CHAPTER XII.

REVIEW OF THE REVOLUTIONARY CRISIS.-ASCERTAINMENT OF THE FINAL TENDENCY OF MODERN SOCIETY.

THE two progressions which were preparing society for its regeneration had advanced at unequal rates, the negative having far outstripped the positive; and thus the need of reorganization was vehemently felt before the method and the means of affecting it were disclosed. This is the true explanation of the vicious course taken by the revolutionary movement to this day. The explosion which ensued, lamentable as it was in many ways, was inevitable; and, besides being inevitable, it was salutary,-inasmuch as without it the caducity of the old system could not have been fully revealed, nor all hopes from it have been intrepidly cast away. The crisis proclaimed to all advanced peoples the approach of the regeneration which had been preparing for five centuries; and it afforded the solemn experiment which was necessary to show the powerlessness of critical principles to do anything but destroy. The preparation of the different European nations for the lesson varied, according as the monarchical and Catholic, or the aristocratic and Protestant form of power was established. We have seen that the former was the more favourable to the decay of the old system and the construction of the new; and for various reasons, France was evidently the country to take the lead. The humiliation of the aristocracy had more radically destroyed the old régime: the people had passed at once from Catholicism to free thought, thus escaping the dangerous inertia of Protestantism: industrial activity was more distinct and elevated, though less developed than in England, from its great independence of the France first aristocracy in Art, the French were in advance of revolutionized. the English, though far behind the Italians; in science, they were foremost; and even in philosophy, they were more thoroughly freed than others from the old system, and nearer to a rational philosophy, exempt from English empiricism and German mysticism. Thus, on both positive and negative grounds, France was clearly destined to lead the final revolutionary movement. Not the less for this were all the other nations interested and impli

cated in her movement, as in former cases when Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, and England had in turn been foremost: and the deep and general sympathy felt in all those countries on the outbreak of the French Revolution, and lasting through the terrible extravagances which ensued, showed that there was a true universality in the movement.

The convulsion had indeed been clearly foreseen by eminent Precursory thinkers for above a century, and had been emphatievents. cally announced by three events, unequal in importance, but alike significant in this relation;-first, by the abolition of the Order of the Jesuits, which proved the decrepitude of the system which thus destroyed the only agency that could retard its decay; next, by the great reformatory enterprise of Turgot, the failure of which disclosed the necessity of deeper and wider reforms; and thirdly, by the American revolution, which elicited the real expectation of the French nation, and therefore its needs. That revolution was regarded as a crisis in which the whole civilized world had a direct interest: and when it is said that France gained much by that event, it should be understood that the benefit to her was simply in the opportunity afforded for the manifestation of her impulses and tendencies; and that she gave more than she received by planting down among a people benumbed by Protestantism, the germs of a future philosophical emancipation.While all indications thus pointed to a regeneration, there was no doctrine by which to effect it. All negative doctrine and action could be no more than a preparation for it; and yet a negative doctrine was all that then existed. From the attempt to render it organic, nothing ensued but a distribution, or limitation, or displacement of the old authorities, such as merely impeded action by supposing that restrictions could solve political difficulties as they arose. Then was the season of constitution-making, of which I have spoken before, the application of metaphysical principles, which fully exposed their organic helplessness. Then was the triumph of the metaphysicians and legists, the degenerate successors of the doctors and judges, and the inadequate managers of society, of whose mischievous intervention I have also spoken before. Thus we see what was the necessary direction of the revolutionary crisis, its principal seat, and its special agents. We must now examine its course; and, for that purpose, divide it into its two distinct stages.

First stage.

At the outset there was naturally some hope of preserving, under some form, more or less of the old system, The Constitu- reduced to its principles, and purified from its abuses. ent Assembly. This was a low state of things, involving a confusion of moral and political authority, and of things permanent with things temporary; so that the provisional position was mistaken for a definitive one. The first effort of the French Revolu

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tion could be no other than a rising of the popular against the royal power, as all the elements of the old system were concentrated in royalty; yet the abolition of royalty was not contemplated, but a constitutional union of the monarchical principle with popular ascendency; and again, of the Catholic constitution with philosophical emancipation. There is no need to dwell on speculations so desultory, nor to point out that they arose from a desire to imitate England, which affords too exceptional a case to admit of imitation. It was supposed that because the negative course of the one country had answered to that of the other, so that England had humbled one of the temporal elements and France the other, they might, by joining forces, destroy the old system altogether. It was for this reason that French reformers turned to England for a pattern for their new work; and again, that the French method is now in favour in the English revolutionary school; each having the qualities that are wanting in the other. But there is, as I showed before, no true equivalence in those qualities; and, if the imitation could have been carried out, it would have been found that the French movement was directed against exactly that political element which gives its special character to the English movement, and which prevents its transplantation to any other soil. It is a mistake to trace back the political constitution of England to the old Saxon forests, and to suppose that it depends on the fanciful balance of powers. It was determined, like every other institution, by the corresponding social state; and if this were thoroughly analysed, the relations of the English polity would be found very different from what is usually supposed. The most analogous political case is, in fact, that of Venice, at the end of the fourteenth century. The tendency to aristocratic rule is the ground of resemblance. The differences are, that the preponderance of the aristocratic power was more complete in Venice,-that the independence of Venice must disappear under the decline of its special government, whereas that of England may remain uninjured by any dislocation of her provisional constitution,-that English Protestantism secures the subordination of the spiritual power much more effectually than the kind of Catholicism proper to Venice, and is therefore favourable to the prolongation of aristocratic power; and again, that the insular position of England, and her consequent national self-engrossment, connect the interests of all classes with the maintenance of a polity, by which the aristocracy are a sort of guarantee of the common welfare. A similar tendency was apparent in Venice, but with less strength and permanence. It is clear that the continuance of the English polity is due, not to any supposed balance of constitutional powers, but to the natural preponderance of the aristocratic element, and to the union of conditions which are all indispensable, and not to be found in combination in any other case. We thus see how irrational were the speculations

