laughing and dancing. It was a fair, not a burial. A Revolution was evidently approaching. The eighteenth century began under auspices like these. Signs followed each other in quick succession. The will of Louis XIV. was torn to pieces by an assembly of magistrates; for by destroying this will, the Parliament gained the restoration of the right of remonstrance. The dissolute character of the Regent, Philippe of Orleans, and of Louis XV. quickened the approach of the catastrophe. M. Blanc, adverting to the popularity of the Regent, says, "The Bourgeoisie and the House of Orleans went always hand in hand, and will fall together before the people." That remark has been prophetic. The Scotch financier Law and his wild schemes of superseding coin by paper, increased the distress of the People, and their contempt of their government. Nevertheless, we find that M. Blane speaks very highly of Law, and he details his system with an alarming degree of affectionate minuteness. We have forsworn criticism, but we cannot but confess, that some parts of this work have actually frightened us. Our temper is not affectionate enough to aspire to a general Fraternisation. We do not like the word, and we do not like the thing. This history of the Revolution is made up with it-it is its purpose, its moral. In turning over its leaves, we are haunted with the idea of Fraternity: like the nightmare in Manfred Though you see it not pass by, which is uncomfortable. But when we read that the system of Law was good and admirable, and that nothing could be blamed in it, except its not going far enough; and when we consider that the writer of these opinions is a member of the Board of Trade in France, we feel a secret dread which we cannot get rid of. "The principle of individualism," says the author, "is suspicion and its money, cash. The principle of association is confidence, credit, and its money is paper. Law felt this. The system of his National Bank was to make the State the rich man's cashier and the poor man's banker." Law's system rose, it grew to admirable proportions. If Commerce be a fountain of wealth in a country when exercised by isolated individuals, who mutually harm and ruin one another -what would it be in a kingdom which were to trade as a body, without, nevertheless, prohibiting trade to individuals? And if a merchant's speculations are in proportion to the funds which he commands, what can we not expect from a vast Association which, mixed up with the State, using its credit, propped by a National Bank, would concentrate in one focus the whole of the capital, talent, and strength of the country, and which, armed for gigantic enterprises, for vast designs, would go forth to conquer the happiness of the human kind, under the standard, and with the treasures and applause of a great nation? It would be useless to waste our space with arguments for or against the financial system of Law. What we wish to point out is, M. Blanc's opinions on political economy, running in the same rut. Law's system is based on general solidarity, and contains the germs of modern Socialism. That is the secret of M. Blanc's admiration, which extends even to the wild scheme of doing away with the necessity of loans and taxes, and abolishing the national debt at the same time, a scheme which fathered the assignats of the first French Republic. Never indeed did any man succeed in inspiring people with such a frenzy of confidence. The South Sea Bubble-the Railway Mania in our own days-are nothing to it. Bullion was a mere drug in the market. To offer a man gold was considered an imposition and resented as an insult. Paper-Law's paper-carried everything before it. Men were found fighting in the streets. They were buyers and sellers of shares. The sellers insisted on being paid in paper, while the buyers had the effrontery to offer mere gold. Then came the bursting of the Bubble, with all the miseries attending such a catastrophe, and all because Law did not go far enough. His speculation came down with a dreadful crash, because he carried it not to the extent M. Blanc would have done. He forgets the application of his own beautiful and true words, when speaking of Montaigne-"We were always deceived, and yet we are greedy of deception. Our last faith is the faith: it is infallible; and till we shelve it with our former errors, we are eager to sacrifice everything to it, honour and life and happiness ;"—and, let us add in the present instance, impartiality in history. The author seeks and finds, in the time immediately preceding the Revolution, two ideas of distinct character and opposed to each other. The first aims at an association of equals, and emanates from the principle of Fraternity; the second leans on individual right. Morelli, Rousseau, Mably, and, in some respects, Necker, were inspired by the former. The latter was represented by Voltaire, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Diderot, Helvetius, Turgot, in short, by the Encyclopædists. Robespierre was the legitimate offspring of the first idea, and Mirabeau of the second. The splendid picture of that great man is consequently drawn with a bold and determined harshness. Mirabeau, the representative of the Revolution of 1789, can expect no mercy from the advocate of the fraternising Revolution of 1793. We are convinced of Mr. Blanc's sincerity, but sincerity is not always truth. But such as Mirabeau appears to Louis Blanc, such may he stand here: "Dazzling ugliness, a bloated physiognomy, awful and livid, the effrontery of the lip allied to the lightning of the eye-that was Mirabeau. His face bore the stamp of his mind. All the vices and virtues of the tempestuous race of the Riquetti seemed to be jumbled together in him. Full of vehemence and cunning, with the manner, the accent of a tribune, he braved the kings, he dared to rouse a Revolution, to use it for his purposes, to license it, to calumniate it; and, he alone of the men of his century, tried to direct popular indignation against the objects of his own insolent private dislikes. For his revolutionary audacity was but a burst of pride and egotism. He had neither the moral vigour nor the virtues of equality, and his venality was awed by the austerity of Republicanism. Johnson, who liked a good hater, would have been delighted with M. Blanc. But there is such a thing as historical justice which ought not to be put aside. A historian should stand above the rancour of a party quarrel. He ought to eschew the hackneyed trickery of the hustings. It is delightful to turn from the envenomed invectives which M. Blanc flings at Mirabeau, to the calm and dispassionate sketch which the German historian, Dahlmann, gives of the leader of the Republican Revolution.