be that the quality of the drug is relative to the condition of
the patient, and that the vital question for the student of the old
_regime_ and the circumstances of its fall is what other drug, what
better process, could have extricated France on more tranquil terms
from her desperate case? The American colonists, in spite of the
over-wide formulae of their Declaration, really never broke with
their past in any of its fundamental elements. They had a historic
basis of laws and institutions which was still sound and whole, and
the political severance from England made no breach in social
continuity. If a different result followed in France, it was not
because France was the land of the classic spirit, but because her
institutions were inadequate, and her ruling classes incompetent to
transform them.

M. Taine's figure of the man who drains the poisonous draught, as
having been previously 'a little weak in constitution, but still
sound and of peaceful habits,' is entirely delusive. The whole
evidence shows that France was not sound, but the very reverse of
sound, and no inconsiderable portion of that evidence is to be found
in the facts which M. Taine has so industriously collected in his
own book. The description of France as a little weak in
constitution, but still sound and of peaceful habits, is the more
surprising to us because M. Taine himself had in an earlier page (p.
109), when summing up the results of Privilege, ended with these
emphatic words: 'Deja avant l'ecroulement final, la France est
dissoute, et elle est dissoute parce que les privilegies ont oublie
leur caractere d'hommes publics.' But then is not this rather more
than being only a little weak in constitution, and still sound?

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Page 269: Corrected "paragragh" to "paragraph."

Page 281: Removed duplicate _and_ from the sentence: "'The nation,'
wrote the wise and far-seeing ... and and so forth (_[OE]uv_. ii.
504)."

Page 281: The "OE" ligature in OEuv is represented as [OE].

Page 287: Standardized punctuation in footnote 6.

End of Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), by John Morley

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES ***

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