announcement startled the assembly, when Cazotte arose to retire, but the Duchess caught hold of him, exclaiming, "and pray, sir prophet, what is to be your fate?" He stood for some

time lost in profound reverie, and finally narrated, that "during the seige of Jerusalem, a man had paraded the ramparts seven days in succession, crying out in mournful accents, Woe unto thee, Jerusalem,' and that, on the seventh day, a stone, flung by the enemy, struck him, and crushed him to death." Cazotte was afterwards arrested, during the massacres of September, and hung. The story is an old one, but it shows how powerfully coming events had cast their shadows before. Indeed, it is impossible to read De Tocqueville's own exposition of the state of opinion, during the period he describes, without feeling that the French mind must have been singularly obtuse not to read the multitudinous signs then appearing on all sides, of some new and tremendous overturn.

The solution of the problem of the French Revolution implies the solution of several subordinate questions, such as why that event took place at all, why it took place when it did and not before, why it occurred among the French, rather than among the other people of Europe, and why, when it did come about, it was characterized by such wholly new and peculiar features. These solutions we shall not undertake, because it would require a volume to treat them even superficially, but we may remark, that it is obvious at a glance, that a successful treatment of them would demand a far more various and retrospective study than our author has given merely to the eighteenth century. His results possess a high degree of value, and they elucidate greatly antecedent periods; but, to arrive at an intelligent view of the origin and of the entire scope and bearing of the French Revolution, we should begin at least with the ministry of Richelieu, if not, indeed, with the triumph of modern monarchy over feudalism in the fifteenth century.

During the middle ages, as it has often been remarked by historians, there was a remarkable similarity in the political and social institutions of nearly the whole of Europe, that is, of civilized Europe. There were differences of detail and of name in different coun

tries, but very much the same spirit and form. Society was divided into the same classes-into princes, nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants, with similar privileges or burdens-the municipal constitutions were alike-the same maxims controlled in the political assemblies-and the land was owned, occupied, tilled, and taxed after the same fashion. Everywhere there existed the same seignories or lords' estates, the same manorial courts, and fiefs, and feudal services, and quit-rents, and in the towns, corporations and trading-guilds.

But, during the fifteenth century, a general change in this condition of things was effected-a change which undermined the ancient feudal constitution, and brought in, in the place of it, the modern nationalities under the vigorous reign of monarchs. In France, the House of Valois, after a series of protracted and sanguinary struggles, had triumphed over the great feudatories, consolidated the territory of the realm, and introduced new principles of administration, which gave at once more unity and more permanence to the power of taxation, to the regular army, and to the parliaments or courts of justice. In Spain, the fierce combat between the Moors and Christians was brought to an end by the conquest of Grenada; the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella had united the two principal kingdoms of Castile and Arragon into a single state; the great and turbulent vassals were suppressed or restrained, and the power of the monarchy in various ways enlarged and confirmed. In Germany, again, the imperial crown, which had always been elective, and still remained so nominally, became virtually hereditary in the family of Maximilian. In England arose, out of the wars of the Roses, in which so many of the nobles had perished, the dynasty of the Tudors. The various Italian republics, stormy and brilliant as they had been, fell under the sway of powerful and wealthy housesFlorence to the Medici, Lombardy to the dukes of Milan, and Genoa, Venice and Naples to foreign sovereigns-who made their soil the battle-fields of their disputing claims. Everywhere the old feudal and anarchical system was falling into decay, and a new system-the system of national royalties-advanced to its place.

From this point, however, the subse

quent developments became exceedingly diverse. The political liberties of Italy perished almost immediately, in consequence of the incessant wars of petty and rival sovereigns; Spain grew into the magnificent empire of Charles V., and of Philip II., and then withered away; France achieved, under the successive administrations of Sully, of Richelieu, of Mazarin and Louis XIV., a degree of splendor which dazzled all Europe, but was then destined to flicker, and corrupt, and sink, until the Revolution came to sweep away nearly every trace of its specious glory; while Germany fell apart into numerous principalities, mostly insignificant, and Engfand alone, after rocking in the tempests of civil commotion for a while, attained to a really secure, stable, and free constitution.

