century ago, several expedients were discovered by which some of these difficulties may be greatly mitigated and some altogether overcome. The publication of the substance of these Essays in the "Quarterly Review," besides giving me a larger audience than could be expected for a dissertation on abstract and general Politics which had little direct bearing on the eager controversies of Party, has gained for me the further advantage of a number of criticisms which reached me before this volume took its final shape. At the head of these I must place a series of observations with which Lord Acton has favoured me. I have freely availed myself of these results of his great learning and profound thought.. H. S. MAINE. LONDON: 1885. 1 ESSAY I. THE PROSPECTS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. THE blindness of the privileged classes in France to the Revolution which was about to overwhelm them furnishes some of the best-worn commonplaces of modern history. There was no doubt much in it to surprise us. What King, Noble, and Priest could not see, had been easily visible to the foreign observer. "In short," runs the famous passage in Chesterfield's letter of December 25, 1753, "all the symptoms which I ever met with in history previous to great changes and revolutions in government now exist and daily increase in France." A large number of writers of our day, manifesting the wisdom which comes after the event, have pointed out that the signs of a terrible time ought not to have been mistaken. The Court, the Aristocracy, and the Clergy should have understood that, in face of the irreligion which was daily becoming more fashionable, the belief in privilege conferred by birth could not be long maintained. They should have noted the portents of imminent B political disturbance in the intense jealousy of classes. They should have been prepared for a tremendous social upheaval by the squalor and misery of the peasants. They should have observed the immediate causes of revolution in the disorder of the finances and in the gross inequality of taxation. They should have been wise enough to know that the entire structure, of which the keystone was a stately and scandalous Court, was undermined on all sides. "Beautiful Armida Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives; lapped in soft music of adulation; waited on by the splendours of the world; which nevertheless hangs wondrously as by a single hair."1 But although Chesterfield appeals to history, the careful modern student of history will perhaps think the blindness of the French nobility and clergy eminently pardonable. The Monarchy, under whose broad shelter all privilege grew and seemed to thrive, appeared to have its roots deeper in the past than any existing European institution. The countries which now made up France had enjoyed no experience of popular government since the rude Gaulish freedom. From this, they had passed into the condition of a strictly administered, strongly governed, highly taxed, Roman province. The investigations of the young and learned school of historians rising in France leave it questionable 1 Carlyle, French Revolution, i. 4. |