II.

of subsistence. In other words, the agricultural population, CHAP. at both periods, was double the manufacturing. In Great Britain, on the other hand, in 1789, the total population was about 10,000,000, of whom only 4,000,000 were engaged in agriculture, and they furnished food for 6,000,000 occupied in trade and manufactures ;—that is, the agricultural population was little more than half of the manufacturing. Since that period the proportion has increased in a still more striking manner in the same direction; and by the late census in 1841, the prodigy was exhibited of a sixth of the whole population furnishing subsistence for the remaining five-sixths engrossed in trade, manufactures, or professions unconnected with the raising of food.* These extraordinary facts both demonstrate in the clearest manner the superiority of British to French agriculture; the vast resources for an increasing population which exist in every country, even the most densely peopled, if developed by an improved cultivation of the soil; and they render unpardonable the crimes and devastations of the Revolution. In all countries, and in all ages, the rural population is the virtuous and orderly-the urban, the corrupted and turbulent portions of the people. What, then, must have been the vices of that ancient régime, which spread discontent so widely through the country population; and what the weakness of some, and the guilt of others, which, in the progress of the convulsion, subjected sixteen millions engaged in agricultural pursuits to the unresisted tyranny of less than half the number of city or manufacturing inhabitants!

The manufactures of France, previous to the Revolution,

By the census of 1831, out of a population of 3,125,175 families in Great Britain, 961,134 only were engaged in the production of food; being at the rate of 282 in 1000, or somewhat more than a fourth. In Ireland, out of a population consisting of 1,385,000 families, no less than 884,339 are employed in raising food, being at the rate of 638 in 1000.-See PORTER, Progress of the Nation, i. 59. By the census of 1841, however, the productive powers of agriculture appear to have gained greatly on what existed in former times or any other country; for, while the producers of food were only 3,343,974, the consumers were 23,482,115, or about 1 to 64.

II.

5.

General

the French

people.

CHAP. though brought to high perfection in some branches, were far from having attained, upon the whole, the state of advancement which the resources and riches of the country character of might have led us to expect. The silks and velvets of Lyons, the jewellery and watches of Paris, the muslins of Rouen, were known and celebrated through all Europe; but though the Tiers Etat, which carried on these lucrative employments, had increased prodigiously in wealth and consideration, yet manufacturing industry as a whole bore a small proportion to agricultural. The genius of the people, ardent, impetuous, and impassioned, not less than the character of the feudal and military institutions which prevailed among them, rendered them little qualified for the persevering industry, the strict frugality, the continued self-denial, which are essential in order to manufacturing greatness. War was their ruling passion, glory their national idol. Gay, volatile, and inconsiderate on ordinary occasions, they were yet capable, when thoroughly roused, of ardent pursuit and heroic determination, and were frequently animated by vehement passion. No people in Europe had, on different occasions, been more enthusiastic in the pursuit of civil and religious freedom, and none had prosecuted war with more impetuous ardour; yet was their government still despotic, their hierarchy still absolute, their territory still bounded by Flanders and the Rhine. Want of steadiness and perseverance in carrying on these objects, had always been their great defect their passions, like those of all persons of a similar temperament, were rather vehement than lasting.

6.

French colonies, and cause of their loss.

The foreign commerce of France, though long kept down by the superior energy and prowess of British seamen, had been the object of anxious solicitude to the government, and had been nursed by the patriotic wisdom of Louis XVI. to an unparalleled pitch of splendour. Her American colonies, planned and planted with extraordinary and prophetic sagacity, had risen up with great rapidity, and early assumed a formidable aspect; but the

II.

same defect in national character which rendered her manufactures inconsiderable, caused these to sink in the first serious conflict before the persevering efforts of her less far-seeing rivals. The opposite history of the Transatlantic settlements of the two countries is very curious, and singularly characteristic of their respective national dispositions. The English, when they first set foot on America, settled on the sea-coast, in a comparatively sterile soil; gradually cleared it by the efforts of persevering industry, and, after the lapse of a century and a half, surmounted the ridge of the Alleghany, and spread themselves over the alluvial plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi, the garden of North America. The French, with far superior penetration, followed from the first the course of the great rivers, and established stations, which, if adequately supported and sustained, would, beyond all question, have given them the empire of the New World, Ascending the course of the St Lawrence, they placed extensive colonies at Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec; descending the Ohio and Mississippi, their flag was to be seen at Louisburg and New Orleans. But though amply endowed with the genius which conceives, they had not the perseverance which matures colonies; they sought at once to snatch greatness as by the vehemence of military conquest; they could not submit to win it by the toil of pacific exertion. They did not spread into the woods, and subdue nature by the enduring labour of freemen. Hence the different destinies of the two colonial empires in America. The English, inconsiderately formed at first, was slowly raised by persevering industry to unparalleled greatness; the French, magnificently con- Malte ceived in the outset, and aiming at enclosing the New 754. World in its arms, sunk in the first rude shock before the strokes of its less aspiring rival.1