Now, what were the causes of this difference? The aristocratic writers tell us (and De Tocqueville is of their number) that it was mainly owing to the greater or less destruction in each of the ancient nobility-that the aristocracy are an indispensable check upon the despotic powers of the kings, and that where the former are removed the latter rise into absolutism, while it is only where the former retain an effective existence, that the equipoise of a regulated and moderate monarchy is reached and preserved. How many changes of eulogistic phrase are rung upon this theory by our English friends? But is it an adequate interpretation of the facts? Does it not ascribe to the services of a class, results which properly belong to popular institutions, which may have been identified, to some extent, with that class, although the class was not essential to them? In other words, are not the liberties of England owing to its parliaments, its courts, and its local meetings, as free assemblies in which the popular heart can find some expression for itself, and the popular mind obtain a true perception of the nature, and end and right practice of government, rather than to the ascendency of any class which may have had the cunning or the virtue to connect its own cause with that of these institutions? We confess that such is our opinion; we confess that our studies of history have left us little respect for nobility anywhere; and we are clear that, though it may have been at times of transitional advantage to the

growth of a higher civilization, it has been far more frequently and permanently a serious detriment.

This view we have not the space to unfold, in regard to all the nations of Europe; but it is apropos to our text to consider it in reference to France, particularly as a main object of De Tocqueville is, to show that despotism is an unavoidable outgrowth of those societies in which the aristocracies have been swept away. His argument runs as follows: "That when men are no longer bound together by the ties of caste, of class, of corporation, of family, they are but too prone to think of nothing but their private interests, too ready to consider themselves only, and to sink into the narrow precincts of self, in which all public virtue is extinguished. Despotism, instead of combating this tendency, renders it irresistible, for it deprives its subjects of every common passion, of every mutual want, of all necessity of combining together, of all occasions of acting together. It immures them in private life; they already tended to separation, despotism isolates them; they were already chilled in their mutual regard, despotism reduces them to ice." Here the doctrine is, that the emasculation of the ancient nobility, by removing a principal obstacle to the growth of absolute royalty, was calamitous in its effects, and the inference from that doctrine, that to restore the liberties of France, something like the old aristocracy should be restored. oppose both the doctrine and the inference: we assert, bad as the French monarchy became, that it was better than the rapacious and turbulent rule of the classes it supplanted; and we hold that the issue from the towering centralism into which it has congested, is not through the revival of those classes, but by the establishment of free local institutions.

We

In order to test the value of these conflicting positions, we need only recall the actual history of the French nobles, from the time of their appearance as feudal sovereigns to the day in which they were so effectively abased by Richelieu, or converted into mere court lackeys by Louis XIV. No one, we presume, will contend, that the enormous prerogatives enjoyed by the French peers and barons, during the middle ages and afterwards, conduced greatly to the benefit of society. Though

nominally vassals of the crown, these great feudatories were possessed of privileges which conferred upon them an almost independent dominion. They were the lords, and, to a large extent, the owners of vast territories; they coined money; they waged private war; they exercised judicial powers, and they were exempt from all public tributes, except the feudal aid, and free of all legislative control. Nor were they backward in the use of these powers. Their right of coining money they often converted into a means of debasing the standard. The most frivolous passion served as a pretext for plunging them in destructive hostilities, while the luxury of their courts, and the expenses incident to their frequent feuds, led to the most oppressive exactions from the people. Spending their lives in the chase, or in war, or in pillage, intent each one on his interest, rather than upon the foundation of order in the state, opposing the municipalities, where the only germs of popular freedom were nourished, harassing the trade of the citizen, and plundering the labor of the peasant, it was impossible, while their power lasted, that there should be either private security, national consolidation, or general development.

