victim. But, in the instance of France we see a Revolution generated
in the rational contemplation of the Rights of Man, and distinguishing
from the beginning between persons and principles.

  But Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles when he is
contemplating Governments. "Ten years ago," says he, "I could have
felicitated France on her having a Government, without inquiring
what the nature of that Government was, or how it was administered."
Is this the language of a rational man? Is it the language of a
heart feeling as it ought to feel for the rights and happiness of
the human race? On this ground, Mr. Burke must compliment all the
Governments in the world, while the victims who suffer under them,
whether sold into slavery, or tortured out of existence, are wholly
forgotten. It is power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke
venerates; and under this abominable depravity he is disqualified to
judge between them. Thus much for his opinion as to the occasions of
the French Revolution. I now proceed to other considerations.

  I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you
proceed along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke's language, it
continually recedes and presents itself at a distance before you;
but when you have got as far as you can go, there is no point at
all. Just thus it is with Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six
pages. It is therefore difficult to reply to him. But as the points he
wishes to establish may be inferred from what he abuses, it is in
his paradoxes that we must look for his arguments.

  As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke
should recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that
his readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned
exclamation.

  When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended
to be believed that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of
Europe is extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if
anyone knows what it is), the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of
manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!" and all this because
the Quixot age of chivalry nonsense is gone, what opinion can we
form of his judgment, or what regard can we pay to his facts? In the
rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of wind mills,
and his sorrows are that there are no Quixots to attack them. But if
the age of aristocracy, like that of chivalry, should fall (and they
had originally some connection) Mr. Burke, the trumpeter of the Order,
may continue his parody to the end, and finish with exclaiming:
"Othello's occupation's gone!"

  Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid paintings, when the French
Revolution is compared with the Revolutions of other countries, the
astonishment will be that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but
this astonishment will cease when we reflect that principles, and
not persons, were the meditated objects of destruction. The mind of
the nation was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what the
consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a higher conquest
than could be produced by the downfall of an enemy. Among the few
who fell there do not appear to be any that were intentionally singled
out. They all of them had their fate in the circumstances of the
moment, and were not pursued with that long, cold-blooded unabated
revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in the affair of 1745.

  Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the
Bastille is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of
implication as if he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were
built up again. "We have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and tenanted
the mansion; and we have prisons almost as strong as the Bastille
for those who dare to libel the queens of France."*[2] As to what a
madman like the person called Lord George Gordon might say, and to
whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a prison, it is unworthy a
rational consideration. It was a madman that libelled, and that is
sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity for confining
him, which was the thing that was wished for. But certain it is that
Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other people
may do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in the
grossest style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some
points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that
Mr. Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power
of the Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.

  Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection
that I can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who
lingered out the most wretched of lives, a life without hope in the
most miserable of prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his
talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than
he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching
his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his
imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.
Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand that hath purloined him
from himself, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the
genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his heroine must be a
tragedy-victim expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of
misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon.

  As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction of the Bastille
(and his silence is nothing in his favour), and has entertained his
readers with refections on supposed facts distorted into real