selfish glory of Louis XIV.; the nobles paid for the pleasures which their
forefathers had so carelessly enjoyed; the privileged classes for the
privileges which they had usurped and had so grievously misused.

The payment fell heavily upon individuals; the innocent often suffered for
the guilty; a Liancourt died while a Polignac escaped. Many who wished
well to France, many who had laboured for her salvation, perished; virtue
received the just punishment of vice. But the Revolution has another side;
it was no mere nightmare of horrors piled on horrors. It is part of the
pathos of History that no good has been unattended by evil, that by
suffering alone is mankind redeemed, that through the valley of shadow
lies the path by which the race toils slowly towards the fulfilment of its
high destiny. And if the victims of the guillotine could have foreseen the
future, many might have died gladly. For by their death they brought the
new France to birth. The Revolution rises superior to the crimes and
follies of its authors; it has atoned to posterity for all the sorrow that
it caused, for all the wrong that was done in its name. If it killed
laughter, it also dried many tears. By it privilege was slain in France,
tyranny rendered more improbable, almost impossible. The canker of a
debased feudalism was swept away. Men were made equal before the law.
Those barriers by which the flow of economic life in France was checked
were broken down. All careers were thrown open to talent. The right of the
producer to a voice in the distribution of the product was recognised.
Above all, a new gospel of political liberty was expounded. The world, and
the princes of the world, learned that peoples do not exist for the
pleasure of some despot and the profit of his cringing satellites. In the
order of nature, nothing can be born save through suffering; in the order
of politics, this is no less true. From the sorrow of brief months has
grown the joy of long years; the Revolution slew that it might also make
alive.