It is surprising that this view of the subject, which now seems so easy to discern, should have been so obscured and confused even to the clearest perceptions.
‘Instead of redressing their grievances,’ says Burke of the representatives of the French nation, ‘and improving the fabric of their state, to which they were called by their monarch and sent by their country, they were made to take a very different course. They first destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which serve to fix the State and to give it a steady direction, and which furnish sure correctives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of the orders. These balances existed in the oldest constitution and in the constitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rashly destroyed, and then they melted down the whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass.’[7]
Burke did not perceive that he had before his eyes the very Revolution which was to abolish the ancient common law of Europe; he could not discern that this and no other was the very question at issue.
But why, we may ask, did this Revolution, which was imminent throughout Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere, and why did it there display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or at least have appeared only in part? This second question is well worthy of consideration, and the inquiry will form the subject of the following book.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
WHY FEUDAL RIGHTS HAD BECOME MORE ODIOUS TO THE PEOPLE IN FRANCE THAN IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.