What has happened in
France teaches us, with many other things, that there are more causes
than have commonly been taken into our consideration, by which
government may be subverted. The moneyed men, merchants, principal
tradesmen, and men of letters (hitherto generally thought the peaceable
and even timid part of society) are the chief actors in the French
Revolution. But the fact is, that, as money increases and circulates,
and as the circulation of news in politics and letters becomes more and
more diffused, the persons who diffuse this money and this intelligence
become more and more important. This was not long undiscovered. Views of
ambition were in France, for the first time, presented to these classes
of men: objects in the state, in the army, in the system of civil
offices of every kind. Their eyes were dazzled with this new prospect.
They were, as it were, electrified, and made to lose the natural spirit
of their situation. A bribe, great without example in the history of the
world, was held out to them,--the whole government of a very large
kingdom.
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