bly be admired by a true
Machiavelist: "they permitted forty thousand of the Irish to enlist in
the service of the kings of Spain and France"--in other words, they
expelled them at once, which, considering that our Rumpers affected such
an abhorrence of tyranny, may be considered as an act of mercy!
satisfying themselves only with dividing the forfeited lands of the
aforesaid forty thousand among their own party, by lot and other means.
An universal confiscation, after all, is a bloodless massacre. They used
the Scotch soldiers, after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, a little
differently--but equally efficaciously--for they sold their Scotch
prisoners for slaves to the American planters.[335]

The Robespierres and the Marats were as extraordinary beings, and in
some respects the Frenchmen were working on a more enlarged scheme.
These discovered that "the generation which had witnessed the preceding
one would always regret it; and for the security of the Revolution, it
was necessary that every person who was thirty years old in 1788 should
perish on the scaffold!" The anarchists were intent on reducing the
French people to eight millions, and on destroying the great cities of
France.[336]

Such monstrous persons and events are not credible--but this is no proof
that they have not occurred. Many incredible things will happen!

Another disorganising feature in the English _Rumpers_ was also observed
in the French _Sans-culottes_--their hatred of literature and the arts.
Hebert was one day directing his satellites towards the _Bibliotheque
Nationale_, to put an end to all that human knowledge had collected for
centuries on centuries--in one day! alleging, of course, some good
reason. This hero was only diverted from the enterprise by being
persuaded to postpone it for a day or two, when luckily the guillotine
intervened; the same circumstance occurred here. The burning of the
records in the Tower was certainly proposed; a speech of Selden's, which
I cannot immediately turn to, put a stop to these incendiaries. It was
debated in the Rump parliament, when Cromwell was general, whether they
should _dissolve the universities_? They concluded that no university
was necessary; that there were no ancient examples of such education,
and that scholars in other countries did study at _their own cost and
charges_, and therefore they looked on them as unnecessary, and thought
them fitting _to be taken away for the public use_!--H