CHAP. IX. ing, supported by aristocratic liberality, indulged with 1793. royal favour, it had successively ruined all the classes
who supported its fortunes. The clergy were the first to join its standard, and they were the first to be destroyed; the nobles then yielded to its fortunes, and they were the next to suffer; the King had proved himself the liberal benefactor of his subjects, and conceded all the demands of the revolutionists, and, in return, he was led out to the scaffold. It remained to be seen what was the fate of the victors in the strife; whether such crimes were to go unpunished; and whether the laws of Nature promised the same impunity to wickedness which they had obtained from human tribunals.
"Quid in rebus civilibus," says Bacon, "maxime prodest? Audacia. Quid secundum? Audacia. Quid tertium? Audacia. In promptu ratio est; inest enim naturæ humanæ, plerumque plus stulti quam sapientis, unde et facultates eæ, quibus capitur pars illa in animis mortalium stulta, sunt omnium potentissimæ. Attamen utcunque ignorantiæ et sordidi ingenii proles est Audacia, nihilominus fascinat et captivos ducit eos qui vel judicio infirmiores sunt vel animo timidiores; tales autem sunt hominum pars maxima." "Le canon que vous entendez," said Danton at the bar of the Assembly, " n'est pas le canon d'alarm; c'est le pas de charge sur nos ennemis. Pour les vaincre, pour les atterrer, que faut-il? De l'audace! encore de l'audace! toujours de l'audace!" It is not a little remarkable, that philosophical sagacity should have inspired to the sage of the sixteenth, not only the idea, but the very words, which a practical acquaintance with the storms of the Revolution suggested to the Bacon, x. terrible demagogue of the nineteenth century.'
Never was the truth of these memorable words