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Untitled - 24grammata.com

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POLITICAL CONSEQUENCESservice which I may thus have rendered him, he amply repaid me four years after by undertaking the translation ofmy essay upon the Influence of the Crusades., which thenobtained the prizeat Paris. I have thought it right to preface these remarks ; partly, in order to show thewhich relation inmy essay stands to that of my late friend ;partly, toexcuse the style of the treatise, which could not from thecircumstances assume the character of a scholastical andlearned dissertation.It does not pretend to afford the learned historiananything new in the detail, but aims at presenting a varietyand abundance of general views, which appear to me to befar from superfluous, inasmuch as a clearer light may thusperhaps be thrown upon the history of modern Europe.THE great political changes by which the destinies of mankind are permanently affected, and which we are accustomedto call by the general name of revolutions, may be divided,as regards their origin, into two classes.The first includesthose which are the work of single individuals, the slaves ofpassion, who have devoted their lives to conquest, and founded their greatness upon the ruins of the states which fortunehas enabled them to overthrow. These may be termedpurely warlike revolutions, as they assume that characterfrom the first, and war is their immediate aim.Such were the exploits of Cyrus and of Timur, and of manyother celebrated heroes, who, though at the head of civilizedmatioiis have made conquest at once the first and last object of their career. Phenomena of this class may be highlyinteresting from tleir results, but in their origin they areless so, as they usually flow from one source, tnd that fortbeiroost part an unhallowed one ambitionThe second class is of a very different character, and maybe best expressed under the joint name Amoral and poLtwal as its foundation is laid in the moral nature of man.Under this we range those revolutions which have been prepnedbypopular ideas slowly spread, but finally be<strong>com</strong>e; and which, by the direct contrast in which they

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