The one set of men had never
heard of the bayonet, and the other set had faith in nothing but the
bayonet, believing it to be as "holy" as M. Michelet asserts it to
be. The pikemen were the most pious of men, and could have eaten an
Atheist with relish, after having roasted him. The grenadiers were
Atheists, and cared no more for Christianity than for Mahometanism,
their chief having testified his regard for the latter, and
consequently his contempt for both, only the year before, in Egypt.
Yet both detachments were successfully employed in doing the same
thing, and that was the clearing away of what was regarded as
legislative rubbish, in order that military monarchies might be
erected on the cleared ground. In each instance there was the element
of violence actively at work, and it makes no possible difference that
the English Commons went out because they did not care to come to push
of pike, and that the French Representatives departed rather than risk
the consequence of a bayonet-charge. So if the Prince of Wales should
see fit to tread in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, he would
have very different instruments from those "king's friends" whose
existence and actions were so fatal to ministers in the early part of
those days when George III.
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