AND THE REVOLUTION. 17 France, fallen as a monarcliy to common speculators, appears more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to tlie disjDosition of the circumjacent pow- ers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all; but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France lias arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any ■\vhicli ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the forti- tude of man. Going straight forward to its end, un- appalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom has overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist except on the principles which habit rather than nature has per- suaded them are necessary to their own particular wel- fare and to their own ordinary modes of action."
Now, was the Revolution, in reality, as extraordina- ry as it seemed to its contemporaries? Was it as unex- ampled, as deeply subversive as they supposed? What was the real meaning, what the true character of this strange and terrible revolution? What did it actual- ly destroy? What did it create?
It appears that the proper time has come to put these questions and to answer them. This is the most opportune moment for an inquiry and a judgment upon the vast topic they embrace. Time has cleared from our eyes the film of passion which blinded those who took part in the movement, and time has not yet im- paired our capacity to appreciate the spirit which ani- mated them. A short while hence the task will have become arduous, for successful revolutions obliterate their causes, and thus, by their own act, become inex- plicable.
18 THE OLD REGIME CHAPTER II.
THAT THE FUNDAMENTAL AND FINAL OBJECT OF THE EEVOLUTION WAS NOT, AS SOME HAVE SUPPOSED, TO DESTROY RELIGIOUS AND TO WEAKEN POLITICAL AUTHORITY.
ONE of the first measures of the French Eevolu- tion was an attack upon the Church. Of all the passions to which that Revolution gave birth, that of irreligion was the first kindled, as it was the last ex- tinguished. Even when the first enthusiasm of liber- ty had worn off, and peace had been purchased by the sacrifice of freedom, hostility to religion survived. Na- poleon subdued the liberal spirit of the Revolution, but he could not conquer its anti-Christian tendencies. Even in the times in which we live, men have fancied they were redeeming their servility to the most slen- der officials of the state by their insolence to God, and have renounced all that was free, noble, and exalted in the doctrines of the Revolution, in the belief that they were still faithful to its spirit so long as they were in- fidels.
Yet nothing is easier than to satisfy one's self that the anti-religious war was a mere incident of the great Revolution; a striking, but fleeting expression of its physiognomy; a temporary result of ideas, and pas- sions, and accidents which preceded it — any thing but its own proper fruit.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 1^ It is generally understood — and justly so — that the philosophy of the eighteenth century was one of the chief causes of the Revolution; and it is not to he de- nied that that philosophy was deeply irreligious; but it was twofold, and the two divisions are widely distinct.
One division or system contained all the new or re- vived opinions with reference to the conditions of soci- ety, and the principles of civil and political law. Such were, for example, the doctrines of the natural equali- ty of man, and the consequent aholition of all caste, class, or professional privileges, popular sovereignty, the paramount authority of the social hody, the uni- formity of rules These doctrines are not only the causes of the French Revolution; they are, so to speak, its substance; they constitute the most funda- mental, the most durable, the truest portion of its work.
The other system was widely different. Its leaders attacked the Church with absolute fiiry. They assail- ed its clergy, its hierarchy, its institutions, its doc- trines; to overthrow these, they tried to tear up Chris- tianity by the roots. But this portion of the philoso- phy of the eighteenth century derived its origin from objects which the Revolution destroyed: it naturally disappeared with its cause, and was, so to speak, bm- ied in its triumph. I purpose returning to this great topic herafter, and will add but one word here in order to explain myself more fully. Christianity was hated by these philosophers less as a religious doctrine than as a political institution; not because the priests as- sumed to regulate the concerns of the other world, but because they were landlords, seigniors, tithe-holders, administrators in tliis; not because the Church could 20 THE OLD REGIME not find a place in the new society which was being established, but because she then occupied the place of honor, privilege, and might in the society which was to be overthrown.
See how time has confirmed this view, and is still confirming it under our own eyes! Simultaneously with the consolidation of the political work of the Rev- olution, its religious work has been undone. The more thoroughly the political institutions it assailed have been destroyed; the more completely the powers, in- fluences, and classes which were peculiarly obnoxious to it have been conquered, and have ceased in their ruin to be objects of hatred; in fine, the more the cler- gy have held themselves aloof from the institutions which formerly fell by their side, the higher has the power of the Church risen, and the deeper has it taken root in men's minds.
This phenomenon is not peculiar to France; every Christian Church in Europe has gained ground since the French Revolution.
Nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that democracy is naturally hostile to religion. Neither Christianity nor even Catholicism involves any contra- diction to the democratic principle; both are, in some respects, decidedly favorable to it. All experience, in- deed, shows that the religious instinct has invariably taken deepest root in the popular heart. All the re- ligions which have disappeared found a last refuge there. Strange, indeed, it would be if the tendency of institutions based on the predominance of the pojoular will and popular passions were necessarily and abso- lutely to impel the human mind toward impiety.
AND THE EEVOLUTION. 21 All that I have said of religious I may repeat with additional emphasis in regard to political authority.
When the Eevolution overthrew simultaneously all the institutions and all the usages which had governed society and restrained mankind within bounds, it was, perhaps, only natural to suppose that its result would he the destruction, not of one particular frame of so- ciety, but of all social order; not of this or that gov- ernment, but of all public authority. There was a de- gree of plausibility in assuming that it aimed essen- tially at anarchy; yet I will venture to say that this also was an illusion.
Less than a year after the Revolution had begun, Mirabeau wrote secretly to the king, " Compare the present state of things with the old regime, and con- sole yourself and take hope. A part — the greater part of the acts of the national assembly are decidedly fa- vorable to a monarchical government. Is it nothing to have got rid of Parliament, separate states, the clerical body, the privileged classes, and the nobility? Rich- elieu would have liked the idea of forming but one class of citizens; so level a surface assists the exer- cise of power. A series of absolute reigns would have done less for royal authority than this one year of Eevolution." He understood the Revolution like a man who was competent to lead it.
The French Revolution did not aim merely at a change in an old government,* it designed to abolish the old form of society. It was bound to assail all forms of established authority together; to destroy acknowl- edged influences; to efface traditions; to substitute new manners and usages for the old ones; in a word.
22 THE OLD REGIME to sweep out of men's minds all the notions which had hitherto commanded respect and ohedience. Hence its singular anarchical aspect.
But a close inspection brings to light from under the ruins an immense central power, which has gathered to- gether and grasped all the several particles of author- ity and influence formerly scattered among a host of secondary powers, orders, classes, professions, families, and individuals, sown broadcast, so to speak, over the whole social body. No such power had been seen in the world since the fall of the Eoman empire. This new power was created by the Eevolution, or, rather, it grew spontaneously out of the ruins the Revolution made. If the governments it created were fragile, they were still far stronger than any that had preceded them, and their very fragility, as will be shown here- after, sprang from the same cause as their strength.
It was the simple, regular, grand form of this cen- tral power which Mirabeau discerned through the dust of the crumbling institutions of olden time. The mass- es did not see it, great as it was. Time gradually dis- closed it to all; and now, princes can see nothing else. Admiration and envy of its work fill the mind, not only of the sovereigns it created, but of those who were strangers or inimical to its progress. All are busy de- stroying immunities, abolishing privileges throughout their dominions; mingling ranks, leveling, substitut- ing hired officials in the room of an aristocracy, a uni- form set of laws in the place of local franchises, a sin- gle strong government instead of a system of diversi- fied authorities. Their industry in this revolutionary work is unceasing; when they meet an obstacle, they AND THE EEVOLUTION. 23 will sometimes even borrow a hint or a maxim from the Eevolution. They have been noticed inciting the poor against the rich, the commoner against the noble, the peasant against his lord. The French Eevolution was both their scourge and their tutor.
24 THE OLD REGIME CHAPTEE III.
THAT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, THOUGH POLITICAL, PURSUED THE SAME COURSE AS A RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION, AND WHY.
ALL political and civil revolutions have been con- fined to a single country. The French Revolu- tion had no country; one of its leading effects appear- ed to be to efface national boundaries from the map. It united and divided men, in spite of law, traditions, characters, language; converted enemies into fellow- countrymen, and brothers into foes; or, rather, to speak more precisely, it created, far above particular nationalities, an intellectual country that was common to all, and in which every human creature could obtain rights of citizenship.
ISTo similar feature can be discovered in any other political revolution recorded in history. But it occurs in certain religious revolutions. Therefore those who wish to examine the French Eevolution by the light of analogy must compare it with religious revolutions.
