The French Revolution has been frequently attributed to that of America. The American Revolution had certainly considerable influence upon the French; but the latter owed less to what was actually done in the United States than to what was thought at the same time in France. Whilst to the rest of Europe the Revolution of America still only appeared a novel and strange occurrence, in France it only rendered more palpable and more striking that which was already supposed to be known. Other countries it astonished; to France it brought more complete conviction. The Americans seemed to have done no more than execute what the literary genius of France had already conceived; they gave the substance of reality to that which the French had excogitated. It was as if Fénelon had suddenly found himself in Salentum.
This circumstance, so novel in history, of the whole political education of a great people being formed by its literary men, contributed more than anything perhaps to bestow upon the French Revolution its peculiar stamp, and to cause those results which are still perceptible.
The writers of the time not only imparted their ideas to the people who effected the Revolution, but they gave them also their peculiar temperament and disposition. The whole nation ended, after being so long schooled by them, in the absence of all other leaders and in profound ignorance of practical affairs, by catching up the instincts, the turn of mind, the tastes, and even the humours of those who wrote; so that, when the time for action came, it transported into the arena of politics all the habits of literature.
A study of the history of the French Revolution will show that it was carried on precisely in that same spirit which has caused so many abstract books to be written on government. There was the same attraction towards general theories, complete systems of legislation, and exact symmetry in the laws—the same contempt of existing facts—the same reliance upon theory—the same love of the original, the ingenious, and the novel in institutions—the same desire to reconstruct, all at once, the entire constitution by the rules of logic, and upon a single plan, rather than seek to amend it in its parts. The spectacle was an alarming one; for that which is a merit in a writer is often a fault in a statesman: and the same things which have often caused great books to be written, may lead to great revolutions.
Even the political language of the time caught something of the tone in which the authors spoke: it was full of general expressions, abstract terms, pompous words, and literary turns. This style, aided by the political passions which it expressed, penetrated through all classes, and descended with singular facility even to the lowest. Considerably before the Revolution, the edicts of Louis XVI. frequently spoke of the law of nature and the rights of man; and I have found instances of peasants who, in their memorials called their neighbours ‘fellow-citizens,’ their Intendant ‘a respectable magistrate,’ their parish-priest ‘the minister of the altar,’ and God ‘the Supreme Being,’ and who wanted nothing but spelling to become very indifferent authors.
These new qualities became so completely incorporated with the old stock of the French character, that habits resulting only from this singular education have frequently been attributed to the natural disposition of the French. It has been asserted that the taste, or rather the passion, which the French have displayed during the last sixty years for general ideas and big words in political discussion, arose from some characteristic peculiar to the French race, which has been somewhat pedantically called ‘the genius of France,’ as if this pretended characteristic could suddenly have displayed itself at the end of the last century, after having remained concealed during the whole history of the country.
It is singular that the French have preserved the habits which they had derived from literature, whilst they have almost entirely lost their ancient love of literature itself. I have been frequently astonished in the course of my own public life, to see that men who had never read the works of the eighteenth century, or of any other, and who had a great contempt for authors, nevertheless so faithfully retain some of the principal defects which were displayed before their birth by the literary spirit of that day.
CHAPTER XIV.
SHOWING HOW IRRELIGION HAD BECOME A GENERAL AND DOMINANT PASSION AMONGST THE FRENCH OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND WHAT INFLUENCE THIS FACT HAD ON THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION.