were a patriot, every man might be a law unto himself. When these deep-rooted ideas showed themselves in action, the results were inevitably disastrous. The labouring population, possessed with the belief that supreme power had been transferred to them, naturally wished to use it, as their superiors had used it in the past, in order to enrich themselves. A general resistance began to rent, tithes, taxes, and money-claims of any kind. While abolishing feudal sovereignty and privilege, the Assembly had endeavoured to confirm all those rights which the feudal seigneur enjoyed as contractor and lessor; but this distinction the peasant naturally did not understand. While abolishing many odious imposts, the State had of course been compelled to substitute some taxes for them. But the peasant, who had only grasped the idea that the Revolution was in some way to set him free from all irksome demands, resented the new taxes as an encroachment on his rights. In many cases he proceeded to help himself to any property of the State which came within his reach. Squatters settled upon the confiscated Church estates. Bodies of men assembled and cut down the timber upon the public lands. Mobs stormed the custom-houses and drove out the clerks. Armed associations prevented the collection of taxes. The idea, originating in minds easily confused, tended to become a passion, and when it was resisted, violence was the result. It was in this way that the Jacobin theory, deduced from philosophy, welcomed by young enthusiasts, scarcely understood by the mass of the people, who applauded it because it opened the way to the satisfaction of their wants, spurred on by opposition, embittered by panic, suspicion, persecution, and translated into action by physical distress, gradually took root in the minds of the poor. But it was by violence that the theory triumphed. It is exceedingly difficult to form a just impression of the part which force played in politics in France in the years 1790 and 1791. On the one side, writers pass over the incidents of disorder. On the other side, they amass them without analysis or explanation, and thereby produce an impression which is probably in some measure false. Historians seem on this point to imagine that facts are a matter of political opinion. There were undoubtedly, in 1790 and 1791, tranquillising influences at work. The decisive triumph of the party of reform, the satisfaction ensuing on the sale of the Church lands and on the issue of the Assignats, the establishment of the new Constitutional authorities, the activity of the bourgeois guards, who went so far as to organise combinations between National Guards in different districts for the common object of suppressing anarchy, the natural instinct of every nation to secure as soon as possible the reign of order--all these causes made for peace, and produced periods of general tranquillity. But still the records