CHAP. 114. It was the the national which pro Revolution. observation; but these causes alone never have produced a revolution, and never will do so. They often have produced, and might then have produced, civil warfare and social contests, but not that total overthrow of all institu- national tions and principles which occurred on the triumph of the vices, not Jacobins. The energy of Roman democracy chafed for sufferings, three centuries against the galling fetters of its proud duced the patricians; but it was not till public virtue and private morality had been sapped, by the spoils of conquest and the selfishness of ambition, that a democratic revolution was effected by the successive efforts of the Gracchi, Marius, and Cæsar. The flagrant abuses of the Romish church induced the fervour of the Reformation, which naturally led to the insurrection of the boors; but the great fabric of German society was unaffected even by that dreadful convulsion, coming as it did in the wake of a religious schism which had rent asunder the world. The extreme principles of Jacobin fanaticism were roused in England by the oppression of the barons in the time of Richard II., but the feudal monarchy of the Normans was hardly shaken by the armed bands of Wat Tyler. The desolation occasioned by the English armies, the disunion and cruelty of their own noblesse, brought on the frightful horrors of the Jacquerie insurrection in France; but its effects were confined to local massacre and ruin, and produced no permanent change on the structure of French institutions. Religious fervour combined with old established habits of freedom in producing the Great Rebellion in England; but the dreams of the fifthmonarchy men vanished in airy speculation, and the fundamental features of British government were veiled, not changed, by the usurpation of Cromwell. The change of dynasty rendered necessary by the Romish tyranny of James II. has been erroneously styled a revolution; it was only a new settlement of the government upon the old, and, as the event has proved, a still more aristocratic basis than that on which it formerly rested. VOL. I. Q CHAP. II. 115. It is the loss of public produces a It is not, therefore, social evils, but the loss of national virtue, which converts the struggle for liberty into the horrors of revolution; and the one will never be turned into the other till the love of freedom has been debased virtue which into the thirst for plunder among the poor, and the revolution. bravery which won property has been extinguished by the enjoyments to which it has led, among the rich. It was neither the taille nor the lettres-de-cachet, the privileges of the noblesse nor the sufferings of the peasantry, the disorder of the finances nor the contest with the parliaments, which brought on the French Revolution. Great as these evils were, they might have been remedied without the overthrow of society; serious as were these sufferings, they have been in innumerable cases exceeded, without inducing the slightest public disturbance, and often removed without inducing an irretrievable convulsion. It was the coincidence of these evils with a total disruption of the moral and religious bulwarks of society which really occasioned the disaster; for that originated a selfish thirst for advancement by crime in one class of the people, and a base disinclination to resistance in the other. Voltaire and Rousseau stand forth as the real authors of the Revolution; it was they and their followers who made shipwreck, in the first of European monarchies, of the noblest of causes-that of public freedom; for it was they who tainted the mind, in both its assailants and defenders, with the fatal gangrene of individual selfishness. It was the dissolute manners of Louis XV., the corruptions of the Regent Orleans, the orgies of Egalité, and the infamy of Du Barri, which dissolved the power of resistance in the monarchy, by corrupting the natural defenders of the throne. It was the tyranny of the priesthood, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which, by removing the only effectual check on the vices of the hierarchy, and inducing a reaction even against religion itself, overturned the altar. CHAPTER III. PROXIMATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION. CHAP. III. Birth of ter of the his father. LOUIS XVI., born on the 23d August 1754, was the grandson of Louis XV. His father, the Dauphin, son of that monarch, died at the age of thirty-six in the year 1765, and left him heir-apparent to the throne of France. Louis XVI., The character of his father, for whom Louis XVI. always and characentertained a profound veneration, contributed powerfully Date to the formation of his own, and exercised in this way a material influence on the history of France. His habits afforded the most striking contrast to the general license with which he was surrounded. With all his vices, Louis XV. was not, at least till his later years, destitute of a sense of propriety; and he, in consequence, kept his son at a distance from his person, and the corruptions in which he himself so freely indulged. The Dauphin, in the midst of the magnificence of Versailles, lived almost the life of a hermit, surrounded by books, and delighting only in the society of a few chosen friends, men older than himself, and possessed of talent and information. The events of past times were his favourite study: the " Esprit des Lois" his constant companion. "History," said he, teaches many lessons to the sons which it would not have ventured to give their fathers." He was strongly 66 attached, like all the princes of his family, to the Roman Catholic religion-perhaps too rigid an observer of its forms; and profoundly afflicted by the banishment of the CHAP. Jesuits-circumstances which render it doubtful how far III. his turn of mind was suited for the stormy scenes to which his son was called. His severity of morals and rectitude of principle preserved him free from reproach in the midst of the seductions of a dissolute court, from which 1 Droz, Hist. he lived in a great measure estranged, and communicated XVI.,.115, the same habits to his son, whose early years were spent ii. 1. in domestic privacy with his parents under the splendid roof of Versailles,1 de Louis 116. Soul. 2. racters of the Dau sons. The Dauphin left three sons, all of whom became kings Early cha- of France: the Duc de Berri, afterwards Louis XVI.; the Comte de Provence, who succeeded on the fall of Napoleon by the title of Louis XVIII.; and the Comte D'Artois, who ascended the throne on the death of Louis XVIII. in 1826, and was driven from it by the revolt of the Barricades in 1830. The eldest, who became the Dauphin, was eleven years of age on his father's death, so that he was old enough to have received his earliest and most durable impressions from his example. The choice which had been made of his preceptor was not a fortunate one the Duc de la Vauguyon, who was intrusted with the chief place in that important duty, was devout rather than enlightened, adroit as a courtier more than skilful as a statesman. The young princes were carefully and equally instructed in the elements of general knowledge; but the difference of their character soon displayed itself. The Dauphin, like his father, was reserved and studious; his manners were shy and modest, his figure was heavy and ungainly; and distrust in himself early appeared in his demeanour. The Comte de Provence, though fond of books, was at the same time observant of men; he had more vivacity in his character, and soon became a great favourite with the courtiers. Soul. ii. 42, The Comte d'Artois, volatile, impetuous, and ardent, 1. 116, 117. seemed to have inherited his grandfather's love of pleasure, and entered with the thoughtless avidity of youth into all the amusements of the palace.2 He had ample opportunity 43. Droz, Camp. i. 123. |