Thus terminated the revolutionary career of Lafayette; through the whole of
which he appears to the impartial observer to have acted an honorable and
disinterested part. If he committed faults, they were those of opinion or
judgment; in sincerity and in zealous devotion to the liberty of his
country, he was exceeded by none. He may justly be considered "an
illustrious confessor of regulated liberty." His great object was to reform
existing abuses, to lay the foundation of constitutional freedom: and with
all his zeal for the recognition and the support of the rights of man, he
was desirous of preserving a just measure of authority in the crowns and
maintaining a sacred regard to law and justice. That he failed in his
wishes of introducing into France a more mild and popular government, is
matter of regret with the friends of civil liberty in America. But he
cannot justly be censured by them for the failure of his object, or for the
excesses which attended the revolution. The violent proceedings of the
jacobins, which excited so much horror among the friends of regulated
liberty in other countries, were opposed by him personally with singular
firmness and constancy. He distinguished, with great accuracy, between the
will of the people and the clamours of a faction; and between the
deliberate acts of the legislature sanctioned by the constitution, and the
hasty sentence or orders of a party, adopted without the usual forms of
law, so necessary to the order and welfare of society.

Lafayette was arrested by an Austrian General, and delivered over to the
King of Prussia, who ordered him to be confined in a prison at Wesel and at
Magdeburg. Here he suffered some time, when he was removed to the fortress
of Olmutz. In this place he was kept under the most rigorous confinement--
enduring the privations and severity fit only to be inflicted on the
greatest criminals.

After a close confinement of several weeks in the common prison at Wesel,