which would have resulted from those ideas in France, would have resulted from them here. Ah, that was the case, was it? That being the danger, we must look at it nearer, and examine it a little more minutely. "The party desiring extensive changes in France had ideas calculated to bring horrid consequences upon themselves, calculated, also, to be adopted by the people of England, and to bring like horrid consequences upon them. This was the theory! and certainly a more remarkable theory was never propounded to the world. The practical consequence, pressed upon the people of England, was, if possible, still more wonderful. They were called upon to go to war against a set of ideas, for fear lest they themselves should adopt them; to go to war against ideas, because they were calculated to bring horrid consequences upon whosoever adopted them; and they, believing this already as the ground why they should go to war, were also made to believe that it was necessary to go to war to prevent themselves from adopting those ideas; to prevent themselves from adopting ideas, which they were already persuaded, to so intense a degree, were unfit for adoption. "This is a curious item to be found in the state of a nation; and having been an item in the state of this nation at so recent a period, must have an intimate connexion with much of what it is now our purpose to expound. "No such monstrous case of gulling, no such inordinate swallow of delusion, we verily believe, is to be found in the history of civilized man. "C Foreigners who visit England, are very apt to say of our dear country, Ma foi, c'est le pays le plus aristocratique de l'Europe. Here we have a cause which will account satisfactorily for many phenomena. "The party demanding extensive changes in France, demanded, among other things, the extinction of those privileges of the aristocratical class, by which that class were enabled to perpetuate bad government for their own advantage. These ideas were horrid, no doubt, to the aristocratical class in England. What deserves profound consideration is, the degree to which they persuaded the rest of the people that they were horrid to them, and the ways and means by which they brought about that extraordinary persuasion. "It is a signal manifestation of their mighty power. First of all, they possessed the privilege, up to that time but little encroached upon, of setting the opinions of the people; in opinions, as in other things, the ambition of the lower sort has been, to follow the example of the higher; in the next place, they had the instruments of noise, to a great degree, in their own hands; the means of filling the ears of the nation so constantly with the din of their own opinions, as almost to exclude the hearing of any other. 'Give me,' says Addison, in one of the Spectators, the power of stating every day without contradiction, to a man at his breakfast, any opinion for a sufficient length of time, and I shall make sure of having his belief in the long run.' The contagion of the passions is another power of which the aristocracy availed themselves on that occasion to an astonishing degree. How naturally one man becomes inflamed by another, needs no illustration. How much more naturally and strongly we catch the passions of those to whom we look up, than of those upon whom we look down, is also matter of certain experience. The aristocratical class, on that occasion, were agitated with real fears; they used every sort of artifice, many theatrical, many far less justifiable, to act still more tragic fears than they felt. The great players found in the people a sympathetic, far too sympathetic audience. "Wielding all the powers of government, having all the punishments and all the rewards of the state at command, they were able, after they had gotten the passions of the people a little on their side, to silence all contradiction. Of the men With a who addressed, or were capable of addressing, the public, by far the greater number were on their side, part from sympathy, part because they saw it greatly for their interest. Against those who would have opened the eyes of the people, they had the instrument of punishment in tremendous power. law such as ours, persecution itself, tormenting, harassing, ruinous by the expense whatever the result, and the result itself almost always uncertain whatever the case, is despotism in the hands of the aristocracy, or the ministry, its organ. Every artifice of delusion employed on the one side, the means of exposing the delusion denied on the other, what wonder is it that the people were dragged, if not willing, yet unresisting, victims to the sacrifice, passing through the fire to Moloch, and feeding the fire which burned them with their substance?" ANECDOTES CONNECTED WITH THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. I HAD Occasion, in the foregoing article, to advert to the excessive prejudice which the old governments of Europe had contrived to excite against the revolutionists of France. As one proof among a thousand of the force of that prejudice, I may adduce the following anecdote, related to me by the individual who is the subject of it. A French gentleman arrived at the island of Martinique, in the year 1802. He was the first Frenchman who had entered the island since the revolutionary struggle; and it was with no little surprise he perceived, that the inhabitants of all ranks and classes, from the rich planter to the poorest slave, shrunk from him, with a degree of astonishment apparently not unmixed with terror, for which he could not account. A day or two afterwards, he ventured to ask an acquaintance if there was any thing so very strange or remarkable in his appearance, that might have caused so marked and so disagreeable a sensation. “Oh no,” rejoined his friend; "but you are a Frenchman; the first we have seen since the horrors of your revolution; and our people have somehow or other imbibed the idea, that France is now a nation of monsters. I doubt not but that some of them looked for the cloven foot." And yet these colonists were themselves, with a few exceptions, French; and had been under British influence only a few years; long enough, however, it would seem, to persuade them that their own countrymen had been changed, by the revolution, from men into demons. Some months afterwards a detachment of the French troops of Moreau's army entered the island. All was consternation ; the men avoided every intercourse with the strangers; the women shut themselves up for several days in their houses, scarcely venturing to appear at their windows, much less to walk the streets. And it was not till after many weeks that the inhabitants began to doubt whether, after all, these republican soldiers were not more quiet, more humane, and more polished, than any troops which had ever visited their colony. I stated that emissaries had been sent from England, and em ployed by other European courts, to push republican principles to extravagance and cruelty, and thus to bring them into contempt and horror. I may illustrate the assertion by a particular instance of this system of inhuman hypocrisy, which has come to my knowledge. The celebrated Pinel, of Paris, was called, in his capacity of physician, to attend a member of one of the principal revolutionary committees; a man who had distinguished himself as the abettor and perpetrator of some of the worst atrocities that stained the annals of that eventful period. The patient eagerly enquired what Pinel thought of his case; requesting, as an act of friendship, that danger, if there were any, might not be concealed from him. Pinel replied by advising him, if he had yet business to arrange, not to delay an hour in settling it. The dying man appeared to be deeply affected with his situation; and Pinel, who had ever been a true and staunch republican, even from the first attack on the Bastile in which he personally assisted— thought the moment favorable to obtain some insight into the motives that had prompted the chief actors in the revolutionary tragedy. "Sir," he said, addressing his patient, "I would fain ask you a question; but it may be a painful one." "Ask it," replied the other; "my time here is short, and I have nothing that I need conceal now." 66 Then," resumed Pinel, "I would ask what possible motive you could have had to enact, under the guise of republicanism, the bloody horrors that have ruined our cause. "Your question is easily answered," returned the sick man; I had a pension of six thousand francs sent to me from England regularly by Louis." وو R. D. O. |