Those of us who remember the revolution of 1789, are forcibly reminded of it by the late event, and from the catastrophe of the former struggle, are apt to draw a mournful presage of the present. It is not for human penetration to foretell, with certainty, the ultimate issue of such a movement. In a case so dependent on the capricious passions of man, there are too many contingencies that may arise to darken the fairest prospect and disappoint our hopes. But there seem to be fundamental points of difference between the two cases which forbid us to reason from the one to the other, and justify, now, the hope of a happy result. Let us attend for a moment to these points of difference.
In the first place, the state of political information in France, and in Europe at large, is widely different now from that which existed in 1789. France was not prepared for that revolution: nor were the people of Europe prepared to understand it, to second it, and to turn it to the best account. This is a grand and over-ruling distinction between the cases.
With regard to France, her people had been buried, for ages, in the night of despotism, and had no idea of the meaning of political liberty. I speak of the great body of the people. On the upper classes, it is true, that day had recently broken from the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Raynal. But thick darkness still rested upon the lower classes. Their faculties were benumbed by its influence, and their spirits enslaved and debased by the habit of subjection. The condition of things which they saw around them, and which had been immemorially transmitted from father to son, seemed to them to be the natural condition, and they considered themselves born for the use of their prince and his nobles.
Such, too, was the general state of things in Europe. As to political rights, the body of the people were all in
Egyptian darkness. The yoke had been fixed and locked upon them in far distant ages, of which they had no knowledge; they had borne it, time out of mind, and their necks had became so callous and accustomed to its pressure, that it never entered into their imaginations to question the right.
In this state of habitual subjection and inveterate ignorance, the sun of liberty suddenly arose upon France, in full glory; when, "blind with excess of light," and maddened by the too rapid circulation of the blood which had so long stagnated in their veins, they passed in a few years, from the extreme of despotism to the extreme of anarchy, and deeds of horror were perpetrated which humanity shudders to recall. They frightened the rest of Europe by their example, instead of alluring them to an imitation of it.
But widely different is the state of information at this day. That revolution itself, dreadful as it was, has awakened the whole continent from the sleep of ages, and put them upon inquiry into the foundations of government, and the purposes for which it was ordained: and during nearly half a century which has since elapsed, a degree of light has been thrown upon the great subject of the rights of man which has found its way into every hamlet and every cottage of southern Europe, and is advancing to the north with such increasing lustre as will ere long scatter the gloom that yet hangs over Siberia and Kamschatka. Hence the people of France, certainly, and perhaps of the whole south of Europe, are now prepared for the temperate enjoyment of liberty, under the administration of a regular government, for which they were totally unfitted in 1789.
There is another striking difference between the cases, and a most important one it is, as it affects the question before us.
France has now the benefit of her own past experience before her eyes: she had no such lamp to light her steps in 1789. Yes; that dreadful lesson is fresh in her recollection. She has had full time to study it: to discover every false step that was then taken, and to observe the causes which led to the miscarriage of that revolution. And to satisfy us that she has profited by this study, a comparison of her very different conduct on those two occasions will suffice.
The former revolution was one long-protracted tragedy of horrors to which there seemed to be no end, and of which the most sagacious men among us could not guess the denouement, except that from its very protraction and violence it would probably end in a despotism. At the close of every scene of horror, we kept saying to ourselves, "surely it will close now, and France will at length have rest and peace." But we were doomed to be disappointed, time after time. One explosion followed another until the heart sickened "with hope deferred," and we turned away our eyes at last in despair from the appalling spectacle.