times; these are the Protestant Reformation, the American War of
Independence, and the French Revolution.

The most complicated and varied of these great movements is the French
Revolution, on which thousands of volumes have been written, so that it
is impossible even to classify the leading events and the ever-changing
features of that rapid and exciting movement. The first act of that
great drama was the attempt of reformers and patriots to destroy
feudalism,--with its privileges and distinctions and injustices,--by
unscrupulous and wild legislation, and to give a new constitution to
the State.

The best representative of this movement was Mirabeau, and I accordingly
select him as the subject of this lecture. I cannot describe the
violence and anarchy which succeeded the Reign of Terror, ending in a
Directory, and the usurpation of Napoleon. The subject is so vast that I
must confine myself to a single point, in which, however, I would unfold
the principles of the reformers and the logical results to which their
principles led.

The remote causes of the French Revolution I have already glanced at, in
a previous lecture. The most obvious of these, doubtless, was the
misgovernment which began with Louis XIV. and continued so disgracefully
under Louis XV.; which destroyed all reverence for the throne, even
loyalty itself, the chief support of the monarchy. The next most
powerful influence that created revolution was feudalism, which ground
down the people by unequal laws, and irritated them by the haughtiness,
insolence, and heartlessness of the aristocracy, and thus destroyed all
respect for them, ending in bitter animosities. Closely connected with
these two gigantic evils was the excessive taxation, which oppressed the