One great colony, however, remained to France, even after the disastrous issue of the Seven Years' War, which of itself nourished an immense commerce, and was worth

1

Brun, iii.

II.

7.

CHAP. all the other colonies in the world put together. In 1788, when the Revolution broke out, the exports of France to St Domingo amounted to 119,000,000f. or nial trade nearly £5,000,000 sterling; and the imports from it were still greater, for they had risen to 189,000,000f. or Domingo. £7,567,000. It maintained sixteen hundred vessels, and

Vast colo

of France

with St

twenty-seven thousand sailors, which gave to France the elements of a powerful marine. This noble colonial establishment, and the growth of his navy, had been, from the very outset of his reign, objects of extreme anxiety to Louis XVI. He deemed no sacrifices unimportant which led to their augmentation. When reproached by the queen, or some of the royal family, for any of his economical reductions, he was wont to reply-" Hush ! 1 Weber, i. it will give us a ship of the line the more.' The results of this steady policy, ably seconded by his ministers, and supported by the vast trade with this magnificent colony, were in the highest degree satisfactory, and, for the first time 113. Jom. in the history of the two nations, brought the naval forces of France almost to an equality with those of England. United to those of Spain they were decidedly superior.2

124.

2 Dumas, viii. 112,

xiv. 445,

446.

8.

Its naval forces as

of England.

"1

At the opening of the revolutionary war in 1792, France had eighty-two ships of the line and seventy-nine compared frigates; and although Great Britain had nominally a hundred and fifty-six line-of-battle ships and eighty-nine frigates at her command, yet so many of them were unserviceable, or guard-ships, that not more than a hundred and fifteen of the line, and eighty-five frigates, could be relied on for active naval operations; and when the number of guns on the whole on both sides was taken into view, the superiority of the British was little more than a sixth.* Add to this, that the Spanish navy

* The line-of-battle ships fit for service in the British and French navies stood, in 1792, as follows:

-JAMES'S Naval History, i. 53, and Appendix to Vol. I., No. 6.

II.

49, 51, 53,

No. 6 and

9.

strength of

consisted of seventy-six ships of the line and sixty-eight CHAP. frigates; so that the French and Spanish navies, taken together, and making allowance for unserviceable vessels on either side, could bring a hundred and thirty-five line-of-battle ships to bear on the British one hundred and fifteen. And the reality of this disparity clearly appeared in the American war; for the united fleets of France and Spain had repeatedly, during that contest, proved so superior in number to that of England, as 1 James Naseriously to endanger the latter's maritime superiority; par- val Hist. i. ticularly on the occasion of the siege of Gibraltar, and when and App. the combined fleets rode triumphant in the Channel, and No. 7. blockaded the English squadron in Plymouth in 1781.1* The military forces of France, before the war broke out, were by no means so considerable. The infantry Military consisted of a hundred and sixty thousand men, the cavalry France beof thirty-five thousand, the artillery of ten thousand; but fore the war. a great proportion of these forces had left their colours during the agitated state of the country prior to the breaking out of the war. During the stormy period of the Revolution, the discipline of the troops had sensibly declined, and the custom of judging for themselves on political questions had introduced a degree of license inconsistent with the habits of military subordination; but all these defects were more than counterbalanced by the number of able men who speedily entered the ranks from the Tiers Etat, and, by their vigour and audacity, first supplied the want of military experience, and soon after induced it. The cavalry, consisting of fifty-nine regiments, brave, enthusiastic, and impetuous, were at first deficient in steadiness and organisation; but these defects were speedily supplied under the pressure of necessity, and by

* The combined fleet which blockaded Gibraltar consisted of forty-four ships of the line; the British which relieved that fortress under Lord Howe, only of twenty-seven the French and Spanish fleets which entered the Channel in August 1781, consisted of fifty line-of-battle ships and twenty frigates, to which Admiral Darby could only oppose twenty-one ships of the line and nine frigates. ADOLPHUS' History of George III., i. 257.