Chapter II: The Last Years of the Ancien Régime

The decay of the old society was accompanied in France by a decay of the ideas which were inseparably associated with it, and which, long kept alive by authoritative sanctions, had exacted, not always without violence, the reverence of men. As the State had usurped the control of every department of action, so the Roman Catholic Church had usurped the control of every department of thought. Resting serenely upon authority and dogma, it had dictated and circumscribed the knowledge of its subjects, had directed their intellectual interests, and had aimed at supplying not only a religion to govern their conduct, but also a complete theory to govern their lives. Against this monopoly, and the conceptions on which it was established, the best minds of the eighteenth century rose in revolt, and their revolt was celebrated by an outbreak of active and intrepid thought. Beginning in the mysterious domain of physical science, with great discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, physics, geology and mathematics, the new spirit of enquiry spread like a flame to illumine other topics. Its votaries, rejecting ancient tradition and immemorial habit, turned with sudden enthusiasm to observation and analysis, and built up for themselves step by step new systems of knowledge, based, not on what their teachers taught them, but on positive facts which they had ascertained and tested for themselves. The vivid curiosity thus aroused woke in them distrust of all preconceived notions, banished the reverent awe which had restrained earlier generations, and broke down the old barriers of belief.

Before long the passion for investigation passed beyond the limits of physical science, and ranging far afield, entered the domain of theology, of economics, of politics and social laws. In all fields alike there appeared the same disposition to repudiate opinions previously held, to examine afresh, under no restrictions, the principles which lay at the root of religion and government, the general laws which regulated human institutions, the origin of existing conceptions of society and property, of justice and right. Tradition was dethroned, and reason was set up in its seat, as the only test by which opinions could be determined, without regard to the subordinate place which reason fills in the conduct of men. The classical spirit, with its finish, its artificiality, its limitations, already dominant in France, set its stamp upon the new philosophy, and afforded the vehicle for conveying it to the world. In successive generations of polished intercourse, the French language had acquired extreme nicety and clearness of expression; it was admirably fitted for criticism, analysis, argument, definition; and it thus rendered the new ideas at once popular and lucid. A passion for philosophical discussion took hold of the educated world, and carried them past the facts which they ought to have noticed, to theories which seemed more distant and consequently more profound. All alike began to speculate, to generalise, to enquire into the meaning of many things, the current interpretation of which they had determined no longer to accept; while the necessity, from which all Frenchmen suffer, of never being dull, encouraged superficiality in the new search for truth, and checked the close study of history, which alone could have avoided error.

As the secrets of the universe unfolded, and as men learned how clear and simple were the laws of physical nature, they determined that there must be other laws of nature, equally clear and simple, to explain society and politics; and finding this theory lamentably contradicted by the confusion of institutions and abuses round them, they began to assail those institutions and abuses with the audacity which science gives. Law and religion in their actual forms were so corrupt that the shocked imagination of these dreamers fell back upon ideals of natural religion and natural law. Far aloof themselves from actual politics, untrained by that wisdom of many voices which free political discussion bestows, dissatisfied with their own political customs, but disdaining to study thoroughly the political customs of others and the origin of all, they proceeded to formulate, by the aid of pure reason, theories which would satisfy their newly roused emotions, and fit in with some apparently more simple and scientific formula of life. All those for whom politics in practice were a sealed book, took refuge in these politics of the imagination, and the political world in France found itself presently divided into two camps, one consisting of those who governed, the other of those who discoursed, the latter perpetually establishing principles, which the former perpetually broke. A society devoted to letters and to conversation embraced and disseminated the speculative literature of the age, and thus the great literary men of the eighteenth century became in France what politicians sometimes strive to be in happier lands, the fountains of political inspiration, and the real leaders of public thought.

