ry, which called into action the
reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible
perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine,
drew the King on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and
calamities which will forever stain the pages of modern history.

[Footnote 33: See page 214 of Volume IV of this collection for this
tribute from Burke.]

I have ever believed that had there been no Queen there would have
been no revolution. No force would have been provoked, nor exercised.
The King would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom of his sounder
counselors, who, guided by the increased lights of the age, wished
only, with the same pace, to advance the principles of their social
constitution. The deed which closed the mortal course of these
sovereigns I shall neither approve nor condemn. I am not prepared to
say that the first magistrate of a nation can not commit treason
against his country, or is unamenable to its punishment; nor yet that
where there is no written law, no regulated tribunal, there is not a
law in our hearts, and a power in our hands, given for righteous
employment in maintaining right and redressing wrong. Of those who
judged the King many thought him wilfully criminal; many, that his
existence would keep the nation in perpetual conflict with the horde
of kings who would war against a generation which might come home to
themselves, and that it were better that one should die than all. I
should not have voted with this portion of the Legislature. I should
have shut up the Queen in a convent, putting harm out of her power,
and placed the King in his station, investing him with limited powers,
which, I verily believe, he would have honestly exercised, according
to the measure of his understanding. In this way no void would have
been created, courting the usurpation of a military adventurer, nor
occasion given for those enormities which demoralized the nations of
the world, and destroyed, and are yet to destroy millions and millions
of its inhabitants.

II

THE FUTILITY OF DISPUTES[34]

I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of our peace
and tranquillity. It is among the most effectual, and its effect is so
well imitated and aided, artificially, by politeness that this also
becomes an acquisition of first-rate value. In truth, politeness is
artificial good humor; it covers the natural want of it, and ends by
rendering habitual a