The “Ochlocracy.”
Mirabeau’s answer to Dreux-Brézé.
This, I should say, is an extremely English way of looking at French affairs. The “ochlocracy” (why not simply have said “popular government”?) is driving France to irretrievable downfall—a result not wholly displeasing to her neighbours—and the democratic development might have been prevented if the bourgeois king and his ministers had only shown “ordinary determination.” A wiser king than Louis Philippe would, no doubt, have made the change to complete democracy gentler and easier by timely concessions; but the ultimate establishment of democratic institutions was inevitable in any case, and inevitable long before Louis Philippe ascended his precarious throne.[22] It was inevitable from the hour when Mirabeau gave his immortal answer to the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé: “Nous sommes ici par la volonté du peuple, et nous n’en sortirons que par la puissance des baïonnettes.” From that hour, on the 23d of June 1789, when the “will of the people” was openly recognised in a French parliament as superior to the will of the king, the establishment of what Mr. Greg called an “ochlocracy,” in its complete development, was simply a question of time. How much parliamentary institutions have gained strength in a hundred years may be realised by imagining the effect of a royal summons to the Chamber of Deputies at the present day. There would be no need of a Mirabeau to resist and resent it with indignant eloquence of voice and gesture; at the most, it would excite a smile.
Resemblance in the Political Metamorphosis of England and France.
A Comparison with Authorship.
For myself, I am much more struck by the resemblance than by the difference between England and France in the great political metamorphosis that has come over both countries and is not yet quite completed in either. I see a wonderful resemblance in the course of events, in the evolution of opinion, and in those general tendencies which are far more important than any mere historical accidents, but I see at the same time a great difference in dates and most curious inequalities of pace. The comparison may be made clearer by supposing that two authors are at work upon two books. The elder has begun his manuscript much sooner than the other, but he has not gone on with it very quickly, except at odd times of inspiration. The younger seems to have plagiarised his opening chapters from his predecessor, there are so many striking points of likeness, but after a time he goes on in his own way and works the faster of the two, notwithstanding frequent goings back caused by immense erasures. Just now it seems as if he had left the elder writer behind, but their different ways of work make this very difficult to determine. Neither of the books is as yet completed. As they advance, their general similarity of tendency and purpose becomes every day more manifest. This vexes the rival authors, who would have preferred to find themselves original.
England from 1630 to 1730, and France from 1780 to 1880.
Sovereignty of the French National Assembly.
Sovereignty of the House of Commons.
English critics usually take France during her revolutionary period and compare her with England at another stage when she has got through her revolutionary and is in her reforming period. A more just comparison would be to take England between 1630 and 1730, and France between 1780 and 1880. There are so many points of resemblance between the two that history has almost repeated itself. Our ancestors decapitated a king and the French decapitated theirs; the difference being that the axe was used in one case, and a more ingenious mechanical contrivance in the other. After the execution of Charles I., the English were not yet ripe for liberty, so they fell under the dictatorship of a soldier; the French did exactly the same. When the English were not disposed to endure the Stuarts any longer, they sent them across the Channel. When the French were not disposed to endure the Bourbons any longer, they sent them across the Channel. The constant tendency in both countries has been to increase the power of the representative chamber and diminish that of the nominal head of the State, with this final result: that in France the National Assembly (the two chambers meeting as one) is declared to be sovereign, and in England the Marquis of Hartington has openly attributed sovereignty to the House of Commons, quoting Professor Dicey in reply to an old-fashioned member who stood aghast at what seemed to him an almost treasonable employment of the word.[23]