CHAP. II. 109. Advantages of seats in them being purchase. not liable to removal by the crown. Without pretending that this mode of acquiring judicial situations and power is so good as that which takes place under a free government, where they are in general the reward of tried ability acquired by and established learning, it may safely be affirmed that it was infinitely better than any known in England prior to the Revolution. We must not confound the purchase of the office with money with the swaying of the decision by bribes; the one makes the judge independent, the other proves him venal. Situated as France was before the Revolution, with no national representation, and hardly any restraint on the prerogative of the crown, it is difficult to say where a counterpoise to the power of the sovereign could have been found if it had not been in the independence, the weight, and the patriotic spirit of the courts of justice. In England, before 1688, as the king could not, by his own prerogative, imprison or destroy an obnoxious subject, he had no resource but to make the courts of law the instrument of his fears or his vengeance. Hence the judges for long held their situations only during pleasure; and the English state-trials exhibit, prior to the Revolution, as Hallam has remarked, "the most appalling mass of judicial iniquity which is to be found in the whole annals of the world." In France, a lettre-de-cachet at once settled the matter, and too often destroyed the victim but the courts of law, at least, were not prostituted, and the members of the parliaments, who held their situations by the tenure of purchase, remained in sturdy independence-neither seeking to be gained, nor capable in general of being seduced by the court. ; This difference has appeared in the most remarkable manner in the history of the two countries. Down to the Revolution of 1688, the courts of law in England were constantly made the instruments of legal or parliamentary oppression. Each party which gained the mastery of the crown, alternately made them the instrument of its oppression or its terrors; the cruel injustice II. 110. Difference be dence of the law in the tries prior Revolu of the Popish and the Rye-house plots, were alternately CHAP. practised by opposite parties by means of the same instrumentality of judge and jury; and the name of Jeffreys remains an eternal monument that the Revo- in conselution itself, which for the first time really purified quence the the British ermine, was brought on by the base subser- indepenvience of the most exalted judges to the passions and courts of mandates of the crown. In France, on the other hand, two counthe parliaments in every part of the country had been, to their for two centuries before the Revolution of 1689, in tions. almost constant opposition to the royal authority: their judgments were sometimes unjust, their punishments often inhuman; but this was the result of the temper of the times, of the cruelty of the clergy, or of the prejudices of the aristocracy, not of their subservience to the mandates of the sovereign. The most severe and hazardous contests in which the crown was ever engaged were those with the parliaments of the kingdom; and the immediate cause of the Revolution was the experienced impossibility of getting the parliament of Paris to register even those new taxes that were essential to pay the public creditors, which, as a last resource, compelled the King to convoke the States-general. In England, the Revolution was brought on by the base subservience-in France, by the sturdy resistance, of the courts of law to the mandates of the throne. 111. of the intendants Thirdly. The system of intendants of provinces which obtained in France, and the custom of selecting the Excellence ministers of the crown from the ablest of their number, French was one admirably calculated to provide a succession of system of experienced and competent statesmen to direct public of provinces. affairs. The intendants of provinces were selected from the most distinguished of the magisterial officers; and from these, after twenty or thirty years spent in the public service, the ministers of the crown were in general appointed. In this way there was secured for France, in almost every department, that invaluable quality in II. CHAP. statesmen, a practical acquaintance with the country. In this respect the old French custom may furnish much to envy, to both the constitutional monarchy of Great Britain and that of modern France. In England, as the practical direction of affairs is placed in the House of Commons, and its vote determines which party is to obtain the reins of power, oratorical skill has come to be the great passport to greatness. Efficiency in debate is the one thing needful in a cabinet minister. In this respect the statesmen of England have acquired an extraordinary, perhaps an unprecedented, degree of ability. But power in debate is not statesmanlike wisdom, though it may coexist with it; on the contrary, the education and habits which produce it are often fitted to preclude the acquisition of that practical acquaintance with affairs which is the only sure foundation of beneficial legislation. The