Ypsilanti sentinel. [volume] (Ypsilanti, Washtenaw Co., Mich.) 1843-1900, 1848-02-02

ssee in the Revolution, nothing but an attempt
4 of the middle class 10 attain to something like
an equality with the noblesse. For our own
part, we see in it,nothing more or less than the
rising of the French people against one OF the
most odious tyrannies that ever weighed down
the energies ofhumanity. We are welt aware
1 that the philosophers of the eighteenth cen
fury had their part in accele-ating the event:
butt it was the part of accelerators only that
they played, and the Revolution would have
taken place had none of them ever been born.
Some of tho details might have been, and most
| probably would have been, very different; and
perhaps the outbreak of right against might,
/ have been postponed for another generatiOn.-
AT the most, the liberal philosophers only gave
direction to the stream that was to sweep over
society, and break down principalities and pow
ers. Or, to vary the figure, they may be said
I to have fired the materials presented by the So
cial aspect of Europe, but create these materi-
ais, most assuredy they did not. 1t would be
as reasonable to so say that the artilieryman
who applies the linstock to the loaded cannon,
created the contents of the cannon. Men re-
! nowhed for their pety, but who should be held
more remarkable for the thcknessof their skulls
rave about Infdelity having caused the Reeve
| luton, which, they say, ''deluged Europe with
| blood" This is sheer nonsense-worse than
midsummer madness. 1t was the suffering OF
| the I;eople which led to the overthrow Of
throne whose occupants were false to their
great trust,-of nobility, W hose glitter and pros
perity were the coBcreted misery of the great
mass of Frenchmen,-of church, which, like
all ecclesiastical bodies that ever have existed,
or ever can exist, was founded in talsehood, land
maintained by plumber. What else than sweep
ing revolution could have been expected, when
kings were wholesale murdereIs and patrons of
10 ho Do -bap tho
mobiles were frviIous and dissolute? and when
the higher clergy were so VIGOROUSLY corrupt,
that Louis XIV could truly say to a bishop that
he was the only great officer of the Gallican
churchwho did not intimately know an infamous
female, whose calling it was to minister to
the vile pleasures of kings and mobiles and priests
alike! The people were reducedto the last ex-
tremty of suffering, to maintain an order of
things so thoroughly vicious; and they rose
against it, as an oppressed people only can rise,
to record their protest. If they wrote that pro-
test-deep n-aetiers of blood on the face of the
earth, ahd-on the historic page, let the wrong
fall where it is due-upon' those whose inhu-
man conduct had beaten humanity ont of the
popular heart. Byrou,-who would have been
the first Of historical critics bad he not been the
first Of poots,-in reply to some of Svuthey'S
nonsense on this subject, summed the matter
up in a few words. T'rhe French Revolution
he SAYS, "was not occasioned by any writings
whatever, bet must have occurred had no such |
writers ever existed. 1t is fashion to attribute |
every thing to the French Revolution, and the |
French Revolution to every thing but its real |
cause. That cause is obvious-the government |
exacted too much, and the people could neither
gire nor bear more. Without this, the Encyc-
lopedists might have written their fingers off
without the occurrence OF single alteration"
When people get to living on "meal-husks and
boiled grass" 1t is high time for revolution, |.
even should it bring .Reign of Terrier and the
guillotine in its train. Ireland would be all
the better for Just such revolution at this We
ry moment. Her children might afterwards not
starve in the MIDST of plenty of their own pro-
ducing, or of fevers brought on by accinmua-
tod suffering Of body and mind. ssThat dreary
GreenIand-wind of being hted Want, perennial
rom sire 10 son." might perchance then cease J
10 freeze the lrishman s'into a kind of torpor
md numb callssty." Perhaps the Sans-pota- {
oe will one day take a leaf for his guidance s
rom the book of the Sans culotte. II
The extravaganza of the ruling portion of the :
French Nation, during the century and half .
which preceded the meeting of the States-Gen- :
raj, had prepared the way for the convulsion h
y which the social and political world Of Eu- h
bpe was upthrown. Mazarin left fortune of ;.
orty millions, all torn from the country over n
'hich he ruled,and all squandered BY his thank 4
III heirs. OfLous XIV.'s extravaganza. some h
lea may be formed from the fact that he ex- -
ended one hundred millions on Versailles alone :.
land that was a mere bagatee in the list of -
is expenditures. The Regent caused vast - :.
lisery by his profigate use of money, and his )
ountenance of Laws wild financial schemes. fr
he reign of Louis XIV. was a continued scene i
wantonness, millions upon millions being \,
'asted in worse than useless wars, and in del :.
aucherles that remind us of the manifold in
lmies of Capree. The Parc-aux- Cerfs was -,
ept up for many years, at an enormous annual :,
ntlaJ. There il was that young girls were III
red mp for the express purpose of mnistering
) the monarch's profigate wants. All this IIv
me, the people were starving, and compelled 10
support to king, the nobility and the priest 90
pod from their earnings; and when they at or
mpted the feeblest remonstrances even, they. ~
ere answered with the gallows. The won ;n
n is, not that the people did at last rise, but u"
at they did not rise sooner: not that they 40
metimes acted in the spirit of their oppressors,
ter their rising, but tat they did not act u
nrse. In point of fact, what are called the -,
lorrors of the French Revolution, are great =,
exaggerated. Undoubtedly there was much 20,
ffering, as that Is inseperable from any change A.,
a great nation which goes TO the very foun- ~
ton Of things Some innocent persons were 49,.
qnesuohao'y p"t 10 uea,h' ana "'a"y OF tnose Dir
no were guilty might have been permitted
live with impunity, and as monuments of the DIM
ople's ceInency and fearless. But nation Al
serfs does not change at once into nation rim
out of the Arabian Tales and ma
: Bible we do ot-Inok ter-sueh- miraculous cIa
anges: and the cruelty which the people had an
en- taught for centuries, they sometimes put no,
practice towards the race of their teachers. .
i'll became the French aristocracv to COM bo
lin of the cruelty ofthe people. The Bastile, fer
4 the gibbets of Montfaucon, were but poor hu,
on royal Justice and mercy: and tax
'se under whose system they had grown up lad
existed for centuries, had no right to muir dor
II at the activity of the Saint of the Palace -