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affairs possible . But he will inquire too , whether the people are likely ever to be made better , morally or intellectually , without a previous change in the government . If not , it may still be his duty to strive for such a change at whatever risks .
What decision a perfectly wise man , at the opening of the French Revolution , would have come to upon these several points , he who knows most will be most slow to pronounce . By the Revolution ,, substantial good has been effected of immense value , at the cost of immediate evil of the most tremendous kind . But
it is impossible , with all the light which has been , or probably ever will be , obtained on the subject , to do more than conjecture whether France could have purchased improvement cheaper ; whether any course which could have averted the Revolution , would not have done so by arresting all improvement , and barbarizing down the people of France into the condition of Russian boors .
A revolution , which is so ugly a thing , certainly cannot be a very formidable thing , if all is true the Tories say of it . For , according to them , it has always depended upon the will of some small number of persons , whether there should be a revolution or no . They invariably begin by assuming that great and decisive immediate improvements , with a certainty of subsequent and rapid progress , and the ultimate attainment of all practical good , may be had by peaceable means at the option of the leading reformers , and that to this they voluntarily prefer civil war and massacre for the sake of marching somewhat more directly and rapidly towards their ultimate ends . Having thus made out a revolution to be so mere a bagatelle , that , except by the extreme of knavery or folly , it may always be kept at a distance ; there is little difficulty in proving all revolutionary leaders knaves or fools . But unhappily theirs is no such enviable position ; a far other alternative is commonly offered to them . We will hazard the assertion , that there never yet happened a political convulsion , originating in the desire of reform , where the choice did not , in the full persuasion of every person concerned , lie between all and nothing ; where the actors in the revolution had not thoroughly made up their minds , that , without a revolution , the enemies of all reform would have the entire ascendency , and that not only there would be no present improvement , but the door would for the future be shut against all endeavour towards it .
Unquestionably , such was the conviction of those who took part in the French Revolution , during its earlier stages . They did not choose the way of blood and violence in preference to the way of peace and discussion . Theirs was the cause of law and order . The States General at Versailles were a body , legally nssembled , legally and constitutionally sovereign of the country , and had every right which law and opinion could bestow upon them , to do
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The French Revolution . 515
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 515, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/3/
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