*

XXVI.

1799.

Disastrous

France.

cause of freedom which the ruin of the French aris- CHAP. tocracy has occasioned, it is not so great or so irreparable as has resulted from the destruction of the Church, and consequent irreligion of the most ener-effects of the getic part of the population. This evil has spread irreligion of to an unparalleled extent, and produced mischiefs of incalculable magnitude. If it be true, as the greatest of their philosophers has declared, that it was neither their numbers, nor their talent, nor their military spirit which gave the Romans the empire of the world, but the religious feeling which animated their people, it may be conceived what consequences must have resulted from the extinction of public worship over a whole country, and the education of a generation ignorant of the very elements of religious belief. It is the painful duty of the moralist to trace the consequences of so shocking an act of national impiety in the progressive dissolution of manners, the growth of selfishness, and the unrestrained career of passion, by which so large a portion of the French people have since been distinguished; but its effects upon public freedom, are, in a political point of view, equally important. Liberty is essentially based on the generous feelings of our nature; it requires often the sacrifice of private gratification for the public good; it can never subsist for any length of time without that heroic self-denial, which can only be founded on the promises and the belief of religion. We must not confound with this generous and elevated spirit the desire for licenti

* Nec numero Hispanos, nec robore Gallos, nec calliditate Poenos, nec artibus Graecos, nec denique hoc ipso hujus gentis et terræ domestico nativoque sensu, Italos ipsos et Latinos; sed pietate ac religione, atque hac una sapientia, quod Deorum immortalium numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus, omnes gentes, nationesque superavimus.-Cicero.

CHAP.
XXVI.

1799.

1 Arist. de

Pol. iv. c.

4.

ousness, which chafes against every control, whether human or divine; the one is the burst of vegetation in its infancy, and gives promise of the glories of summer and the riches of harvest; the other, the fermentation which precedes corruption. By destroying the Church, and educating a whole generation without any religious principles, France has given a blow to her freedom and her prosperity, from which she can never recover. The fervour of democracy, the extension of knowledge, will give but a transient support to liberty when deprived of that perennial supply which is derived from the sense of duty which religion inspires." As Atheism," says Lord Bacon, "is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means of exalting itself above human frailty; and as it is in particular persons, so it is in nations." Passion will find as many objects of gratification under a despotism as a republic; seduction is as easy from private as public desires ; pleasure is as alluring in the palace of opulence as the forum of democracy. The transition is in general slow from patriotic principle or public spirit to private gratification, because they spring from the opposite motives to human conduct; but it is rapid, from rebellion against the restraints of virtue, to thraldom under the chains of vice, for the former is but the commencement of the latter. "The character of democracy and despotism," says Aristotle,'" is the same. Both exercise a despotic authority over the better class of citizens; decrees are in the one what ordinances and arbitrary violence are in the other. In different ages, the democrat and court favourite are not unfrequently the same men, and always bear a close analogy to each other; they have the principal power in their respective forms

CHAP.

1799.

of government; favourites with the absolute mo- XXVI. narch; demagogues with the sovereign multitude." "Charles II," says "threw RepubChateaubriand, lican England into the arms of women;" but, in truth, it was not the amorous monarch who effected the change; it was the easy transition from democratic license to general corruption, which debased the nation at the Restoration. Mr Hume has observed, that religious fanaticism during the Civil Wars disgraced the spirit of liberty in England; but, in truth, it was the only safeguard of public virtue during those critical times; and but for the unbending austerity of the Puritans, public freedom would have irrecoverably perished in the flood of licentiousness which overwhelmed the country on the accession of Charles II.

"Knowledge," says Lord Bacon, "is power;" he has not said it is either wisdom or virtue. It augments the influence of opinion upon mankind; but whether it augments it to good or evil purpose, depends upon the character of the information which is communicated, and the precautions against corruption which are simultaneously taken. As much as it enlarges the foundations of prosperity in a virtuous, does it extend the sources of corruption in a degenerate age. Unless the moral and religious improvement of the people extends in proportion to their intellectual cultivation, the increase of knowledge is but an addition to the lever by which vice dissolves the fabric of society.

effects of the centralization of power intro

The revolutionary party have frequently said, that it was Napoleon who constructed with so much Prodigious ability the fabric of despotism in France; but, in truth, it was not he that did it, nor was his power, great as it was, ever equal to the task. It was the duced by Constituent Assembly who broke the bones of France, tion.

the Revolu

XXVI.

1799.

CHAP. and left only a disjointed, misshapen mass, forming an easy prey to the first despotism which should succeed it. By destroying the parliaments, provincial assemblies, and courts of law; by annihilating the old divisions and rights of the provinces; by extinguishing all corporations and provincial establishments, at the same time that they confiscated the property of the Church, drove the nobles into exile, and soon after seized upon their estates, they took away for the future all elements of resistance even to the power of the metropolis. Every thing was immediately centralized in its public offices; the lead in all public matters taken by its citizens; and the direction of every detail, however minute, assumed by its ministers. France, ever since, has fallen into a state of subjection to Paris to which there is nothing comparable even in the annals of Oriental servitude. The ruling power in the East is frequently shaken, sometimes overturned, by tumults originating in the provinces; but there has been no example, since the new régime was fully established by the suppression of the La Vendée rebellion, of the central authority in France being shaken but by movements originating in the capital. The authority of Robespierre, Napoleon, Louis, and LouisPhilippe, were successively acknowledged by thirty millions over the country, as soon as a faction in Paris had obtained the ascendency; and the obedient departments waited for the announcement of the telegraph, or the arrival of the mail, to know whether they should salute an emperor, a king, a consul, or a decemvir. This total prostration of the strength of a great nation to the ruling power in the metropolis, could never have taken place under the old government; and, accordingly, nothing of the kind was experienced under the monarchy. It was the great act

St Cha

mans, 237,

260.

XXVI.

1799.

of democratic despotism of the Constituent Assembly CHAP. which destroyed all the elements of resistance in the provinces, and left France a helpless multitude, necessarily subject to the power which had gained possession of the machinery of government. Despotic as the old government of France was, it could never have attempted such an arbitrary system; even the power of the Czar Peter, or the Sultan Mahmoud, would have been shattered against such an invasion of established rights and settled interest. A memorable instance of the extreme danger to which the interests of freedom are exposed from the blind sions of democracy; and of the fatal effect of the spring flood which drowns the institutions of a state, when the opposing powers of the people and the government are brought for a time to draw in the same direction.

pas

To all human appearance, therefore, the establishment of permanent freedom is hopeless in France; the bulwarks of European liberty have disappeared in the land, and over the whole expanse is seen only the level surface of Asiatic despotism. This grievous result is the consequence and the punishment of the great and crying sins of the Revolution; of the irreligious spirit in which it was conceived; the atheistical measures which it introduced; the noble blood which it shed; the private right which it overturned; the boundless property which it confiscated. But for these offences, a constitutional monarchy, like that which for a century and a half has given glory and happiness to England, might have been established in its great rival; because, but for these offences, the march of the Revolution would have been unstained by crime. In nations, as in individuals, a harvest of prosperity never yet was reaped from seed sown in injustice. But nations have no immortality; and that