CHAPTER XXXVII.
ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
1789-1802.
The meeting of the States General.
In the year 1789, when Pitt was in the zenith of his power, strong in the confidence of the nation and the king, signs of trouble began to appear across the British Channel, which attracted the attention of all intelligent men. The great French Revolution was commencing:—in May, 1789, King Lewis XVI. summoned the States General of France to meet at Versailles, in order to consult with him on measures for averting the impending bankruptcy of the realm. It was nearly two centuries since the last States General had assembled, and nothing but dire necessity drove the king to call into being the assembly which his despotic ancestors had so carefully prevented from meeting. But France was in a desperate condition: the greedy and autolatrous Lewis XIV. and the vicious spendthrift Lewis XV. had piled up a mountain of debts which the nation could no longer support. The existing king, though personally he was mild and unenterprising, had been drawn into the war of American independence, and wasted on it many millions more. The only way out of the difficulty was to persuade the nation to submit to new imposts, and most especially to induce the nobles to surrender their old feudal privilege of exemption from taxation.
France under the Ancien Régime.
The king and his ministers were only thinking of the financial trouble; but by summoning the States General they gave the power of speech to discontented France, and found themselves confronted by a much larger problem. The realm had been grossly misgoverned for the last century by a close ring of royal ministers, who constituted a bureaucracy of the most narrow-minded sort. Lewis XIV. had crushed out all local institutions and liberties, in order to impose his royal will on every man. The lesser kings who followed had allowed the power to slip from their own hands into those of the close oligarchy of bureaucrats whom the Grand Monarque had organized. France under the Ancien Régime was suffering all the evils that result from over-centralization and "red tape." The smallest provincial affairs had to be referred to the ministers at Paris, who tried to settle everything, but only succeeded in meddling, and delaying all local improvements. The most hopeless feature of the time was that the nobility and gentry were excluded from all political power by the Parisian bureaucrats, though suffered to retain all their old feudal privileges and exemptions. Thus they were objects of jealousy to the other classes, yet had no share in the governance of the realm, or opportunity to temper the despotism of the royal ministers. Two old mediaeval abuses survived, to make the situation of the country yet more unbearable: offices of all kinds were openly bought and sold, while taxation was not raised directly by the state, but leased out to greedy tax-farmers, who mulcted the public of far more than they paid into the national treasury.
Growth of discontent.—Voltaire and Rousseau.
While the government was in this deplorable condition, public opinion had of late been growing more and more restive. All the educated classes of France were permeated with deep discontent. Ideals of constitutional government, borrowed originally from English political writers, were in the air. The recent alliance with America had familiarized many Frenchmen with republican institutions and notions of self-government. The opposition was headed by the chief literary men of the age. The stinging sarcasms of Voltaire were aimed against all ancient shams and delusions. Nothing was safe from his criticism, and most of all did he ridicule the corrupt Gallican Church, with its hierarchy of luxurious and worldly prelates and its bigoted and superstitious lower clergy. While Voltaire was decrying old institutions and teaching men to be sceptical of all ancient beliefs, his younger contemporary, the sentimental and visionary Rousseau, was advocating a return to the "state of nature." He taught that man was originally virtuous and happy, and that all evil was the result of over-government, the work of priests and kings. He dreamed of a renewal of the Golden Age, and the abolition of laws and states. All men were to be brothers, and to live free and equal without lord or master. Smarting under the narrow and stupid rule of the Ancien Régime, many Frenchmen took these Utopian ideas seriously, and talked of setting up the reign of reason and humanity. Hence it came that all the claims and aspirations of the French Revolution were inspired by vague and visionary ideas of the rights of man, and demanded the destruction of old institutions, unlike our English agitations for reform, which from Magna Carta downwards have always claimed a restoration of ancient liberties, not the setting up of a new constitution.
The National Assembly.
When the dull but well-intentioned Lewis XVI. had once summoned the States General of 1789, he soon found that he had given himself a master. For the deputies of the Tiers Etat, or Commons, instead of proceeding to vote new taxes, began to clamour for the redress of grievances of all kinds. When the king, like Charles I., threatened to dissolve them, their spokesman answered, "We are here by the will of the people of France, and nothing but the force of bayonets shall disperse us." King Lewis was too weak and slow to send the bayonets. He drew back, and allowed the States General to organize themselves into a National Assembly, and to claim to represent the French nation.
Storming of the Bastille.