I. 3. Great in religion in and of in ples in RELIGION, in the English Revolution, was the great CHAP. instrument for moving mankind. Even in the reign of James I., the Puritans were the only sect who were zealously attached to freedom; and in every commotion fluence of which followed, the civil contests between the contending England, parties were considered as altogether subordinate to their fidel princireligious differences, not only by the actors on the scene, France. but by the historians who recorded their proceedings. The pulpit was the fulcrum on which the whole efforts of the popular leaders rested; and the once venerable fabric of the English monarchy, to which so large a portion of its influential classes have in every age of its history been attached, yielded at last to the force of fanatical frenzy. In France, the influence of religion was all exerted on the other side: the peasants of La Vendée followed their pastors to battle, and deemed themselves secure of salvation when combating for the Cross; while the Jacobins of Paris founded their influence on the ridicule of every species of devotion, and erected the altar of Reason on the ruins of the Christian faith. Nor was this "irreligious fanaticism" as Carnot has well styled it, confined to the citizens of the metropolis: it pervaded equally every department of France where republicanism was! Larocheembraced, and every class of men who were attached Scott's Nato its fortunes. Every where the churches, during the 241 CarReign of Terror, were closed: the professors of Christi- not's Me anity were dispossessed, and their rights overturned: and Rév. Mém. the first step toward the restoration of a regular govern- Lac. Pr. ment, was the re-opening of the temples which the tempest 467. of anarchy had closed, and the revival of the faith which its fury had extinguished.1 jaquelin, 74, poleon, ii. moires, 200. xxxvii. Hist. i. the English The civil war in England was a contest between one portion of the community and the other; but a large Moderation part of the adherents of the republican party were drawn displayed in from the higher classes of society, and the sons of the civil wars, yeomanry filled the ranks of the iron and disciplined in France. bands of Cromwell. No massacres or proscriptions took and cruelty I. CHAP. place; few manor-houses were burned by the populace, save in the fury of actual assault; none of the odious features of a servile war were to be seen. Notwithstanding the dangers run and the hardships suffered on both sides, the moderation of the victorious party was such as to call forth the commendation of the royalist historians; and, with the exceptions of the death of the King, of Strafford, and of Laud, few acts of unnecessary cruelty 127; and vii. 76. Ling. xi. 8. Rivarol, 95, 96. 1 Hume, v. stained the triumph of there publican arms.1 In France, the storming of the Bastile was the signal for the general Clarendon, dissolution of the bands of authority, and a universal vi. 551. invasion of private property; the peasantry on almost every estate, from the Channel to the Pyrenees, rose against their landlords, burned their houses, and plundered their effects; and the higher ranks in every part of the country, excepting La Vendée and the royalist districts in its vicinity, were subjected to the most revolting cruelties. The French Revolution was not a contest between such of the rich and poor as maintained republican principles, and such of them as espoused the cause of the monarchy, but a universal insurrection of the lower orders against the higher. It was sufficient to put a man's life in danger, to expose his estate to confiscation, and his family to banishment, that he was, from any cause, elevated above the populace. The gifts of nature, destined to please or bless mankind, the splendour of genius, the powers of thought, the graces of beauty, were as fatal to their possessors, as the adventitious advantages of fortune or the invidious distinctions of rank. "Liberty and Equality" was the universal cry of the revolutionary party. Their liberty consisted in the general spoliation of the opulent classes; their equality in the destruction of all who outshone them in talent, or excelled them in acquirement. The English Revolution terminated in the establishment of the rights for which the popular party had contended, but the great features of the constitution remained I. 5. Vast differ ence as regards the law in the two coun unchanged; the law was administered on the old pre- CHAP. cedents even during the usurpation of Cromwell, and the majority of the people scarcely felt, at least in their private concerns, or in their intercourse with each other, the important alteration which had been made in the subsequent government of the country. In France, the triumph of the popular party was followed by an immediate change tries. of institutions, private rights, and laws; the nobility in a single night surrendered the whole privileges which they had inherited from their ancestors; the descent of property was turned into a different channel by the abolition of the right of primogeniture; and the administration of justice between man and man was founded on a new code, destined to survive the perishable empire of its author. Every thing in England remained the same after the Revolution, with the exception of the privileges which were confirmed to the people, and the pretensions which were abandoned by the crown. Every thing in France was altered, without the exception even of the dynasty that ultimately obtained the throne.1 1 Ling. xi. 6. Rivarol, 139. 