There is no end of patriotic speeches by these converts to liberty. The burden of all is the same. They are anxious to give up their oppressions. It is of no use to struggle longer, they are beaten, they will yield to save France.[46] Artists illustrate the great event, some pathetically, some comically.[47] The millennium seems arrived, a _Te Deum_ is appointed. Yet plain common sense Buchez notes one thing in all this not so pleasant. In these "transports and outpourings," (_transports et l'effusion de sentiments genereux_,) one very important thing has been forgotten. _The nobles forget to give, and the people forget to take--guarantees._[48] Woe to the people who trust merely the word of an upper caste habituated to oppression! Woe to the statesmen who do not at once crystallize such promises into constitutional and legislative acts! These nobles shortly regretted their concessions and sought to evade them.[49] The aristocrats whom they represented soon denied the right of their deputies to make these concessions, and soon after repudiated them.[50] How could it be otherwise? When you speak of concessions by a caste habituated to oppression, you do not mean that they give away a single, simple, tangible thing, and that _that_ is the end of it;--not at all. You mean that they give up old habits of thought,--habits of action. You mean that every day of their lives thereafter they are to give up a habit, or a fancy, or a comfort. No mere promises of theirs to do this can be trusted. There must be guarantees fixed immutably, bedded into the constitution,--clamped into the laws. That same anchoring of liberties, and not "_transports et l'effusion de sentiments genereux_," is statesmanship. These concessions were not thus secured. The old habits of oppression again got the upper hand. The upper class became as hostile to liberty and peace as ever. Then thundered through France the Revolution. It _must_ come;--that great and good French Revolution which did more to advance mankind in ten years than had been done politically in ten centuries,--which cost fewer lives to establish great principles than the Grand Monarque had flung away to gratify his whimsies! The right hand of the Almighty was behind it. I refuse at the will of English Tory historians to lament more over the sufferings that besotted caste of oppressors brought upon themselves during those three years, than over the sufferings they brought upon the people during three times three centuries.[51] The great thing was now partially done which Louis XI. and Richelieu had left entirely undone. The lower class were not merely freed from serfdom; they received guarantees of full civil rights.[52]