This is what history or
books of speculation could hardly have taught us. How many could have
thought that the most complete and formidable revolution in a great
empire should be made by men of letters, not as subordinate instruments
and trumpeters of sedition, but as the chief contrivers and managers,
and in a short time as the open administrators and sovereign rulers? Who
could have imagined that atheism could produce one of the most violently
operative principles of fanaticism? Who could have imagined, that, in a
commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in an extensive and
dreadful war, military commanders should be of little or no account,
--that the Convention should not contain one military man of name,--that
administrative bodies, in a state of the utmost confusion, and of but a
momentary duration, and composed of men with not one imposing part of
character, should be able to govern the country and its armies with an
authority which the most settled senates and the most respected monarchs
scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess I did not
foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and not out
of my apprehension even for several years.
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