Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 390, April, 1848

by Various

In making these observations, we must guard against being misunderstood. We do not assert that the present leaders of the Revolution desire foreign war, or are insincere in the pacific professions which they have put forth in their public proclamations. We have no doubt that “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” is what they really desire; and that with England in particular they are sincerely desirous to remain, at present at least, on terms of amity. The early promoters of the Revolution of 1789—Siêyes, Bailly, Mirabeau, and Lafayette—were equally loud and probably sincere in their pacific protestations at the outset of the first convulsion. What we assert is another proposition entirely corroborated by past history, and scarcely less important in its present application—viz., that the members of the existing Revolutionary Government are placed in a false position; that they have been elevated to power by the force of passion, and the spread of principles inconsistent with the existence of society; that if they continue to fan them, they will ruin their country, if they attempt to coerce them, they will be destroyed themselves. This is the constant and dreadful alternative in which a Revolutionary Government is placed, and which has so uniformly led in past history to what is called a departure from the principles of freedom by its successful leaders. It was this which brought Lafayette into such discredit in Paris, that his life was saved only by his fortunate confinement in an Austrian dungeon: it was this which rendered Mirabeau in the end a royalist, and for ever ruined him in popular favour: it was this which made Robespierre strive to restore the sway of natural religion in the infidel metropolis: it was this which gave Napoleon such a horror of the metaphysical “Ideologues,” who, according to him, had ruined France, and rendered him the resolute and unbending opponent of the Revolution. But even Napoleon’s iron arm was unequal to the task of arresting the fiery coursers of democracy: he only succeeded in maintaining internal tranquillity by giving them a foreign direction. He turned them not against the Tuileries, but against the Kremlin; he preserved peace in France only by waging war in Europe. A “Napoleon of Peace” will never succeed in restraining the Revolution.

Observe the pledges with which the Provisional Government are commencing their career. They are, that the state is to provide employment for all who cannot procure it from private individuals; that an ample remuneration is to be secured to labour; that the right of combination to raise wages is to be protected by law; that the House of Peers is to be abolished, as well as all titles of honour, the bearing of which is to be absolutely prohibited; that a noble career to all Frenchmen is to be opened in the army; the national representation is to be placed on the most democratic basis of a National Assembly, elected by nine millions of electors; all burdens on subsistence are to be abolished; unlimited circulation is to be provided for newspapers and the extension of knowledge; but the taxes, in the mean time at least, are to undergo no diminution. These promises and pledges sufficiently demonstrate what interest in the state has now got the ascendency. It is the interest, or rather supposed interest, of labour, in opposition to that of capital—of numbers against property.

The Revolution that has taken place is a communist or socialist triumph; the chiefs who have been installed in power are the leaders of the party who think that the grand evil of civilisation is the encroachment of the profit of capital on the wages of labour, and that the only effectual remedy for them is to be found in the forcible diminution of the former and extension of the latter.

The doctrine of this party in France has long been, that Robespierre perished because he did not venture to pronounce the word, agrarian law. It would be to little purpose to pronounce that word now, when the Republic has got nearly six millions of separate proprietors, most of them not worth six pounds a-year each. There is little but sturdy resistance to be got by attempting to spoliate this immense and indigent body, as they have spoliated the old territorial proprietors. But the capitalists and shopkeepers of towns stand in a different situation. In their hands, since the fall of Napoleon, very considerable wealth has accumulated. The peace and order maintained by the governments of the Restoration and the Barricades, though fatal to themselves, has been eminently favourable to the growth of bourgeois opulence. It is against that opulence that the recent Revolution was directed. The shopkeepers, deluded to their own destruction, began the insurrection: they surrounded and compelled the abandonment of the Tuileries. All successful convulsions are headed, in the first instance at least, by a portion of the higher or middle ranks. But they were soon passed by the rabble who followed their armed columns; and when the tumultuous mob broke into the Chamber of Deputies, fired at the picture of Louis Philippe, and pointed their muskets at the head of the Duchess of Orleans, it was too late to talk of Thiers and Odillon Barrot; the cause of reform was already passed by that of Revolution; and nothing could serve the victorious and highly excited multitude, but the abolition of monarchy, peers, and titles of honour, and the vesting of government in the hands of dreamers on equality, and leaders of Trades’ Unions in France.