Among the pioneers of the new doctrines two men stand out conspicuously in each half of the century,--Montesquieu and Voltaire in the first half, Diderot and Rousseau in the second. Montesquieu, the earliest of the philosophers, was a polished and eminent lawyer, well versed in history, serious, acute, a profound student of human institutions, and the master of a terse and pointed style. His writings, generally speaking, were no mere flights of pert fancy, but the result of systematised and careful thought, weighty, luminous, moderate in tone, and scientifically sane. It was Montesquieu, who, in his _Lettres Persanes_, initiated the philosophic movement, and unmasked the batteries of criticism and satire, which for two generations were to play so effectively upon the foundations of the old monarchy in France. It was Montesquieu, who, twenty seven years later, when he produced the great work of his life, the _Esprit des Lois_, analysed with clear and wide sagacity the laws which regulate human governments and customs, and thus destroyed the mysterious prestige which had never till then been stripped from the ancient institutions of France. It was Montesquieu, who first exposed those institutions to a ruthless analysis which they could not stand. But the slow and careful method, which was Montesquieu's distinction, was less popular with his successors. It involved too much trouble. It ran the risk, except in a master's hands, of being dull. The classical spirit, the French temperament, the love of amusement combined to guide criticism into an easier groove, and the philosophic movement, without altogether deserting the studious atmosphere of facts, adopted a more becoming garment in the exquisite raillery of Voltaire.

Voltaire's life extended long past the middle of the century, and its closing years were the years of its greatest triumphs. But he yet belongs to the generation of Montesquieu rather than to that of Rousseau. Under him, the tone of the new movement altered. It became lighter, and bolder too. Its reserve vanished. Its intrepidity increased. It entered every field. It illumined every subject. In verse, in prose, in history, in drama, in romance, Voltaire assailed traditions, beliefs, abuses, exposing mercilessly their shortcomings and shifts, laughing aloud over their absurdities, denying the pretensions which they boasted, denouncing the iniquities to which they led. Voltaire's rare and versatile wit, his light touch, his unabashed scepticism, his brilliant common-sense, appealed irresistibly to the minds of his countrymen. He made the philosophic movement popular. He identified it with many errors, and with the gravest faults of taste. But with it all he taught men to despise many follies and to impeach many wrongs.

It was Voltaire who gave to the literary movement that decisive tone of irreligion, which it so long retained. The Church stood in the van of the opponents whom the philosophers had to encounter, and to attack the Church, her practice and her creeds, was to Voltaire an intellectual delight. More than any other institution the Church in France represented the spirit of tradition, of authority, of submission to formulas, of reverence for the past. As such, she was certain to view with alarm the new spirit of independent enquiry. Of all forms of political power, the political power of the Church was the most unpopular. She stepped in to support with mysterious sanctions the civil institutions which many felt were unjust. As the censor of the Press, she represented the Government at the very point where the Government and the philosophers came into conflict. Of all the supports of the old order, she was in many ways the most open to attack. Consequently, the philosophic movement from the first brought its forces to bear upon the Church, and Voltaire led the onslaught with the irreverent vivacity of his nature, and the rich splendour of his information and literary resource.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the conduct of the philosophic movement passed to a large extent into younger hands. In 1751, the first volume of the celebrated Encyclopaedia concentrated public attention on a group of writers of no common range and understanding, all inspired with the new spirit, and combined to carry it into every field of economic, political, and social action. The Encyclopaedists numbered among them many distinguished men. On the roll of their contributors we find the names of Turgot, Rousseau, Buffon, Marmontel. D'Alembert, the accomplished mathematician, brought to the work his trained abilities, his admirable style, and the wisdom acquired by a student during a life spent in frugality and independence. But the greatest of the staff, the most original in genius, the most reckless in expression, and the most intense and imaginative in thought, was the brilliant, perverse, impetuous Diderot, with his extraordinary, magnetic conversation, his indomitable perseverance, his genuine consciousness of his own shortcomings, his ardent desire for the improvement of mankind. It is significant that nearly all the prominent members of the Enyclopaedic party had been brought up as pupils of the Jesuits, and unquestionably, as a party, they associated themselves with a pronounced attack upon the chief tenets of the Catholic Church. But it is difficult and not very profitable to attempt to assign definite names of obloquy to the varieties of disbelief within their ranks, and it is a grave mistake to regard that aspect of their writings as the most characteristic or important. What gave to the enterprise its force and success was the fact that it travelled far beyond the barren conflicts of theology, and brought the new ideas, the new habit of enquiry and analysis, the new fearlessness of social comment, and the new humanitarian zeal, to investigating political and economic phenomena, to preparing the way for practical reform. The glory of the Encyclopaedists lies not in their contempt for things holy, but in their hatred of things unjust, in their denunciation of the trade in slaves, of the inequalities of taxation, of the corruption of justice, of the wastefulness of wars, in their dreams of social progress, in their sympathy with the rising empire of industry, which was beginning to transform the world.

