Causes of the French Revolution.
On the 5th of May 1789 the States-General of France was assembled for the first time since the year 1614. The causes of this momentous event, which produced nothing less than a complete change in the history of the world, were of ancient growth; the explosion had been slowly preparing ever since Louis XIV. had completed the mistaken policy of centralization, and had been able to say that the King and the State were one. The power and importance of the Crown had been secured at the cost of the destruction or degradation of all the conservative elements of society. The nobility, deprived of their local power, had been summoned to the capital to swell the splendour of the Court; without duties they still continued to enjoy privileges, while the administrative power was practically centred in the hands of the royal intendants; they were exempt from direct taxation, and known to their tenantry and dependants only by the feudal dues which they exacted, and by certain remnants of feudal services they could still claim. The judicial body, the "nobility of the robe," held their position, not by merit or by legal knowledge, but by purchase. The upper clergy were drawn to the Court like the nobles, and lived in splendour, while the village curé had hardly the means of livelihood. The people, oppressed by unjust taxation, excluded from all hope of bettering their condition, saw themselves deserted by their natural guardians and leaders, who seemed to enjoy wealth wrung from their toil, and honours earned by no merit of their own, but solely on the ground of birth. The misery of their position was aggravated by the constant recurrence of famines, and they saw with rage the corn trade so manipulated by men in the highest position as to all appearance to increase the scarcity. But an oppressed people will suffer long in silence unless the temper of the class above them be such as to favour the expression of their discontent. Such a temper had been called into existence among the thinking middle classes by the growth of scepticism and materialistic philosophy. Drawn originally from English sources, from the writings of the philosophers of the English Revolution, this form of thought had found its exponent in Voltaire, from the keen shafts of whose wit no abuse and no institution was secure. Montesquieu had pushed the same spirit of inquiry into political and constitutional questions, and Rousseau, more sentimental and spiritual in his views, had supplied a firmer but no less revolutionary basis to society than was afforded by the purely negative teaching of Voltaire. The literary power of these men make them the best known exponents of the spirit of the time, but the spirit itself was prevalent everywhere. Thus, while the institutions of the country were radically bad, they were exposed to the fiercest and most destructive criticism, and ideas of the possibility and rightfulness of a happier state of things were suggested to the public mind. The conduct of the Court and Government was not of a character to blunt the criticisms directed against them; the finances were in a state of hopeless disorder. The accession of Louis XVI. had for a moment raised hopes of a change of system; Turgot, an honest and able man of reforming views, was summoned to the ministry. But as his plan included of necessity retrenchment on the part of the Court and the taxation of the privileged classes, Court, nobles, and magistracy made common cause against him, and he found their opposition too strong for him. The same fate attended every effort at reform. Minister after minister was called to office, content either to follow the old course, which was inevitably leading to bankruptcy, or obliged to yield before the selfish opposition of the privileged classes. In turn, Clugny, Necker, and Calonne withdrew discomfited. At length, in 1787, the Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne accepted the difficult post. Like his predecessors, he soon found that there was no resource but the extension of taxation. This brought him into collision with the Parlement, the chief court of justice, whose members were drawn from among the privileged class. They contrived for a while to give their opposition the appearance of a popular movement against the power of the Crown; they even went so far as to declare that the right of extending taxation resided in the States-General alone. It was in vain that the King superseded the Parlement, and produced a new and by no means injudicious constitution; the mention of the States-General had seemed to open a new view to the people; nothing short of them would now be accepted. The new constitution fell hopelessly to the ground; the King found it necessary to recall Necker, the only minister who had enjoyed any popular confidence, and his triumphant return was speedily followed by the meeting of the States.
Assembly of the States-General. May 5, 1789.
The assembling of the States-General, which was by many regarded with hope as the close of the difficulties of France, proved but the beginning of troubles. The unprivileged classes had at length obtained the means of expressing their wants, and would be satisfied with nothing short of complete revolution. Unfortunately, the King, a well-meaning man, with a real love for his people, was of a slow intellect, and easily guided by those around him. He fell into the hands of the princes and courtiers, and was induced to make common cause with the privileged classes, which were at first the real object of attack. When the Commons, or Tiers Etat, declared themselves the real representation of the nation, and changed the States-General into a National Assembly, he attempted to check them by a royal sitting, only to find his authority disregarded. The Commons assembled in the Tennis Court at Versailles (June 20), swore to perfect the constitution, and became the dominant power in the nation. An attempt to check their further advance by force of arms, the collection of troops around Paris, the removal of the popular minister Necker and the appointment of the Marshal de Broglie to the command of the army, drove Paris to insurrection. The thorough untrustworthiness of the army was proved; the Bastille fell (July 14); the National Guard sprang into existence; and a revolutionary Commune at the Hôtel de Ville governed the capital. The power of the sword passed into the hands of the people. Though the Assembly continued the work of the constitution, though, on the 4th of August, the aristocracy, in a moment of wild enthusiasm, surrendered all its old feudal rights, the mistrust of the Parisians, aggravated by the famine and the difficulty of subsistence, continued to increase. The Court imprudently gave colour to its mistrust, Lafayette, at the head of the National Guard, desired to get the management of the Revolution more entirely in his own hands. On the 6th of October a crowd of National Guards and starving women marched to Versailles and brought the King in triumph to Paris. He was followed by the The King brought to Paris. Oct. 6. National Assembly, which henceforward worked under the eyes of the Parisian Commune and people. The prestige of royalty disappeared, the King was in fact a prisoner in his own capital; the power had passed even from the National Assembly, and was centred in the people of Paris.
Excitement produced in England.
Such scenes, marked by acts of sanguinary vengeance on the part of the people, and showing the absolute powerlessness of the old system of Louis XIV., could not fail to excite the strongest interest in Europe. Nowhere was this more the case than in England. To some it appeared that our great enemy was perishing before our eyes of its own natural decay; while from another point of view, to lovers of liberty, there was a whole world of hope in the vigorous life exhibited by a people, downtrodden as the French lower orders were believed to be; to another party the hurried and irregular vehemence which had marked the changes in France seemed proof only of an anarchy shocking to all respect for form or antiquity, and sad evidence against the possibility of an orderly growth of reform. "The French have shown themselves," said Burke, "the ablest architects of ruin that have hitherto existed in the world. They have done their business for us as rivals in a way which twenty Ramillies or Blenheims could never have done." "How much is it the greatest event that ever happened in the world and how much the best," said Fox after the taking of the Bastille. While a third view, and this at first was Pitt's, rested complacently on the possible approximation of the Government of France to a constitutional monarchy similar to that of England.
The three years which elapsed between 1789 and the end of 1792 drew more distinctly the line which separated the two first of these opinions, and proved that the third was untenable. It was clear from the first which of them would ultimately gain the upper hand among the governing classes in England. Already, as early as March 1790, a proposition for the relief of Protestant Dissenters, and for the abolition of Test and Rejection of the Abolition of Tests and of the Reform Bill. Corporation Acts, which had been lost by only a small majority the preceding year, was thrown out by overwhelming numbers. A Bill for the reform of the representation, introduced by Flood, though Pitt had several times himself brought the subject forward, met with a similar fate; and shortly after the meeting of the new Parliament on November 25th, Burke issued what may be regarded as the manifesto of his party in his work Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution." entitled "Reflections on the French Revolution." It was called forth by signs of the sympathy which the French Revolution was meeting in England. Its more enthusiastic admirers had determined to reap what advantages they could from the present state of excitement, and two societies—the Constitutional Society, founded a few years before, and the Revolution Society, an old established body connected with the Dissenting interest, and intended to support the principle of the Revolution of 1688—had entered upon a course of renewed activity. On its anniversary, in November 1789, the Revolution Society had not only listened to an inflammatory and revolutionary discourse by Dr. Price, a Unitarian minister, but had also sent an address of sympathy, signed by Lord Stanhope, their President, to the National Assembly, by whom it had been rapturously received. It was upon this text chiefly that Burke wrote. His book had a wonderful success, 30,000 copies were speedily sold, and writers have been found bold enough to imply that the safety of Europe was owing to this work. In truth, Burke saw more clearly than those around him the inevitable course of the Revolution; he foresaw its excesses and its miserable end in a military despotism; he saw, too, that it must of necessity become proselytizing. Terrified by these dangers, and unable to conceive the excellence of any government unlike our own, which was at that time a highly aristocratic limited monarchy, he did not see the truths which the French Revolution embodied, and which, had they been wisely directed and not rudely assailed, would have allowed Europe to pass into the new and inevitable phase of progress for which it is still struggling, without the constant outbreaks of passion on one side or the other which have marked the last seventy years. This work drew forth many replies, the most important of which were Macintosh's "Vindiciæ Gallicæ" and Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man,"—the first a temperate and excellent work of the man who was afterwards to be one of the greatest philosophical statesmen in England, the other the rough but sensible production of a revolutionist by profession.
The sentiments which Burke had declared in his essay he soon took an opportunity of declaring in Parliament. The question before the House was a new constitution for Canada. This was called for by the extremely antagonistic character of the inhabitants of the two parts of the colony. The inhabitants of Lower Canada were French, and used to French habits, those of Upper Canada entirely English. The province was in future to be divided, and the constitution of the Upper Province assimilated as nearly as possible to the English model. Hereditary peerages even were to be established. The Bill, granting as it did a sort of self-government to the colony, was a wise one, but Fox opposed it, and took the opportunity of speaking in high praise of the new constitution of France. Some days afterwards, upon the same measure, Burke arose and proceeded to reply, inveighing strongly Breach between Fox and Burke. May 6, 1791. against the Revolution. His own side vociferously called him to order; he persisted in his speech, deploring that he should be obliged to break with his friends, but ready, as he said, to risk all, and with his last words to exclaim, "Fly from the French constitution." Fox whispered there was no loss of friends, but Burke rejoined, "I have done my duty at the price of my friend; our friendship is at an end." Fox rose afterwards, and with tears in his eyes repeated that he regarded Burke as his master and teacher in politics, but he could not withdraw what he had said in praise of the French constitution; and thus the friendship of years was severed, and Burke was ranked with the ministerialists.