temporary advantages of injustice are more than counterbalanced by the permanent dissatisfaction which it occasions. The surest guide, it is at length discovered, is to be found in the inward monitor which nature has implanted in every human heart; and statesmen are taught by experience, that true wisdom consists in following what their conscience tells them to be just, in preference to what their limited experience, or mistaken views, may apprehend to be expedient.

over the safety of the commonwealth; he is anticipating or warding off the strokes of the traitor. Milton represents Satan justifying his temptation of our First Parents even amidst the innocence of Paradise. "Necessity, the tyrant's plea," was already in his mouth.*

5. The works of many of the greatest dramatists and romance-writers of modern times are characterised by this remarkable error-Racine and Molière, Alfieri and Scott, Lope de Vega and Bulwer, with all their profound knowledge of the human heart, have fallen into it.+ Yet deeper observers of human nature have perceived the real character of man in this respect. Shakspeare draws, with a master's hand, the self-delusion of the human heart, and the struggle in the breast of the incipient criminal. Corneille represents his heroes justifying all their excesses on the grounds of state necessity; it was on this account that Napoleon said, if he had lived in his time, he would have made him his first councillor of state. Euripides and Sophocles exhibit the cruel deeds of their characters as overborne by irresistible destiny. Machiavel holds forth state policy as justifying deeds of wick

4. Novelists and writers of the drama would do well to reflect on these observations. They generally represent their depraved characters as admitting their wickedness, but expressing their determination to adhere to it. This never occurs in real life. Men often admit the performance of, or profess an intention to perform, actions which the world calls wicked: but they never admit they are wicked. Invariably they speak of them as perfectly justifiable, or a commendable escape from absurd or iniquitous restraint. The libertine will avow all his deeds of perfidy-nay, he will glory in them; but he never allows they are wrong: on the contrary, he maintains they were no more than obe-edness to such an extent that subsedience to the dictates of nature, and that hypocritical cant alone can make them the subject of condemnation. The fraudulent bankrupt may not deny his deeds of deceit; but as long as he perseveres in his career, he represents them only as clever devices, indicating a superiority in the conduct of affairs over other men. The thief often admits his depredations, nay, he magnifies their number and dexterity; but while he remains a thief he never drops a hint as to their being criminal. The tyrant may, in a soliloquy, confess his cruel projects; but he never confesses they are cruel. State necessity, overruling destiny, are ever in his mouth; he is only watching *"And should I at your harmless innocence Melt as I do, yet public reason just, Honour and empire with revenge enlarged, By conquering this new world, compels me

quent ages have been doubtful whether he did not intend to vindicate them altogether. It is no doubt very convenient for a dramatist to represent his atrocious characters as laying bare their atrocity in conversation with confidants and in soliloquies; but no man ever met with this in real life. Those who look for it in the world will be constantly disappointed. Among the innumerable criminals whom the French Revolution warmed into life, there is not one who ever approached even to an admission that he had done wrong in the course of it. The same plea was Cromwell's apology for the murder of Charles I. He knew the human heart well who

It is in an especial manner conspicuous in Alfieri. Madame de Stael was of the same opinion: "There is in the dramas of Alfieri such a profusion of energy and magnanimity, or, on the contrary, such an exaggeration of violence and crime, that it is impossible to recognise his characters as human beings. They are never so wicked or so generous as he paints them."-Corinne, lib. vii. c. 2.

said "The heart is deceitful above all | followed by immediate and unqualified things, and desperately wicked." *

submission from every part of France. Legendre himself, his old friend, said at the Jacobin Club-"I am bound to declare before the people, that I am fully convinced, by the documents I have inspected, of Danton's guilt. Before his accusation I was his intimate friend; I would have answered for his patriotism with my head; but his conduct, and that of his accomplices, at their trial, leaves no doubt of their intentions." Robespierre made a laboured harangue, interrupted at every moment by applauses, against his unfortunate rival. "It is evident," said Arthur, one of his own party, "that Danton was led to engage Dumourier to march to Paris. The money which Danton possessed was offered to Santerre, but not quickly enough to produce an insurrection." + The same sentiments were re-echoed from every part of France. From all the departments arrived a crowd of addresses, congratulating the Committee of Public Salvation and the Convention on their energy. Every one hastened to make his submission to the government, and to admit the justice of its proceedings. But while approbation was in every mouth, submission in every countenance, terror in every heart, hatred at the oppressors was secretly spreading, and the downfall of democratic tyranny preparing amidst the acclamations of its triumph.