Posterity is more familiar with the defects than with the virtues of this strange episode in human thought. Its ideals were disfigured by many faults--by unreality, political ignorance, dangerous license, violent extremes. In its anxiety to escape from conventions, it relaxed necessary codes. It made impiety obstreperous. It hastily adopted a belief in the perfectibility of man, to fill the niche where once had rested a belief in the perfection of God. In place of the traditions and systems which it uprooted, it taught its followers to look for guidance to their own instincts, and to vague aspirations after imaginary systems of natural law. It planted in the French people an inextinguishable desire to abolish everything which reminded it of the past, however much they might suffer in the attempt. Its teaching seemed to discourage the impulses of virtue, and to offer no satisfaction for the spiritual needs of man. Helvetius' famous treatise _De l'Esprit_ laid down, amid much shallow commonplace, the depressing doctrine that self-interest dictates both the conduct and the views of men, and that the attainment of pleasure is their only final aim. Holbach's not less famous _Système de la Nature_ touched the climax of a century of philosophical commotion, in its passionate indictment of the vices of kings and the slavery of men, in its direct demand for revolution, in its remorseless rejection of every form of faith, in its insistence upon atheism and materialism as the only true philosophy of life. 'Religious and political errors,' cried Holbach, 'have changed the universe into a valley of tears.'

Beside the contributors to the Encyclopaedia, and sometimes among them, were men of different schools of thought, allied with them in advocating change. Quesnai and Turgot were conspicuous in the ranks of an eminent sect termed by some Economists, by others Physiocrats. The Economists shared with Diderot and his colleagues the zeal for reform, the contempt for the past, the democratic temper of the times. They were prepared to enforce equality even at the cost of despotism. They insisted on the subordination of all private rights to the public interest. They preached the necessity of national education as the first essential of national prosperity, and urged that the burden of taxation should be thrown upon the land, which they regarded as the sole source of wealth. They advocated free trade, free agriculture, free industry, while they cared little for freedom itself. Others like Morelly, the author of the _Code de la Nature_, accepted the Economist theory of the omnipotence of the State, but added other theories of their own. Morelly proposed to establish community of goods and uniformity of all conditions. He denounced the institution of private property, and he shadowed forth in their earliest shape many of those suggestions for the readjustment of the world, which have since assumed the name of Socialism and acquired the dimensions of a spectre in minds intolerant of change.

But far above the sound of other voices rose the lofty tones and the sonorous rhetoric of Rousseau. Rousseau disdained the study and analysis of the past, in which Montesquieu had sought laborious wisdom. He cared nothing for the diffusion of knowledge and art, of which Voltaire was the brilliant representative. He hardly understood the wide, ambitious projects, by which Diderot and Turgot hoped to benefit humanity. He resented the utilitarian theories of Helvetius. He hotly denied the material philosophy of the school of Holbach. To Rousseau's angry discontent with life, study, knowledge, cultivation, seemed to be only steps in the degradation of man. To his inflamed vision all society was artificial, all accepted forms of political organisation were tyranny and abuse. Man, he protested, was naturally good and just and loving, created by a just and loving God, until art, the bane of life, invaded his simplicity, tainted his virtue, and brought him face to face with suffering and sin. Sweep away therefore, he exhorted his hearers, all the false fabric of society, the world of ugly want and insolent riches miscalled civilization, the oppression miscalled order, the error miscalled knowledge! Level its inequalities, repudiate its learning, break its conventions, shatter its chains! Let men return to the simplicity of ancient days, to the idyllic state, when uncorrupted instinct only ruled them, and there once again, innocent and ignorant, as Nature made them, and guided only by the 'immortal and celestial voice' of reason, seek the high paths of felicity of life.

In a generation full of privilege and hardship, and weary of its own artificial ways, such teaching as this struck a resounding chord. It did not matter that the teacher reconciled a rather sordid practice with a gorgeous theory, and was himself too often morbid, egotistical, unmanly, mean. The disciples, who drank in his doctrines, did not enquire critically into his motives. They did not ask--and possibly we have not the right to speculate--whether he assailed society, because he failed to shine in it, or whether he inveighed against riches, because he lacked the patient industry to earn them for himself. They did not know or care whether his quarrel with the world, his indictment of its usages and laws, his eloquent defence of human instinct, and his sensuous love for Nature, were or were not dictated by the feverish longing which possessed the man to follow every impulse of his mind, and to submit his impulses to no control. They did not see that the example of a master, who, whatever shameful faults he might commit, could still maintain that civilization, and not he, deserved the blame, and could still gravely describe himself to his friends as one of the best men that he had ever known, was only too well calculated to enable his disciples to persuade themselves that they were instruments of virtue, purity and justice, while they were permitting iniquity and palliating crime. They knew that his denunciation of oppression coincided with the bitter lessons which their experience taught. They found that his eloquent words renewed their self-respect, and raised their ideal of the dignity of man. They felt that he pleaded the cause of the unfortunate in tones and with a genius which made the fortunate attend, and that he brought to that exalted service the widest compassion, the readiest sympathy, and the most majestic language which the eighteenth century had heard.

In 1762, Rousseau published one of the most famous, and, in its consequences, probably one of the most important books ever written. 'Man was born free,' ran the prologue to the _Contrat Social_,--'man was born free, and is everywhere in chains.' In the _Contrat Social_ Rousseau rejected altogether the historic method--that wise process of political philosophy, which patiently studies the circumstances of the past, in order, by the experience so obtained, to modify and to improve the present. Relying on the unsafe methods of abstract, _a priori_ speculation, he proceeded to develop, out of his ardent and imaginative brain, an ideal theory of society, which should establish by logical and conclusive argument the opinions which his sentiments had already espoused. The result of the enterprise was the celebrated doctrine of the Sovereignty of Peoples. The origin of every human society, argued Rousseau, was this:--At some remote epoch in the dawn of days, men, living in a state of nature, virtuous, rational, equal and free, had resolved to enter into an association to defend the persons and property of all, while every individual in it remained free. Accordingly, they had formed a Social Compact, under which each individual had submitted himself to the direction of the general will, and had been received as an inseparable part of the whole. The body formed by this Social Compact was the Sovereign. All citizens who belonged to it--and all did--had an equal share in the common sovereignty, and were bound to one another by a fraternal tie. Its sovereignty consisted in the exercise of the general will, and that sovereignty could not be alienated to any individual or group, nor could it be divided up into different parts and distributed among different officials. The will of the sovereign body was expressed in laws, and every member of it must take his part personally, and not by delegation, in the making of those laws. If he delegated that right to representatives, he surrendered his share of sovereign power. For the sake of convenience, the sovereign body might delegate to governments certain executive powers for a limited time; but the sovereign body still retained the right of resuming or modifying those powers at will, and must from time to time assemble, in order to enforce its right. When the whole sovereign people was thus assembled, the power of governments ceased, and all executive authority was suspended. If any government usurped the sovereignty, the Social Compact was thereby broken; all citizens resumed their liberty to act, and might rise in rebellion to assert it. Lastly, in religion, the sovereign body was entitled to impose a civil profession of faith, and to compel all its citizens, under penalties of banishment and death, to believe in the existence of a beneficent God, in an immortal life, in the reward of the just and the chastisement of the wicked, in the obligation of the Social Contract and of the laws.

It is easy in these days to criticise the _Contrat Social_. The mistaken idea of compact as the basis of society; the rejection of representative legislatures, and the insistence on a principle which could only apply in a miniature State--the personal participation of every citizen in the making of the laws; the sanction given to the right of insurrection, when the imaginary compact was broken; the absence of any method of ascertaining whether the compact were broken or not;--these are flaws in its argument which will readily occur. It is easy also to point to certain characteristics which disfigure it throughout--to its disregard of facts, to its sophistry and inconsistencies, to the narrow intolerance of its sentimental theology, to its aloofness from the region of practice, to its reliance on dogma and on the logic of words. But it is not so easy to appreciate the extraordinary impression which in those days it produced, or the enthusiasm aroused in all who looked for liberty, by the fearless splendour of its phrases, by the fused argument and passion of its style, by its generous democratic temper, by the spiritual earnestness which inspired it, by its fine exaltation of patriotism and freedom. The _Contrat Social_ supplied the text and lit the fire of revolution. It became the gospel of the Jacobin party, and of that party Robespierre constituted himself high-priest.

The seed sown by these remarkable writers fell upon fruitful soil. The years which immediately preceded the outbreak of the Revolution in France were years of vague but widespread agitation. An enthusiasm for the natural greatness of man, and a boundless contempt for the age and society in which he lived, pervaded the thought of the time. In almost every European country, observers noticed the same presentiment of impending change, and of a change which, on behalf of humanity, most people were prepared to welcome. Thinkers and talkers alike were full of illusions, full of curiosity, full of unselfishness, full of hope. Outside France, as within it, everyone plunged into philosophical debate. In the trading cities of Germany, merchants and manufacturers would gather, after the day's work, to discuss the condition of the human race. Sovereigns like Frederick, Catherine, and Joseph affected the secure radicalism of despots. In Spain, in Portugal, in Tuscany, as well as in England and France, statesmen echoed the new humanitarian maxims. Aranda, Pombal and Manfredini exhibited the spirit, and emulated the reforms, of Turgot and Necker, of Fox and Pitt. The outbreak of the American Revolution roused the deepest interest in Europe. Volunteers from France poured over to America, to fight for the political ideals, about which they had for so long been dreaming, and the realisation of which in the New World seemed to bring home conviction to the Old. The tidings of the triumph of the American colonists were received with acclamation in the roadsteads of Elsinore. Strangely enough, the feverish unrest of the time produced, in an age which professed to have undertaken a war against superstition, a revival of the mysticism of an earlier day. On the eve of the French Revolution, the best educated classes in Europe were engrossed by secret societies and brotherhoods, like the Illuminati, the Swedenborgians, the Mesmerists, the Rosicrucians, dabbling on all sides in necromancy and occult science, and frequently the dupes of ridiculous impostors, who, catching the temper of the times, proposed to effect by charlatanism the regeneration of the world.

This vague perturbation of spirit did not, it is true, penetrate to the lowest or unlettered class. But in all above that rank it was conspicuous. The years of the reign of Louis XVI were in France, as in nearly all parts of Europe, years of national expansion. The trade of the country was advancing by leaps and bounds, and the commerce of Bordeaux already exceeded, in the sober judgment of Arthur Young, that of any English port save London. At the same time the wealth of the middle classes was increasing with similar rapidity. Year after year they lent more money to the Government; and year after year, as they saw the Government wasting it with reckless profusion, and falling steadily deeper into debt, they ranged themselves more decidedly in the ranks of opposition, and became more emphatic in their discontent. The gross mismanagement of the finances became a matter in which they felt they had a right to interfere. Their stake in the game of politics made them politicians, and not only that--it made them reformers too. And thus the growing wealth of the country tended indirectly to multiply the enemies of the Court, and to throw on to the side of revolution that important financial interest, which is generally a stable, sometimes an obstructive, element in a State.

In other ways also, by the end of the century, in their style of living, in their education, in their enlightenment, the middle classes had become the equals of the nobles. They had imbibed the same philosophy; they had cultivated the same tastes; they contemplated with the same sublime ignorance of history and politics the philanthropic ideas of the age; and they resented, even more bitterly than before, the exclusive and exacting privileges of caste. At the same time, the nobles, on their side, were losing, under the benign influence of philosophy, a great deal of the apathetic insolence, which had made their privileges hateful. The Court of Louis XVI was very different from that of his predecessors. It was less pompous, less artificial. The rules of etiquette were relaxed. A better tone prevailed in its society. The haughtiest nobles opened their doors freely to lowborn genius. They debated republican theories in their drawing-rooms. They applauded republican sentiments in the theatres. They began dimly to realise their public duties, and in a tentative way to perform them. They awoke to the distress of the poor about them, and endeavoured to alleviate it with a generous hand. Some of the nobility proposed to surrender their immunity from taxation. Others, headed by the King, emancipated the serfs who still remained on their estates. The Marquis de Mirabeau established a gratuitous office for the settlement of law-suits. The Duchesse de Bourbon rose early in the morning, to visit with alms the garrets of the poor. The Queen laid out a village at the Trianon, where, attired in a muslin gown and a straw hat, she could fish in the lake and see her cows milked. The King multiplied his private charities, and, one severe winter, commanded that all the poor, who came, should be fed daily in the royal kitchens. On all sides, among the upper classes of society, the same symptoms showed themselves. Extravagant but kindhearted sensibility became the mainspring of their actions; reform was their passion, limitless, radiant hope their creed. 'With no regret for the past,' says one of their number, looking back from the sere contemplation of later years on that entrancing morning of his life,--'with no regret for the past and no apprehensions for the future, we danced gaily along a carpet of flowers stretched over an abyss.'

