No doubt, the laws of public decency must be observed; there are excesses of guilt and brutality that must not be thought possible amongst mankind, and must, therefore, not be mentioned, lest the human heart should lose, by any familiarity, that first instinctive recoil of horror and disgust, which, as we now unhappily see, is its best protection.

Still, however, the crimes, the outrages that were committed, must not be concealed. It is for history to admonish mankind, to warn them of their nature, and to show them. what they may become.

I am concluding my lecture, but I will first mention an incident that I observed in one of the histories of the times.

When the Convention met after the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, it was accustomed to hold two sittings every day; and in one of the evening sittings, some time after these dreadful massacres, when the hall was but feebly lighted, Danton was in the tribune and speaking, while scarcely seen, and in the shade. He was vaunting the services he had rendered the country, and in his turn spoke aloud of reason, of justice, and of humanity. The sounds were scarcely uttered, when from a distant part, and athwart the obscure gloom of the hall, a loud and thrilling voice pronounced the word "September."

The fable of antiquity seemed now to be realized. As if the head of a Medusa had been seen, the deputies sat petrified, and the orator was struck dumb. At the word September, reason, justice, and humanity, profaned by the breath of Danton, obtained a short but memorable triumph; the hearers could no longer listen, and the speaker faltered as he endeavoured to proceed. The assembly (and that assembly the Convention) had felt the common workings of our nature, and in the bosom of the ruffian demagogue the strangled scorpions of his conscience had suddenly revived and stung him.

Something of the nature now described seems to have taken place in the sentiments even of others, who may be thought in many respects but too much to resemble him. No declaimer for the authority of the people, however wild, no demagogue, no revolutionist, that would not be checked and reduced to his limitations and apologies when reminded of the

scenes that took place on these days of September; and no Frenchman, however democratic, that would refuse to acknowledge, that, during this fatal period, his Revolution and his country incurred a stain that can never be obliterated.

But the great practical lesson of these massacres of September is the precipitous nature of human guilt.

Are the authors and perpetrators of these appalling crimes, are they our fellow mortals or not? They are men of like passions with ourselves.

See, then, to what a state of degradation a community may be reduced, to what extravagances of horror men may be excited, when each and all of them have been accustomed to tamper with their moral feelings.

In public as in private life, this is not to be done. Crime leads on to crime, probably in ourselves, certainly in those who follow us.

It is not too much to say, that they who tolerated the people in their excesses on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, prepared the way for those of the 20th of June, and so of the 10th of August and of the rest; and that all the popular leaders who from the first shut their eyes on the licentiousness of the people, are thus gradually brought within the character of guilt, and must all, in whatever varied proportion, take their share even in the guilt of the massacres of September.

NOTE.

In the Memoir on the massacres of September, there is a detailed and most affecting account of the perils and sufferings of the Abbé Sicard. The abbé was one of the refractory priests, but was the celebrated teacher of the deaf and dumb. His narrative is very descriptive of what passed at this period.

He

Tallien makes a dreadful appearance in these scenes. stands before the Legislative Assembly of his country, talking of assignats and barriers, and of the justice of the people; of the honour of the people, and of the just vengeance of the people; while all these foul butcheries were perpetrating, and while he was one of those who had regularly planned, prepared, and organized them.

Mr. Roland describes her sufferings, and the efforts of her husband, then minister, to avoid the guilt and shame, she says, of being in any measure an accomplice in such transac

tions.

LECTURE XXXII.

LA FAYETTE. FAULTS OF ALLIED POWERS, ETC.

IT

T is impossible to speak of the scenes and characters, to which I have alluded in the two last lectures, but in the terms I have made use of; it is impossible to feel any other sensations but those of reprobation and horror. We should be as inhuman as themselves were we to think with any other sentiments of these furious and unfeeling men, of their counsels of blood, of insurrections and massacres: insurrections against a helpless king and his family, his insulated friends and guards; and massacres of priests and aged men. And I may go still further, and protest against the employment of mobs, and all base and unprincipled pandering to the licentious passions of the people. Resistance may be made, it may even grow up into a civil war, and sad may be the scenes of private and of public wrong that may thence ensue; but what is even a civil war, compared with insurrections and massacres? Many a good and brave man may lie slaughtered in the field, and many a widow may have to mourn, and many an orphan to be desolate; but what are even these calamities (the afflicting scenes and results of honourable warfare), when put in comparison with the atrocities of the 10th of August and the 2nd of September? Who ever compared the civil wars of England with scenes of guilt and cruelty like these? We, too, have had our civil dissensions, our struggles for liberty, our Hampdens, and even our Cromwell; but not our processions of murder and assassination, our massacres in palaces and prisons, our Marats, our Dantons, and our Robespierres. The assertors of freedom are not to be the ministers of Moloch. Resistance is to be honourable and manly; it is not to be made at all but in the last resource, and after every moral and constitutional resist

ance has been tried in vain; but even then it must not be made in the murder of a few faithful guards, and the butchery of men confined in public prisons-in the commission of crimes and atrocities, which can only render the very name of freedom hateful to mankind; which can only serve to reconcile them to any species of rule, however arbitrary, which leaves them any tolerable enjoyment of their lives and property.

Through these two last lectures, and through the whole of these lectures, wherever I presume to breathe the accents of censure on popular leaders at all, I speak not to censure the cause of freedom, for it is the cause of human nature, but to censure the conduct of those on whose caution and moderation its success depended, a caution and moderation on which its success must ever depend.

And having now made these general observations, I must announce to you that a painful duty immediately presents itself. I must turn from the faults, and excesses, and crimes of the assertors of the new opinions, to the faults of those who were their opponents, the followers of the court and the supporters of the old.

It is the melancholy situation of an historian or commentator on human affairs, when they at all assume a revolutionary aspect, to be placed between the contending offences and mistakes of the patriots and rulers of mankind. He has to censure each in their turn, and to be himself very often exposed to great misapprehension; for while he is speaking with just indignation of the criminality of the one, he may appear to have quite forgotten, to be even insensible, to the faults of the other. This is especially the case of all who have to speak of the French Revolution. I must entreat my hearers not to do me this injustice. I would fain teach them-it would be the pride and honour of my life, it may hereafter be my comfort, to have taught them—that as they belong to the educated classes of the community, they are the proper guardians, not only of the institutions of their country, but of the liberties of their country; that they must never abandon that sacred cause; but that it is a trust, delicate as it is important; and that they are not to let it descend, either by their own inertness or their own violence, to the licentious