CHAPTER VI.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THE establishment of Catholicism, the Reformation,

and the Revolution, mark three great stages through which the mind of Europe has travelled since the decline of the Western Empire. Each of these names covers a set of moral and intellectual conceptions, in which are contained the germs of some of the chief social changes, that have transformed Europe from its state in the fourth century, to its state in the nineteenth, and all three of which are still working in the accomplishment of a further and more radical transformation. The history of the process by which one of these systems of belief has gradually been made to give way in the most far-seeing minds to its successor, would be the history of the Renaissance, of the development of speculative philosophy, of the advance of physical science, in a word, of the evolution of ideas in every order of thought which, directly and indirectly, is able to modify man's con

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victions about the relations between himself and all that lies beyond himself. Though each has had a special geographical centre, Catholicism in Italy, the Reformation in Germany, the Revolution in France, the movement has in each case extended with varying strength and in different forms over the rest of the European federation. With a common organization lying in the background of our past history, and with a constant and close communication, it is impossible that powerful progressive elements in one nation should not, with some modifications in their embodiment, exercise an energetic influence over the other members of the same general body.

There is an important distinction in the nature of the exact connexion between the several movements. The Reformation, while adding something to Catholicism in the shape of dogma, and stripping it of much in the matter of discipline, still must be acknowledged to have sprung from the bosom, and to have been tended by the sons, of Catholicism. The Revolution, though deeply indebted to the Protestant armoury for many weapons which helped to clear the way, and to Jansenism, which was Protestant doctrine with Catholic discipline, still arose from springs, and flowed in a channel, of its own. Contrasted with the Revolution,

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

The

the Reformation remained of close kith and kin with Catholicism. Again, the order of influence is somewhat different. The Reformation had its roots in spiritual needs and theological diversities, and only led indirectly to momentous political changes. Revolution, in its primary aspect almost purely political, only subsequently reveals its profound moral and spiritual bearings. The Reformation, emancipating the minds of those who were ripe for it from heavy spiritual burdens, contributed also, as Holland, England, and America showed, to engender a strong desire for political emancipation. The Revolution, in its earlier stages the offspring of material disorder and the organ of secular reform, soon became a tremendous engine of spiritual regeneration, to whose power even yet the world fails to render perfect justice.

For, above all things, let us never forget that those manifold agencies which are summed up under the name of the Revolution, are still at work. The Treaties of Vienna were not to the Revolution, what the Peace of Westphalia was to the Reformation. Whether we look upon the Revolution merely as the final destroyer of systems of social privilege and spiritual authority, previously all but worn out, or, more than this, as contributing permanent and positive elements to human

progress, we must in either case perceive that its forces. were not exhausted nor its activity terminated, with the Empire, or at the restoration of the old dynasty to the French throne. The history of Europe since the Treaties of Vienna has been little else than the history of their abrogation; in other words, of the revival and spread of that Revolution which they were believed to have finally quelled. Old dynasties, old divisions of classes, old forms of privileged government survive, but little political foresight is needed to disclose that they are all doomed, and that they are only endured as temporary resting-places on an onward road. The conception of finality and equilibrium might seem to have vanished from the midst of every nation in Europe. Every statesman recognises more or less frankly the transitory character of the system which he for the hour administers and upholds. Everywhere we discern the hand and hearken to the tread of the Revolution,

To insist upon identifying this general and continuous movement with the first phase of it, is as misleading and as inadequate as it would be to conceive the Reformation as covered and wholly comprehended in the single history of Luther or of Calvin, of Cranmer or of Knox. In considering the successive

epochs of the French Revolution, for we may speak of the rapidly crowded transactions of these eight or ten years as if they extended over many generations, as indeed in a sense they are doing,-it is our constant business to separate in them that which was accident of time or place or person, from that which belonged to the spirit and essence of the movement. Each aspect of it claims investigation and thought; but in watching the sets of events as they followed one another with impetuous haste, let us beware of putting a finger upon this set or that,-upon the acts of the Constituent Assembly, of the Commune, of the Legislative, of the Convention; upon the fall of the Bastille, or the death of the King, or the Terror; upon Mirabeau or Marat, upon Danton or Robespierre,—and exclaiming that here then was the Revolution. The more attentively we study the character of the chiefs who came to the surface and then swiftly disappeared, and the more thoroughly we grasp the meaning of those situations, each of which seems to be so critical and decisive, the more irresistibly is the conviction borne in upon us that the spirit of the Revolution was something above all these and beside them. Would the King in exile have been more dangerous than was the spectre of the King guillotined? If Mirabeau had lived,