6. The truth of these principles was strongly exemplified in the later stages of the French Revolution. During the four months which elapsed between the death of Danton and the fall of Robespierre, DEATH became the sole engine of government; systematic and daily executions took place in the capital; extermination, conducted by despotic agents, prevailed in the provinces and yet nothing but the language of philanthropy was breathed in the Convention, nothing but the noblest sentiments were uttered by the Decemvirs. Each defeat of their rivals only rendered the ruling faction more sanguinary. The successive proscriptions of the Royalists, the Girondists, the Constitutionalists, the Anarchists, and the Moderates, were immediately followed by a more violent effusion of human blood, and a more vehement profession of the principles of humanity. The destinies of France, as of every other country which undergoes the crisis of a revolution, had fallen into the hands of men who, born of the public convulsions, were sustained by them alone: they massacred in the name of their principles, they put to death in the name of the public welfare; but terror of their rivals was the real spring of their actions. The most barbarous cruelty, the most ruthless violence, the most degrading despotism, were represented as emanating from the princi- 8. The political fanaticism of that exples of freedom, and as imperiously call-traordinary period exceeded the relied for by state necessity. The noblest and most sacred motives which can influence the human breast-virtue, humanity, love for the public good, the freedom of the world-were incessantly invoked to justify their executions, to vindicate their tyranny, to prolong a power founded on the agony of the people.

period received large sums of money from + It clearly appears that Danton had at one the court. In addition to the evidence on this subject furnished by Bertrand de Molleit appears from a note of Lafayette's that ville, already referred to (Chap. VII. § 24), he had previously agreed to sell himself to the court. "Danton sold himself for

100,000 francs (£4000), of which he only got 10,000. After the suppression of the disturbances, he was ready to sell himself to any

7. Yet, so firmly was their power esta-party. blished that the death of Danton was

*On the evening after the execution of Charles I., Cromwell walked round the corpse in Whitehall, muffled up in a long black cloak, repeating to himself the words, "Dreadful necessity!"- European Magazine, XX. 106; and Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons,

i. 254.

While he was making incendiary motions at the Jacobins, he was the spy of the court, giving it a systematic account of all that passed there. Later, he received a great deal of money: the Friday before the 10th of August, he got 100,000 crowns. Madame Elizabeth said before that day'We are tranquil; we can rely upon Danton.""-Note found among the papers of General Lafayette; Hist. Parl. xxxii. 105, 106.

gious fervour of the age of Cromwell. | cemvirs was to establish a republic in Posterity will find it as difficult to France after the model of the ancients, credit the one as the other. "Plus le to change the manners, the habits, the corps social transpire," said Collot public spirit of the country. Soved'Herbois, "plus il devient sain."-"Il reignty in the people, magistrates withn'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent out pride, citizens without vice, sim'pas," exclaimed Barère. "Le vaisseau plicity of manners, fraternity of relade la Révolution ne peut arriver au tions, austerity of character-such was port que sur une mer rougie de flots de the basis on which their institutions sang," said St Just. "Une nation ne were to rest. There was one objection se régénère que sur des monceaux de to them, that they were utterly impraccadavres," rejoined Robespierre.* Such ticable, from the character of the great were the principles daily carried into body of mankind. Camille Desmoupractice for months together in every lins saw this, when, in a letter to his town in France. Alone and unre- wife, the night before his execution, strained, the Committee of Public Sal- he said "I had dreamt of a republic vation struck repeated and resistless which all the world would have adored. blows from one end of the kingdom to I could not have believed that men the other. Fertile in crime, abounding were so ferocious and so unjust." "I in wretchedness, that eventful reign knew well the great," said Alfieri, after was not wanting in the most heroic witnessing at Paris the 10th August, examples of virtue. "Non tamen adeo "but I did not know the little." + Such virtutum sterile seculum, ut non et were the errors which ruined France: bona exempla prodiderit. Comitatæ a mistaken idea of the virtue of unprofugos liberos matres, secuta maritos sophisticated man, unbounded confiin exilia conjuges, propinqui audentes, dence in social regeneration, utopian constantes generi, contumax etiam ad- expectations of human perfectibility, versus tormenta servorum fides, su- were the root of all the errors which premæ clarorum virorum necessitates, prevailed. To accomplish these chiipsa necessitas fortiter tolerata, et lau- merical projects, it was indispensable datis antiquorum mortibus pares exi- to destroy the whole superior classes of tus." + society, to cut off all those who were preeminent among their neighbours, either for fortune, rank, talent, or acquirement. These, they seriously believed, were the only wicked men in the world. To destroy them was the end, accordingly, proposed in the indiscriminate massacres which were put in execution. And what would have been its consequence if completely carried into effect? To sink the whole human race to the level of the lowest classes, to annihilate all superiority in virtue, knowledge, or acquirement, and destroy everything which dignifies or adorns human nature. Such was the chimera which they followed through these oceans of blood. Politicians have no right, after such proceedings, to reproach religious enthusiasm with the reign of saints, or the expected approach of the millennium.

