Revolutions almost always spring from the noble and generous enthusiasm of
youth; but seditions arise from the vulgar and ignoble crowd, or from the
outcast few, who would, for wealth, sacrifice all that honor and nature
hold dear; or for the meaner gratifications of self-aggrandizement, would
crumble into dust, and scatter to the winds of the earth, the noblest
institutions and laws of mankind. Who will say that this resort to arms
was an insurrection of justice in favor of the weak, or that it was a
revolt of nature against tyranny?
The agitations of revolutions stir up the innermost natures of men, and
from the revelations out of the depths appear the extreme qualities of the
soul, elevated or debased, according to the inspirations from Heaven or
the influence of a vile cause.
What rays of intellectual light, what flashes of genuine eloquence, burst
forth during the tempestuous times of this period to illumine their
progress or define the glory of their future? When the minds and
imaginations of men are moved in civil war, they betray, in spite of
themselves, the nobility or meanness of their cause. Even the ignorant,
says Quintilian, when moved by the violent passions, do not seek for what
they are to say. It is the soul alone that renders them eloquent. Only the
hoarse clamors for revenge, or the hollow laugh against the remonstrance
of humanity, do we hear from their tribunals and halls of legislation.
Fatuity possessed their minds, and rather than not succeed in their
designs, the leaders would have preferred a dreary solitude to the best
interests of humanity, or, like Erostratus, they would have rather burned
down the temple of liberty itself.
"Pejus deteriusque tyrannide sive injusto imperio, bellum civile."