50 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



It is the blunder and the crime of the French Eevolu 

 tion, that it erected into a principle what had thereto- 

 fore been only a transient disorder in the life of nations 

 — the overthrow of power. It has been said that it is 

 time to make an end of the Revolution, and that, in 

 order to end it, we must sit in judgment on it. Let me 

 add, that in order to judge it, we must analyze it. If 

 I take it at the start — at that famous date of 1789, I 

 find before me two very different movements, which 

 nevertheless are often confounded together. At the 

 beginning, it was a legitimate and necessary reaction 

 against the political abuses and moral corruption of the 

 last days of the old regime. Political abuses had stifled, 

 under an unprecedented centralization, the remains of 

 the liberty of the Middle Ages, and the recent pros- 

 perity of the France of Henry lY. and Louis XIII. 

 And as to moral corruption, my illustrious predecessor 

 in this pulpit has depicted it with an admirable stroke 

 of eloquence, courage, and truth : " In the room where 

 Saint Louis had slept, Sardanapalus lay down ! Stam- 

 boul was transported to Versailles, and there found 

 itself entirely at home."* A shamefully large propor- 

 tion of the provincial nobility, leaving behind them with 

 their old-fashioned morals the scourge of absenteeism, 

 hastened to follow or at least admire the new foshions 

 in morality ; and the court clergy united witli them to 

 sanction tlicse corruptions, not, of course, in words — 

 that would have been impossible — but l)y guilty silence. 

 Against such a state of things, reaction could not be too 

 energetic nor too indignant; but it should have con- 

 tinued to Ije peaceful and lawful. It was to reform the 

 power, not destroy it. liut what am 1 saying? The 



* " CoTiftrences de Notre-Dame de Paris, by the lîcverciul Father Lacordaire. 

 Xllle. Conf., De la Chasteté/' 



