History of the Bastille and of its principal captives
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| History of the Bastile |
The execution of a plan so frequently falls immeasurably short of the author's original conception, that some wit, of whom I have forgotten the name, has likened them to the cry of an oriental fruit-hawker: " In the name of the Prophet figs !" I can bear witness to how much what is purposed goes beyond what is accomplished. I began loftily, and perhaps the reader will say, that I have ended with figs. At the outset, I designed to link, in some measure, the history of the Bastille with that of France, and to trace the rise and progress of those parties, factions, and sects, which furnished inmates to the prisons of the state.
But I soon discovered that the contracted limits of a single volume would not admit my plan being carried into execution. By enlarging the page, and by making, at no small cost, a very considerable addition to the number of pages, the publisher has liberally endeavoured to give me the means of rendering the work less imperfect than it would otherwise have been; but I have, nevertheless, been exceedingly cramped by the want of adequate space.
But, though I have not done all that I wished to do, I am by no means disposed to disparage my labours. I have consulted every document that was accessible and has conscientiously tried to be strictly just and to combine information with amusement. I indulge a hope that the volume will tend not only to keep up an abhorrence of arbitrary power but also to inspire affection for governments which hold it to be a duty to promote the happiness of the people. Whatever may be its defects, it is the only work in the English language that has even the slightest pretension to be denominated a History of the Bastille.
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