tion was acted
upon by a higher stimulus than what the consideration of persons could
inspire, and sought a higher conquest than could be produced by the
downfall of an enemy. Among the few who fell there do not appear to be
any that were intentionally singled out. They all of them had their fate
in the circumstances of the moment, and were not pursued with that long,
cold-blooded unabated revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in
the affair of 1745.

Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the Bastille
is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of implication as if
he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were built up again. "We
have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and tenanted the mansion; and we have
prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the
queens of France."*[2] As to what a madman like the person called Lord
George Gordon might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a
prison, it is unworthy a rational consideration. It was a madman that
libelled, and that is sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity
for confining him, which was the thing that was wished for. But certain
it is that Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other
people may do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in
the grossest style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some
points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that Mr.
Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power of the
Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.

Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection that I
can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who lingered out
the most wretched of lives, a life without hope in the most miserable of
prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt
himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is
not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the
showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage,
but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand
that hath purloined him from himself, he degenerates into a composition
of art, and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his
heroine must be a tragedy-victim