336 Travels in France 



fogger, to be fleeced by impositions, and a mockery of justice in 

 the seigneural courts ? Who gives us the awards of the intendant 

 and his sub-delegues, which took off the taxes of a man of fashion 

 and laid them with accumulated weight on the poor who were 

 so unfortunate as to be his neighbours ? Who has dwelt suffi- 

 ciently upon explaining all the ramifications of despotism, regal, 

 aristocratical, and ecclesiastical, pervading the whole mass of 

 the people ; reaching, like a circulating fluid, the most distant 

 capillary tubes of poverty and wretchedness? In these cases, 

 the sufferers are too ignoble to be known; and the mass too 

 indiscriminate to be pitied. But should a philosopher feel and 

 reason thus? should he mistake the cause for the effect? and 

 giving all his pity to the few, feel no compassion for the many, 

 because they suffer in his eyes not individually, but by miUions ? 

 The excesses of the people cannot, I repeat, be justified ; it would 

 undoubtedly have done them credit, both as men and Christians, 

 if they had possessed their new acquired power with moderation. 

 But let it be remembered that the populace in no country ever 

 use power with moderation; excess is inherent in their aggregate 

 constitution : and as every government in the world knows that 

 violence infallibly attends power in such hands, it is doubly 

 bound in common sense, and for common safety, so to conduct 

 itself that the people may not find an interest in public con- 

 fusions. They will always suffer much and long before they are 

 effectually roused ; nothing, therefore, can kindle the flame but 

 such oppressions of some classes or order in the society as give 

 able men the opportunity of seconding the general mass; dis- 

 content will soon diffuse itself around; and if the government 

 take not warning in time, it is alone answerable for all the 

 burnings, and plunderings, and devastation, and blood that 

 follow. The true judgment to be formed of the French revolu- 

 tion must surely be gained from an attentive consideration of 

 the evils of the old government : when these are well understood 

 — and when the extent and universality of the oppression under 

 which the people groaned, oppression which bore upon them 

 from every quarter — it will scarcely be attempted to be urged 

 that a revolution was not absolutely necessary to the welfare of 

 the kingdom. Not one opposing voice ^ can, with reason, be 



' Many opposing voices have been raised, but so little to their credit 

 that I leave the passage as it was written long ago. The abuses that are 

 rooted in all the old governments of Europe give such numbers of men a 

 direct interest in supporting, cherishing, and defending abuses, that no 

 wonder advocates for tyranny, of every species, are found in every country 

 and almost in every company. What a mass of people in every part of 



