want of authority to assess equal and
proportioned charges upon all, will be compelled to lay a strong hand upon
the possessions of a part. As against the moderate section of the
Constituent Assembly this was just.

One secret of Burke's views of the Revolution was the contempt which he had
conceived for the popular leaders in the earlier stages of the movement. In
spite of much excellence of intention, much heroism, much energy, it is
hardly to be denied that the leaders whom that movement brought to the
surface were almost without exception men of the poorest political
capacity. Danton, no doubt, was abler than most of the others, yet the
timidity or temerity with which he allowed himself to be vanquished by
Robespierre showed that even he was not a man of commanding quality. The
spectacle of men so rash, and so incapable of controlling the forces which
they seemed to have presumptuously summoned, excited in Burke both
indignation and contempt. And the leaders of the Constituent who came first
on the stage, and hoped to make a revolution with rose-water, and hardly
realized any more than Burke did how rotten was the structure which they
had undertaken to build up, almost deserved his contempt, even if, as is
certainly true, they did not deserve his indignation. It was only by
revolutionary methods, which are in their essence and for a time as
arbitrary as despotic methods, that the knot could be cut. Burke's vital
error was his inability to see that a root and branch revolution was, under
the conditions, inevitable. His cardinal position, from which he deduced so
many important conclusions, namely, that, the parts and organs of the old
constitution of France were sound, and only needed moderate invigoration,
is absolutely mistaken and untenable. There was not a single chamber in the
old fabric that was not crumbling and tottering. The court was frivolous,
vacillating, stone deaf and stone blind; the gentry were amiable, but
distinctly bent to the very last on holding to their privileges, and they
were wholly devoid both of the political experience that only comes of
practical responsibility for public affairs, and of the political sagacity
that only comes of political experience. The parliaments or tribunals were
nests of faction and of the deepest social incompetence. The very sword of
the state broke short in the king's hand. If the king or queen could either
have had the political genius of Frederick the Great, or co