Moral Effects of Revolutions

(_May, 1822._)

In revolutionary times, as when a civil war prevails in a country, men / are much worse, as moral beings, than in quiet and untroubled states / of peace. So much is matter of history. The English, under Charles / II., after twenty years' agitation and civil tumults; the Romans after / Sylla and Marius, and the still more bloody proscriptions of the / Triumvirates; the French, after the Wars of the League and the storms / of the Revolution -- were much changed for the worse, and exhibited / strange relaxations of the moral principle. But why? What is the / philosophy of the case? Some will think it sufficiently explained by / the necessity of witnessing so much bloodshed -- the hearths and the / very graves of their fathers polluted by the slaughter of their / countrymen -- the _acharnement_ which characterises civil contests (as / always the quarrels of friends are the fiercest) -- and the license of / wrong which is bred by war and the majesties of armies. Doubtless this / is part of the explanation. But is this all? Mr. Coleridge has / referred to this subject in _The friend_; but, to the best of my / remembrance, only noticing it as a fact. Fichte, the celebrated German / philosopher, has given us his view of it (_Idea of War_); and it is / so ingenious, that it deserves mention. It is this -- 'Times of / revolution force men's minds inwards: hence they are led amongst other / things to meditate on morals with reference to their own conduct. But / to subtilise too much upon this subject must always be ruinous to / morality, with all understandings that are not very powerful, _i. e._ / with the majority, because it terminates naturally in a body of maxims / a specious and covert self-interest. Whereas, when men meditate less, / they are apt to act more from natural feeling, in which the natural / goodness of the heart often interferes to neutralise or even to / overbalance its errors. '