CHAP. LII.] LITERARY INFLUENCES. 335 State, began among themselves a deadly struggle for power, a struggle of which the mob were still the arbiters. How this state of things soon found its natural termination in a military despotism will appear in the following narrative. The character of the national representatives was another cause of the failure of the Revolution. From the want of all public life in France, they had no political experience. Their knowledge of politics rested entirely on theory and speculation; and thus, as M. Tocqueville observes,' they carried their literary habits into their proceedings. Hence a love of general theories, complete systems of legislation, exact but impracticable symmetry in the laws; a contempt for existing facts, and a taste for what was original, ingenious, and new; a desire to reconstruct the State after a uniform plan, instead of trying to amend the parts of it. To this political ignorance, or worse still, illusory knowledge, must be ascribed some of the greatest evils of the Revolution. Vague and undefined notions of liberty and equality produced the worst and most ridiculous excesses. As it was impossible to establish an equality by raising up the lower orders, it was determined to pull down the higher ones, and thus to reduce everything to a uniform low level. Polite manners were exchanged for the grossness of the least educated class. The rich dissembled their enjoyments, and hid their pride under a modest, not to say miserable exterior; even wit itself, as something above the vulgar level, was compelled to assume the carmagnole or dress of the people. As the bounds of the liberty aimed at were undefined, so they were never thought to be attained; and the entering thus on an unknown course necessarily inflamed and exaggerated all passions and opinions. This is no sketch from fancy, but the confessions of an actor in those scenes, a Republican, and a member of the Convention.3 "We were but weak creatures," he says, "abandoned to ourselves, and scarcely knowing how to profit by the errors of the preceding day. We could only advance through a thousand obstacles, a thousand dangers, and thus, from mistake to mistake, from catastrophe to catastrophe, from overthrow to overthrow, painfully arrive at the grand result desired by all, but which no individual wisdom could assure to us beforehand." Anc. Régime, p. 224 sq. Bailleul, Esprit. de la Révol. ch. viii. The carmagnole consisted of enormous black pantaloons, a short jacket, a threecoloured vest, a Jacobite wig of short black hair, a terrible moustache, the bonnet rouge, and an enormous sabre. It was also the name of a song and dance. 3 Idem, Examen crit. de l'ouvrage de Mdme. de Staël, t. i. p. 129. 336 AFFECTATION OF ROMAN MANNERS. [CHAP. LII. The literary character of the Revolution was thus the cause of many of its mistakes and follies, and perhaps of some of its atrocities. As the English Puritans assumed Scriptural names, and set up as their example the scenes of the Old Testament, so many of the French demagogues imagined that they were emulating Brutus and other heroes of Roman story. The members of the Convention talked familiarly of poignarding one another; and it is possible that the memory of the proscriptions of Sulla and the Triumvirs may not have been without some influence on the massacres of the Revolution. M. Villemain attributes this affectation of antiquity to the influence of Rousseau.1 Another cause, perhaps, was, that the French, finding no example of patriotism in their own annals, were obliged to recur to those of ancient times. This pedantry of patriotism seems to have been more especially characteristic of the Girondists. In the time of the Directory fêtes were given, in which ancient chariots were introduced, and the guests appeared in Greek costumes. When Bonaparte made the Peace of Tolentino, and stipulated for the delivery. of Roman statues and other works of art, he wrote to the Directory: "I have particularly insisted on the busts of Junius and Marcus Brutus, which shall be the first sent to Paris." The five Directors, at their reception of Bonaparte at the Luxembourg in 1797, appeared in Roman dresses; while he himself, who, no doubt, laughed at them in his sleeve, was very plainly attired.3 2 But we must remember, after all, that the French had a good cause; and though the crimes and follies with which they disgraced it, under the leadership of monsters like Danton, Marat, and Robespierre and their fellows, prevent us from looking on their struggles for liberty with the same unmixed satisfaction with which we regard those of some other great nations, yet we must not suffer ourselves to be diverted from taking a calm and equitable view of their revolution by the disgust or contempt which many of its scenes inspire. We must not confound the great body of the French people with the wretches to whom we have alluded. We must recollect that they had many just grounds of provocation; that the state of France demanded not a mere political revolution, but the reorganization of society from its very foundations; that such a change cannot suddenly be effected without inflicting for a time the severest social misery; that a -Leçon xxii. 1 "C'est lui (Rousseau), et non pas l'éducation des collèges, comme on l'a dit, qui avait créé cet enthousiasme de l'antiquité, fécond en parodies et en crimes." 2 Madame de Staël, Considérations, §‹. p. iii. ch. ix. 3 Ibid. chs. xxiii. xxvi. CHAP. LII.] FRENCH AND ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 337 reform begun under circumstances of violence is difficult, perhaps impossible, to be arrested at the point when it ceases to be any longer salutary; that the evils and calamities of the French Revolution must in great part be ascribed to the wretched government which rendered it inevitable. We must make allowance for a people oppressed and irritated by despotism, and accustomed to be guided and controlled in all their acts, who suddenly became their own masters, and who, from the arbitrary proceedings and coups d'état of the old régime, had ceased to feel any reverence for law and justice, and had come to regard them as mere fictions. We must also allow for their new and unexampled situation, for the alarm and suspicion which it necessarily created. A vague fear of brigands, which nobody could define, a fear of famine, more