Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
He, better than any one else, may be taken as a representative of the people of New England, and of the spirit with which they engaged in the
Revolutionary struggle.
A
revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand
revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old.
He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the
revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic
revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc.
Haldin slept perhaps more soundly than General T , whose task--weary work too--was not done, and over whose head hung the sword of
revolutionary vengeance.
One of them disorganized by
revolutionary changes, the other rusted in the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us entered the contest with odds against them from the first.
Observe," said Villefort, smiling, "I do not mean to deny that both these men were
revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and the 4th of April, in the year 1814, were lucky days for France, worthy of being gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order; and that explains how it comes to pass that, fallen, as I trust he is forever, Napoleon has still retained a train of parasitical satellites.
"I daresay you have the social
revolutionary jargon by heart well enough," he said contemptuously.
The foundation of the former was a superintending Providence- -the rights of man, and the constituent
revolutionary power of the people.
Philip looked upon him with puzzled surprise; for he was very unlike his idea of the
revolutionary: he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite; he never sat down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met Philip in the street took off his hat with an elaborate gesture; he never laughed, he never even smiled.
And quite enchanted with his joke, the ferocious Orangeman took his cresset and his keys to conduct Cornelius to the cell, which on that very morning Cornelius de Witt had left to go into exile, or what in
revolutionary times is meant instead by those sublime philosophers who lay it down as an axiom of high policy, "It is the dead only who do not return."
As soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that PATRICK HENRY, of
revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive.