The first volume of “An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effect it has produced in Europe,” which Mary wrote during the months she lived in France, was published by Johnson in 1794. It was favorably received and criticised, especially by that portion of the public who had sympathized with the Revolutionists in the controversy with Burke. One admirer, in 1803, declared it was not second even to Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” It went very quickly through two editions, surest proof of its success. The “Analytical Review” called it
“... a work of uncommon merit, abounding with strong traits of original genius, and containing a great variety of just and important observations on the recent affairs of France and on the general interests of society at the present crisis.”
Mary had apparently spent in idleness the years which had elapsed since the “Rights of Women” had taken England by storm. But in reality she must have made good use of them. This new book marks an enormous advance in her mental development. It is but little disfigured by the faults of style, and is never weakened by the lack of method, which detract from the strength and power of the work by which she is best known. In the “French Revolution” her arguments are well weighed and balanced, and flowers of rhetoric, with a few exceptions, are sacrificed for a simple and concise statement of facts. Unfortunately the first volume was never followed by a second. Had Mary finished the book, as she certainly intended to do when she began it, it probably would still be ranked with the standard works on the Revolution.
As the title demonstrates, her object in writing this history was to explain the moral significance, as well as the historical value, of the incidents which she recorded. This moral element is uppermost in every page of her book. The determination to discover the truth at all hazards is its key-note. This end Mary hoped to accomplish, first by tracing the French troubles to their real causes, and then by giving an unprejudiced account of them. The result of a thorough study and investigation of her subject was the formation of doctrines which are in close sympathy with those of the evolutionists of to-day. Nothing strikes the reader so much as her firm belief in the theory of development, and her conclusion therefrom that progress in government consists in the gradual substitution of altruistic principles for the egotism which was the primal foundation of law and order. Profession of this creed is at once made in both the preface and first chapter of the “French Revolution.” In the former, she writes:—
“By ... attending to circumstances, we shall be able to discern clearly that the Revolution was neither produced by the abilities or the intrigues of a few individuals, nor was the effect of sudden and short-lived enthusiasm; but the natural consequence of intellectual improvement, gradually proceeding to perfection in the advancement of communities from a state of barbarism to that of polished society.”
In considering this subject, she concludes that the civilization of the ancients was deficient because it paid more attention to the cultivation of taste in the few than to the development of understanding in the many, and that that of the moderns is superior to it because of the more general diffusion of knowledge which followed the invention of printing. Her arguments in support of her theories are excellent.
“When,” she writes, “learning was confined to a small number of the citizens of a state, and the investigation of its privileges was left to a number still smaller, governments seem to have acted as if the people were formed only for them; and ingeniously confounding their rights with metaphysical jargon, the luxurious grandeur of individuals has been supported by the misery of the bulk of their fellow-creatures, and ambition gorged by the butchery of millions of innocent victims.”
This despotism, she further asserts, always continues so long as men are unqualified to judge with precision of their civil and political rights. But once they begin to think, and hence to learn the true facts of history, they must discover that the first social systems were founded on passion,—“individuals wishing to fence round their own wealth or power, and make slaves of their brothers to prevent encroachment,”—and that the laws of society could not have been originally “adjusted so as to take in the future conduct of its members, because the faculties of man are unfolded and perfected by the improvements made by society.” This knowledge necessarily destroys belief in the sanctity of prescription, and when once it is made the basis of government, the ruling powers will have as much consideration for the rights of others as for their own.
“When society was first subjugated to laws,” she writes, “probably by the ambition of some, and the desire of safety in all, it was natural for men to be selfish, because they were ignorant how intimately their own comfort was connected with that of others; and it was also very natural that humanity, rather the effect of feeling than of reason, should have a very limited range. But when men once see clear as the light of heaven—and I hail the glorious day from afar!—that on the general happiness depends their own, reason will give strength to the fluttering wings of passion, and men will ‘do unto others what they wish they should do unto them.’”
One of the first means, therefore, by which this much-to-be-desired end is to be attained, is the destruction of blind reverence of the past.