Schiller observes with truth, in his History of the Thirty Years' War, that one striking effect of the Eef- ormation was that it led to sudden alliances and warm friendships among nations which hardly knew each other. Frenchmen were seen, for instance, fighting against Frenchmen, with Englishmen in their ranks. Men born on distant Baltic shores marched down into AND THE REVOLUTION. 25 the heart of Germany to protect Germans of whom they had never heard before. All the foreign wars of the time partook of the nature of civil wars; in all the civil wars foreigners bore arms. Old interests were forgotten in the clash of new ones; questions of terri- tory gave way to questions of principle. All the old rules of politics and diplomacy were at fault, to the great surprise and grief of the politicians of the day. Precisely similar were the events which followed 1789 in Europe.
The French Eevolution, though political, assumed the guise and tactics of a religious revolution. Some farther points of resemblance between the two may be noticed. The former not only spread beyond the lim- its of France, but, like religious revolutions, spread by preaching and propagandism. A political revolu- tion, which inspired proselytism, and whose doctrines were preached abroad with as much warmth as they were practiced at home, was certainly a new spectacle, the most strikingly original of aU the novelties which were presented to the world by the French Eevolution. But we must not stop here. Let us go further, and try to discover whether these parallel results did not flow from parallel causes.
Eeligions commonly affect mankind in the abstract, without allowance for additions or changes effected by laws, customs, or national traditions. Their chief aim is to regulate the concerns of man with God, and the reciprocal duties of men toward each other, independ- ently of social institutions. They deal, not with men of any particular nation or any particular age, but with men as sons, fathers, servants, masters, neighbors.
B 26: THE OLD REGIME Based on principles essential to human nature, they are applicable and suited to all races of men. Hence it is that religious revolutions have swept over such extensive areas, and have rarely been confined, as po- litical revolutions have, to the territory of one people, or even one race; and the more abstract their charac- ter, the wider they have spread, in spite of differences of laws, climate, and race.
The old forms of paganism, which were all more or less interwoven with political and social systems, and whose dogmas wore a national and sometimes a sort of municipal aspect, rarely traveled beyond the frontiers of a single country. They gave rise to occasional outbursts of intolerance and persecution, but never to proselytism. Hence, the first religious revolution felt in Western Europe was caused by the establishment of Christianity. That faith easily overstepped the boundaries which had checked the outgrowth of pa- gan systems, and rapidly conquered a large portion of the human race. I hope I shall exhibit no disrespect for that holy faith if I suggest that it owed its suc- cesses, in some degree, to its unusual disentanglement from all national peculiarities, forms of government, social institutions, and local or temporary considera- tions.
The French Eevolution acted, with regard to things of this world, precisely as religious revolutions have acted with regard to things of the other. It dealt with the citizen in the abstract, independent of particular social organizations, just as religions deal with man- kind in general, independent of time and place. It in- quired, not what were the particular rights of French AND THE REVOLUTION. 27 citizens, but what were the general rights and duties of mankind in reference to political concerns.
It was by thus divesting itself of all that was pecu- liar to one race or time, and by reverting to natural principles of social order and government, that it be- came intelligible to all, and susceptible of simultane- ous imitation in a hundred different places.
By seeming to tend rather to the regeneration of the human race than to the reform of France alone, it roused passions such as the most violent political revolutions had been incapable of awakening. It inspired prose- lytism, and gave birth to propagandism; and hence as- sumed that quasi religious character which so terrified those who saw it, or, rather, became a sort of new re- ligion, imperfect, it is true, without God, worship, or future life, but still able, like Islamism, to cover the earth with its soldiers, its apostles, and its martyrs.
It must not be supposed that all its methods were unprecedented, or aU the ideas it brought forward ab- solutely original. On many former occasions, even in the heart of the Middle Ages, agitators had invoked the general principles on which human societies rest for the purpose of overthrowing particular customs, and had assailed the constitution of their country with arguments drawn from the natural rights of man; but all these experiments had been failures. The torch which set Europe on fire in the eighteenth century was easily extinguished in the fifteenth. Arguments of this kind can not succeed till certain changes in the condition, customs, and minds of men have prepared a way for their reception.
There are times when men differ so widely that the 28 THE OLD REGIME bare idea of a common law for all appears unintelligi-' He. There are others, again, when they will recog- nize at a glance the least approach toward such a law, and embrace it eagerly.
The great wonder is not that the French Eevolution employed the methods it did, and conceived the ideas it brought forth; what is wonderful and startling is that mankind had reached a point at which these meth- ods could be usefully employed, and these ideas readi- ly admitted.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 29 CHAPTER lY.
HOW THE SAME INSTITUTIONS HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED OVER NEAR- LY ALL EUROPE, AND WERE EVERY WHERE FALLING TO PIECES.
THE tribes which overthrew the Roman empire, and eventually constituted modern nations, differ- ed in race, origin, and language; they were alike in barbarism only. They found the empire in hopeless confusion, which they aggravated; and thus, when they settled, each was isolated from the others by the ruins it had made. Civilization was almost extinct. So-' cial order had ceased to exist. International commu- nication was difficult and dangerous. Safety dictated the division of the great European family into a thou- sand little states, which soon became exclusive and hostile to each other.
Yet out of this chaos uniform laws suddenly issued.
They were not borrowed from Roman legislation. They were, indeed, so much opposed to it that the old Roman law was the instrument afterward used to transform and abolish them.^ Their principles were original, and wholly different from any that had ever been broached before. Composed of symmetrical parts, knit together as closely as the articles of any modem code, they constituted a body of really learned laws for the use of a semi-barbarous people.
It is not my design to inquire how such a system was formed and spread over Europe. I merely note 30 THE OLD REGIME the fact that, during the Middle Ages, it existed to some extent in every country; and in many, to the total exclusion of all other systems.
I have had occasion to study the political institu- tions which flourished in England, France, and Ger- many during the Middle Ages. As I advanced in the work, I have been filled with amazement at the won- derful similarity of the laws established by races so far apart and so widely different. They vary con- stantly and infinitely, it is true, in matters of detail, but in the main they are identical every where. When- ever I discovered in the old legislation of Germany a political institution, a rule, or a power, I Imew that a thorough search would bring something similar to light in France and England; and I never failed to find it so. Each of the three nations enabled me to under- stand the other two.
In all three the government was carried on in ac- cordance with the same principles: the political assem- blies were constituted from the same materials, and armed with the same powers; society was divided into the same classes, on the same sliding-scale; the nobles occupied the same rank, enjoyed the same privileges, were marked by the same natural characteristics — in short, the men were, properly speaking, identically the same in all.
The city constitutions resembled each other; the rural districts were governed on one uniform plan. There was no material difference in the condition of the peasantry; land was held, occupied, cultivated on the same plan, and the farmer paid the same taxes. From the confines of Poland to the Irish Sea we can AND THE REVOLUTION. 31 trace the same seigniories, seigniors' court, feuds, rents, feudal services, feudal rights, corporate bodies. Some- times the names are the same, and, what is still more remarkable, the same idea pervades all these analo- gous institutions. I think it is safe to say that in the fourteenth century the various social, political, admin- istrative, judicial, economical, and literary institutions of Europe were more nearly alike than they are now, though civilization has done so much to facilitate in- tercourse and efface national barriers.
The task I have undertaken does not require me to relate how this old constitution of Europe gradually gave way and broke down; I merely state that in the eighteenth century it was in proximate ruin every where. ^ Decay was least conspicuous in the eastern half of the continent, and most in the west; but old age and decrepitude were prominent on all sides.
The records of the old Middle-Age institutions con- tain the history of their decline. It is well known that land registers {terriers) were kept in each seign- iory, in which, century after century, were entered the boimdaries of the feuds and seigniories, the rents due, the services to be rendered, the local customs. I have seen registers of the fourteenth and thirteenth centu- ries, which are masterpieces of method, perspicuity, and intellect. The more modem ones grow more ob- scure, more incomplete, more confused as they ap- proach our own day. It would seem as though the civilization of society had involved the relapse of the political system into barbarism.
The old European constitution was better preserved in Germany than in France; but there, too, a portion 32 THE OLD REGIME of the institutions to wHcli it had given life were al- ready destroyed. One can judge of the ravages of time, however, better from the portion which survived than from that which had perished.
Of the municipal franchises which, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had converted the chief cities of Germany into rich and enlightened republics,^ a mere empty shadow remained. Their enactments were un- repealed; their magistrates bore the old titles, and ap^ peared to perform the old duties; but the activity, the energy, the civic patriotism, the manly and fruitful vir- tues of olden time had vanished. These venerable in- stitutions seemed to have sunk down without dis- tortion.
All the surviving mediaeval sources of authority had suffered from the same disease; all alilie were decay- ed and languishing. Nor was this all; every thing which, without actually growing out of the mediaeval system, had been connected with it and marked by its stamp, seemed equally lifeless. Aristocracy wore an air of servile debility. Even political freedom, which had filled the Middle Ages with its works, became sterile in the dress in which they had clothed it. '*' Those provincial assemblies which had preserved their old constitution in its integrity were rather a hindrance than a help to civilization. They presented a stolid, impenetrable front to the march of intellect,, and drove the people into the arms of monarchs. There was nothing venerable in the age of these institutions; the older they grew, the smaller their claims to respect; and somehow, the more harmless they became, the more hatred they seemed to inspire.^ A German writer, whose AND THE REVOLUTION. 33 sympathies were all on the side of the old regime un- der which he lived, says, " The present state of things is shameful for all of us, and even contemptible. It is strange how unfavorably men look upon every thing that is old. Novelty penetrates even the family cir- cle, and overturns its peace. Our very housekeepers want to get rid of their old furniture." Yet in Ger- many, as in France, society was then thrilling with ac- tivity, and highly prosperous; but (mark this well! it is the finishing touch to the picture) every living, act- ing, producing agent was new, and not only new, but contrary to the old.
Royalty had nothing in common with mediaeval royalty; its prerogatives were different, its rank had changed, its spirit was new, the homage it received was unusual. ^ The central power encroached on every side upon decaying local franchises. A hierarchy of pub- lic functionaries usurped the authority of the nobles. All these new powers employed methods and took for their guide principles which the Middle Ages either never knew or rejected, and which, indeed, were only- suitable for a state of society they never conceived.
At first blush it would appear that the old constitu- tion of Europe is still in force in England; but, on a closer view, this illusion is dispelled. Forget old names, pass over old forms, and you will find the feu- dal system substantially abolished there as early as the seventeenth century: all classes freely intermingled, an eclipsed nobility, an aristocracy open to all, wealth installed as the supreme power, all men equal before the law, equal taxes, a free press, public debates — phe- nomena which were all unknown to mediaeval society. B2 34 THE OLD REGIME It was the skillful infusion of this young blood into the old feudal body which preserved its life, and im- bued it with fresh vitality, without divesting it of its ancient shape. England was a modern nation in the seventeenth century, though it preserved, as it were embalmed, some relics of the Middle Ages.
This hasty glance at foreign nations was essential to a right comprehension of the following pages. 'No one can understand the French Revolution without having seen and studied something more than France.
AND THE REVOLUTION. 35 CHAPTER V.
WHAT DID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION REALLY ACHIEVE?
THE object of the preceding inquiries was to clear the way for the solution of the question I origin- ally put: What was the real object of the Revolution? what was its peculiar character? why was it brought about? what did it achieve?
It is an error to suppose, as some have done, that the object of the Revolution was to overthrow the sovereignty of religious creeds. Despite appearances, it was essentially_a_social..and political revolution. It did not tend to perpetuate or consolidate disorder, to y methodize anarchy" (as one of its leading opponents remarked), but rather to augment the power and the rights of public authority. It was not calculated to change the character of our civilization, as others im- agined, or to arrest its progress, or even to alter, es- sentially, any of the fundamental laws upon which our Western societies rest. When it is disengaged from the extraneous incidents which imparted a temporary coloring to its complexion, and is examined on its own proper merits, it will be seen that its sole effect was to abolish those institutions which had held undivided sway over Europe for several centuries, and which are usually known as the feudal system,; in order to sub- stitute therefor a social and political organization mark- 36 THE OLD EEGIME ed by more uniformity and more simplicity, and rest- ing on the basis of the equality of all ranks.
That alone required a stupendous revolution; for these old institutions were not only connected and in- terwoven with all the religious and political laws of Europe, but had, besides, created a host of ideas, and feelings, and habits, and customs, which had grown up around them. To destroy and cut out of the social body a part which clung to so many organs involved a frightful operation. This made the Eevolution ap- pear even greater than it was. It appeared the uni- versal destroyer; for what it did destroy was linked, and, in some degree, incorporated with almost every thing else.
Eadical as it was, the Eevolution introduced fewer innovations than has been generally supposed, as I shall have occasion to show hereafter. What it really achieved was the destruction — rtotal, or partial, for the work is still in progress — of every thing which pro- ^ ceeded from the old aristocratical and feudal institu- tions, and of every thing which clung to them or bore in any way their distinguishing mark. It respected no legacy of the past but such as had been foreign to these institutions, and could exist without them.