Southern sentinel. [volume] (Plaquemine, Parish of Iberville [La.]) 1848-1858, 1850-11-02
Cause of the Revolutionary HOr.
rOrS Of l79S.

In my opinion, the popular horrors that dark
ened the end Of the eighteenth century, though
pointed in their way by the finger of Mirabeau
legitimatcly trace their pedigree to the royal
grandeurs that closed the preceding one. The
French Revolution was born of Louis the Four.
teenth. His policy-his achievements-his fail
ures, and, still more, his personal character and
court department, killed monarchy in the hearts
Of the French people. The prominent ruling
characteristic of himself and reign was an all ab
sorbing egotism. A maelstrom of debasing
selfshness, and unconscious of any law of reci-
procity to arise from his relations to a common
humanity, this chief and example of anumerous
aristocracy was the grand centre to which was
to be directed every affection and service, from
which was to be circulated every voition and
ordinance. And need say that no elninence of
intellectual power-no prudence of personal
deportment-no briIliancy Of external achieve
ment, can or ought to have any effect on specta-
tors so keen-witted and impassionable as the
French, save to make additionally insupportable
4 character which, even on the smallest scale, is
of all others, the most odious and repulsve.
The stern unity and perfection of order in which
he was enabled to present political power-that
necessary evil of human existence-but added
intensity to the hate, it added grandeur TO the
idea Of his despotism. In the eyes of his suffer-
ing subjects it brought him face to face with the
catastrophies no less than with the glores of his
reign, and without the merit of the avowal-ad-
sum qui feel! gave him all its dread responsible
ties. An old despot surviving his greatness while
retaining the singing irony of its title-a saint
amid the standing "reminiscences Of his adulte-
ries, expiating his pleasures by annihilating
those Of others, and tormenting consciencies to
save his own-his suffering and downcast peo-
pie became at length disabused but too utterly
Of the base apotheosis of his person and char
acter, so long maintained by him in the name of
false glory and debased religion. They even
publicly rejoieed at death bed made pitiable by
the absence of his mistress, confessor, and fam
lily; and meeting in mobs that, encountering his
corpse on its way through by-!anes to hugger
mugger interment at St. Denis, they might tear
it into shreds, gave early and por'entous evidence
that the germ of an envenomed and bloody de-
mocracy had been elected in the very perfection
OF his stern and heartless tyranny. The unblush-
ing excesses of the Regent and of Louis the
Fifteenth, who gratuitously Withdrew the last
veil that concealed the utter rottenness Of all
that claimed popular obedience, under the names
of religion and authority, suficed, though. scarce
ly needed, to complete the discredit of the french
monarchy and, ascending his throne surroun-
ded by dissolute clergy, an overbearing aris-
tocracy, and discontented and impoverished
people, the robed Louis the Sixteenth seemed
but the calf ofatonement Of the Scriptures deck
ed for sacrifice, and doomed to expiate ccntu-
ry of court gayetes and crimes in which he had
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