TION. 1 Robert son's i. 120. INTRODUC- they had rendered the crown independent of the control of the feudal barons; but a greater Wisdom than that of Richelieu was preparing, in their power and discipline, the Charles V. means of a total change of society. In vain the unfortunate Louis summoned his armies to the capital, and 384. Lac. appealed to their chivalrous feelings against the violence of France, v. the people; the spirit of democracy had penetrated even 32. Mign.i. 14. the ranks of the veteran soldiers, and, with the revolt of the guards, the French monarchy was destroyed.1 Comines, i. Hist. de 52. of the revolt It is this circumstance which has created so important Vast effect a distinction between the progress of popular power in of armies on recent, and its fate in ancient times. Tyranny has democracy. every where prevailed in former times, by arming one the cause of portion of the people against the other; and its chief reliance has hitherto been placed on the troops, whose interests were identified with its support. But the progress of information has destroyed, in the countries where it is fully established, the security of despotism, by dividing the affections of the armies on which it depends; and the sovereigns of the military monarchies in Europe have now often more to fear from the troops whom they have formed to be the instruments of their will, than from the citizens whom they regard as the objects of apprehension. The translation of the sword from the nobility to the throne, so long the subject of regret to the friends of freedom, has thus become an important step in the emancipation of mankind: War, amidst all its horrors, has contributed to the communication of knowledge and the dispelling of prejudice; and power has ceased to be unassailable, because it has been transferred from a body whose interests are permanent, to one whose attachments yield to the changes of society. Yet is this last and greatest shake given to the powers of despotism not unaccompanied with evil: on the contrary, it often produces calamities greater even than those it was intended to remove. Military caprice becomes irresistible when military subordination is overthrown the TION. foundations of government are laid in the quicksands of INTRODUC the soldier's favour; the prætorian bands of the capital become the rulers of the state. It is but a poor exchange which a nation makes which throws off the regular government of hereditary property, to incur the arbitrary rule of the sword: the soldiers who betray their oaths to induce the change, are the worst pioneers of despotism. 53. from popu threatens The former history of the world is chiefly occupied with the struggles of freedom against bondage; the efforts Danger of laborious industry to emancipate itself from the yoke lar license of aristocratic power. Our sympathies are all with the which now oppressed, our fears are lest the pristine servitude of the society. species should be re-established. But with the rise of the French Revolution, a new set of perils have been developed, and the historian finds himself overwhelmed with the constant survey of the terrible evils of democratic oppression. The causes which have been mentioned, have at length given such an extraordinary and irresistible weight to the popular party, that the danger now sets in from another quarter; and the tyranny which is to be apprehended, is often not that of the few over the many, but of the many over the few. The obvious risk now is, in all states with a popular form of government, that the influence of knowledge, virtue, and worth, will be overwhelmed in the vehemence of popular ambition, or lost in the turbulence of democratic power. This evil is of a far more acute and terrible kind than the severity of regal, or the weight of aristocratic oppression. In a few years, when fully developed, it destroys the whole frame of society, and extinguishes the very elements of freedom, by annihilating the classes whose intermixture is essential to its existence. It is beneath this fiery torrent that the civilised world is now passing; and all the efforts of philosophy are therefore required to observe its course and mitigate its devastation. Happy, if the historian can find, in the record of past suffering, aught to justify INTRODUC future hope, or in the errors of former inexperience the lessons of subsequent wisdom. TION. 54. Slow growth of durable freedom. It is by slow degrees, and imperceptible additions, that all the great changes of nature are accomplished. Vegetation, commencing with lichens, swells to the riches and luxuriance of the forest; continents, the seat of empires, and the abode of millions, are formed from the deposits of innumerable rills; animal life, springing from the torpid vitality of shell-fish, rises to the energy and power of man. It is by similar steps, and as slow a progress, that the great fabric of society is formed. Regulated liberty, the greatest of human blessings, the chief spring of human improvement, is of the most tardy development; ages elapse before it acquires consistency; nations disappear during the contest for its establishment. The continued observation of this important truth is fitted both to inspire hope and encourage moderation: hope, by showing how unceasing has been the progress of improvement through all the revolutions of the world; moderation, by demonstrating how vain and dangerous are all attempts to outstrip the march of nature, or confer upon one age the institutions or habits of another. The annals of the great French Revolution, more than any other event in human affairs, are calculated to demonstrate these important truths; and by evincing in equally striking colours the irresistible growth of liberty, and the terrible evils of precipitate innovation, to impress moderation upon the rulers, and caution upon the agitators of mankind, and thus sever from the future progress of Freedom those bloody triumphs by which its past history has been stained. CHAPTER I. COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF FREEDOM IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. I. Parallel English re No events in history are more commonly considered CHAP. parallel than the Great Rebellion in England and the French Revolution. None, with certain striking points 1. of resemblance, are in reality more dissimilar to each between the other. In both, the crown was engaged in a contest French and with the people, which terminated fatally for the royal volutions. family. In both, the reigning monarch was brought to the scaffold, and the legislative authority overturned by military force. In both, the leader of the army mounted the throne, and a brief period of military despotism was succeeded by the restoration of the legitimate monarchs. So far the parallel holds good-in every other particular it fails. In England, the contest was carried on for many years, and with various success, between the crown and a large portion of the gentry on the one hand, and the cities and popular party on the other. In the single troop of dragoons commanded by Lord Barnard Stuart, on the royal side, in 1643, was to be found a greater body of landed proprietors than among the whole of the republican party, in both houses of parliament, who voted at the commencement of the war. In France, the monarch yielded, almost without a struggle, to the encroachments of the people; and the only blood which was shed in civil conflict arose from the enthusiasm of the peasants in VOL. I. Ꭰ I. CHAP. La Vendée, or the loyalty of the towns in the south of France, after the leaders of the royalist party had withdrawn from the struggle. The great landholders and privileged classes, to the number in the end of a hundred and twenty thousand,* abandoned their country; and the crown was ultimately overturned, and the monarch brought to the scaffold, by a faction in Paris, which a few 1 Lac. Pr. thousand resolute men could at first have easily overcome, Hist. i. 246, and which subsequently became irresistible only from France, ix. its having been permitted to excite, through revolutionary vi. 505. measures, the cupidity of the lower orders throughout the monarchy.1 Id. Hist. de 230. Hume, 2. and violence in France after vic tory. Proportioned to the magnitude of the resistance Moderation opposed in England to the encroachments of the people by the crown, the nobility, and the higher classes of the landed proprietors, was the moderation displayed by both sides in the use of victory, and the small quantity of blood which was shed upon the scaffold. With the exception of the monarch and a few of the leading characters in the aristocratic party, no individual during the Great Rebellion perished by the hands of the executioner; no proscriptions or massacres took place; the victors and the vanquished, after the termination of their strife, lived peaceably together under the republican government. In France, scarcely any resistance was offered by the government to the popular party. The sovereign was more pacifically inclined than any man in his dominions, and entertained a superstitious dread of the shedding of blood; the democrats triumphed, with the loss only of 132. Hume, fifty men, over the throne, the church, and the landed gard, xi. 8. proprietors ;+ and yet their successes, from the very first, were stained by a degree of cruelty of which the previous history of the world affords no example.2 2 Lac. vi. vii. 76. Lin Toul. i. 145. * They were altogether 123,318. See PRUDHOMME's Crimes de la Révolution, vi. Table. + See infra, chap. IV. § 105, for the loss sustained in the attack on the Bastile, which practically overturned the monarchy. |