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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



express purpose of hurrying forward the executions, and which 

 was found to be fully equal to its infernal work. Thousands of 

 persons were sent to the scaffold on the bare suspicion of not 

 being sound in the cause of the democrats, and, as if this were 

 not enough, the prisons being inadequately guarded, the mob 

 rushed into them, and murdered the inmates before they could 

 be tried. Members of the Convention were sent into the pro- 

 vinces to root out the upholders of the old regime, and awfully 

 they fulfilled their mission. The guillotine could not fall fast 

 enough ; volley-firing into squads of helpless prisoners, many of 

 them children, and women with infants at the breast, was 

 resorted to, and so was wholesale drowning, to clear the dun- 

 geons. Lists were prepared in which the names of the doomed 

 were written, and in them were to be found, as the Revolution 

 went on, the names of those who at the beginning had sup- 

 ported change, but who tried to check it when the wickedness 

 of the measures of it became so apparent. 



Under these circumstances it was that Mr. Burke played his 

 part in the famous dagger scene in the British House of Com- 

 mons ; these were the events he had in his memory when he 

 spoke of what this country had to gain by an alliance with 

 France. And dreadfully was he justified in his assertion of 

 what would happen. Within four weeks of the time he uttered 

 his warning, the head of Louis the Sixteenth of France had 

 rolled on the scaffold, and already had the French rulers 

 issued an invitation to all peoples to throw down their princes, 

 and promised them the support of the French armies in 

 doing so. 



The scene at the death of the king has been graphically 

 pictured by the Abbe Edgeworth, who was himself an eye- 

 witness : " On quitting the tower, the king crossed the first 

 court, formerly the garden, on foot. He turned back once or 

 twice towards the tower, as if to bid adieu to all most dear to 

 him on earth ; and, by his gestures, it was plain that he was 

 trying to collect all his strength and firmness. At the entrance 

 of the second court a carriage waited ; two gensd'armes held 

 the door : at the king's approach, one of these men entered first, 

 and placed himself in front ; his majesty followed, and placed 

 me by his side at the back of the carriage ; the other gend'arme 

 jumped in last, and shut the door. The procession lasted 

 almost two hours ; the streets were lined with citizens, all 

 armed ; and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops, 

 formed of the most desperate men of Paris. As soon as the 

 king perceived that the carriage stopped, he turned and whis- 

 pered to me, ' We have arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence 

 assured him that we had. On quitting the vehicle, these guards 

 surrounded his majesty, and would have taken off his clothes, 

 but he repulsed them with haughtiness ; he undressed himself, 

 untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself. 

 The path leading to the scaffold was exceedingly rough and 

 difficult to pass ; the king was obliged to lean on my arm, and, 

 from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared, for a 

 moment, that his courage might fail. But what was my 

 astonishment when, arrived at the last step, I felt that he sud- 

 denly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the 

 breadth of the whole scaffold, silence, by his look alone, fifteen 

 or twenty drummers that were placed opposite to him, and in a 

 loud voice heard him pronounce distinctly these memorable 

 words : ' I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge ; I 

 pardon those who occasioned my death ; and I pray God that 

 the blood you are now going to shed may never be visited on 

 France.' He was proceeding, when a man on horseback (this 

 was Santerre), in the national uniform, waved his sword, and 

 ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were heard at the 

 same time encouraging the executioner, who immediately seized 

 the king with violence, and dragged him under the axe of the 

 guillotine, which, with one stroke, severed his head from his 

 body." 



It must indeed have been painful to a keen lover of liberty 

 as Burke was, to be compelled to range himself on the side 

 which was seemingly opposed to it, to be compelled to break 

 with old friends whose tutor and father in politics he had been. 

 But he saw what they did not sec, that liberty carried to excess 

 had become licence, that licence was not capable of being con- 

 tained within any bounds, and that unless a check were forthwith 

 applied to the spirit of licence here, the wild asserters of freedom 

 would in this country, as in France, " cry havoc, and let slip the 

 dogs of war ! " " Truth, truth ! How many lies are told in thy 

 name ! " These words of an eminent truth-seeker are strictly 

 applicable to the case of the founders and the overthrowers of 

 the French Revolution ; but the former had at least the merit of 

 believing what they said, and they sealed their profession with 

 their blood. In England they had many admirers, none greater 

 than Edmund Burke himself, and included within their ranks 

 were Fox and his political friends, who, heedless of the example 

 forced upon their notice, reckoned on their own power to intro- 

 duce revolutionary principles into the English constitution, 

 and to stop them at a certain point with some magic words, 

 like those of King Canute, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no 

 farther." 



Outside the Parliament, in the ranks of the middle and lower 

 classes, the principles of the Revolution had numerous adherents, 

 though there was not the same reason for adopting them as 

 there was in France. England had never at any time since 

 Magna Charta been in such slavery, never had suffered so dread- 

 fully, as France did before the Revolution, and those dangers 

 which ambition, and pride, and the tyranny of priest, peer, or 

 king, might threaten, had been sufficiently guarded against years 

 before by many constitutional barriers. But there was just 

 enough of misgovernment, of selfishness, corruption, and dis- 

 union in the country in 1789, to allow of the key-note struck in 

 the French States-Genaral vibrating through many an English 

 breast. The lovers of change for change's sake of course felt 

 it, and there were numerous lovers of the abstract principle of 

 liberty who recognised in what was going forward the assertion 

 of a right which they believed to emanate from God himself. 

 There was not, however, any guarantee that even the most 

 honest professors might not be carried away by their enthusiasm, 

 or be swamped, as the French asserters of freedom had been, by 

 the men of passion, while there could not be any doubt that on 

 the first show of disaffection in high places, there would be 

 found men of violence who by their nature would have carried 

 events far beyond the bounds prescribed for them by their 

 authors. At the very time Mr. Burke spoke, there were in 

 London many political societies, some secret, others bold in 

 declaring themselves, of which the members openly avowed 

 their sympathy with the French in all that had been done, and 

 it was no mystery that these societies were in direct communion 

 with the most revolutionary of the French political clubs. 

 From the press flowed daily a torrent of seditious matter, and 

 men who, perhaps, did not mean that their words should be 

 taken literally, but only wished to stir up the popular will to 

 achieve something short of what was indicated and what was 

 preached, enunciated doctrines wholly subversive of the British 

 constitution. 



In spite of the warnings given in France, there were men, like 

 Fox, who could not see danger in these facts, and though sobered 

 a little by the news that the son of St. Louis had been sacrificed, 

 persisted in denying that there was any danger to be apprehended 

 from an alliance with the murderers. It was a wish to startle 

 such men into conviction, to bring the matter home suddenly 

 to their minds in an unusual and therefore striking way, that 

 Mr. Burke, on the 28th of December, 1792, resorted to the 

 theatrical expedient of throwing a dagger the emblem of 

 French liberty, fraternity, and equality on the floor of the 

 British House of Commons. 



JTUJTTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.G. 



