It would be difficult to estimate the full value of Mr. Whitney's
labors, without going into a minuteness of detail inconsistent with our
limits. Every cotton garment bears the impress of his genius, and the
ships that transported it across the waters were the heralds of his
fame, and the cities that have risen to opulence by the cotton trade
must attribute no small share of their prosperity to the inventor of the
cotton-gin. We have before us the declaration of the late Mr. Fulton,
that Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney--we would add Fulton to the
number--were the three men who did most for mankind, of any of their
contemporaries; and in the sense in which he intended it, the remark is
probably true.
EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI
MURDER OF MARAT: CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE
A.D. 1793
THOMAS CARLYLE
In the early days of the French Revolution many moderates
who favored reform of the monarchy, but not its abolition,
were wholly alienated by the condemnation and execution of
Louis XVI, after what has been regarded as a mock trial by
the National Convention. It was a still graver effect of
this tragedy that it impelled the leading European powers to
join in the great coalition against France contemplated in
the Convention of Pillnitz (August, 1791).
Scarcely less was the influence upon the internal affairs of
France from the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday.
Jean Paul Marat, sometimes called, from the name of a paper
which he published, the "Friend of the People," was one of
the most ultra-revolutionary of the Jacobin leaders in the
National Convention. By his murder the "Red
Republicans"--the extreme radical party in the Convention,
called the "Mountain" because they occupied the higher seats
in the hall--were confirmed in their determination to
destroy their opponents, the moderate republicans, called
Girondists or Girondins. Many of the Girondist leaders,
among them some of the most distinguished men in France,
were soon sent to the guillotine, and the Reign of Terror
was fully inaugurated. Carlyle calls Marat "atrocious," and
so most writers regard him, but there are not wanting some
to vindicate his character and purposes.
These tragic scenes, and the opening of the civil war which
followed, known as the War of La Vendée, are depicted by
Carlyle in that manner, all his own, which invests his
history of the French Revolution at once with the element of
realism and an air of romance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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