Chaumette, and Anacharsis Clootz. Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were trotted forth in their sanguinary winding-sheets, and treated as the counterparts and precursors of "modern worthies," and an innocent meeting some well-known writers lurid and Jacobin Clubs.
Mr. John Morley has been described as the Saint Just of the English revolution of the present day. "It would have been just as well," says Morley, "to call me Nero, Torquemada, Iago, or Bluebeard." The course pursued toward this publicist illustrates the general treatment of French politics and governmental reform by the English-speaking people. The idea underlying what is known as conservative thought is, that if the French had never had a revolution of their own, and had never been compelled to resort to extreme measures to overthrow bad government in their country, that good government would have grown faster in the rest of the world.
Nothing could be a greater perversion of fact than this position, which has been assumed by so many influential writers and prominent political leaders, for a careful examination of historic facts will show that the effect of the French Revolution was most beneficial upon the structural mechanism of the governments of the world.
It is perfectly true that there is a continuity in history; that it is quite impossible to comprehend the affairs of one country in their general form without knowing the historic facts which precede them; that history opens the mind to generous impulses, quickens the political imagination, instructs the mass in the experiences of government, allows the thinker to make analogies, and, in fine, to profit by that force which lies back of the growth and development in government. This force, however, must be treated in its general spirit and essence, and, above all,
