as in the hands of the sufferers;--and they touched not one hair of his
head. In the first revolution, victims were sent to death by scores for
the most trifling acts proved by the lowest testimony, before the most
partial tribunals. After the second revolution, those ministers who had
signed the ordinances, those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of the
foulest kind, was proved by the clearest evidence,--were punished only
with imprisonment. In the first revolution, property was attacked. In
the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions, it is true, left
the public mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions were
followed by insurrectionary movements. But, after the first revolution,
the insurgents were almost always stronger than the law; and, since the
second revolution, the law has invariably been found stronger than the
insurgents. There is, indeed, much in the present state of France which
may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire to see her free,
happy, powerful, and secure. Yet, if we compare the present state of
France with the state in which she was forty years ago, how vast a
change for the better has taken place! How little effect, for example,
during the first revolution, would the sentence of a judicial body
have produced on an armed and victorious partty! If, after the 10th of
August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the 9th of
Thermidor, or after the carnage of Vendemiaire, or after the arrests of
Fructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of
the conquered, with what contempt, with what derision, would its award
have been received! The judges would have lost their heads, or would
have been sent to die in some unwholesome colony. The fate of the victim
whom they had endeavoured to save would only have been made darker and
more hopeless by their interference. We have lately seen a signal proof
that, in France, the law is now stronger than the sword. We have seen a
government, in the very moment of triumph and revenge, submitting itself
to the authority of a court of law. A just and independent sentence
has been pronounced--a sentence worthy of the ancient renown of
that magistracy to which belong the noblest recollections of French
history--which, in an age of persecutors, produced L'Hopital,--which,
in an age of courtiers, produced D'Aguesseau,--which, in an age of
wickedness and madness, exhibited to mankind a pattern of every virtue
in the