Their cruelty has not even been the base result of
fear. It has been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in
authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and
burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain
from the beginning.
* * * * *
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly
unaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of the National
Assembly: I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it now
stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great
measure it is composed, which is of ten thousand times greater
consequence than all the formalities in the world. If we were to know
nothing of this assembly but by its title and function, no colors could
paint to the imagination anything more venerable. In that light, the
mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the
virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, would
pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect.
Instead of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, no
power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the
men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God,
and Nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them.
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