Bokelskere.no

Now what distinguishes the French Revolution and makes it an event unique in history is that it is radically bad. No element of good disturbs the eye of the observer; it is the highest degree of corruption ever known; it is pure impurity. On what page of history will you find such a great quantity of vices assembled at one time on the same stage? What horrible assemblage of baseness and cruelty! What profound immorality! What absence of all decency! The characteristics of the springtime of liberty are so striking that it is impossible to be mistaken. It is a time when love of the fatherland is a religion and respect for the laws a superstition, a time of sturdy character and austere morals, when every virtue flourishes at once, when factions benefit the fatherland because they fight only for the honour of serving it, when everything, even crime, carries the mark of greatness. If this picture is compared to the one offered us by France, how can anyone believe in the performance of a liberty that springs from gangrene? Or, more precisely, how can one believe that this liberty can be born (since it does not yet exist) or that from the heart of the most disgusting corruption there can emerge a form of government that less than any other may dispense with virtue? When one hears these so-called republicans talk of liberty and virtue, one thinks of a faded courtesan with rouged blushes putting on the airs of a virgin.