9. The professed object of the De

* "If we wish to save the vessel of the Re

public, there must be no pity; blood! blood! Let all the Capetians and Royalists of every denomination perish. We want neither a Cæsar nor a Pompey! that is my profession

of faith."-ACHARD à GRAVIER, juré national, 10 Ther., Ann. 2; Papiers trouvés chez ROBESPIERRE, ii. 225. These expressions, to which hundreds of others might be added, prove how true to nature the great Scottish novelist was in his delineation of the Covenanters. "We must smite them hip and thigh, even from the rising to the going down of the sun. It is our commission to slay them like Amalek, and utterly destroy all they have, and spare neither man nor woman, infant nor suckling; therefore hinder me not," said

Burley, "for this must not be done negligently."-Old Mortality, chap. ix.

"Yet the age was not so sterile in virtue as to be destitute of great examples. Mothers attended their flying children, wives followed their exiled husbands, relations were un daunted, sons-in-law unshaken, the fidelity of slaves firm even against the utmost tortures, the illustrious subjected to the utmost hardships, and that hardship itself bravely endured, and death, equal to the most renowned of antiquity, of daily occurrence."

"Je connais bien les grands, mais je ne connaissais pas les petits."-ALFIERI, Vita, i. 374 ad fin.

10. In pursuance of these views, St | of France, adopted several measures Just made a laboured report on the calculated to strengthen its own power, general police of the commonwealth, and subvert that of the people. The in which he recapitulated all the fabu- situations of the different ministers lous stories of conspiracies against the of state were abolished, and twelve Republic; explaining them as efforts committees appointed to carry on the of every species of vice against the aus- details of government. These comtere rule of the people; and concluding missions, entirely appointed by the with holding out the necessity of the Committee of Public Salvation, and degovernment striking without intermis-pendent on the will of its members, sion, till it had cut off all those whose corruption opposed itself to the establishment of virtue. "You have been severe-you were right to be so, but you have acted judiciously. It was necessary to resist crime by inflexible justice, to destroy conspiracies, and to punish the sanguinary hypocrisy of those who, without courage, seek to restore the throne and destroy the Republic. The foundation of all great states has been laid in storms. The basis of all great institutions is terror. Where would now have been an indulgent Republic? We have opposed the sword to the sword, and its power is in consequence established. It has emerged from the storm, and its origin is like that of the earth out of the confusion of Chaos, and of man who weeps in the hour of nativity." As a consequence of these principles, he proposed a general measure of proscription against all the nobles as the irreconcilable opponents of the Revolution. "You will never,” said he, "satisfy the enemies of the people, till you have re-established tyranny in all its horrors. They can never be at peace with you; you do not speak the same language; you will never understand each other. Banish them by an inexorable law; the universe may receive them; and the public safety is our justification." then proposed a decree which banished all the ex-nobles, all strangers from Paris, the fortified towns, and seaports of France; and declared hors la loi whoever did not yield obedience in ten hours to the order. It was received with applause by the Convention, and passed, like all decrees of government at that time, without coming to a vote.

were, in fact, nothing but the offices in which they exercised their mighty and despotic powers. Shortly after, steps were taken to extinguish all the popular societies which did not immediately depend on the great parent club of the Jacobins. It was resolved at that society that they would no longer receive any deputation from bodies formed since the 10th August, or keep up any correspondence with them; and that a committee should be appointed, to consider whether it should be maintained with those which were formed before that event. This measure, directed in an especial manner against the club of the Cordeliers, the centre of the influence of Danton, soon produced the desired effect. Intimidated by the destruction of the leaders of that great society, the whole other clubs in France, to avoid the coming storm, dissolved themselves; and in less than ten days after the promulgation of this resolution, there remained no secondary club in France, but those which were affiliated with the Jacobins at Paris. That body thenceforward became the sole organ of government in regulating public opinion. It was next proposed to close the sittings of the Cordeliers; but this was unnecessary; that club, once so terrible, rapidly He declined, and soon died a natural death. The Jacobins, swayed with absolute power by the Committee of Public Salvation, with its affiliated societies, alone remained of all the innumerable clubs which had sprung up in France. Thus, on all sides, the anarchy of the Revolution was destroying itself; and out of its ruins the stern and relentless despotism of a few political fanatics was wringing out of the heart's blood of France the last remnants of democratic fervour.

11. The Committee of Public Salvation, now confident in its own strength, and strong in the universal submission