Excerpt from The History and Theory of Revolutions The present generation in this country have heretofore known revolutions only as matters of history, or as events occurring in some distant part of the world. We have read of them, heard of them with the hearing of the ear; but now a revolution, or an attempt at one, has become to us a present and most visibly real fact. The word has always had, for the public ear, a portentous and startling sound. We have been accustomed, and justly so, to connect with revolution the idea of civil war, as the world has known it hitherto, with all its atrocities and horrors; its wild, uncontrollable phrenzy, setting man against man, and community against community, with all the ungovernable fury of a tempest; its fratricidal hate and bloodshed; its unleashing i all the worst passions of the human heart, which, in their wild and lawless revel, respect not the rights of man or the virtue of woman; its smoking and ruined cities, its pillaged towns, its deserted and untilled fields, and all its sanguinary paraphernalia of dungeons and scaffolds, guillotines and gibbets, armies and battle-fields. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.