I. villiers, 257. one hundred thousand persons were put to death, of CHAP. whom a tenth part suffered by the frightful torments of the stake or the wheel. The most moderate computa- 1 Boulaintion makes the number of individuals who left the king- de la dom four hundred thousand; while an equal number France, ii. perished in going into exile, of famine or fatigue, in prison, in the galleys, and on the scaffold; and a million. besides, seemingly converted, maintained in secret, amidst tears and desolation, the faith of their fathers. The rental of heritable property belonging to the Huguenots Louis XIV. "Capefigue, confiscated to the crown, amounted to 17,000,000 francs ii. 258, ch. 2. (£680,000) a-year; and lands producing a still larger c. 16, p. 549. sum annually, torn from the Protestants, were bestowed xxvi. 522. on the Catholic relations of the exiles, or the courtiers of Versailles.2 Rhulières, C. Sismondi, 67. ultimate re The immediate effects of this atrocious iniquity, as often happens with great but energetic and vigorous Dreadful deeds of violence, were eminently favourable to the cause tribution to of persecution. Bossuet, Flechier, and the Roman which it led. hierarchy, were in raptures at the daily accounts of conversions which were received. Six thousand abjured in one place, ten thousand in another; the churches could not hold the converts: never had the true faith achieved such a triumph since the days when, represented in Constantine, it mounted the imperial throne. But it is not thus that the real conversion of mankind is effected, or a lasting impression created; dragoons and stripes will not, in an age of intelligence, permanently enchain the human mind. It was by enduring, and not inflicting, tortures that the apostles established Christianity on an imperishable foundation. The tears of the innocent Huguenots were registered in the Book of Fate they brought down an awful visitation on the within twenty-four hours men were frequently conducted from tortures to abjuration, from abjuration to the communion-table, attended in both in general by the common executioner."-These are the words of an eye-witness, a courtier of Louis XIV.-the Duc de St Simon.-See ST SIMON'S Mémoires, vol. xiii. p. 113; and SMYTH's French Revolution, i. 30. I. CHAP. third and fourth generations. From the revocation of the Edict of Nantes is to be dated the commencement of a series of causes and effects which closed the reign of Louis XIV. in mourning, induced weakness and disgrace on the French monarchy, spread the fatal poison of irreligion among its inhabitants, and finally overthrew that throne and that church which had made such an infamous use of their power. The reaction of mankind against violence, of genius against oppression, proved stronger than the power of the Grand Monarque.1 1 Smyth, i. 31. Sism. Hist. des Français, xxvi. 520, 556. 68. Manner in which this about. The exiled Huguenots were received with generous sympathy in Germany, Holland, and England: far retribution and wide they spread the tale of their wrongs and of was brought their sufferings: they roused the indomitable spirit of the heroic William: they cemented the bonds of the Grand Alliance; they sharpened the swords of Eugene and Marlborough. Diffusing through the British isles their industry, their arts, and their knowledge, they gave as great an impulse to the manufactures of this country as that which they withdrew from those of France; and thus contributed to that disproportion between the riches of the two rival states, which, as much as the energy of its people, brought England in triumph through the dreadful crisis of the revolutionary war. More than all, this atrocious cruelty fixed a lasting and hopeless malady in the French nation; for it at once inspired the passion for liberty, and took away the power to bear its excitements. By severing the cause of freedom from that of religion, it removed the possibility of ruling the people by any other restraint than that of force; by preventing the growth of any habits of self-government or free discussion among them, it rendered the nation, when passionately desirous of self-government, destitute of all the habits essential for the safe exercise of its power. Thence it was that philosophy, confounding religion with the enormities perpetrated in its name, became imbued with scepti cism, and the cause of human emancipation synonymous in general opinion with that of the overthrow of Christianity; thence it was that the remnant of the persecuted sect nourished in secret the bitterest rancour against their oppressors, which appeared with fatal effect in the severest crisis of the Revolution. Thence it was that the victorious Church, weakened by victory, paralysed by success, slumbered in fancied security on the very edge of perdition, and perished, without a struggle, before the infidel spirit which the comparatively guiltless Church of England had so often shaken off as the lion shakes the dewdrops from his mane. CHAP. 69. the savage the French The extraordinary character of the French Revolution, therefore, arose, not from any peculiarities in the Causes of disposition of the people, or any faults exclusively character of chargeable on the government at the time it broke out, Revolution. but from the weight