I am not conscious of approaching the subject with a bias in favour of any party. I have no cause to plead for or against any individual or group of men. I have tried to read all sides, and to allow for those deep-rooted prejudices which seem to make most Frenchmen incapable of judging the event. But when, on the information before me, the facts seem clear, I have not hesitated to praise, or censure, or condemn. I will only add that I have considered very carefully the judgments which I have expressed, though I cannot hope that they will recommend themselves to all alike. Books of this kind cannot well lay claim to much originality, and I do not pretend to have kept pace with the constantly accumulating literature, which the French press produces on this question every year. I have used freely the works of such modern writers as M. de Tocqueville, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Morse Stephens, and others, and my obligations to them are plain. On M. Taine's great work, too, I have drawn largely, and while allowing for bias in the author, and while fully admitting that M. Taine's method tends to destroy one's sense of proportion, and in some degree to give a blurred and exaggerated impression of the facts, still I cannot question the weight and value of the mass of information which he has collected, and no one can fairly overlook the lessons which it tells. Besides these books, I think I may say that I have read and consulted most of the materials in histories, memoirs, biographies, and elsewhere, which the many well-known French writers on the subject have supplied, and I have paid particular attention to the voluminous histories of M. Louis Blanc and of M. Mortimer-Ternaux, to the correspondence of Mirabeau and La Marck, to the memoirs and writings of Bailly, Ferrières, Mallet du Pan, Madame Roland, and M. de Pontécoulant, to the biographies of the great Jacobin leaders, especially those by M. Hamel and M. Robinet, and to the valuable and important works of M. Sorel, of Professor Schmidt, and of Professor Von Sybel. This list is not complete or comprehensive; but I hope it is enough to justify the opinions which I have formed. At the end, I have given, in a short appendix, a list of well-known books upon the period, which may perhaps be of use to students, who wish to go more fully into the subject for themselves. CHAPTER I. THE CONDITION OF FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.