The same spirit animated the Government of the time. In spite of his want of strength, his lamentable irresolution, and his well-intentioned lethargy of mind, Louis XVI possessed not a few of the qualities in which good kings excel--a high standard of morality and duty, a large fund of quiet simplicity and courage, a readiness to listen to the advice of wiser men, a marked sensitiveness to public opinion, and a genuine desire to serve his people. Louis had not been long upon the throne before he gave proof of his benevolent intentions by appointing to the office of Comptroller-General the greatest practical reformer of the day. Under Turgot the new spirit penetrated rapidly into every department. The extravagances of the Court were cut down. Useful changes were introduced into the system of farming and collecting the taxes. The Corvées were converted into a regular impost, from which the privileged classes were not exempt. The guilds, which monopolised and fettered trade, were suppressed. Fresh encouragement was offered to agriculture and commerce. Free trade in corn was established within the kingdom. The minister talked of commuting feudal dues, and dreamed of abolishing the inequalities of taxation. A spirit of gentleness and consideration came over the administration. The Government not only introduced reforms; it condescended to recommend them to the public, to point out their necessity, to explain their intention. 'The burden of this charge,' said the Royal edict which abolished the Corvées, 'falls solely upon those who possess nothing but the right to toil.' 'The right to work,' ran the preamble to the edict which suppressed the guilds, 'is the most sacred of all possessions, and every institution which infringes it, violates the natural rights of man.'

In the same way, Necker, when he succeeded Turgot, appealed for support to public opinion. He recognised the 'invisible power which commanded obedience even in the King's palace,' and endeavoured to justify his policy by publishing an account of the state of the finances. In the same way, though Turgot and Necker fell, and their schemes perished with them, the reforming spirit continued to affect the Government all through Louis' reign. Change after change, experiment after experiment, attested the readiness of the Crown to bend before the forces of the time. The measures taken, first of all to suppress, and afterwards partly to restore the guilds, destroyed the old relations between employers and workmen, while they did little to establish a more complete or satisfactory system in their place. And thus, when the Revolution came, there reigned generally among the artisans of the great towns a sense of uncertainty and discontent, which rendered discipline impossible and mischief easy.

Again, only a year before the Revolution, one royal decree transformed the administration of justice in France; while a year earlier, in 1787, another bold and memorable measure completed the reform begun as an experiment some years before, and established provincial assemblies in all the Pays d'Élection. The importance of this step, which has been sometimes overlooked among the graver changes of a later day, can hardly be exaggerated; for it introduced, almost without warning, a new principle into the government of the country. By the side of the autocratic Intendants, new provincial assemblies were created, which stripped the Intendants of most of their powers, or, if they resisted, entered into active competition with them. By the side of the autocratic Sub-Delegates, new district assemblies were formed, to pursue a similar course of action in a smaller sphere. In place of the ancient parochial assemblies, and in the midst of the inequalities and privileges, of which French villages were the familiar scene, and which in themselves remained unaltered, new, elective, municipal bodies sprang up to assert democratic methods, among conditions wholly irreconcilable with democratic ideas. When one considers the scope of these important changes, their novelty, their inconsistencies, and the suddenness with which they were made, one realises something of the confusion and paralysis which they must have produced in the public service, and one begins to understand why the agents of the Government proved so powerless, in spite of their prestige, when they had to face the crisis in 1789. On the very eve of the Revolution, Louis and his advisers, forgetful of the salutary maxim that the most dangerous moment for a bad Government is the moment when it meddles with reform, had deliberately destroyed the old, despotic, administrative system, which, at the end of the eighteenth century, formed the only certain mainstay of the throne.

