Lectures on the French RevolutionMacmillan and Company, limited, 1910 - 379 pages |
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army arrest Assembly attack August authority Barère Barnave became began bishop Bouillé brought cause Charette Church clergy command Committee Commons Constitution Convention Count of Provence Court Crown danger Danton declared decree defended democracy deputies Duke Dumouriez elected émigrés enemies England English executive favour Feuillants force France French friends gave Girondins Guard hands Hôtel Hôtel de Ville idea Jacobin Club Jacobins June king king's knew Lafayette letters Lewis XVI liberty lost Louis Blanc Malouet Marat Marie Antoinette minister Mirabeau monarchy Montesquieu Montmédy Mounier Napoleon nation Necker never nobles officers once opinion Paris party political popular priest principle prison privilege proposed Prussians queen refused reign Republic republican resistance restore Revolution revolutionary revolutionary tribunal Robespierre royal royalists sent September Sieyes States-General Talleyrand things Third Estate thought throne tion took tribunal Tuileries Turgot Varennes Vendée Versailles victory vote wrote
Popular passages
Page 34 - The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
Page 22 - To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.
Page 29 - I see no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives but the interposition of the body of the people itself, whenever it shall appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law, and to introduce an arbitrary power.
Page 26 - This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen ; it was obvious from the nature of things, and of mankind, and above all from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England ; the same spirit which called all England on its legs...
Page 37 - That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends ; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
Page 31 - To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government. It would be a vain presumption in statesmen to think they can do it. The people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of government to prevent much evil ; it can do very little positive good in this, or perhaps in any thing else.
Page 24 - ... at plough. Secondly, These laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately, but the good of the people. Thirdly, They must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people, given by themselves or their deputies.
Page 36 - Nay more, if the whole legislature, an event to be deprecated, should attempt to overleap the bounds prescribed to them by the people, I, in administering the public justice of the country, will meet the united powers at my seat in this tribunal; and, pointing to the constitution, will say to them, here is the limit of your authority; and, hither shall you go, but no further.
Page 28 - ... he proceeds to general reflection on the condition and prospects of Europe. "In a word, if we seriously consider me mode of supporting great standing armies, which becomes daily more prevalent, it will appear evident, that nothing less than a convulsion that will shake the globe to its centre, can ever restore the European nations to that liberty by which they were once so much distinguished.
Page 30 - The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consists in its being the express image 91 of the feelings of the nation.