Chap. III.—The Revolution rendered France a new nation:—it
emancipated the Gauls from the tyranny of the Franks: it created new interests, and a new order of things conformable with the welfare and rights of the people, and the justice and knowledge of the age.
“The French Revolution was not produced by the jarring interests of two families disputing the possession of the throne; it was a general rising of the mass of the nation against the privileged classes. The French nobility, like that of every country in Europe, dates its origin from the incursion of the barbarians, who divided the Roman Empire among them. In France, nobles represented the Franks, and the Burgundians, and the rest of the nation, the Gauls. The feudal system which was introduced established the principle that all land should have a lord. All political privileges were exercised by the Priests and the Nobles; the peasants were slaves, and in part attached to the glebe. The progress of civilization and knowledge emancipated the people. This new state of things promoted industry and trade. The chief portion of the land, wealth, and information, belonged to the people in the eighteenth century. The nobles, however, still continued to be a privileged class: they were empowered to administer justice, and they possessed feudal rights under various denominations and forms: they enjoyed the privilege of being exempt from all the burdens of the state, and of possessing exclusively the most honourable posts. These abuses roused the indignation of the citizens. The principal object of the Revolution was to destroy all privileges; to abolish signorial jurisdictions, justice being an inseparable attribute of sovereign authority; to suppress feudal rights, as being a remnant of the old slavery of the people; to subject alike all citizens and all property, to the burdens of the state. In short, the Revolution proclaimed equality of rights. A citizen might attain any public employment, according to his talent and the chances of fortune. The kingdom was composed of provinces which had been united to the Crown at various periods: they had no natural limits, and were differently divided, unequal in extent and in population. They possessed many laws of their own, civil as well as criminal: they were more or less privileged, and very unequally taxed, both with respect to the amount and the nature of the contributions, which rendered it necessary to detach them from each other by lines of custom-houses. France was not a state, but a combination of several states, connected together without amalgamation. The whole had been determined by chance and by the events of past ages. The Revolution, guided by the principle of equality, both with respect to the citizens and the different portions of the territory, destroyed all these small nations: there was no longer a Brittany, a Normandy, a Burgundy, a Champagne[Champagne], a Provence, or a Lorraine; but the whole formed a France. A division of homogeneous territory, prescribed by local circumstances, confounded the limits of all the provinces. They possessed the same judicial and administrative organization, the same civil and criminal laws, and the same system of taxation. The dreams of the upright men of all ages were realized. The opposition which the Court, the Clergy, and the Nobility, raised against the Revolution and the war with foreign powers, produced the law of emigration and the sequestration of emigrant property, which subsequently it was found necessary to sell, in order to provide for the charges of the war. A great portion of the French nobility enrolled themselves under the banner of the princes of the Bourbon family, and formed an army which marched in conjunction with the Austrian, Prussian, and English forces. Gentlemen who had been brought up in the enjoyment of competency served as private soldiers: numbers were cut off by fatigue and the sword; others perished of want in foreign countries; and the wars of La Vendée and of the Chouans, and the revolutionary tribunals, swept away thousands. Three-fourths of the French nobility were thus destroyed; and all posts, civil, judicial, or military, were filled by citizens who had risen from the common mass of the people. The change produced in persons and property by the events of the Revolution, was not less remarkable than that which was effected by the principles of the Revolution. A new church was created; the dioceses of Vienne, Narbonne, Frejus, Sisteron, Rheims, &c., were superseded by sixty new dioceses, the boundaries of which were circumscribed, in the Concordat, by new Bulls applicable to the present state of the French territory. The suppression of religious orders, the sale of convents and of all ecclesiastical property, were sanctioned, and the clergy were pensioned by the State. Every thing that was the result of the events which had occurred since the time of Clovis, ceased to exist. All these changes were so advantageous to the people that they were effected with the utmost facility, and, in 1800, there no longer remained any recollection of the old privileges and sovereigns of the provinces, the old parliaments and bailiwicks, or the old dioceses; and to trace back the origin of all that existed, it was sufficient to refer to the new law by which it had been established. One-half of the land had changed its proprietors; the peasantry and the citizens were enriched. The advancement of agriculture and manufactures exceeded the most sanguine hopes. France presented the imposing spectacle of upwards of thirty millions of inhabitants, circumscribed within their natural limits, and composing only a single class of citizens, governed by one law, one rule, and one order. All these changes were conformable with the welfare and rights of the nation, and with the justice and intelligence of the age.