The new laws and institutions will depend on the interests of the
triumphant party and of the classes which have assisted it--the
clergy for instance.

If the revolution has triumphed only after a violent struggle, as
was the case with the French Revolution, the victors will reject
at one sweep the whole arsenal of the old law. The supporters of
the fallen regime will be persecuted, exiled, or exterminated.

The maximum of violence in these persecutions is attained when
the triumphant party is defending a belief in addition to its
material interests. Then the conquered need hope for no pity.
Thus may be explained the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the
autodafes of the Inquisition, the executions of the
Convention, and the recent laws against the religious
congregations in France.

The absolute power which is assumed by the victors leads them
sometimes to extreme measures, such as the Convention's decree
that gold was to be replaced by paper, that goods were to be sold
at determined prices, &c. Very soon it runs up against a wall of
unavoidable necessities, which turn opinion against its tyranny,
and finally leave it defenceless before attack, as befell at the
end of the French Revolution. The same thing happened
recently to a Socialist Australian ministry composed almost
exclusively of working-men. It enacted laws so absurd, and
accorded such privileges to the trade unions, that public opinion
rebelled against it so unanimously that in three months it was
overthrown.