his
reason, leading men of ability, bitterly hostile to the new system, were
saved by Danton; for it was often indifferent who were the victims,
provided the group to which they belonged was struck down. The question
was not, what crimes has the prisoner committed? but, does he belong to
one of those classes whose existence the Republic cannot tolerate? From
this point of view, there were not so many unjust judgments pronounced,
at least in Paris, as is generally believed. It was necessary to be
prodigal of blood, or to abandon the theory of liberty and equality,
which had commanded, for a whole generation, the enthusiastic devotion
of educated men, and for the truth of which thousands of its believers
were ready to die. The truth of that doctrine was tested by a terrible
alternative; but the fault lay with those who believed it, not
exclusively with those who practised it. There were few who could
administer such a system without any other motive but devotion to the
idea, or who could retain the coolness and indifference of which St.
Just is an extraordinary example. Most of the Terrorists were swayed by
fear for themselves, or by the frenzy which is produced by familiarity
with slaughter. But this is of small account. The significance of that
sanguinary drama lies in the fact, that a political abstraction was
powerful enough to make men think themselves right in destroying masses
of their countrymen in the attempt to impose it on their country. The
horror of that system and its failure have given vitality to the
communistic theory. It was unreasonable to attack the effect instead of
the cause, and cruel to destroy the proprietor, while the danger lay in
the property. For private property necessarily produces that inequality
which the Jacobin theory condemned; and the Constitution of 1793 could
not be maintained by Terrorism without Communism, by proscribing the
rich while riches were tolerated. The Jacobins were guilty of
inconsistency in omitting to attack inequality in its source. Yet no man
who admits their theory has a right to complain of their acts. The one
proceeded from the other with the inflexible logic of history. The Reign
of Terror was nothing else than the reign of those who conceive that
liberty and equality can coexist.

One more quotation will sufficiently justify what we have said of the
sincerity and ignorance which Mr. Goldwin Smith shows in his remarks on
Catholic subjects. After calling the Bull