real and tangible; a fear of treachery, of foreign plots, of Pitt and Coburg. The alarm was increased by sudden calls to arms, the sound of the tocsin, the strange dresses and emblems, the new magistracies and tribunals, the dislocation and disruption of all social life. Thus terror ruled uncontrolled, and terror is soon precipitated into deeds of cruelty. Resemblances between the French and English Revolutions have been ingeniously pointed out, which at first sight seem striking enough. In both countries an unpopular queen; the Long Parliament in England, and the self-constituted National Assembly in France; the flight of Louis to Varennes, and of Charles to the Isle of Wight; the trial and execution of both those monarchs; the government by the Parliament, and the government by the Convention; Cromwell and Bonaparte, who expel these assemblies and rule by the sword; the setting aside of the heirs of these usurpers, and the restoration of the legitimate Kings. These resemblances, however, lie only on the surface. A deeper examination will discover that no two events of the same kind can be more opposite in their essential character than the French and English Revolutions. While the object of the one was to destroy, that of the other was to restore. In the Petition of Right, the English Parliament protested against certain of the King's acts which were the acknowledged prerogative of the French Monarch; such as the levying of taxes by his own authority, imprisoning his subjects and confiscating their property arbitrarily and without legal trial, billeting soldiers and mariners upon householders, &c. Against these abuses they appeal to the rights and liberties which they have inherited according to the 1 See Croker's Essays on the French Revolution, p. 10. 338 CHARLES I. AND LOUIS XVI. [CHAP. LII. laws and statutes of the realm, such as the Great Charters, statutes of Edward I., Edward III., and others. Such was the beginning of the English Revolution. But what was the course of the first National Assembly? After a long and splendid career in arts and arms, the most polished nation in Europe found it necessary to assume the position of Man just emerged from his primeval forests, and like the original societies imagined by Rousseau and other speculative politicians, to settle the elementary conditions of its civil state. Everything that had gone before was swept away, and a constitution was built up on paper from first principles as deduced from the supposed natural rights of Man. A practical statesman would refrain from enunciating these elementary principles, which, in fact, are little more than truisms, though it may be said that they had a peculiar significance in France, as showing the hatred towards the privileged classes, and indicating the levelling system which was to follow. Another striking difference is, that while in England the quarrel was in great part founded on religious disputes, and fanaticism was a principal agent, in France religion was discarded altogether. As the whole method and character of the two revolutions was diametrically opposed, so also was the conduct of the two Kings. Charles I. had violated the Constitution by not calling a Parliament during a space of twelve years; Louis XVI., though bound by no law but his own will, assembled the Etats généraux, which had not been summoned for nearly two centuries; during the abeyance of the English Parliament, the Star Chamber had proceeded in the most absolute and illegal manner, while the French King, instead of increasing, considerably mitigated the arbitrary powers, such as lettres de cachet, &c., which were at his disposal; Charles began a civil war and took up arms against his subjects; Louis could not be persuaded to shed the blood of his people, even in the most urgent cases of self-defence. In judging the French Revolution from its effects, which, however, may still be said to be in progress, we must on the whole pronounce it to have been beneficial. It delivered France from an arbitrary and unbounded royal prerogative, from an intolerant Church and a tyrannical feudal nobility; and it welded the previously ill-cemented provinces into one compact and powerful body; in short, into the present French nation. It will hardly be disputed that France of the present day is an in The characters of the French and English Revolutions are very justly dis criminated in Mr. Massey's Reign of George III. vol. iv. ch. 33. 339 CHAP. LII.] EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. comparably greater and more powerful State than it ever was under the ancient dynasty. But notwithstanding the vast effects of the French Revolution on the material condition of Europe, its moral influence does not appear to have been permanent. In the latter respect it is far behind the Reformation. Had the Revolution been successful, had it established a democratic republic or even a stable constitutional monarchy, its moral effects would have been incalculable. France would have become the model country of Europe and perhaps the foster-mother of a universal democracy; as it is, her example offers rather warning than encouragement. It may be remarked, for the credit of human nature, that the excesses of the French democrats were not imitated in those countries where their principles had produced a revolution. Neither massacres, nor incendiarism, nor sacrilege, nor proscriptions took place in the Netherlands, on the banks of the Rhine, in Switzerland, and Italy. It may, too, be observed as a singular fact that in foreign countries their absurd and abominable principles found readier acceptance among the higher classes of society than among the lower and more uneducated. In Germany the peasants of Suabia and the Palatinate were the chief opponents of the French Revolution, while the Princes and States of the Empire made but a feeble resistance, and ultimately took advantage of it to forward their own selfish interests. It was to the peasants of Northern Italy that the allies were considerably indebted for their rapid triumphs in 1799; it was the lazzaroni and peasants of Naples who defended the capital against the French, re-established the King, and drove the French from Rome. The same class of people in Piedmont displayed the greatest devotion to their Sovereign, and often proved a serious impediment to the progress of the French arms. |