The
answer is,--The inducement was the same with that which led him to
partake in the perpetration of all the crimes the calamitous effects of
which he describes with the pen of a master,--ambition. His faction,
having obtained their stupendous and unnatural power by rooting out of
the minds of his unhappy countrymen every principle of religion,
morality, loyalty, fidelity, and honor, discovered, that, when authority
came into their hands, it would be a matter of no small difficulty for
them to carry on government on the principles by which they had
destroyed it.
The rights of men and the new principles of liberty and equality were
very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of
tranquillity and order. They who were taught to find nothing to respect
in the title and in the virtues of Louis the Sixteenth, a prince
succeeding to the throne by the fundamental laws, in the line of a
succession of monarchs continued for fourteen hundred years, found
nothing which could bind them to an implicit fidelity and dutiful
allegiance to Messrs. Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet, Anacharsis Clootz,
and Thomas Paine.
In this difficulty, they did as well as they could. To govern the
people, they must incline the people to obey. The work was difficult,
but it was necessary. They were to accomplish it by such materials and
by such instruments as they had in their hands. They were to accomplish
the purposes of order, morality, and submission to the laws, from the
principles of atheism, profligacy, and sedition.
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