It was partly the perception of these abuses, partly their own selfish love of aggrandizement, and partly the demands of the suffering burghers and people, which led the French kings, one after another, to endeavor to strip them of their overgrown resources. Sometimes by the forcible seizure of their domains, as of the Vermandois, by Philip Augustus, sometimes by interposing in behalf of the weaker classes, as was frequently done by good St. Louis, sometimes by perfidious declarations of forfeitures against extensive fiefs, as under Philip the Fair, the privileges of the great vassals were undermined and the authority of the crown extended. Yet, in spite of these interferences, in spite of the reduction of their numbers, effected by their own wasteful strife, and by the distant expeditions of the crusades; in spite of their gradual loss of privileges, by the growth of the cities, and the advent of the legists to judicial honors, by which they were deprived of an important means of distinction and influence, and in spite of the mercenary multiplication of their number, which destroyed, in a measure, unity of feeling and action,

they continued for centuries a strenuous though unequal struggle against the supremacy of the monarchs. As late as the time of the religious wars, which followed the Reformation, they were able to dictate to the throne, then occupied by a weak and superstitious prince, bringing upon their nation the eternal disgrace of the massacre of Vassy and the horrors of St. Bartholomew. One needs but to read the infamous proceedings of the Guises and the League--now conferring secretly with the bigoted Philip II., and now openly with the scarcely less bigoted Pope, for the means of more effectually assassinating their sovereigns or butchering the Calvinists-to see that the high nobility were still an independent and pernicious power in the state, and to find an ample justification for nearly every stretch of authority which marked the policy of Richelieu. Neither Gaston nor Condé, neither Soissons nor Vendome, any more than the Constable Bourbon of a former day, or a Cinq-Mars of their own day, appear to have cherished any sense of obligation towards France, any patriotic sentiment, any thought of duty beyond their duty to their own interests, any aspiration which reached outside the objects of their avarice, their ambition, and their pride. For a moment, the impulses of fear or hope might bring them to submission to the royal standard; but neither fear, nor hope, nor any other motive could ever bind them to the cause of the people. No name was sacred, no law authoritative to their insane selfishness; they openly conspired with foreigners; they secretly betrayed their engagements; and when they were finally broken, by the masterly genius of the great cardinal, the mind of the reader of French history, though disapproving often his means, is relieved as from the presence of banditti.

No, the growth of absolute royalty was evidenced, not occasioned, by the destruction of the nobles. The displays in that direction were not an unmingled, yet they were an undoubted good. They gave union to a series of distracted states; substituted great general ends of policy for petty schemes of personal gain; raised merit, if not above rank and birth, at least to a level with them; elevated justice and its tribunals, and introduced to places of trust and honor, once the exclusive possession of warlike nobles,

lawyers, and ecclesiastics, who were their superiors in everything but family. At the same time, it must be admitted, that the kings and their ministers went much further than this-that in reducing society to this monarchical unity, which was so largely personal, their action sacrificed also many useful ancient institutions, that it trampled upon the just rights of provinces and cities, that it violated what we now consider to be, and were always considered by advanced minds, fundamental principles of justice and law, and that the régime which it inaugurated could in no sense become a definitive one, could in no sense answer the demands of reason, or patriotism, or the free human soul; but it was not for these that the aristocracy had lived and labored, nor for these that their prolonged existence, in the plenitude of their power, would have been profitable. Greatly as they had been despoiled by the monarchs, there was yet scarcely a period in their career in which they might not, had they been wise and generous, as they were mostly selfish and proud, have done much towards arresting the rapid concentration of power in a single hand; but, up to the very eve of the Revolution, they were more anxious about their own privileges than the welfare of the people, and, while the nation was bound and paralyzed by the burden of taxes, they vehemently maintained their traditional exemption.

The circumstances, which really permitted the towering uprise of the monarchy were, as we think, the essential weakness of all the municipal institutions of France, combined with the absence of all free legislative_assemblies, provincial or supreme.

In com

mon with those of the rest of Europe, the French towns and boroughs, in the twelfth century, experienced that movement towards communal independence which was among the most remarkable phenomena of the age. Many of them, known as the Pays d'Etats, such as Languedoc, Brittany, Provence, Artois, etc., either by stubborn tenacity or purchase, retained the more important of their privileges, especially elective magistrates and deliberative assemblies, up to a late day; but the greater part of them, having none but a municipal existence, having no political relation to a regular parliament, like the English towns, were easily weakened by the rapacious no

bles, who were nearly always their enemies, and at last swallowed up by the kings, who were at first their friends and afterwards their tyrants. But the rapid increase of wealth in the towns, more than any other cause, perhaps, undermined their strength by relaxing their heroism. At the outset, the communes had displayed extraordinary virtue and vigor in the defense of their citizen rights. The sturdy streams of artisans and burghers which they poured from the Hotel de Ville, were a drowning torrent for the pillaging barons of the vicinage; but as the gains of industry swelled up around them, as the fruitful arts of peace caused them to dread the storms of battle, they lost the joy of conflict, they withdrew even from the lesser disputes of the council, and the bell, which had summoned them to the assembly or the gate, ceased to sound.

