with extraordinary rapidity after the American War. The whole condition
of those industrial arts which give work to the lower orders was
changed, and an enormous impulse given to the employment of industry. In
spite of the constant complaints of those who were bent upon asserting
the decline of the nation, the population had been gradually increasing
ever since the Revolution of 1688; the rate of increase in the thirty
years preceding 1780 was about 400,000 a year. This increase of
population had already begun to call fresh land into cultivation;
between 1760 and 1770 no less than a thousand enclosure Bills were
passed. The improved processes of husbandry did even more than the mere
extent of cultivable area to increase the productive power of
agriculture. But this agricultural production could never have increased
at the rate it did had it not been that the proportion between consumers
and producers of food was rapidly being altered; for it was this period
which changed England from an agricultural to a manufacturing country,
and placed the weight of population, which had hitherto been greater in
the South, entirely in the North. By successive steps all the great
improvements in spinning and weaving were introduced; the discovery that
iron could be worked as well with pit coal as with charcoal gave an
immense impetus to the second great branch of industry; and the
improvement in the steam engine, which enabled machinery to be worked
irrespective of local peculiarities, spread the manufactures, which had
hitherto nestled among the hills for the sake of obtaining water-power,
into all parts of the coal-producing districts. This burst of industry
of necessity produced great economic changes. The employment of labour
in manufactories tended to increase the population rapidly. The increase
of numbers, the growth of wealth among the manufacturers, called into
activity more skill in agriculture, and demanded the occupation of more
land. Land to which recourse is had under this pressure is naturally the
worse land; it therefore requires more labour to produce its crop, and
the most laboriously produced crop sets the value of the whole; the
prices of the necessaries of life began rapidly to rise. Though the use
of machinery made many things cheaper, and improved methods of husbandry
prevented prices from rising as they would otherwise have done, as a
general rule, while the price of luxuries decreased, the price of
necessaries rose. Wages did not rise with a proportionate rapidity, and
it was still a question whether, if the French war had not intervened,
the relation between food and consumption, between prices and wages,
would have been satisfactorily arranged. It was however evident that all
these improvements, while they created great wealth for the middle and
mercantile classes, by no means rendered the position of the mechanic
and artisan easier, while, at the same time, higher and more intelligent
employment, and the more sedentary life led by the mechanic, were well
suited to foster habits of thought, and to make the half-educated man a
shallow reasoner, ready to accept crude ideas as to the measures best
fitted to produce improvement in the social position of himself and his
class; and such ideas, emanating from France, had been for some time
widely spread among the people.
[Sidenote: Active condition of England abroad and at home.]
Thus, while England had gradually resumed her commanding position
abroad, and was ready with allies to join in any external movement, and
while the growing wealth of the mercantile world was rendering it daily
more certain that any such movement would be in a conservative
direction, the people--increased in numbers and intelligence, but not
bettered in their general condition--were becoming ready to lend a
willing ear to any measures which promised to improve the political
position of their class. And it was just at this time that the French
Revolution broke out.
[Sidenote: Causes of the French Revolution.]
