rke's book was upwards of eight
months in hand, and is extended to a volume of three hundred and
sixty-six pages. As his omission does injury to his cause, his apology
makes it worse; and men on the English side of the water will begin to
consider, whether there is not some radical defect in what is called the
English constitution, that made it necessary for Mr. Burke to suppress
the comparison, to avoid bringing it into view.

As Mr. Burke has not written on constitutions so neither has he written
on the French Revolution. He gives no account of its commencement or its
progress. He only expresses his wonder. "It looks," says he, "to me, as
if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but
of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken
together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has
hitherto happened in the world."

As wise men are astonished at foolish things, and other people at
wise ones, I know not on which ground to account for Mr. Burke's
astonishment; but certain it is, that he does not understand the French
Revolution. It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos,
but it is no more than the consequence of a mental revolution priorily
existing in France. The mind of the nation had changed beforehand,
and the new order of things has naturally followed the new order of
thoughts. I will here, as concisely as I can, trace out the growth of
the French Revolution, and mark the circumstances that have contributed
to produce it.

The despotism of Louis XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and
the gaudy ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same
time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have
lost all sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their
Grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only for
weakness and effeminacy, made no other alteration than that of spreading
a sort of lethargy over the nation, from which it showed no disposition
to rise.

The only signs which appeared to the spirit of Liberty during those
periods, are to be found in the writings of the French philosophers.
Montesquieu, President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, went as far as a
writer under a despotic government could well proceed; and being obliged
to divide himself between principle and prudence, his mind often appears
under a veil, and we ought to give him credit for more than he has
express