And while this local spirit was undergoing decay, while the rights of the cities and the states were being gradually subtracted, there existed no great and disinterested central authority, to whom the people could make their wrongs known or appeal for redress. The States-General, as the occasional assemblies of the clergy, the nobles, and the third estate are called, make a conspicuous figure in French history; but they were always more remarkable for high pretensions than effective performance. They were not strictly legislative assemblies-the extent of their powers as a whole, as well as the extent of the powers of each chamber, were always in doubt; and if we except a few scenes of memorable resistance to the royal authority, in which they were aided as much by external circumstances as by their own spirit, they were no check upon the kings, and no guarantee for the rights of the people. A far more efficient organ, in both respects, were the parliaments, as the affiliated courts of justice were denominated. Their veneration for forms, if not their sense of justice or love of liberty, often interposed between the interests of the community and the ambition of the kings; and some of the noblest scenes in the annals of France are to be found in the struggles of these grave and long-robed clerks against the overbearing tyranny of ministers and favorites. But, like the States-General, they were badly

con

Is it

constituted their objects were : fused between their judicial and their legislative functions, while, holding their places by a venal tenure, they were not always raised above temptation, either from the court or the populace. In short, we do not discover that there existed anywhere in France, from the beginning of its political existence as a nation, any of those great and indelible maxims of justice which are the glory of the common law of England any of those local tribunals, which keep alive in the breasts of the people the knowledge of their rights and the practice of self-government, nor any of those larger central assemblies, in which all classes meet, to state their grievances, to compare their opinions, to unite against a common oppression, and to adjust their conflicting claims. surprising, then, that the royal authority should have inflamed into monstrous disproportions; that the kingslegislators from the beginning-commanders of armies from the beginning-dispensers of justice, with the exception of some intervals, from the beginning should also become the sole administrators? How was it possible to resist their aggrandizement, except as it was finally resisted, by popular revolution? Or how, on the other hand, was it possible for a structure so top-heavy, so thoroughly without basis, as the old monarchy, to continue its vertiginous career? At the top of its glory, which was during the first half of Louis XIVth's reign, it was already crumbling. It made, for a century nearly, convulsive efforts to retain an upright position; but they were n vain: it only reeled and staggered the more, till, under the amiable and helpless Louis Seize, it fell to the ground.

After this brief historical reference, we are prepared to estimate the political state of France under the Louises, which

If a

is the proper subject of De Tocque ville's book. The government, as we have seen, was entirely in the hands of the king: not the general government alone that which conducts foreign affairs and the national interests as a whole-but the government down to its minutest functions in the districts and towns, with few exceptions. All the parochial business, even, was transacted by functionaries, who were neither the agents of the local lords or seigneurs, nor the chosen representatives of the parish (though, in some cases, they were elected by the peasants), but the appointees of the royal Intendants. parish meeting were to be held, or a road repaired, or a church or schoolhouse built, or taxes raised and expended, these officers, holding from the central authority, were the persons charged with the supervision. They were responsible, not to the community, but to the Intendants, and these Intendants were the creatures of the royal council, as that body immediately surrounding the king, and which had gradually drawn within itself nearly all the supreme judicial and administrative functions, was named. Their powers were scarcely less than those of the council itself, and were exercised by them, for the most part, without much regard to any other end than the exigencies of the state. Thus all ranks of society were dispensed from those habitual interferences in public affairs, which are their best education in the practice of self-govern

ment.

But while their own energies were paralyzed, they were taught to rely upon those of the government; and the more ignorant soon came to ascribe to it all the vicissitudes of fortune -even the distemperature of the climates, or the failure of crops, no less than the reverses of war.*

The nobles, though deprived of their powers, still possessed many of their most oppressive privileges, and much