the vast complexities of man [v.04
p.0832] in the social union, is either mischievous or futile, and
mischievous exactly in proportion as it is not futile.

To discuss Burke's writings on the Revolution would be to write first a
volume upon the abstract theory of society, and then a second volume on the
history of France. But we may make one or two further remarks. One of the
most common charges against Burke was that he allowed his imagination and
pity to be touched only by the sorrows of kings and queens, and forgot the
thousands of oppressed and famine-stricken toilers of the land. "No tears
are shed for nations," cried Francis, whose sympathy for the Revolution was
as passionate as Burke's execration of it. "When the provinces are scourged
to the bone by a mercenary and merciless military power, and every drop of
its blood and substance extorted from it by the edicts of a royal council,
the case seems very tolerable to those who are not involved in it. When
thousands after thousands are dragooned out of their country for the sake
of their religion, or sent to row in the galleys for selling salt against
law,--when the liberty of every individual is at the mercy of every
prostitute, pimp or parasite that has access to power or any of its basest
substitutes,--my mind, I own, is not at once prepared to be satisfied with
gentle palliatives for such disorders" (_Francis to Burke_, November 3,
1790). This is a very terse way of putting a crucial objection to Burke's
whole view of French affairs in 1789. His answer was tolerably simple. The
Revolution, though it had made an end of the Bastille, did not bring the
only real practical liberty, that is to say, the liberty which comes with
settled courts of justice, administering settled laws, undisturbed by
popular fury, independent of everything but law, and with a clear law for
their direction. The people, he contended, were no worse off under the old
monarchy than they will be in the long run under assemblies that are bound
by the necessity of feeding one part of the community at the grievous
charge of other parts, as necessitous as those who are so fed; that are
obliged to flatter those who have their lives at their disposal by
tolerating acts of doubtful influence on commerce and agriculture, and for
the sake of precarious relief to sow the seeds of lasting want; that will
be driven to be the instruments of the violence of others from a sense of
their own weakness, and, by