It is not necessary to linger here over the episodes of Louis' reign. Turgot and Necker fell in turn; but Necker carried with him from office a reputation for sound finance, for disinterestedness, and for honest liberality of opinion, which won for him a name out of all proportion to his powers. He left behind him a problem of ever-increasing difficulty, and a deficit alarmingly enlarged by the intervention of France in the American war. For a time, after the overthrow of Necker, reactionary influences had their way. The wastefulness of the Treasury continued. The spectre of reform was for the moment laid. And at the head of that splendid and light-hearted Court, which combined the profuse traditions of the Grand Monarque with the gay philanthropy that was the fashion of the day, and resented all economies as mean, and radical innovations as thoroughly ill-bred, there stood, conspicuous in brilliancy and beauty, the figure of the Queen. Wilful and proud, unthinking and extravagant, intolerant of disagreeable facts, because she was wholly ignorant of their truth, already widely calumniated and misjudged, but destined to face far worse calumnies, which partisanship, in the mask of history, has repeated since, Marie Antoinette has never ceased to command the interest and attention of posterity, as her tragic story, and the fall to which her errors partly led, have never ceased to move its pity and respect. In 1783, Calonne took office as Comptroller-General, and for four years, encouraged by the favour of the Queen and Court, and helped by his own surprising agility and resource, Calonne maintained his place. Money was found at ruinous expense to supply the necessities of the Government and the rapacious claims of courtiers. Every day bankruptcy came more distinctly into view. At last Calonne, unable to carry on his system any longer, fell back upon a desperate expedient. He summoned, in February, 1787, an extraordinary assembly of Notables, consisting of nobles, bishops, magistrates and officials, laid before them frankly the situation of affairs, and gaily informed them that within the last ten years the Government had borrowed no less than fifty millions sterling.

It is curious to notice the attitude of this assembly, and the way in which its action was received by the country. As might be expected, the Notables, consisting almost entirely of members of the privileged orders, were not prepared to make large personal sacrifices to save the state. When Calonne audaciously proposed to them the abolition of privileges and exemptions, and asked them to submit to a heavy tax, he fell, amid a storm of reproaches from the courtiers, who regarded him as a deserter from their ranks. But instead of carrying popular sympathy with him, Calonne found that his opponents, although they were resisting reform, had usurped the popularity of reformers. The Notables adroitly shifted the ground of attack to the conduct of the Government. They demanded the public accounts. They censured the acts of the Administration. And simply because they assailed the Government, and ventured to criticise and oppose the Crown, they suddenly found themselves, to their own surprise, transformed into popular heroes, and their conduct and courage applauded all over the kingdom. The same thing happened after Calonne's fall. Loménie de Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse, succeeded to Calonne's office, and found himself compelled to take up many of Calonne's plans. Thereupon the Parlement of Paris stepped to the front, and following the example of the Notables, accepted some of the Minister's reforms, and particularly the edict for the establishment of provincial assemblies, while they rejected the new taxes, which were an inseparable part of the Government's scheme. In vain the King threatened and punished the members of the Parlement. The Parlement, borrowing the language of the times, and forgetting that they themselves were only a privileged and exclusive corporation, posed as the representatives of the nation, and demanded that the States-General should be summoned to express the national will.

The Government attempted to carry its schemes through with a high hand. All over the kingdom, the local Parlements, the judicial magistracy of France, took up the cause of the exiled Parlement of Paris, echoed its tones, and even threatened dangerous rebellion. In Dauphiné, in particular, the clergy, nobles, and commons of the province, gathering at Vizille, and led by the courageous eloquence of Mounier, protested against the policy of the Minister, and defied the Crown. The nation, caring little for the rights or wrongs of the quarrel, but delighted to see the all-powerful Government baffled and assailed, welcomed the Parlements as national deliverers, and proclaimed them the champions of popular freedom. For a moment the strange spectacle offered of the privileged orders in France defending their privileges, with the enthusiastic support of the nation, against the Government, which wished to destroy them in the interests of all. In face of this extraordinary union, the Government recoiled. Alarmed by the increase of riots and disorder, by the high price of food, by the disaffection in the army, by the Ministry's total loss of credit, and by the prospect of bankruptcy in the immediate future, the King decided to consult the nation. He announced that the States-General, the ancient, representative Parliament of France, would again, after the lapse of a century and three-quarters, assemble to debate the destinies of the kingdom. Then the popularity of the privileged bodies died as suddenly as it had begun. In August, 1788, Necker was recalled to office, and a general outburst of rejoicing celebrated the astonishing surrender of the Crown.

