produced by the deluge of assignats and
by the maximum fell only on the emigrants,--or that there were not many
emigrants who would have stayed and lived peaceably under any government
if their persons and property had been secure.

We never said that the French Revolution took place because the poor
began to compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets
of the rich. We were not speaking about THE CAUSES of the Revolution,
or thinking about them. This we said, and say, that, if a democratic
government had been established in France, the poor, when they began to
compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets of the
rich, would, on the supposition that Mr Mill's principles are sound,
have plundered the rich, and repeated without provocation all the
severities and confiscations which at the time of the Revolution, were
committed with provocation. We say that Mr Mill's favourite form of
government would, if his own views of human nature be just, make those
violent convulsions and transfers of property which now rarely happen,
except, as in the case of the French Revolution, when the people are
maddened by oppression, events of annual or biennial occurrence. We gave
no opinion of our own. We give none now. We say that this proposition
may be proved from Mr Mill's own premises, by steps strictly analogous
to those by which he proves monarchy and aristocracy to be bad forms of
government. To say this, is not to say that the proposition is true.
For we hold both Mr Mill's premises and his deduction to be unsound
throughout.

Mr Bentham challenges us to prove from history that the people will
plunder the rich. What does history say to Mr Mill's doctrine, that
absolute kings will always plunder their subjects so unmercifully as to
leave nothing but a bare subsistence to any except their own creatures?
If experience is to be the test, Mr Mill's theory is unsound. If Mr
Mill's reasoning a priori be sound, the people in a democracy will
plunder the rich. Let us use one weight and one measure. Let us not
throw history aside when we are proving a theory, and take it up again
when we have to refute an objection founded on the principles of that
theory.

We have not done, however, with Mr Bentham's charges against us.

"Among other specimens of their ingenuity, they think they embarrass the
subject by asking why, on the principles in question, women should not
have votes as well as men. AND WHY NOT?