6. regards the tion of perty. The great estates of England were little affected by the Revolution. The nobles, the landowners, and the And as yeomanry alike retained their possessions, and, under the distribunew form of government, the influence of property remained unchanged. With the exception of the lands belonging to the dignitaries of the church, which were put under a temporary sequestration, and of the estates. of a few obnoxious cavaliers, who lost them by abandoning their country, no material alterations in property took place; and after the Restoration a compromise almost universally ensued, and the ancient landholders, by the payment of a moderate composition, regained their possessions. In France, on the other hand, the whole landed property of the church, and the greater part of that of the nobility, was confiscated during the Revolution; and such was the influence of the new proprietors, that the Bourbons were compelled, as the fundamental pro CHAP. condition of their restoration, to guarantee the security of the revolutionary estates. The effects of this difference have been in the highest degree important. The whole proprietors who live on the fruits of the soil in Great Britain and Ireland at this moment, notwithstanding the prodigious increase of wealth which has since taken place, probably do not amount to three hundred thousand, while above five million heads of families, and seventeen millions of persons dependent on their labour, subsist on the wages they receive. In France, on the other hand, there are nearly six millions of separate proprietors, most of them in a state of great indigence, and at least twenty millions of souls, constituting their families, without resource in great part at least, in the wages of labour, being a greater number than the whole remainder of the community. In France, the proprietors are much more numerous than the other members of the state; in England, they hardly amount to a tenth part of their number.1* Baron de Staël, 54. Ling. xii. 20, 21. Mign. ii. 403. Col quhoun, 106, 107 Ganilh. 166, 208. Mé moires du Duc de Gaëta, ii. 334. 7. Political France since the Revolution, with Eng The political influence of England since the Restoration has mainly rested in the great families. A majority in weight in the House of Commons was long appointed by a certain number of the House of Lords, and experience has proved compared that, excepting in periods of uncommon national exciteland. ment, the ruling power in the state is still to be found in the hands of the principal landed proprietors, or the moneyed capitalists in towns. In France, the Upper House is comparatively insignificant; a great proportion of its members derive their subsistence from the bounty of the crown; and the whole, either directly or indirectly, do not possess any serious weight in the constitution. The struggle bequeathed by the Revolution to succeeding ages has from this cause become different in the two countries. In Britain, as in ancient Rome, it is between * The number of separate properties in France, by the last survey, was 10,868,000; but at least a third of these, though rated separately in the government books, are held by owners of other properties.-Stat. de la France, 1839. See infra, chap. xcv. § 52 et seq. I. the patricians and the plebeians; in France, as in the CHAP. dynasties of the East, between the crown and the people. This is the natural consequence of the maintenance of the aristocracy in the one country, and its destruction in the other. Political weight, in the end, always centres where the greater part of the national property is to be found. military and countries. The military and naval power of England was not 8. materially changed by the Great Rebellion. A greater And on the degree of discipline, indeed, was established in its armies, naval power and a more decided tone adopted by the government in its of the two intercourse with foreign states; but the external relations of the monarchy remained the same: no permanent conquests were effected, and no alteration in the balance of European power resulted from its success. Within a few years after the Restoration, the English waged a doubtful maritime war with the smallest state in Europe, and the future mistress of the seas was compelled to submit to humiliation from the fleets of an inconsiderable republic. In France, on the other hand, the first burst of popular fury was immediately followed by an ardent and universal passion for war; the neighbouring states soon yielded to the vigour of the revolutionary forces, and Europe was shaken to its foundations by the conquests which they achieved. The ancient balance of power has been permanently destroyed by the results of their exertions; at first, by the overwhelming influence which they gave to the arms of the conquering republic, at last, by the ascendency acquired by the powers who subdued them. some gen Discrepancies so great, consequences so opposite, can- 9. not be explained by any reference to the distinctions of These divernational character, or of the circumstances under which sities must liberty arose in the two countries. There is certainly a owing to material difference between the character of the French eral cause. and that of the English, but not such a difference as to render the one revolution bloody with all but the sovereign, the other bloodless save in the field; the one destructive to feudal power, the other confirmative of aristocratic |