Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None. They
were themselves the devoted victims of this plot, and they have not
retaliated; why, then, are they charged with revenge they have not
acted? In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which
all degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering
themselves, by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction meditated
against them, is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When men
are sore with the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the
prospects of new ones, is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of
insensibility to be looked for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage;
yet the greatest is that which himself has committed. His book is a
volume of outrage, not apologised for by the impulse of a moment, but
cherished through a space of ten months; yet Mr. Burke had no
provocation- no life, no interest, at stake.

More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their opponents:
but four or five persons were seized by the populace, and instantly
put to death; the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris,
who was detected in the act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon,
one of the new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law, who had
accepted the office of intendant of Paris. Their heads were stuck
upon spikes, and carried about the city; and it is upon this mode of
punishment that Mr. Burke builds a great part of his tragic scene.
Let us therefore examine how men came by the idea of punishing in
this manner.

They learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate the
punishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon
spikes, which remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in
the horror of the scene from those carried about upon spikes at