On the 5th of May 1789 the States-General of France was assembled for
the first time since the year 1614. The causes of this momentous event,
which produced nothing less than a complete change in the history of the
world, were of ancient growth; the explosion had been slowly preparing
ever since Louis XIV. had completed the mistaken policy of
centralization, and had been able to say that the King and the State
were one. The power and importance of the Crown had been secured at the
cost of the destruction or degradation of all the conservative elements
of society. The nobility, deprived of their local power, had been
summoned to the capital to swell the splendour of the Court; without
duties they still continued to enjoy privileges, while the
administrative power was practically centred in the hands of the royal
intendants; they were exempt from direct taxation, and known to their
tenantry and dependants only by the feudal dues which they exacted, and
by certain remnants of feudal services they could still claim. The
judicial body, the "nobility of the robe," held their position, not by
merit or by legal knowledge, but by purchase. The upper clergy were
drawn to the Court like the nobles, and lived in splendour, while the
village curé had hardly the means of livelihood. The people, oppressed
by unjust taxation, excluded from all hope of bettering their condition,
saw themselves deserted by their natural guardians and leaders, who
seemed to enjoy wealth wrung from their toil, and honours earned by no
merit of their own, but solely on the ground of birth. The misery of
their position was aggravated by the constant recurrence of famines, and
they saw with rage the corn trade so manipulated by men in the highest
position as to all appearance to increase the scarcity. But an oppressed
people will suffer long in silence unless the temper of the class above
them be such as to favour the expression of their discontent. Such a
temper had been called into existence among the thinking middle classes
by the growth of scepticism and materialistic philosophy. Drawn
originally from English sources, from the writings of the philosophers
of the English Revolution, this form of thought had found its exponent
in Voltaire, from the keen shafts of whose wit no abuse and no
institution was secure. Montesquieu had pushed the same spirit of
inquiry into political and constitutional questions, and Rousseau, more
sentimental and spiritual in his views, had supplied a firmer but no
less revolutionary basis to society than was afforded by the purely
negative teaching of Voltaire. The literary power of these men make them
the best known exponents of the spirit of the time, but the spirit
itself was prevalent everywhere. Thus, while the institutions of the
country were radically bad, they were exposed to the fiercest and most
destructive criticism, and ideas of the possibility and rightfulness of
a happier state of things were suggested to the public mind. The conduct
of the Court and Government was not of a character to blunt the
criticisms directed against them; the finances were in a state of
hopeless disorder. The accession of Louis XVI. had for a moment raised
hopes of a change of system; Turgot, an honest and able man of reforming
views, was summoned to the ministry. But as his plan included of
necessity retrenchment on the part of the Court and the taxation of the
privileged classes, Court, nobles, and magistracy made common cause
against him, and he found their opposition too strong for him. The same
fate attended every effort at reform. Minister after minister was called
to office, content either to follow the old course, which was inevitably
leading to bankruptcy, or obliged to yield before the selfish opposition
of the privileged classes. In turn, Clugny, Necker, and Calonne withdrew
discomfited. At length, in 1787, the Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne
accepted the difficult post. Like his predecessors, he soon found that
there was no resource but the extension of taxation. This brought him
into collision with the Parlement, the chief court of justice, whose
members were drawn from among the privileged class. They contrived for a
while to give their opposition the appearance of a popular movement
against the power of the Crown; they even went so far as to declare that
the right of extending taxation resided in the States-General alone. It
was in vain that the King superseded the Parlement, and produced a new
and by no means injudicious constitution; the mention of the
States-General had seemed to open a new view to the people; nothing
short of them would now be accepted. The new constitution fell
hopelessly to the ground; the King found it necessary to recall Necker,
the only minister who had enjoyed any popular confidence, and his
triumphant return was speedily followed by the meeting of the States.
[Sidenote: Assembly of the States-General. May 5, 1789.]
[Sidenote: The King brought to Paris. Oct. 6.]
The assembling of the States-General, which was by many regarded with
hope as the close of the difficulties of France, proved but the
beginning of troubles. The unprivileged classes had at length obtained
the means of expressing their wants, and would be satisfied with nothing
short of complete revolution. Unfortunately, the King, a well-meaning
man, with a real love for his people, was of a slow intellect, and
easily guided by those around him. He fell into the hands of the princes
and courtiers, and was induced to make common cause with the privileged
classes, which were at first the real object of attack. When the
Commons, or Tiers Etat, declared themselves the real representation of
the nation, and changed the States-General into a National Assembly, he
attempted to check them by a royal sitting, only to find his authority
disregarded. The Commons assembled in the Tennis Court at Versailles
(June 20), swore to perfect the constitution, and became the dominant
power in the nation. An attempt to check their further advance by force
of arms, the collection of troops around Paris, the removal of the
popular minister Necker and the appointment of the Marshal de Broglie to
the command of the army, drove Paris to insurrection. The thorough
untrustworthiness of the army was proved; the Bastille fell (July 14);
the National Guard sprang into existence; and a revolutionary Commune at
the Hôtel de Ville governed the capital. The power of the sword passed
into the hands of the people. Though the Assembly continued the work of
the constitution, though, on the 4th of August, the aristocracy, in a
moment of wild enthusiasm, surrendered all its old feudal rights, the
mistrust of the Parisians, aggravated by the famine and the difficulty
of subsistence, continued to increase. The Court imprudently gave
colour to its mistrust, Lafayette, at the head of the National Guard,
desired to get the management of the Revolution more entirely in his own
hands. On the 6th of October a crowd of National Guards and starving
women marched to Versailles and brought the King in triumph to Paris. He
was followed by the National Assembly, which henceforward worked under
the eyes of the Parisian Commune and people. The prestige of royalty
disappeared, the King was in fact a prisoner in his own capital; the
power had passed even from the National Assembly, and was centred in the
people of Paris.