* The financial difficulties of France, the result of unjust taxation and royal prodigality, and the wretched state of the country, are generally assigned as the causes of the Revolution, but Louis Blanc admits them only as secondary causes. They were sparks * Vide pp. 171-188 of Dahlmann's Geschichte der Französischen Revolution bis auf die Gründung der Republik. 2nd ed. 8vo, pp. 474. Leipzig, 1847. London: Williams et Norgate. which lighted the train. It is nevertheless worth our while to enumerate them. The national debt amounted, in 1769, to 8,500,000l. sterling, and in 1787 to 25,200,000l. The nation had at all times been involved; but since the debt of Louis XIV. the debt had gone on steadily increasing. The evil seemed almost irremediable. Law, Turgot, Necker, Calonne, each was in turn called in. Every one of them boasted of a nostrum of some infallible efficacy, but the evil grew worse. Each new plan of paying the national debt was introduced by a loan. The plans failed; but the loans remained, and added to the enormous interest of the debt. Each year brought a new deficit of some millions. The royal exchequer was invariably empty, and the courtiers discontented. They grumbled, the people groaned; for they were miserably poor. The country swarmed with beggars, whom the police arrested. In 1767, no less than 50,000 beggars were arrested in France; and the year after they amounted to the almost incredible number of 1,200,000. The hardships borne by the working classes and the inhabitants of the country (peasants they could scarcely be called) almost exceed belief. Every now and then they were thinned by downright famine, but generally they starved from one generation to another. At one time, when doctors were sent to Montargis, to cure an epidemic disease which ravaged the country, they found, after some fruitless experiments, that the patients died from inanition, and effected a cure by distributing the common necessaries of life. France was indeed in a dreadful state, and one which we, in spite of Irish famines, are hardly able to bring home to our minds. Fancy a traveller of 1848 suddenly removed to the France of 1748. He would see that country cut up in every direction,-traversed,-divided by twelve hundred leagues of internal customs-lines. He would see a war organised on these artificial frontiers, all the passes guarded by fifty thousand men, of whom twenty-three thousand were soldiers, armed to awe and punish a population of reckless smugglers. He would see France composed of many provinces, strangers to one another, differing in laws and morals, locked up by custom-houses, distinguished by privileges or the want of them. There was one division for the Collector of taxes, another for the Fermier-general, another for the lawyer. The keeper of the salt-stores would show him the provinces of "la grande et petite gabelle," the "pays redimés," the free provinces, the "pays de saline," and the "quartbouillon " all fiscal distinctions, for which the English language luckily has no equivalent. Salt alone paid an annual duty of above 1,200,000l.; but the aristocracy and upper clergy had their salt free of duty. The peasant's cattle were not even allowed to come near the sea-shore, lest they might defraud the Exchequer by drinking the salt-water. But there was not only a tax on salt: the people were obliged to purchase a certain quantity, a certain number of pounds of salt being assessed on each head. If a family was too poor to buy their allotment, they fell into the clutches of the tax-gatherer, who sold their goods and imprisoned them. The nobles were not obliged to take the salt. Hence the wretched financial position of France. Those who could pay the taxes were exempt from them, and their whole weight fell upon those who were less able to increase the revenue by their contributions. Among these was the Vingtième, a kind of income-tax of one shilling in the pound. It was first introduced under Louis XIV., with the promise of being abolished in a few years. But instead of this, it was doubled, and the poorer class were likewise the exclusive bearers of this tax. The poverty of the people would not have made any deep impression on thatwhat was then called-society; but its reaction on the Royal treasury was keenly felt, and begot new schemes and new loans, till every man in the kingdom wished for a change. But what change? None knew, and very few cared. The greater part of the aristocracy and gentry sided with the ministers, who, succeeding each other in quick succession, advised a convocation of the States-General, and were dismissed when they pressed the point. Monarchy had already fallen from its high estate: it was but a mockery and a painted tomb. An appeal to the people was therefore a very serious thing. Louis XVI. felt himself unequal to the emergency. He was not fit to reign, and least of all in a time teeming with the wrongs of centuries. And he felt it. When informed of the death of Louis XV., of that death which made him a king, he trembled, and going down upon his knees, with his wife, Marie Antoinette, he cried: “Guide us, oh, God! protect us! for we are too young to reign." He was then in his twentieth year. Louis XVI. was one of those kings whom nature intended for tradesmen. As a locksmith, (his favourite trade), he would have been happy and respectable, —as king he was neither. His wife, Marie Antoinette, was a daughter of Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria. From the mass of contradictory evidence |