to finish with him, while the crowd exulted. A hundred
thousand people saw the procession and not a voice or a hand was raised
in protest. The whole world agreed that the Terror should end. But the
oldest of those who suffered on the 10 Thermidor was Couthon, who was
thirty-eight, Robespierre was thirty-five, and Saint-Just but
twenty-seven.

So closed the Terror with the strain which produced it. It will remain a
by-word for all time, and yet, appalling as it may have been, it was the
legitimate and the logical result of the opposition made by caste to the
advent of equality before the law. Also, the political courts served
their purpose. They killed out the archaic mind in France, a mind too
rigid to adapt itself to a changing environment. Thereafter no organized
opposition could ever be maintained against the new social equilibrium.
Modern France went on steadily to a readjustment, on the basis of
unification, simplification of administration, and equality before the
law, first under the Directory, then under the Consulate, and finally
under the Empire. With the Empire the Civil Code was completed, which I
take to be the greatest effort at codification of modern times.
Certainly it has endured until now. Governments have changed. The Empire
has yielded to the Monarchy, the Monarchy to the Republic, the Republic
to the Empire again, and that once more to the Republic, but the Code
which embodies the principle of equality before the law has remained.
Fundamentally the social equilibrium has been stable. And a chief reason
of this stability has been the organization of the courts upon rational
and conservative principles. During the Terror France had her fill of
political tribunals. Since the Terror French judges, under every
government, have shunned politics and have devoted themselves to
construing impartially the Code. Therefore all parties, and all ranks,
and all conditions of men have sustained the courts. In France, as in
England, there is no class jealousy touching the control of the
judiciary.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] _Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire de Paris_, H. Wallon, I, 57.

[41] "C'est demain qu'on me tue; n'etes-vous donc qu'un lache?"

CHAPTER VI

INFERENCES

As the universe, which at once creates and destroys life, is a complex
of infinitely varying forces, history can never repeat itself. It is
vain, therefore, to look in the future for some paraphrase of the past.
Yet if society be, a