[Sidenote: Excitement produced in England.]
Such scenes, marked by acts of sanguinary vengeance on the part of the
people, and showing the absolute powerlessness of the old system of
Louis XIV., could not fail to excite the strongest interest in Europe.
Nowhere was this more the case than in England. To some it appeared that
our great enemy was perishing before our eyes of its own natural decay;
while from another point of view, to lovers of liberty, there was a
whole world of hope in the vigorous life exhibited by a people,
downtrodden as the French lower orders were believed to be; to another
party the hurried and irregular vehemence which had marked the changes
in France seemed proof only of an anarchy shocking to all respect for
form or antiquity, and sad evidence against the possibility of an
orderly growth of reform. "The French have shown themselves," said
Burke, "the ablest architects of ruin that have hitherto existed in the
world. They have done their business for us as rivals in a way which
twenty Ramillies or Blenheims could never have done." "How much is it
the greatest event that ever happened in the world and how much the
best," said Fox after the taking of the Bastille. While a third view,
and this at first was Pitt's, rested complacently on the possible
approximation of the Government of France to a constitutional monarchy
similar to that of England.
[Sidenote: First reactionary movement.]
[Sidenote: Rejection of the Abolition of Tests and of the Reform Bill.]
[Sidenote: Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution."]
The three years which elapsed between 1789 and the end of 1792 drew more
distinctly the line which separated the two first of these opinions, and
proved that the third was untenable. It was clear from the first which
of them would ultimately gain the upper hand among the governing classes
in England. Already, as early as March 1790, a proposition for the
relief of Protestant Dissenters, and for the abolition of Test and
Corporation Acts, which had been lost by only a small majority the
preceding year, was thrown out by overwhelming numbers. A Bill for the
reform of the representation, introduced by Flood, though Pitt had
several times himself brought the subject forward, met with a similar
fate; and shortly after the meeting of the new Parliament on November
25th, Burke issued what may be regarded as the manifesto of his party in
his work entitled "Reflections on the French Revolution." It was called
forth by signs of the sympathy which the French Revolution was meeting
in England. Its more enthusiastic admirers had determined to reap what
advantages they could from the present state of excitement, and two
societies--the Constitutional Society, founded a few years before, and
the Revolution Society, an old established body connected with the
Dissenting interest, and intended to support the principle of the
Revolution of 1688--had entered upon a course of renewed activity. On
its anniversary, in November 1789, the Revolution Society had not only
listened to an inflammatory and revolutionary discourse by Dr. Price, a
Unitarian minister, but had also sent an address of sympathy, signed by
Lord Stanhope, their President, to the National Assembly, by whom it had
been rapturously received. It was upon this text chiefly that Burke
wrote. His book had a wonderful success, 30,000 copies were speedily
sold, and writers have been found bold enough to imply that the safety
of Europe was owing to this work. In truth, Burke saw more clearly than
those around him the inevitable course of the Revolution; he foresaw its
excesses and its miserable end in a military despotism; he saw, too,
that it must of necessity become proselytizing. Terrified by these
dangers, and unable to conceive the excellence of any government unlike
our own, which was at that time a highly aristocratic limited monarchy,
he did not see the truths which the French Revolution embodied, and
which, had they been wisely directed and not rudely assailed, would have
allowed Europe to pass into the new and inevitable phase of progress for
which it is still struggling, without the constant outbreaks of passion
on one side or the other which have marked the last seventy years. This
work drew forth many replies, the most important of which were
Macintosh's "Vindiciæ Gallicæ" and Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man,"--the
first a temperate and excellent work of the man who was afterwards to be
one of the greatest philosophical statesmen in England, the other the
rough but sensible production of a revolutionist by profession.
