THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY AND THE FRENCH

O

REVOLUTION.

BY JAMES J. FOX, D.D.

HE eighth volume of The Cambridge History of Modern Europe covers the period of the French Revolution down to the fall of the Directory and the accession of Napoleon to the consulate. Its general characteristics are those of the preceding volumes. In style it affects the cold, severe, impersonal type which has become the ideal of the historical student. The most tremendous scenes that occurred in the "red fool fury of the Seine," important battles like Aboukir, thrilling episodes like the bridge of Lodi, are related with conscientious endeavor for accuracy and lucidity, but with scarcely more appeal to the imagination than is to be found in Kant's Critik, or Burke's Essay on the Sublime. We all remember Macaulay's picture of the perfect historian, who besides showing us the camp, the court, "shows us also the nation":-He "considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, of education, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will be indicated, not merely by a few general phrases, or a few extracts from statistical documents, but by appropriate images in every line." There is very little of this kind of writing in the history before us, or indeed, in any history of to-day. The ascendancy of German ideals of research and scholarship has made the historian sacrifice the picturesque to accuracy, wealth of detail, and systematic analysis. The aim to-day is not to produce a picture, but to conduct, in the most scientific fashion, a postmortem examination. The present-day historian is not a painter, but an anatomist.

*The Cambridge Modern History. Planned by the Late Lord Acton. Vol. VIII. French Revolution.

The

I.

The volume opens with a chapter investigating the influences contributed to the genesis of the Revolution by the best of philosophic, philanthropic, and economic writers who immediately preceded it. The writer, Mr. Willert, of Oxford University, exhibits a power of reasoning, and an insight into his subject, such as are not apparent in some other contributions to the work. Opening with a citation of the contradictory views of Mallet du Pan and of Mounier, the former of whom ascribed the entire origin of the revolution to philosophy, "who may boast her reign over the country she has devastated," while the latter minimizes the influence of the philosophes, Mr. Willert examines all the great prominent writers of the seventeenth century, and some minor ones, who contributed, or are alleged to have contributed, to the principles of 1789. He affirms that many of these principles were employed in the sixteenth century by both Catholic and Huguenot theologians as weapons against the claims of the Crown. He cites particularly Father Boucher, and the well-known apology for tyrannicide advanced by the Jesuit Mariana. Montaigne's scepticism, he considers, contributed, but only slightly; while Bayle, "although there may be, at first sight, but little of the spirit of the eighteenth century in his writings," had an extensive influence. Hobbes with his political works, and Locke's Treatise on Government and Letters on Toleration, were potent factors in preparing the way. The former of Locke's works, Mr. Willert rightly points out, was the inspiration for the Contrat Social of Rousseau, while the latter gave an impulse to Voltaire's attack upon authority. So "at the end of the seventeenth century 'principles' were not wanting to which the French people might appeal, should a time come when they were no longer satisfied with the existing social and political conditions."

That time came in the close of the eighteenth century. The finances had been ruined, the peasantry were in a condition of extreme poverty, the Jansenist controversy, the conflict between the hierarchy and the Gallican Parlement over the Bull "Unigenitus," dealt a severe blow to religion. Intercourse with England introduced knowledge and high appreciation of the democratic features of the English constitution. At this point Vol

taire's Letters on the English introduces that writer to Mr. Willert's tribunal. The sentence passed upon him is not unduly severe. He aimed at religion and the Church, rather than at the throne. He exerted a powerful but not indispensable influence: "He did nothing that others also were not attempting, that, left undone by him, they might not have accomplished. His work was negative. He cleared away the obstacles which dammed back the rapidly rising flood, but his hand was only the most active and unerring of many engaged in the same task; and even unassisted the impatient stream would have overflowed and borne away the impediments to its course."

Here the author goes back to take up the thinkers and writers who addressed themselves primarily to the political and economic side of the condition of France. Those who wrote against the abuses, in the last years of Louis XIV., such as the Comte de Boulainvilliers, did not achieve much; but every effort, however small, helped to start the avalanche. Montesquieu, by his satirical Fersian Letters, helped to discredit religious and, to a lesser extent, secular authority, while his Esprit des Lois, of whose intrinsic value Mr. Willert expresses no very high opinion, further stimulated the growing longing for a constitutional government as a remedy for existing evils.

The works of Rousseau receive lengthened consideration. Although Mr. Willert, as well he may, finds enough idle imagination, baseless theory, and extravagant sentiment in Rousseau to justify those who catalogue him as "the great professor and founder of the philosophy of vanity," nevertheless the Revolution lived on the ideas which he preached: "those clear and precise dogmas of natural equality and freedom, of inalienable popular sovereignty, and their corollaries; that every government not based on popular consent is a usurpation; that the people can at any moment dismiss their rulers; that the nation being an aggregate of equal and independent units. whose will can only be discovered by counting heads-if, owing to the size of a country, a representative body is necessary, this assembly must represent, not classes or interests, but individuals."

The verdict with which this chapter closes is: Even if we believe that the philosophers did not cause the Revolution, nor

originate the ideas which determined the form it was to take, we must allow that they precipitated it by giving a definite shape to vague aspirations, by clearing away the obstacles which restrained the rapidly rising flood of discontent, by depriving those, whose interests and position made them the defenders of the old order, of all faith in the righteousness of their cause, and by inspiring the assailants with hope and enthusiasm."

In the treatment of his problem Mr. Willert evinces considerable power of analysis and of lucid exposition, along with commendable freedom from prejudices which have so often rendered studies of this subject mere special pleadings for an interest or a party. Occasionally, however, the reader will require to control Mr. Willert's estimates, and more frequently some of his passing observations, by falling back upon Catholic principles.

II.

In the second chapter, Mr. Montague, to whom falls, as well, a large share of the subsequent narrative, undertakes an exposition of the system of government and judicial and military administration that prevailed in France immediately before the Revolution, and of the constitution and relative position of the various classes that made up the French nation, the clergy, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the peasantry. The extent of the Crown's prerogative, the function of ministers and of intendants of provinces, the origin and gradual decay of the Provincial Estates, or petty parliaments, are successively traced. The most striking inherent weakness of the system was, says Mr. Montague, that there was no intermediate unit of organization between the province, which might contain two millions of inhabitants, and the village of a score or two. Municipal institutions scarcely existed and were subject to arbitrary interference from the Crown. The highly intensified bureaucracy, exempt from public criticism, falling into all the evils of formalism, or, to use the colloquial expression, red tape, and permitted by the Crown to exercise, especially in the person of its higher functionaries, arbitrary caprice, aggravated the structural faults of a bad system, and weighed heaviest on the peasantry, the class which was least able to stand any increase of their already overwhelming burdens.

The nobility, although their extensive privileges, which here are enumerated at length, bore heavily on the tillers of the soil, had their own grievances. They, as a body, possessed scarcely any political power. A great number of them were poor, and obliged to live a life of isolation on their estates. The more powerful ones were attracted to court, there to lavish their wealth in extravagant living. "As a class they had become useless; their proprietary rights very generally took a form which hindered the progress of husbandry; their obsolete. prejudices debarred them from lucrative callings, and the jealousy of the Crown excluded them from public life. Arrogance, isolation, and futility, rather than any enormous wickedness, seems to have been the causes of the ill-will felt towards the French nobles."

The middle class, the bourgeoisie, which more than any other promoted the Revolution in its early stage, was the most fortunately situated of all. Confined almost exclusively to the towns and cities-for there were scarcely any large tenant farmers, or proprietors corresponding to the yeomen class in England-it was made up of well-to-do traders, manufacturers, lawyers, and doctors; nearly all lucrative employments were filled by men of this class. It supplied the great majority of lawyers, judges, and civil servants, the contractors who reaped a rich harvest in every war, and the financiers who farmed the indirect taxes. "If the bourgeoisie had little land, they possessed nearly all the capital of France, held the bulk of the public securities, and counted many a noble and prelate among their debtors." With the exception of Mirabeau, Lafayette, and a few others, all the leaders of the Revolution, even of the Terror, sprang from the bourgeoisie. This class it was which read and digested the philosophers and had been most deeply impressed by them. It lost reverence; it saw the evil effects of the bad fiscal system; and it feared for its own funds and incomes; it chafed under its exclusion from the army, the navy, and the diplomatic service. "Such feelings had not been sobered by any experience of public life, or by any provident fear as to what might ensue were the old order too roughly assailed. The bourgeoisie were not yet aware of any danger from below; nor could they divine that, in no long space of time, they would be the theme of invective as bitter as Diderot or Champfort had ever poured forth against kings and priests."