horrible as the massacre
of Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These
were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France
had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that
a courtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted
her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre.
For a time men thought that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth
century was folly; and that those hopes of great political and social
ameliorations which had been cherished by Voltaire and Condorcet were
utterly delusive.

Under the influence of these feelings, M. Dumont has gone so far as
to say that the writings of Mr Burke on the French Revolution, though
disfigured by exaggeration, and though containing doctrines subversive
of all public liberty, had been, on the whole, justified by events, and
had probably saved Europe from great disasters. That such a man as the
friend and fellow-labourer of Mr Bentham should have expressed such
an opinion is a circumstance which well deserves the consideration of
uncharitable politicians. These Memoirs have not convinced us that the
French Revolution was not a great blessing to mankind. But they have
convinced us that very great indulgence is due to those who, while the
Revolution was actually taking place, regarded it with unmixed aversion
and horror