408 ROBESPIERRE ; HIS PRINCIPLES AND CHARACTER. 
blished order of things which are dictated by reason, and which 
time and circumstances render expedient, may enforce a change in, 
but will never lead to an entire overthrow of, the government ; all 
subjects in dispute between the people and those placed in authority 
admitting of easy and amicable adjustment. But in such a country 
as France, over which the iron hand of the fiercest despotism had 
been for ages extended, and where not even the rays of national li- 
berty were permitted to illumine the prevailing darkness of barba- 
rism, the people, being in ignorance of the true character of social 
liberty, are prone to confound licentiousness with freedom ; and the 
war which ensues between the combatants—the one worshipping a 
mummy, and the other indulging the most extravagantly fanciful 
and unattainable ideal chimeras—must be attended by the most la- 
mentable digressions from the paths of rectitude and truth, inevita- 
bly producing those moral monsters of whom Robespierre will ever 
remain a lamentable specimen in the pages of history. 
The feelings of the people of the Netherlands were strongly im- 
bued with a spirit of liberty until its suppression under the absolute 
rule of Spain ; and when religious enthusiasm gave rise to a political 
war, the belligerents, ever keeping in view the object desired, disputed 
their ground by deliberate steps and with suitable measures, in no re- 
spect digressing into those extravagancies, or debasing themselves by 
committing those crimes, which disgraced the French Revolution, 
though the contest was protracted for thirty years. Similar observa- 
tions may, with much propriety, be applied to the family war carried 
on between the houses of York and Lancaster, regarding the legiti- 
mate title to the throne of England, as established by the constitution, 
which, though damaged in its superstructure during the despotic reign 
of the Tudors, remained nevertheless unshaken in its foundation. 
The Spaniards, likewise, have been at all times warmly attached to 
national liberty, guaranteed to them, in some measure, by the exist- 
ence of the Cortes, who, notwithstanding their power was curtailed 
by the despéts immediately succeeding Charles V. nevertheless con- 
trived to preserve, at least, the remnants of freedom, which have gra- 
dually taken root in the affections of the whole people; and though 
the Spanish nation, at this moment, is divided against itself regarding 
the right of succession to the throne, and perseveres in a protracted 
civil war, which entails the severest calamities on the population, it 
has not hitherto assumed the fierce and inhuman character so pecu- 
liar to the French Revolution. The American Revolution, so cele- 
brated for the mildness, purity, and patriotic zeal which marked its 
