Cabinet, that they (the National Assembly) would hold the ministry,
of which Foulon was one, responsible for the measures they were
advising and pursuing; but the mob, incensed at the appearance of
Foulon and Berthier, tore them from their conductors before they were
carried to the Hotel de Ville, and executed them on the spot. Why
then does Mr. Burke charge outrages of this kind on a whole people?
As well may he charge the riots and outrages of 1780 on all the
people of London, or those in Ireland on all his countrymen.

But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and
derogatory to the human character should lead to other reflections
than those of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some
claim to our consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of
mankind as are distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or the
ignorant mob, are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we
ask ourselves this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise,
as an unavoidable consequence, out of the ill construction of all old
governments in Europe, England included with the rest. It is by
distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased,
till the whole is out of nature. A vast mass of mankind are
degradedly thrown into the back-ground of the human picture, to bring
forward, with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and
aristocracy. In the commencement of a revolution, those men are
rather the followers of the camp than of the standard of liberty, and
have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.

I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I
then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here
lay down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of the
French Revolution, as much as any one thing he could have asserted.