HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
nature of enthusiasm, that, on the 
very first meeting of an assembly 
chosen by the whole people of 
France, without any consideration 
of property or rank, when mutual 
confidence might be supposed, if 
ever to reign (and immediately 
after the abolition of royalty, and 
an oath of eternal hatred to kings) 
such sentiments should be avowed 
by so eminent and popular a leader 
in the revolution. The ground of 
virtue, the basis of republican go- 
gernment, was abandoned, andan 
asylum sought within the precincts 
of despotism. 
» But Roland, with his friends and 
adherents, though he distrusted the 
present generation, anticipated the 
virtue of future times, the happy 
and glorious fruit of the new form 
of government. In a letter which 
the minister of the interior sent, 
_ ‘Nearly at the same time, to the ad- 
' ministrative bodies, he says, ‘* Hi- 
deous egotism, which would walk 
tranquilly amidst ruin, to search 
after what it could appropriate to 
itself; jealous and bold ambition, 
always ready to shoot up in minds 
heated and unruly, the unthinking 
and immoral habits of so many men 
vitiated by tyranny,—all these kept 
up a focus of corruption, the effects 
Of which have appeared to tarnish 
some epochs of the constitution. 
It would be as great injustice to 
Siren as to be astonished at them. 
he instant at which the elements, 
confused in chaos, came into regu- 
Jar union; must have been that of 
am agitation in which none but the 
Creator could perceive the incalcu- 
a var 
[65 
lable and disorderly movements. 
The moment when the genius of 
liberty extinguishes empire, offers 
something analogous which philo- 
sophy alone can calculate.—But 
the light is made :—its shining rays 
animate and give colour to objects. 
Royalty is proscribed, and the reign 
of equality begins.” 
If ever there existed a chaos, or 
abyss of disorder, there could have 
been no such thing in its agitation 
as disorderly motion, since every 
motion from a state of disorder 
must have been a motion towards 
the establishment of order and har- 
mony. But it would be idle to 
waste time in exposing the inapti- 
tude, as well as extravagance of 2 
comparison, between the creation 
of the universe and the French re- 
volution. This scene doves not so 
naturally recall to a dispassionate 
mind, light and order springing, at 
the Almighty fiat, out of darkness 
and confusion*, as the whole crea- 
tion groaning and inf pain, in conse- 
quence of the disorders introduced 
into the world by sin. But it is 
not wholly foreign to our purpose 
to give a specimen of those flowers 
of rhetoric which accorded so well 
with the genius of France; parti- 
culaly at this time, and were consi- 
dered as very convincing arguments 
by so great a portion of the nation. 
The weight of this observation is 
not lessened but rather encreased, 
if the letters and other compositions 
of Roland were written, as is ge- 
nerally believed, by his wife. 
M. Roland, in a letter to the de- 
partments, on the subject of the 
_ * M. Roland alludes to the justly admired passage in the first chapter of Genetis, 
“ And God said, Jet there be light: and there was light.” 
+ Rom, viii. 22. 
Vou. XXXIV, 
fe- 
‘ 
(F] 
massacres, 