which led the leaders of the Constituent Assembly to propose, as the aim of the French Revolution, a mere imitation of a system as contradictory to the whole of their past history as repugnant to the instincts arising from the actual social state; yet the imitation was meditated and attempted in all leading particulars, and, of course, with thorough failure;-a failure which exhibits the most striking contrast on record of the eternity of speculative hopes and the Second stage. fragility of actual creations. When the second period The National of the Revolution was entered upon, the National Convention. Convention discarded the political fictions on which the Constituent Assembly had acted, and considered the abolition of royalty an indispensable introduction to social regeneration. In the concentrated form of royalty then existing, any adhesion to it involved the restoration of the old elements which had supported it. Royalty was the last remnant of the system of Caste, the decay of which we have traced from the time that Catholicism broke it up, and left only hereditary monarchy to represent it. Already doomed by that isolation, hereditary monarchy could not but suffer serious injury by the excessive concentration of functions and prerogatives, spiritual and temporal, which obscured its view of its domain, and tempted it to devolve its chief powers on ministers who became less and less dependent. Again, the growing enlightenment of mankind in social matters made the art of ruling less and less one which might be learned in the hereditary way,-by domestic imitation; and the systematic training requisite for it was open to capacity, full as much, to say the least, as to royal birth, which before had naturally monopolized it.

The abolition of royalty was presently followed by that of whatever might interfere with a renovation of the social system. The first instance that presents itself is the audacious legal suppression of Christianity, which proved at once the decrepitude of a system that had become alien to modern existence, and the necessity of a new spiritual function for the guidance of the regeneration. The minor acts of the same kind were the destruction of all former corporate bodies, which is too commonly attributed to a dislike to all aggregation, but which is rather to be referred to a dim sense that there was a retrograde character about all such bodies, their provisional office being by this time fulfilled. I think this applies even to the suppression of learned societies, not excepting the Academy itself, the only one deserving of serious regret; and before this time its influence had become, on the whole, more injurious than favourable to the progress of knowledge, as it is at this day. It should be remembered that the Assembly, largely composed of legists, suppressed the law corporations with others: and that it showed its solicitude for the encouragement of real science by establishing various foundations, and especially by that of the Polytechnic School, which was of a far higher order than any of its predecessors.

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These are proofs of disinterestedness and of forecast in regard to social needs which should not be forgotten.

A practical character of universality was given to the Revolution by the alliance of European Governments to put it Alliance down. During the second phase of social progress of foes. the powers of Europe had allowed Charles I. to fall without any serious effort on his behalf; but they were now abundantly ready to go forth against a revolution of which the French outbreak was evidently only the beginning. Even the English oligarchy, which had no great apparent interest in the preservation of monarchies, put themselves at the head of the coalition, which was to make a last stand for the preservation of the theological and military system. This attack was favourable to the Revolution in its second period, by compelling France to proclaim the universality of her cause, and by calling out an agreement of sentiment, and even of political views, such as was required for the success of the noblest national defence that history will ever have to exhibit. It was this also which sustained the moral energy and mental rectitude which will always place the National Convention far above the Constituent Assembly in the estimate of posterity, notwithstanding the vices inherent in both their doctrine and their situation. They wonderfully soon escaped from metaphysical toils, respectfully adjourned a useless constitution, and rose to the conception of a revolutionary government, properly so called, regarding it as the provisional resource which the times required. Putting away the ambition of founding eternal institutions which could have no genuine basis, they went to work to organize provisionally a temporal dictatorship equivalent to that gradually wrought out by Louis XI. and Richelieu, but much more responsive to the spirit of the time and the end proposed. Based on popular power, declaratory of the end proposed, animating to the social affections and to popular self-respect, and favourable to the most general and therefore the deepest and highest social interests, this political action of the Convention, supported and recompensed by sublime and touching devotedness, and elevating the moral temper of a people whom successive governments have seduced into abject selfishness, has left ineffaceable impressions and deep regrets in the mind of France, which can never be softened but by the permanent satisfaction of the corresponding instinct. The more this great crisis is studied, the more evident it is that its noble qualities are ascribable to the political and moral worth of its chief directors, and of the people who supported it so devotedly; while the serious errors which attended it were inseparable from the vicious philosophy with which it was implicated. That philosophy, by its very nature, represented society to be wholly unconnected with past events and their changes, destitute of rational instigation, and indefinitely delivered over to the arbitrary action of the legislator. It passed