Historical voices

Every generation is equal in rights to generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary.

The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other.

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any…

If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must now refer.

Here our enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home.

It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation.

The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing.

If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand…

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.

Wisdom and policy now consisted in changing a scene of danger into a happy event.

The Revolution could derive no benefit from confusion, and its opposers might.

If the crimes of men were exhibited with their sufferings, stage effect would sometimes be lost, and the audience would be inclined to approve where it was intended they should commiserate.

It suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences without their causes.

He begins this account by omitting the only facts which as causes are known to be true; everything beyond these is conjecture, even in Paris; and he then works up a tale accommodated to his own passions and prejudices.

Never were more pains taken to instruct and enlighten mankind, and to make them see that their interest consisted in their virtue, and not in their revenge, than have been displayed in the Revolution of France.

It is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris that, during such a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the control of all authority, they have been able, by the influence of example and exhortation, to restrain…

These outrages were not the effect of the principles of the Revolution, but of the degraded mind that existed before the Revolution, and which the Revolution is calculated to reform.

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.

It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature.

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.

It is over the lowest class of mankind that government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it operates to the worst effect.

The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited to the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge; and by the base and false idea of governing men by terror, instead of reason, they become precedents.

It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.