Let the National Guard, who brought about the Revolution, and seduced or overcame the loyalty of the troops of the line, explain, if they can, the benefit they are likely to derive from this triumph of Socialism over Bourgeoisie, of labour over capital, of numbers over property. The Revolution was the work of their hands, and they must reap its fruits, as unquestionably they will bear its responsibility. It is of more importance for us in this country to inquire how the promises made by government, and the expectations formed by the people, are to be realised in the present social and political state of France. Already, before the Io Pæans upon the fall of the Orleans dynasty have ceased, the difficulties of the new government in this respect have proclaimed themselves. Columns of ten and fifteen thousand workmen daily wait on the administration to insist on the immediate recognition of the rights of labour: their demands were promptly acceded to by the decree of 3d March, which fixes the hours of labour in Paris at ten hours a-day, and in the provinces at eleven hours. They were formerly eleven hours in Paris and twelve in the provinces. This is quite intelligible: it is reasonable that the Civil Prætorian Guards of the capital should work less than the serfs of the provinces. Cutting off an hour’s labour over a whole country would be deemed a pretty serious matter in “l’industrieuse Angleterre:” but on the other side of the Channel, we suppose, it is a mere bagatelle, important chiefly as showing from what quarter the wind sets. Other prognostics of coming events are already visible. Monster meetings of operatives and workmen in and around Paris continue to be held in the Champs de Mars, to take the interests and rights of labour into consideration: it is probable that they will still further reduce the hours of toil, and proportionately raise its wages. Already the stone-cutters have insisted on a minimum of pay and maximum of work, and got it. Eight hours a-day, and ten sous an hour, is their ultimatum. The journalists early clamoured for the immediate removal of all duties affecting them. They succeeded in shaking off their burdens; other classes will not be slow in following their example. Meanwhile government is burdened, as in the worst days of the first Revolution, with the maintenance of an immense body of citizens with arms in their hands, and very little bread to put into their mouths. How to feed this immense body, with resources continually failing, from the terrors of capital, the flight of the English from Paris, and the diminished expenditure of all the wealthier classes, would, according to the former maxims of government, have been deemed a matter of no small difficulty. But we suppose the regenerators of society have discovered some method of arriving, with railway speed, at public opulence amidst private suffering.

The melancholy progress of the first Revolution has naturally made numbers of persons, not intimately acquainted with its events, apprehensive of the immediate return of the Reign of Terror and the restoration of the guillotine into its terrible and irresistible sovereignty in France. Without disputing that there is much danger in the present excited and disjointed state of the population of that country, there are several reasons which induce us to believe that such an event is not very probable, at least in the first instance, and that it is from a different quarter that the real danger that now threatens France is, in the outset at least, to be apprehended.

In the first place, although the Reign of Terror is over, and few indeed of the actual witnesses are still in existence, yet the recollection of it will never pass away: it has affixed a stain to the cause of revolution which will never be effaced, but which its subsequent leaders are most anxious to be freed from. Its numerous tragic scenes—its frightful atrocity—its heroic suffering, have indelibly sunk into the minds of men. To the end of the world, they will interest and melt every succeeding age. The young will ever find them the most engrossing and attractive theme,—the middle-aged, the most important subject of reflection,—the old, the most delightful means of renewing the emotions of youth. History is never weary of recording its bloody catastrophes,—romance has already arrayed them with the colours of poetry,—the drama will ere long seize upon them as the finest subjects that human events have ever furnished for the awakening of tragic emotion. They will be as immortal in story as the heroes of the Iliad, the woes of the Atrides, the catastrophe of Œdipus, the death of Queen Mary. So strongly have these fascinating tragedies riveted the attention of mankind, that nothing has ever created so powerful a moral barrier against the encroachments of democracy. The royal, like the Christian martyrs, have lighted a fire which, by the grace of God, will never be extinguished. So strongly are the popular leaders in every country impressed with the moral effects of these catastrophes, that their first efforts are always now directed to clear every successive convulsion of their damning influence. Guizot and Lafayette, at the hazard of their lives, in December 1830, saved Prince Polignac and M. Peyronnet from the guillotine; and the first act of the Provisional Government of France in 1848, to their honour be it said, was to proclaim the abolition of the punishment of death for political offences, in order to save, as they intended, M. Guizot himself.

