Although everything remained local, still the effect of the enfranchisement was to call a new and general class into being. No coalition had existed amongst the burghers, nor had they, as a class, any public and common existence. But the land was covered with men occupying an identical situation, with common interests and manners, amongst whom there could not fail to be formed by degrees a certain bond and unity, which was sure to originate a burgher class. Thus a necessary result of the local enfranchisement of boroughs, was the formation of a great social order, the citizen or burgher class.
We must not imagine that this class was then what it has since become. Not only has its situation greatly changed, but its elements or component parts were quite different. In the twelfth century, it was only composed of dealers and traders driving a trifling commerce, and of small proprietors, either of houses or of land, who had taken up their abodes in towns. Three centuries afterwards, the burgher class comprised, in addition, lawyers, physicians, local magistrates, and persons engaged in various literary avocations. It was thus formed successively, and of very distinct elements; but neither to the succession nor to the diversity has proper attention been paid in its history. Whenever the burgher class is spoken of, it has been considered, apparently, as at all epochs composed of the same elements. Such a conclusion is absurd. It is, perhaps, more than all in the diversity of its composition, at the various eras of history, that the secret of its destiny ought to be sought. So long as it included neither magistrates nor lettered men—so long, in fact, as it was not what it became in the sixteenth century—it possessed neither so high a standing nor so great an influence in the state. The successive rise within itself of new professions and relative moral positions, of a new intellectual development, must be traced, in order to comprehend the vicissitudes of its fortunes and its power. In the twelfth century it was composed, I repeat, of petty traders, who retired into the towns after making their purchases and sales, and of owners of houses or small estates who had fixed their residence in them. Such was the European burgher class in its first elements.
The next great result of the enfranchisement of boroughs was the contest of classes, which thereupon arose inevitably from the fact itself, a contest which occupies all modern history. Europe, as at present constituted, has sprung from the struggles amongst the different orders of society. In other regions, as I have formerly stated, the contest produced very opposite effects. In Asia, for example, one class completely triumphed; the system of castes succeeded that of classes, and society fell into stagnation. Thanks be to God, no such consequence has happened in Europe. No one order has been able to vanquish or enslave the others; the contest, instead of becoming a principle of immobility, has been the cause of advancement. The relations of the different classes amongst themselves, and the necessity in which they have found themselves to struggle and to yield by turns, the variety of their interests and passions, the desire for conquest, without being able to accomplish it—from all this has resulted, perhaps, the most energetic and fruitful principle of development in European civilisation. The orders have been engaged in constant warfare: they detested each other; a deep-seated diversity in position, interests, and manners, wrought amongst them a profound moral hostility or antagonism, and yet they have progressively drawn together, amalgamated, and merged their differences. Every country in Europe has witnessed a certain general spirit, a certain community of interests, ideas, and feelings, take root and gain development within its own confines, which has triumphed over dissension and division. For example, in France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the social and moral separation of the orders was still deeply planted; yet there is no doubt that the fusion was even then far advanced, and that there was a veritable French nation, not of one class exclusively, but comprising all classes, animated with a certain common sentiment, having a common social existence, and strongly impressed with nationality.
Thus, from our diversity, enmity, and warfare, has arisen in modern Europe that national unity, which has become so brilliant a feature of the present times, and which is tending, day by day, to a development still more glorious and beneficial.
Such are the great external, palpable, and social effects that have resulted from the revolution under review. We will now proceed to inquire what were its moral effects, or what changes it wrought in the minds of the burghers themselves, what, in fact, they became, in a moral sense, in their new position.
There is one fact with which it is impossible to avoid being struck, when we study the relations of the burghers, not merely in the twelfth century, but in after ages, with the state, or government of the state, with the general interests of the country. I speak of the extraordinary timidity and humility of the burghers, of the excessive modesty of their pretensions with regard to the government of their country, and of the facility they display in being contented. They give no token of possessing that true political spirit which aspires to influence, to reform, and to govern; they are utterly devoid of boldness of thought and greatness of ambition. They seem more like prudent and plodding freedmen.
There are only two sources whence greatness of ambition and boldness of thought, in the political sphere, can result. There must be present either the feeling and consciousness of exercising an important influence and great power over the destinies of others, and upon a vast stage, or an energetic self-conviction of complete personal independence, an absolute certainty of individual liberty, and an inward persuasion of a destiny dependent upon no other will than that of the individual himself. Upon one or other of these conditions seem to depend hardihood of mind, loftiness of ambition, and a desire to act in an extended sphere, and to be instrumental in obtaining results of high import.
Neither the one nor the other entered into the situation of the burghers of the middle ages. Their importance was limited to themselves: out of their own towns, or upon the state at large, their influence was trifling. Neither could they have any strong sentiment of personal independence. It was of little moment that they had conquered and obtained charters. The burgher of a town, comparing himself to a petty lord who lived near him, and who had just been vanquished, felt, notwithstanding the latter incident, his extreme inferiority; he was a stranger to that haughty feeling of independence which swelled the breast of the fief-holder; his portion of freedom was held not from himself, but from his association with others, resting on a succour difficult and precarious. Thence arose that character of reserve, timidity of spirit, modest awe, and cringing humility of speech, even in the midst of stem resolution, which was so profoundly impressed on the burgher life of the twelfth century, and which has come down to their latest descendants. They have never had a taste for great enterprises; and when fate has plunged them into such, they have been beset with disquietude and embarrassment; the weight of responsibility has pressed too heavily upon them; they have felt themselves out of their sphere, and longed to return to more accustomed habits; thus they have always been ready to treat on moderate terms. We therefore find, in the course of European history, and especially in the French, that the burgher class was esteemed, flattered, even consulted, but very rarely feared; it seldom impressed its adversaries with the idea of its being a great or high-spirited power of real political weight. This weakness in the comparatively modern burgher class is not matter of astonishment, since its principal cause is clearly assignable to its origin, and to those circumstances of its enfranchisement which I have shortly before noted. A high ambition, entertained independently of social station, expansion and boldness in political thought, desire for intervention in the affairs of the realm, full consciousness of the dignity of man as a human being, and of the extent of his power, if he have capacity to exercise it—these are sentiments and dispositions altogether modern, the proceeds of modern civilisation, and the fruit of that glorious and elastic generality which characterises it, and which can never fail to assure to the people an influence and a weight in the government of the country, which were always wanting, and must of necessity have been wanting, to the burghers, our ancestors.