[Sidenote: The Canada Bill. 1791.]
[Sidenote: Breach between Fox and Burke. May 6, 1791.]
The sentiments which Burke had declared in his essay he soon took an
opportunity of declaring in Parliament. The question before the House
was a new constitution for Canada. This was called for by the extremely
antagonistic character of the inhabitants of the two parts of the
colony. The inhabitants of Lower Canada were French, and used to French
habits, those of Upper Canada entirely English. The province was in
future to be divided, and the constitution of the Upper Province
assimilated as nearly as possible to the English model. Hereditary
peerages even were to be established. The Bill, granting as it did a
sort of self-government to the colony, was a wise one, but Fox opposed
it, and took the opportunity of speaking in high praise of the new
constitution of France. Some days afterwards, upon the same measure,
Burke arose and proceeded to reply, inveighing strongly against the
Revolution. His own side vociferously called him to order; he persisted
in his speech, deploring that he should be obliged to break with his
friends, but ready, as he said, to risk all, and with his last words to
exclaim, "Fly from the French constitution." Fox whispered there was no
loss of friends, but Burke rejoined, "I have done my duty at the price
of my friend; our friendship is at an end." Fox rose afterwards, and
with tears in his eyes repeated that he regarded Burke as his master and
teacher in politics, but he could not withdraw what he had said in
praise of the French constitution; and thus the friendship of years was
severed, and Burke was ranked with the ministerialists.
[Sidenote: The Birmingham riots. July 1791.]
But it was not only in Parliament that the strong division of opinion
caused by the Revolution was beginning to be evident. The conservative
temper of the upper and middle classes was shown clearly in the riots at
Birmingham. The friends of the Revolution had determined to have a
public dinner to celebrate the anniversary of the taking of the
Bastille. The dinner was chiefly planned by Dr. Priestley, a Unitarian
minister, a man of much scientific repute. Hearing that his movement was
unpopular, he attempted to postpone the dinner, from which he was
himself absent; some eighty persons however met, and in the evening a
fierce riot broke out against them; from Thursday till Sunday the riots
continued, Dr. Priestley's house and library were destroyed, and much
wanton mischief done. It was constantly reported, though never proved,
that the magistrates of the district, far from trying to check the
rioters, had been seen urging them on.
[Sidenote: Pitt's policy as yet unchanged.]
Up till this point Pitt had certainly shown no sign of yielding to the
conservative feeling of the country. He had declared distinctly that he
intended to pursue a policy of neutrality, to hold carefully aloof from
any interference in the domestic affairs of France, and had even
entirely neutralized the effect of the Convention of Pilnitz (Aug.
1791) by refusing to accede to the project of concerted action on the
part of European powers which had there been broached. He even felt so
certain of the continuance of peace, that his Budget, in the spring of
the year 1792, was framed entirely upon a peace footing. He suggested
the diminution of the number of sailors by 2000; he allowed the
subsidiary treaty with Hesse to come to an end, and drew up a plan for
the reduction of the interest of the Funds from 4 to 3½ or 3 per cent.
He even continued his measures of improvement; he again supported, in a
speech of unusual excellence, the immediate abolition of the slave
trade, although without success; while, in conjunction with his great
opponent, he carried through a Bill for a change in the libel law known
as Fox's Libel Bill, which placed in the hands of juries the right of
determining not only the fact of the publication of a libel, but the
more important question whether the matter published was in its
character libellous or not. The opposition offered to this Bill by Lord
Chancellor Thurlow cost him his position; the Great Seal was put into
commission. But the crisis had in fact arrived. The events which had
taken place in France, and which continued to take place during the year
1792, and the corresponding excitement aroused in England, were
gradually driving the minister to the persuasion that his peaceful
policy of non-intervention was no longer tenable.
[Sidenote: Progress of the French Revolution.]
