The right of the human conscience, proclaimed by Luther in 1517, had in 1793 only expanded into the large conception of all the inherent rights of the _individual_.
It had taken centuries for English persistence to accomplish what France, with such appalling violence, had done in as many years.

It had been a furious outburst of pent-up force; but the work had been thorough.

Not a germ of tyranny remained.

The incrustations of a thousand years were not alone broken, but pulverized; the privileged classes were swept away, and their vast estates, two-thirds of the territory of France, ready to be distributed among the rightful owners of the soil, those who by toil and industry could win them.

France was as new as if she had no history.