In the next place, the bloodshed and confiscation of the first Revolution have, as subsequent writers have repeatedly demonstrated, so completely extinguished the elements of national resistance in France, that the dangers which threatened its progress and ensanguined its steps no longer exist. It was no easy matter to overturn the monarchy and church of old France. It was interwoven with the noblest, because the most disinterested feelings of our nature,—it touched the chords of religion and loyalty,—it was supported by historic names, and the lustre of ancient descent,—it rested on the strongest and most dignified attachments of modern times. The overthrow of such a fabric, like the destruction of the monarchy of Great Britain at this time, could not be effected but by the shedding of torrents of blood. Despite the irresolution of the king, the defection of the army, the conquest of the capital, and the emigration of the noblesse, accordingly, a most desperate resistance arose in the provinces; and the revolution was consolidated only by the mitrillades of Lyons and Toulon, the noyades of the Loire, the proscriptions of the Convention, the blood of La Vendée. France was not then enslaved by its capital. But now these elements of resistance to the government of the dominant multitude at Paris no longer exist. The nobles have been destroyed and their estates confiscated; the clergy are reduced to humble stipendiaries, not superior in station or influence to village schoolmasters; the corporations of towns are dissolved; the house of peers has degenerated into a body of well-dressed and titled employés. Six millions of separate landed proprietors, without leaders, wealth, information, or influence, have seized upon and now cultivate the soil of France. Power is, over the whole realm, synonymous with office. Every appointment in the kingdom flows from Paris. In these circumstances, how is it possible that resistance to the decrees of the sovereign power, in possession of the armed force of the capital, the treasury, the telegraph, and the post-office, can arise in France elsewhere than in the capital? Civil war, therefore, on an extended scale over the country, is improbable; and the victorious leaders of the Revolution, delivered from immediate apprehension, save in their own metropolis, of domestic danger, have no motive for shocking the feelings of mankind, and endangering their relations with foreign powers, by needless and unnecessary deeds of cruelty. It was during the struggle with the patricians that the proscriptions of Sylla and Marius deluged Italy with blood. After they were destroyed, by mutual slaughter and the denunciations of the Triumvirate, though there was often the greatest possible tyranny and oppression under the emperors, there was none of the wholesale destruction of life which disgraced the republic, when the rival factions fronted each other in yet undiminished strength.

Although, however, for these reasons, we do not anticipate, at least at present, those sanguinary proscriptions which have for ever rendered infamous the first Revolution, yet we fear there is reason to apprehend changes not less destructive in their tendency, misery still more widespread in its effects, destined, perhaps, to terminate at last in bloodshed not less universal. Men have discovered that they are not mere beasts of prey: they cannot live on flesh and blood. But they have learned also that they can live very well on capital and property: and it is against these, in consequence, that the present Revolution will be directed. They will not be openly assailed: direct confiscations of possessions have fallen almost as much into disrepute as the shedding torrents of blood on the scaffold. The thing will be done more covertly, but not the less effectually. They will take a leaf out of the former private lives of the Italians, and the recent public history of Great Britain. We have shown them that, under cover of a cry for the emancipation of slaves, property to the amount of one hundred and twenty millions can be quietly and securely destroyed in the colonies; that, veiled under the disguise of placing the currency on a secure basis, a third can be added to all the debts, and as much taken from the remuneration of every species of industry, throughout the country. These are great discoveries, they are the glory of modern civilisation: they have secured the support of the whole liberal party in Great Britain. The objects of the French Revolutionists are wholly different, but the mode of proceeding will be the same. The stiletto and the poison bowl have gone out of fashion: they are discarded as the rude invention of a barbarous age. The civilised Italians have taught us how to do the thing. Slow and unseen poison is the real secret; there are Lucretia Borgias in the political not less than the physical world. The great thing is to secure the support of the masses by loud professions of philanthropy, and the warmest expressions of an interest in the improvement of mankind; and having roused them to action, and paralysed the defenders of the existing order of things by these means, then to turn the united force of the nation to their own purposes, and the placing of the whole wealth of the state at their disposal. Thus the ends of Revolution are gained without its leaders being disgraced: the substantial advantages of a transfer of property are enjoyed without a moral reaction being raised up against it. Fortunes are made by some, without a direct spoliation of others being perceived: multitudes are involved in misery, but then they do not know to what cause their distresses are owing, nor is any peculiar obloquy brought upon the real authors of the public calamities.

We do not say that the present Provisional Government of France are actuated by these motives, any more than we say that our negro emancipators or bullionists and free-traders meant, in pursuing the system which they have adopted, to occasion the wholesale and ruinous destruction of property which their measures have occasioned. We consider both the one and the other as political fanatics; men inaccessible to reason, insensible to experience; who pursue certain visionary theories of their own, wholly regardless of the devastation they produce in society, or the misery they occasion in whole classes of the state. “Perish the colonies,” said Robespierre, “rather than one iota of principle be abandoned.” That is the essence of political fanaticism; it rages at present with equal violence on both sides of the Channel. The present Provisional Government of France are some of them able and eloquent—all of them, we believe, well-meaning and sincere men. But they set out with discarding the lessons of experience; their principle is an entire negation of all former systems of government. They think a new era has opened in human affairs: that the first Revolution has destroyed the former method of directing mankind, and the present has ushered in the novel one. They see no bounds to the spread of human felicity, by the adoption of a social system different from any which has yet obtained among men. They have adopted the ideas of Robespierre without his blood,—the visions of Rousseau without his profligacy.