I.

CHAP. sudden abolition of slavery in St Domingo involved that flourishing island in unutterable calamities-in the British West Indies, consigned those noble colonies to hopeless ruin. Taught by these examples, the enlightened observer will augur little of a revolution which proposed at once to elevate a whole nation, without any previous preparation, from political nullity to the exercise of the highest and most perilous political powers; he will think lightly of the wisdom of those who thought they could make a child fit for the duties of maturity by merely putting upon him the dress of manhood. But he will form a clear opinion on the guilt of all who would endanger, by undue extension of political powers, so noble and enduring a fabric as that of the British constitution. He will recollect that it was from that cause that Carthage perished-from it that Rome fell under the tyranny of the emperors; and he will class with the most depraved of the human race, those, of whatever rank or station, who, with such examples before their eyes, for their own selfish elevation shake a structure which it has required so many ages to raise, and which, when once cast down, can never be rebuilt.

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL STATE OF FRANCE, AND CAUSES WHICH

PREDISPOSED ITS PEOPLE TO REVOLUTION.

II.

1.

sources of

MORE favourably situated than any monarchy in Europe, CHAP. both as regards maritime strength and internal resources, FRANCE has received from the bounty of nature gifts which Vast phyqualify her to take the lead in the career both of pacific sical reimprovement and military greatness. Her territory, spa- France. cious, fertile, and compact, is capable of maintaining an incredible number of inhabitants, and at once stimulates industry, and rewards it by the riches which it obtains. Extensive sea-coasts, washed by the stormy waves of the Bay of Biscay and the ceaseless surges of the Channel, furnish the capabilities, and induce the hardihood, which lead to maritime greatness; while a happy climate, intermediate between the rigour of northern and the amenity of southern latitudes, rouses effort by necessity, and softens manners by enjoyment. Almost all the agricultural productions and materials for manufacture, which are necessary to the subsistence, the comfort, and the luxury of man, are to be met with in the different parts of this favoured region. Extensive corn-fields and boundless pastures, in the north, furnish inexhaustible agricultural resources for the maintenance of the immense population to which its coal-fields are fitted to afford employment in the middle provinces, the vine and the maize announce to the northern traveller

II.

CHAP. his approach to the regions of the sun; while vast seams of iron, along the banks of the Loire, afford materials for a great and now rapidly increasing manufacture of hardware. In the south, the sunny banks of the Garonne, and the rocky slopes of the Rhone, yield delicious fruits and wines of the richest flavour; beetroot almost rivals the cane of the West Indies for the production of sugar; while the smiling shores of the Mediterranean sea are covered with olives, which equal those of Greece and Tuscany in vigour and luxuriance.

2.

Its advanland trade.

tages for in

That lucrative traffic, the greatest and most lasting which can exist in a civilised community, between the wealth created by northern industry and the profusion of southern luxuries, to most other states a foreign, is to France a home trade. Her inhabitants reap exclusively the profits of production at both ends of the chain, and of transit along its whole extent: a vast network of internal canals, and the broad external highway of the ocean, furnish, in every quarter, ample facilities for transport; and the rapidity of returns, alike prized by the practical trader and the enlightened economist, is perpetually experienced in the most important branches of commerce, which increasing wealth can require for its inhabitants. Its coal is, indeed, inferior to that of Great Britain, and only exists, at least in considerable quantities, in the northern provinces; but the industry of the inhabitants has found a compensation in the extensive woods, periodically cut down, with which the face of the country is every where diversified, and which constitute not the least lucrative part of its agricultural productions; while the benignity of the climate, which permits the vine, the 1 Personal peach, and the olive to be reared on rocky slopes, that Arthur in England would be abandoned to furze and broom, 97,142,256. renders almost every part of the country competent to reward the industry of the husbandman.1

observation.

Young, i.

France, including Corsica, contains 203,000 square geographical miles; more than twice the extent of Great

II.