French statesmen of the eighteenth century, trained in the actual government of the provinces, often brought to the helm of affairs that knowledge, derived from their own experience and observation, which our ministers, trained in the debates of parliament, only acquire at second-hand, through the doubtful and often deceptive channel of parliamentary commissions. France can boast a succession of statesmen, Sully, Colbert, Louvois, Turgot, Calonne, Vergennes, Necker, to whom England, at the same period, could exhibit no parallel. What it wanted was not wisdom in its statesmen to discern the proper course, and patriotism to correct evils, but national support to counteract the aristocratic influence which sought to govern the state for the benefit chiefly of the privileged classes. Minute as the details recorded in the preceding pages may appear to many, they will not, by the reflecting reader, be deemed misplaced, even in a work of general history, and their consideration leads to conclusions of much more real importance than the more interesting CHAP. 112. Reflections on the causes Revolution. and tragic catastrophes in which the great social conflict of the eighteenth century is so soon to terminate. When the conflict is once begun, when irretrievable faults have been committed on the one side, unpardonable crimes perpetrated on the other, the period for which preinstruction to the statesman, for examples to the cedution patriot, is past; it is the soldier who is then to learn greatly to dare, the citizen nobly to endure. The period which it really behoves the inhabitants of a free state, and still more of one advancing to freedom, to study, is that which precedes the collision: the social evils, the moral sins, which alienate the different classes of society from each other, or disable them for the discharge of their duty the long-continued causes which, inducing a thirst for change on the one side, and a disability to resist on the other, at length bring about an irretrievable convulsion. In that stage the malady is still susceptible of cure; the diseased parts may be healed, the festering wounds closed; but if this period is allowed to elapse without the proper remedies being applied, it is generally a very doubtful matter whether any human wisdom can, at a future stage, avert the catastrophe. This period is generally considered as the one which it especially behoves the holders of property to investigate, in order to learn in what way the evils which menace their possessions, or undermine their influence, may be avoided; but, without disputing the importance of such a study, it may safely be affirmed that it is one which it still more behoves the lovers of freedom to consider, in order to prevent, ere it is too late, the shipwreck of all their hopes in the stormy sea of Revolution. 113. the real Selfishness and oppression in the higher classes, tyrannical exactions by kings, invidious privileges of nobles, What are the obstinate retention in one age of the institutions originating in the necessities and suited to the circum- revolution. stances of another, are commonly considered as the causes of CHAP. II. causes of revolutions. That they have a material share in aggravating them, will probably be disputed by none who have considered the social state of France anterior to 1789, even as it is portrayed in the preceding sketch. But they are not, taken alone, their cause. A revolution is the result of a diseased state of the national mind; the spirit which gives rise to it issues from the selfish recesses of the heart; it is wholly distinct from the passionate love of freedom which springs from the generous affections, and is founded in the noblest principles of our nature. The latter is based on virtue, the former on vice; the latter on the love of freedom, the former on the passion for license; the latter on generosity, the former on selfishness. Hypocrisy is the invariable characteristic of the revolutionary principle; it borrows the glow of generosity to cover the blackness of selfishness; ever using the language of freedom, it is ever prompting the actions of despotism. A profound sense of religion has in every age, from those of the Roman republic to that of the English commonwealth, been the foundation of the latter principle; a total and avowed irreligion, from the days of Catiline to those of Robespierre, has characterised the former. The lover of freedom is willing, if necessary, to sacrifice himself for his country; the revolutionist has seldom any other object but to sacrifice his country to himself; and if he can elevate his own fortunes, he is ever willing to fall down and worship the most frightful tyranny that ever decimated mankind. If we would ascertain the causes of the establishment of liberty in any country, we must look for them in the circumstances which have produced in the general mind a predominance of virtue over vice; the secret springs of revolution are to be found in those which have given vice an ascendency over virtue. That France, when the great convulsion broke out, had serious grievances to complain of, great evils that loudly called for remedy, is apparent on the most superficial |