liamentary monarchy to put in
its place "a royal democracy," it is at once explained to them that such
an institution applied to France can produce nothing but anarchy, and
finally end in despotism.

"Nowhere[2123] has liberty proved to be stable without a sacrifice of
its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence... . Under
this miserable government... the people, soon weary of storms, and
abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their
oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious
hand that stands ready to seize it."

Events occur from month to month in fulfillment of these predictions,
and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild
birds:[2124]

"It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when
it flies so wild... . This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit
of metaphysical whims, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. The
Assembly, at once master and slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in
practice, engrossing all functions without being able to exercise any,
has freed that fierce, ferocious people from every restraint of religion
and respect... . Such a state of things cannot last... The glorious
opportunity is lost and for this time, at least, the Revolution has
failed."

We see, from the replies of Washington, that he is of the same opinion.
On the other side of the Channel, Pitt, the ablest practician, and
Burke, the ablest theorist, of political liberty, express the same
judgment. Pitt, after 1789, declares that the French have overleaped
freedom. After 1790, Burke, in a work which is a prophecy as well as a
masterpiece, points to military dictatorship as the termination of the
Revolution, "the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared
on earth." Nothing is of any effect. With the exception of the small
powerless group around Malouet and Mounier, the warnings of Morris,
Jefferson, Romilly, Dumont, Mallet du Pan, Arthur Young, Pitt and Burke,
all of them men who have experience of free institutions, are received
with indifference or repelled with disdain. Not only are our new
politicians incapable, but they think themselves the contrary, and their
incompetence is aggravated by their infatuation.

"I often used to say, "writes Dumont,[2125] "that if a hundred persons
were stopped at haphazard in the streets of London, and a hundred in the
streets of Paris, and a proposal were made to th