Note 393 — Front matter (continued 10)

In reference to the terrific conflict between the privileged classes and the enslaved people, Prof. Smyth writes, "My conclusion is that neither the high party nor the low have the slightest right to felicitate themselves on their conduct during this memorable revolution. No historian, no commentator on these times can proceed a moment, but on the supposition that, while he is censuring the faults of the one, he is perfectly aware of the antagonistic faults of the other; that each party is to take its turn; and that the whole is a dreadful lesson of instruction both to the one and the other. I have dwelt with more earnestness on the faults of the popular leaders, because their faults are more natural and more important; because the friends of freedom (hot and opinionated though they be) are still more within the reach of instruction than are men of arbitrary temperament, than courts and privileged orders, who are systematically otherwise."—Prof Smyth, Fr. Rev., vol. iii., p. 245.

The story of the French Revolution has too often been told in this spirit, veiling the atrocities of the oppressors and magnifying the inhumanity of the oppressed. While truth demands that all the violence of an enslaved people, in despair bursting their bonds, should be faithfully delineated, truth no less imperiously demands that the mercilessness of proud oppressors, crushing millions for ages, and goading a whole nation to the madness of despair, should be also impartially described.