tures is to warn you of the possible mistakes of men of elevated and generous natures, of men of ardent and sanguine minds, of men, of young men more particularly (they were almost all young men that took a lead in this Revolution), of men of presumptuous and conceited understandings, such is naturally the character (I mean not to offend) but such is naturally the character of men at any early period of life, especially when they are men of talents; such men, as in the instance of France before us, and in any other instance that can be expected to arise, will always start up from society, the supporters of new opinions, the scoffers of prejudices and antiquated notions, the patrons of sweeping measures and daring experiments; and they will undertake to manage mankind as they would the pieces on their chess boards; and suppose that what is clear to their own particular understandings, must necessarily be so to that of the community; and conceive that when a reasonable doctrine or system, or what appears such to themselves, has once been held up to the acceptance of men, no further difficulty remains.

The fact is always otherwise; and, if the system which the patriots adopt has not been from the first one of compromise and conciliation, opposition, determined opposition, is engendered; the multitude are then to be called in, the violent prevail; and for the early patriots, and for the friends of peace and order, there is no longer any hope; they find that they become unpopular, they lose their power.

"Carceribus sese effudêre quadriga,

Addunt se in spatia: et frustra retinacula tendens
Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas."

I must now conclude; but I must make one parting observation on the noblesse of France at this period, which will enable me to do equal justice to all parties, and exercise my censure (such as it is) on both the descriptions of offenders that appeared in these memorable scenes.

It is melancholy then to reflect upon the conduct of the nobility, during these discussions on the constitution; what chance for them, what chance for the king, what chance for their country, even according to their own particular notions, but in the formation of two houses? Yet mark now their

From the supera

miserable jealousies and small views. bundant noblesse of France, only a small portion could be chosen to form an upper chamber; those, who saw no chance of their being themselves elected, were against the measure of two houses. Some imagined that the forty-seven who had first joined the Tiers Etat would be first promoted to the upper house, and this again was intolerable; and of the rest too many of the higher orders, who were enemies to the Revolution in any form, thought that such a regulation would give stability to it, and prevent that discord, precipitancy, and anarchy, of which they already saw the seeds and the beginnings in the present Assembly, and from which they augured its overthrow and the restoration of the old régime.

The question was, therefore, lost by an immense majority: the higher orders and the royalists voted against the two chambers, uniting with their enemies; and this conduct of the noblesse, which was the destruction of France, is but too much the conduct of privileged orders at all times and in all countries: they can never rise superior to the temptations of their situation, whether in religion or politics; and the wellwisher to the civil and religious liberties of mankind, the historian or the philosopher, who comes afterwards to weigh them in his balance, loses all his proper calmness and consideration, and in the impatience of his indignation, when public disorder and ruin have been the consequence, pronounces them to be as selfish, contracted, and improvident in their notions, as the lowliest of the rabble which surround their carriages in the streets.

The mistake of the noblesse, to which I have just alluded, was not only one very obvious and very unpardonable, but it was a late one. They and the court had already made their mistakes before, and they now repeated them; but the people also and the popular leaders had now to make their mistakes, and I think, as we have just seen, they did make them. I speak not of bad and wicked men, such as will always be found, such as must always be taken into all calculations in political affairs; I speak of men of enlightened minds and patriotic feelings, such as I have no right to suppose meant ill to their country. To these men, the patriotic leaders of 1789, and to the privileged orders who preceded them in their

mistakes, to both descriptions of men the words of Mr. Burke, in one of his celebrated passages, are strictly applicable, and were not only a lesson to them, which they ought to have observed, but they are also a memorable lesson to those who are to come after them; for a sort of conflict between old and new opinions in the history of this world of ours will never cease.

"Early reformations," says Burke, in a well-known paragraph in his well-known speech on economical reform, "are amicable arrangements with a friend in power; late reformations are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy. Early reformations are made in cold blood; late reformations are made under a state of inflammation. In that state of things the people behold in government nothing that is respectable; they see the abuse, and they will see nothing else."

Weighty words these, and universally applicable; uttered many years before, and prophetic, if applied to France; for the privileged orders never could see the wisdom of early reformations, and the patriotic leaders (too many of them) could afterwards behold in government nothing that was respectable. They saw the abuse, as Mr. Burke says, and would see nothing else. They fell into the temper," as he continues, “of a furious populace, provoked at the disorder of a house of ill fame: they never attempted to correct or regulate; they went to work by the shortest way; they abated the nuisance, they pulled down the house."

IN

LECTURE XIX.

FIFTH AND SIXTH OF OCTOBER.

your

N the three last lectures, I have endeavoured to draw attention to the period that intervened between the 14th of July and the beginning of October, 1789. I have endeavoured to place it before you in every point of view: the different questions that were then discussed, the different opinions that were then expressed; and I have done this at great length (reckless of any charge of tediousness and repetition), on account of what I believe to be the importance of the lessons that this period offers to all who are disposed to engage in public concerns, more especially to the friends of freedom. During this period, had Mounier and his friends been properly supported, the Revolution might have been adjusted upon a system of mutual sacrifices, conciliation, and peace; but the opportunity was lost. No proper terms were kept with the king and with the court. The friends of freedom, some of them, still entertained their terror of the return of arbitrary power, while others of them were animated with hopes of a new order of things, more favourable, as they thought, to liberty, but evidently of a nature far too vague and unqualified, far too democratic to be admitted into a system like that of the French monarchy, without much positive injustice, great violence, the certainty of much commotion, and the hazard of a civil war.

Now these I conceive to have been serious mistakes made by the friends of freedom on this occasion in the one way and in the other; and I am now, you will observe, speaking only of those men who are entitled to our respect, those who meant well, who supposed that they were friends to their country and mankind. I speak not of daring, selfish, unprincipled men, such as always come forward on occasions of

public agitation: I speak not of those; of such men it is in vain to speak; I am directing my observations to those who were too full of their own opinions to respect those of others; who expected too much from the influence of truth and reason; who considered not the perilous and uncertain nature of all political dissensions; who were too sanguine to be wise. Men like these will, as I conceive, always exist: nay, more; unless men of generous minds and ardent temperaments are continually found in society, freedom cannot be maintained in it. No point, therefore, can be a point of greater anxiety than to teach men like these, the temptations of their situation; to warn them, by the example of a period like this in the French Revolution, that they are to keep a guard upon their very virtues and upon some of the most indispensable and highest qualities of their nature. In revolutions, the history is always much the same. There are those of warm passions, of ready eloquence, of fearless minds: these are the men who put a revolution into motion; dangerous from the very elevation of their characters, from the very purity of their enthusiasm; young men, for the most part, caught by novelty, disposed to experiment, offensive by their presumption, and who turn away with contempt from what are proposed to them as the lessons of experience. These are found on the one side; and on the other are ranged those more advanced in age, more especially those of the privileged orders, accustomed to a certain routine of duties and opinions, and too much disposed to consider, as still in existence, those sentiments and prejudices, good and bad, which, amid the changes of the world, may have passed away.

Now, between these descriptions of men stand the men of intelligence and reflection, too young for the one, too old for the other; who are by nature, as by wisdom, placed between the two, and whose wish and whose labour it will be to conciliate and to harmonize, to estimate and to provide at once for the past, the present, and the future. But what will naturally be the fate of such men? Belonging not to the violent on either side, they will persuade neither, they will displease both; they will fail, they will be disappointed; they will be found in the company of the first that come forward while the revolution is ripening, but they will be also