[Sidenote: The King's flight to Varennes. June 1791.]
[Sidenote: The Girondin ministry declares war. April 1792.]
[Sidenote: The King suspended. Aug. 10.]
[Sidenote: Massacres of September.]
[Sidenote: Declaration of the Republic. Sept. 21, 1792.]
After its removal to Paris in October 1789, the Assembly, now under the
influence of the Jacobin Club, and watched by the Parisians, proceeded
rapidly in its work of destruction and reconstitution. All local
arrangements and provincial powers disappeared when France was divided
into Departments; the Crown lost its hold upon the judicial system,
which was now grounded upon a popular basis; the Church became a
department of the State, and the necessities of the State were supplied
by selling its vast property, or, as purchasers were not forthcoming, by
issuing bills payable in Church lands, called assignats. It became plain
that the power of the Crown, and with it the power of the executive, was
entirely disappearing. Nothing could save it but one of two courses--the
King might become a traitor to his country, throw himself into the arms
of his brother potentates, and begin a war of kings against peoples, or,
withdrawing from his capital, rally round him all the conservative
elements which yet remained in France. This was the plan of the one
great man of the Revolution, Mirabeau; but Mirabeau died in April 1791;
and in June of the same year the King adopted the other and worse
course, fled from Paris, and was arrested at Varennes. He was brought
back a prisoner, and remained with suspended authority till the Assembly
in September, hurriedly completing its work of constitution-making,
resigned its office. The King then resumed his authority at the head of
the new monarchical constitution, but with power strangely clipped, and
with an Assembly the leading members of which, the Girondins (so called
because their leaders were representatives from the Gironde, a district
near Bordeaux), eager and ambitious men, preferred theoretically a
republic, and believed that their power would be best secured by
plunging France into a war. It is not in fact true to assert, as is
commonly done, that it was the attacks of the combined monarchs of
Europe which drove France to war. Much sympathy was no doubt felt for
the disasters of the royal family, and the representations of the
emigrant nobles and princes had met with some success in Russia and
Sweden. But both those countries were far off. The more immediate
antagonists of France--Austria and Prussia--were prevented by their
domestic jealousies, their fear of Russia, and their relations with
Poland, from at first dreaming of an open assault upon France. It was
for their own ends that the Girondins stirred up the war spirit in
France, and it could best be fostered by exciting the popular feelings
by suggestions of interference on the part of foreign kings with the
new-born liberty of the country, and by hinting that the King himself
was a party to this conspiracy. It was thus, taking advantage of the
sympathy which foreign courts no doubt expressed for the King, that the
Girondins demanded, in an overbearing tone, immediate and satisfactory
replies to their diplomatic questions, and failing these, declared war
upon Austria in the month of April 1792. Their declaration of war was
speedily followed by the reality of that union between Austria and
Prussia which they had falsely urged as an excuse for it. But the
Girondins had overreached themselves: by exciting the popular feeling
against the King they had played directly into the hands of the
Jacobins; and when the King, in June 1792, discarded his Girondin
ministry and attempted to rule with something like independence, it was
only with the aid of the Jacobins that they ultimately returned to
power. For it was by this extreme party, still further excited by the
injudicious and threatening manifesto which the Duke of Brunswick had
issued on the 25th of May, and by the ill success of the opening of the
war, that the great insurrection of the 10th of August was carried out.
The King was suspended from his functions, the Tuileries were taken,
and though the Gironde was nominally restored, the power of the State
was really in the hands of the Jacobins and the revolutionary Commune.
The Legislative Assembly lingered but a few weeks longer, to give place
in September to a National Democratic Convention. The brief space
between the 10th of August and the 21st of September was filled by the
terrible consequences of the unbridled triumph of the people. The
royalist prisoners were murdered in the prisons, the revolutionary
Commune established in Paris, and when the Convention met, in the midst
of fear at home and fear of the advancing Prussians abroad, its first
step was of necessity the declaration of the Republic and the
dethronement of the King.
[Sidenote: Revolutionary character of the war.]
[Sidenote: Edict of Fraternity. Nov. 19, 1792.]