Excerpt from Lectures on History, Vol. 3: Second and Concluding Series, on the French Revolution
The new opinions must be now considered as having entirely prevailed; the execution of the king was the consummation of their triumph. Scarcely a trace of the old opinions remained: not only was the monarch violently cast out of the political system, but the nobility, the ecclesiastical establishment, the feudal notions, were banished or proscribed; the principles of government, the interior organization of the kingdom, the magistracy, every thing connected with the constitution of the state, was altered. In the speeches of the different members of the Convention we see no appeal made but to the sovereignty of the people; their will, if it can but be ascertained, is supposed to be a sufficient sanction and rule: the whole system is now that of a republic, a republic of the most unqualified nature. And this, then, is the result to which this great kingdom has been at last conducted by the progress of the new opinions. But no such result as this was ever in the contemplation of wise and good men when they first wished success to the Revolution in France - little that they had promised themselves had taken place; on the contrary, every thing that they would have deprecated; and on the whole, the Revolution, now arrived at the end of its first stage, must be considered as having entirely failed.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Lectures on History, Vol. 3 (William Smyth)