astonishment will be that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but
this astonishment will cease when we reflect that principles, and not
persons, were the meditated objects of destruction. The mind of the
nation was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what the
consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a higher conquest
than could be produced by the downfall of an enemy. Among the few who
fell there do not appear to be any that were intentionally singled
out. They all of them had their fate in the circumstances of the
moment, and were not pursued with that long, cold-blooded unabated
revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in the affair of 1745.

Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the
Bastille is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of
implication as if he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it
were built up again. "We have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and
tenanted the mansion; and we have prisons almost as strong as the
Bastille for those who dare to libel the queens of France."*[2] As to
what a madman like the person called Lord George Gordon might say,
and to whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a prison, it is unworthy
a rational consideration. It was a madman that libelled, and that is
sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity for confining him,
which was the thing that was wished for. But certain it is that Mr.
Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other people may
do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in the grossest
style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative authority of
France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British House of
Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some points
and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that Mr.
Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power of
the Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.