A wise minister would have endeavoured by prompt and decisive action to allay the vague excitement of the time. Every day the feeling of restlessness was spreading in the country. Paris had become a great debating club. The tension in the public mind was already extreme. Instead, however, of hurrying on the elections, instead of showing a resolution to face the crisis with enlightenment and calmness, the Government hesitated, procrastinated, wavered, and allowed all the world to see that it had formed no policy, and hardly knew what its intentions were. The meeting of the States-General was delayed until the following spring, and in the meantime the Government stimulated the fever of opinion. All through the winter of 1788-9, France was flooded with political addresses and with democratic pamphlets--among which the audacious pamphlet of the Abbé Sieyès excited general remark--calculated to raise as high as possible the hopes and pride of the Tiers-État. To add to the war of words, the Government invited all classes to draw up Cahiers or petitions of grievances, to be laid before the States-General, when they met, and thus, by its own action, it focussed the attention of its subjects on the many abuses which had been borne silently so long.

Moreover, when the important question of the constitution of the new States-General arose, the Government found it impossible to make up its mind. In the electoral arrangements, as might be expected from the innumerable local and personal rights still existing in the country, there was very great complexity and confusion. But the general principle, at any rate in the Pays d'Élection, was this. The nobles and clergy of each Bailliage, as a rule, elected their representatives directly, though the rule was subject to a good many exceptions. In the election of the commons, on the other hand, the voting was in no case direct, but had two, or even three or four degrees. All Frenchmen over twenty-five, who had paid even the smallest amount of direct taxes, had votes. They might vote for any representatives they pleased, for there was no property qualification for candidates. But they could not vote for them directly. The electoral assembly of each Bailliage thus consisted of the nobles and clergy of the Bailliage, and of a number of representatives of the commons, who had been previously elected by primary assemblies of voters in the different towns and villages of the Bailliage. When the electoral assembly of the Bailliage had been formed, the nobles, the clergy, and the electors of the Tiers-État, who composed it, separated into three distinct bodies[5], and each order chose a certain number of deputies to represent it in the States-General at Versailles. The number of deputies allowed to each Bailliage varied according to circumstances, but was mainly determined by its population and wealth.

It was arranged without opposition that the nobles and the clergy in the States-General should have, according to usage, three hundred representatives each; but then the difficult question arose, how many deputies were the Tiers-État to elect. The advocates of democracy urged, amid enthusiastic applause from the public, that the commons infinitely out-numbered the other two orders, and ought therefore to have at least double the number of representatives. On this point Louis and Necker alike wavered undecided, besieged by the importunities of the democratic feeling which they had let loose in France. In vain Necker, in November, 1788, gathered another assembly of Notables, and tried to shift his responsibility on to them. The Government at last made up its mind to concession, and announced that the commons were to have 'the double representation'--six hundred representatives in the new Parliament. But the genius of irresolution still dogged its steps. It could not even then bring itself to decide whether the three orders should sit and vote in separate Houses, or whether they should all sit in one Chamber and vote together. The timidest intelligence must have perceived that, unless the three orders were to vote in one body, the numerical superiority which the commons had obtained would be without significance, and the Government's concession to popular feeling would be merely a delusion. And yet to the last this important question was left undecided by the Crown, as a fruitful source of quarrel out of which the troubles of the Revolution might begin. So, with a Government perplexed by fears, with a local administration paralysed by a variety of recent changes, with signs of disorder multiplying upon every side, with innumerable difficulties requiring settlement, and with the fixed spirit of old traditions vainly attempting to assimilate the new, the monarchy prepared to meet the representatives of the nation, who, already flushed with triumph, and intoxicated with self-confidence and hope, advanced to realise their long-delayed millennium, and with the aid of freedom and philosophy to readjust the destinies of France.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: In three cases only, in Langres, Péronne, and Montfort l'Amaury, the three orders sat and voted together in the electoral assembly.]