After it was resolved to go to war against the
people of France, all the hirelings of corruption were set to work to
gloss over the character and conduct of the old Government, and to
paint in the most horrid colours the acts of vengeance which the
people were inflicting on the numerous tyrants, civil, military, and
ecclesiastical, whom the change of things had placed at their mercy.
The people's turn was now come, and, in the days of their power, they
justly bore in mind the oppressions which they and their forefathers
had endured. The taxes imposed by the Government became at last
intolerable. It had contracted a great debt to carry on its wars. In
order to be able to pay the interest of this debt, and to support an
enormous standing army in time of peace, it laid upon the people
burdens which they could no longer endure. It fined and flogged
fathers and mothers if their children were detected in smuggling. Its
courts of justice were filled with cruel and base judges. The nobility
treated the common people like dogs; these latter were compelled to
serve as soldiers, but were excluded from all share, or chance of
honour and command, which were engrossed by the nobility.

Now, when the time came for the people to have the power in their
hands, was it surprising that the first use they made of it was to
take vengeance on their oppressors? I will not answer this question
myself. It shall be answered by Mr. Arthur Young, the present
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. He was in France at the time,
and living upon the very spot, and having examined into the causes of
the Revolution, he wrote and published the following remarks, in his
_Travels_, vol. i. page 603:--

'It is impossible to justify the excesses of the people on
their taking up arms; they were certainly guilty of
cruelties; it is idle to deny the facts, for they have been
proved too clearly to admit of doubt. But is it really the
people to whom we are to impute the whole? Or to their
oppressors, who had kept them so long in a state of bondage?
He who chooses to be served by slaves and by ill-treated
slaves, must know that he holds both his property and his
life by a tenure far different from those who prefer the
service of well-treated freemen; and he who dines to the
music of groaning sufferers, must not, in the moment of
insurrection, complain that his sons' throats are cut. When
such evil