Britain, which embraces 88,000. It is in its greatest CHAP. length about 660 miles long; and nearly 600 broad, measuring from Cape Finisterre to the Lower Rhone. Statistics

3.

Its extent of sea-coast is no less than 1400 miles; a of the length nearly as great as the entire circumference of country. Great Britain. The population in 1789, when the Revolution broke out, was somewhat above 25,000,000; in 1814, when it closed, 28,500,000; and in 1827, when the losses of the revolutionary wars had been nearly supplied, it contained 31,820,000 inhabitants, being at the rate, on an average of the whole kingdom, of about 150 to the square mile. Malte-Brun has justly observed, that if the whole kingdom were peopled in the same proportion as the departments of the north, it would contain 85,000,000 of souls, or considerably more than triple what were to be found in it when the Revolution broke out.1 Vast as this number may appear, a little Malte reflection must be sufficient to demonstrate that it is much 198. within what the agricultural resources of the country could furnish subsistence for in comfort and affluence;*

* The division of France, according to the nature of the employments of its soil, is, as we learn from Chateauvieux, one of the latest and best authorities, as follows:

Total superficies

1

Brun, iii.

Hectares, or English Acres. 53,702,871 132,646,091

Now, to show the capability of the soil of a country of this description to maintain an increase of inhabitants, let us consider merely what may be raised from 40,000,000 of arable acres, little more than one-half of its arable ground, and considerably less than a third of its total superficies. The average produce of arable land in all the counties of England is two quarters and five bushels to an acre.-M'CULLOCH's Statistical Account of England, i. 476. Take it as two quarters only in France, to be within the mark, and we shall have 40,000,000 acres yielding 80,000,000 quarters, which would feed 80,000,000

II.

CHAP. and that, without pressing upon the limits assigned by the physical extent of its natural capabilities to the increase of man, a hundred and twenty millions might be maintained with ease and comfort on the French territory. This calculation will excite surprise, and by many be deemed incredible: let those who are of this opinion examine and point out what is overcharged in the data on which it is founded. It leads to a conclusion of the very highest importance, and which bears with overwhelming force upon the history of the Revolution; for it shows that the French people, when that convulsion broke out, were far within the limits of their possible and comfortable increase; and consequently that the whole suffering which had preceded, and crimes which followed it, are nowise chargeable on Providence, but are to be exclusively ascribed to the selfishness, the vices, and the corruption of man.1

1 Malte Brun, iii.

197, 198.

Dupin,

Tour Com.

de France,

i. 37, 46.

Another peculiarity in the physical situation of France, Remarkable both before the Revolution and at this time, is very redisproportion between markable, and deserves to be noted, both from its imporrists and tant bearing on economical principles, and from rendering manufac- the dreadful devastation of the Revolution the more surFrance and prising. The agricultural population at the former period

agricultu

turers in

England.

was 16,500,000, and it furnished food for 8,500,000 persons living in cities, or engaged in trade or manufactures; at this time 22,000,000 of agriculturalists, in round numbers, are engaged in raising food for 11,000,000 persons engaged in pursuits unconnected with the productions

souls-a quarter of grain being the average consumption of a human being for a year. This is leaving 92,000,000 acres for the support of horses, and for raising wood, vines, and butcher-meat for the use of man. If we suppose that 30,000,000 of the 76,000,000 arable acres in France are cultivated in potatoes, each acre will yield, according to M'Culloch, (Commercial Dict.; art. Potatoes,) food for two-according to Arthur Young and Newenham, for three individuals. Take it at the lowest estimate of two individuals, these 30,000,000 acres would maintain 60,000,000 more persons, or 140,000,000 in all; still leaving 62,000,000 acres for luxuries, roads, canals, cattle, horses, &c., for this immense population. -See NEWENHAM on the Population of Ireland, 340; ARTHUR YOUNG'S Tours in Ireland, Append., 12, 24, 4to edit.; and M'CULLOCH'S Statistics of Great Britain, i. 471.