of the despotism which had preceded it, the magnitude of the changes which were to follow it, and the vices of the age which conducted it. It was distinguished by violence, and stained with blood, because it originated chiefly with the labouring classes, and partook of the savage features of a servile revolt it totally subverted the institutions of the country, because it condensed within a few years the changes which should have been diffused over as many centuries; it speedily fell under the direction of the most depraved of the people, because its guidance was early abandoned by the higher to the lower orders; it led to a general spoliation of property, because it was founded on a universal insurrection of the poor against the rich, and not combated by any adequate spirit and unanimity among the aristocracy of the country. It was distinguished from the first by the fatal characteristic of irreligion, because the abuses and oppression of the Romish Church had ranged every independent and generous spirit against their continuance. France would have done less at the Revolution, if she had done VOL. I. H CHAP. I. 70. effects of periods of more before it; she would not have so unmercifully unsheathed the sword to govern, if she had not so long been governed by the sword; she would not have remained prostrate for years under the guillotine of the populace, if she had not groaned for centuries under the fetters of the nobility. It is in periods of apparent disaster, during the sufferBeneficial ing of whole generations, that the greatest improvements on human character have been effected, and a foundation suffering. laid for those changes which ultimately prove most beneficial to the species. The wars of the Heptarchy, the Norman Conquest, the contests of the Roses, the Great Rebellion, are apparently the most disastrous periods of our annals; those in which civil discord was most furious, and public suffering most universal. Yet these are precisely the periods in which its peculiar temper was given to the English character, and the greatest addition made to the sources of English prosperity; in which courage arose out of the extremity of misfortune, national union out of foreign oppression, public emancipation out of aristocratic dissension, general freedom out of regal ambition. The national character which we now possess, the public benefits we now enjoy, the freedom by which we are distinguished, the energy by which we are sustained, are in a great measure owing to the renovating storms which have, in former ages, passed over our country. The darkest periods of the French annals, in like manner, those of the reigns of the successors of Charlemagne, of the English wars, of the religious contests, of the despotism of the Bourbons, are probably the ones which have formed the most honourable features of the French character; which have engrafted on the slavish habits of Roman servitude the generous courage of modern chivalry-on the passive submission of feudal ignorance the impetuous valour of victorious patriotism ; which have extricated from the collision of opinion the I. powers of thought, and nursed, amidst the corruption CHAP. of despotism, the seeds of liberty. Through all the horrors of the Revolution, the same beneficial law of nature may be discerned in operation; and the annals of its career will not be thrown away, if, amidst the greatest calamities, they teach confidence in the Wisdom which governs, and inspire hatred at the vices which desolate the world. 71. and invalu ritance of What a lesson does this retrospect teach us as to the slow growth of habits of freedom, and the lengthened Slow growth period during which a nation must undergo the training able inhenecessary to bear its excitements ! Not years, but cen- real freeturies must elapse during the apprenticeship to liberty; dom. the robust strength requisite for its exercise is to be acquired only by the continued struggles of many successive generations. During the fervour of the Revolution, the French thought a few days sufficient to prepare any people for democratic powers; during the fervour of Reform, the English deemed a few years enough to enable the Negroes safely to make the transition from slavery to freedom.* But it is not thus that the great and durable changes of nature are worked out; it is not with the rapidity of the mushroom's growth that the solidity of the oak is acquired. Nothing is lasting in the material or moral world but what is tardy of formation; but a minute may destroy what ages have produced. History tells us that the liberties of Rome grew during the contests of six centuries; that the freedom of England began with the laws of Edward the Confessor, and gradually enlarged during the subsequent struggles of eight hundred years: that predial servitude, universal in Europe during the middle ages, wore out so imperceptibly and safely in the countries where it has disappeared, that no man can say when it ceased to exist; but that the * They fixed the period of apprenticeship, by the Emancipation Act of 1834, at seven years-deeming it as easy to make a slave a freeman as to make a freeman an artisan. Even this, however, was thought too slow by the fervent spirit which then ruled the nation. Complete emancipation followed in five years. |