CHAP. 1795. ral influence commands success. One-tenth part of the emigrants who fled from France, if properly head- XIX. ed and disciplined, would have been sufficient to have curbed the fury of the populace, crushed the ambition of the reckless, and prevented the Reign of Terror.1 No doubt can now exist that the interference of the Allies augmented the horrors, and added to the duration of the Revolution. All its bloodiest excesses were committed during, or after an alarming, but unsuccessful invasion, by the Allied Forces. The massacres of September 2d, were perpetrated when the public mind was excited to the highest degree, by the near approach of the Duke of Brunswick; and the worst days of the government of Robespierre, were immediately after the defection of Dumourier, and the battle of Nerwinde, threatened the rule of the Jacobins with destruction. Nothing but a sense of public danger could have united the factions who then strove with so much exasperation against each other; the peril of France alone could have induced the people to submit to the sanguinary rule which so long desolated its plains. The Jacobins maintained their ascendency by constantly representing their cause as that of national independence, by stigmatizing their enemies as the enemies of the country; and the patriots wept and suffered in silence, lest by resistance they should weaken the state, and erase France from the book of nations. In combating a revolution one of two courses must be followed; either to advance with vigour, and crush the hydra in its cradle, or to leave the factions to contend with each other, and trust for safety to the reaction which crime and suffering necessarily produce. The suppression of the Spanish Revolution 1 Burke, vi. 237. XIX. CHAP. by the Duke d'Angouleme in 1823, is an example of the success of the first system: the bloodless restora1795. tion of the English monarchs, in 1660, a proof of the wisdom of the second. To advance with menaces, and recoil with shame; to awaken resistance, and not extinguish opposition; to threaten, and not execute, is the most ruinous course that can possibly be adopted. It is to unite faction by community of danger; to convert revolutionary energy into military power; to strengthen the hands of crime, by giving it the support of virtue. Ignorance of the new element which was acting in human affairs may extenuate the fatal errors committed by the European powers in the first years of the Revolutionary war; no excuse will hereafter remain for a repetition of the mistake. But it is not with impunity that such sins as disgraced the Revolution can be committed by any people. The actors in the bloody tragedy almost all destroyed each other; their crimes led to their natural and condign punishment, in rendering them the first victims of the passions which they had unchained. But a signal and awful retribution was also due to the nation which had suffered these iniquities, which had permitted such torrents of innocent blood to flow, and spread the bitterness of domestic suffering to such an unparalleled extent throughout the land. These crimes were registered in the book of fate; the anguish they had brought on others was speedily felt by themselves; the tears they had caused to flow, were washed out in the torrents which fell from guilty eyes.* France was decimated for her cruelty; for twenty years the flower of her youth was marched away by a relentless power to the harvest of death; 66 "There is in the misfortunes of France, enough," says Savary, to make her sons shed tears of blood."-Savary, iv. 382. XIX. 1795. the snows of Russia revenged the guillotine of Paris. CHAP. Allured by the phantom of military glory, they fell down and worshipped the power which was consuming them; they followed it to the verge of destruction, till the mask of the spectre fell, and the ghastly features of death appeared. This dreadful punishment also was the immediate effect of the atrocities which it chastised. In the absence of all the enjoyments of domestic life, in the destruction of every pacific employment, one only career, that of violence, remained. From necessity, as well as inclination, every man took to arms; the sufferings of the state swelled the ranks on the frontier, and France became a great military power, from the causes which it was thought would have led to its destruction. The natural consequence of this was the establishment of military despotism, and the prosecution of the insane career of conquest by a victorious chieftain. France only awakened from her dream of ambition when her youth was mowed down, her armies destroyed, her conquests rifled, and her glory lost. Both the Allied Powers, and the French people suffered in these disastrous conflicts, because both deserved to suffer; the former for their ambitious projects on the territory of the Republic, the latter for their unparalleled cruelty. Finally, the history of those melancholy periods affords the strongest evidence of the incessant operation of the principles destined for the preservation of social happiness, even in the darkest periods of human existence. Since the fall of the Roman Empire no such calamitous era had arisen as that which immediately followed the 10th of August; none in which innocence so generally suffered, and vice so long triumphed ; in which impiety was so openly professed, and profligacy CHAP. so generally indulged; in which blood flowed in such ceaseless torrents, and anguish embittered such a mul1795. titude of hearts. Yet, even in those disastrous times, the benevolent laws of Nature were incessantly acting; this anguish expiated the sins of former times; this blood tamed the fierceness of present discord. In the stern school of adversity wisdom was learned, and error forgotten; speculation ceased to blind its votaries, and ambition to mislead by the language of virtue. Years of suffering conferred centuries of experience; the latest posterity will, it is to be hoped, in that country at least, reap the fruits of the Reign of Terror. Like all human things, the government of France may undergo changes in the lapse of time; different institutions may be required, and new dynasties called to the throne; but no bloody convulsion similar to that which once tore its bosom will again take place; the higher ranks will not a second time be massacred by the lower; another French Revolution of the same character as the last, and the age in which it occurs, must be ignorant of the First. END OF VOLUME SECOND. 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