In that its
acme of human prosperity and greatness, in the high and palmy state of
the monarchy of France, it fell to the ground without a struggle. It
fell without any of those vices in the monarch which have sometimes been
the causes of the fall of kingdoms, but which existed, without any
visible effect on the state, in the highest degree in many other
princes, and, far from destroying their power, had only left some slight
stains on their character. The financial difficulties were only pretexts
and instruments of those who accomplished the ruin of that monarchy;
they were not the causes of it.
Deprived of the old government, deprived in a manner of all government,
France, fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared
more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the
disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and
terror of them all: but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in
France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more
terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination
and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end,
unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims
and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could
not believe it was possible she could at all exist, except on the
principles which habit rather than Nature had persuaded them were
necessary to their own particular welfare and to their own ordinary
modes of action.
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