CHAPTER XIX

THE EIGHTEENTH A TRANSITION CENTURY

THE Readings of this chapter deal with the great transition move ments which characterized the eighteenth century and made of it a transition century. They cover the political and religious conditions obtaining at the time; the attack on the ancient privileges of both Church and State; the liberalizing movements of the century; the demands for reform in France; the rise of democratic government in England and America; and the sweeping away of the old abuses in France. Only a few of the large number of possible Readings illustrative of eighteenth-century conditions are reproduced in this chapter.

The first (247) gives an interesting picture of the results of ecclesiastical despotism on a nation fast attaining a national consciousness, and contrasts well the outcome of larger religious freedom in England with the lack of it in France. The eighteenth century became one of open rebellion in France. In England reforms were granted, and the evolution in consequence was slower but more peaceful.

The outstanding intellectual genius of the eighteenth century was Voltaire. He attacked privilege in every direction, but particularly the privileges and abuses of the greatest and most powerful institution of his day -the Church. He contributed many articles to the famous Encyclopédie edited by Diderot, and one of these, setting forth what he conceived to be the proper relations between Church and State, is here (248) reproduced.

The two extracts from the Social Contract of Rousseau (249 a-b) are given to show the nature of the warfare he declared on organized society, and also the fervid character of his reasoning. This book depicted so well the abuses of his age that it became "the Bible of the French Revolutionists."

The writings of Buckle represent extended research, and the selection reproduced (250) from his great history gives an interesting description of the eighteenth-century intellectual progress of the English people.

The Bill of Rights reproduced from the 1776 Pennsylvania

Constitution (251) is one of the shorter of these early documents, but compares fairly well with similar provisions incorporated into present-day constitutions. An interesting comparison may be made between this, the American Declaration of Independence of the same year, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791 (253).

The Cahier reproduced in part (252) represents one of the more conservative of these famous documents, and is interesting for the conception of education which it gives.

The final selection (253) reproduces the famous French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," a very influential document clearly modeled after Jefferson's famous Declaration.

247. Ecclesiastical Tyranny in France

(Dabney, R. H., Causes of the French Revolution, pp. 190-93. New York, 1888. By permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.)

The following extract from a very interesting volume describes well conditions existing during the eighteenth century in France, and contrasts the situation there and the results with the larger religious freedom of England.

.. France had been brought by Louis XIV to the brink of ruin. Ecclesiastical tyranny had been exercised in England, it is true, as well as in France, and in every other country. But nothing had taken place in England in the seventeenth century which could at all bear comparison, for instance, with the frightful persecution of the Huguenots by Louis XIV. Of pauperism and misery among the lower classes there was also no lack in England. But the rich were taxed to support the paupers of their parish; they lived among them; and performed duties in return for their power. Bad as was the condition of the English masses, it could bear no comparison whatever with the abject misery of the French. The numerous bread-riots which broke out in various parts of France all during the eighteenth century were ominous signs of the inflammable state of the lower classes. They themselves were too grossly ignorant to organize a revolution; but when the educated and thinking men of the country had been driven by ecclesiastical and governmental tyranny into determined hostility to the existing social system, the Old Régime was doomed. For they found the downtrodden masses eager to be led against their oppressors. In England the condition of the lowest class was far from perfect; but the great body of the middle class was contented enough. The intellectual tyranny of the Established Church was sufficient, in a rationalistic age, to create among thinking men that anti-clerical movement which showed itself in

the formation of new sects, and in a literature hostile to the Christian religion. But it was not sufficient to drive the great body of the people into radical opposition.

In France, however, the abuses in the Church were at that time so great as to arouse the opposition of even the conservative c.asses. Hating the bishops and their privileges, men who, under free institutions, would probably have been on the side of religious conservatism, were eager to read the revolutionary literature that was directed, first, against the priests, and then against Christianity itself. Even the ignorant peasants, the most conservative class in religion, as in all things, were predisposed to hostility to the Church. For although their mental stage of development was far more likely to incline them to fetichism than to philosophic deism or atheism, they nevertheless hated at least the upper clergy on account of the tithes and other ecclesiastical taxes.

Ecclesiastical tyranny in an age of rationalism produced the writings of Bolingbroke and Voltaire, and the eager reception of these writings by the French people was a symptom of the fatal rottenness of the French church. The literature of any age is, indeed, in the first instance, a symptom and a result of the intellectual tendencies of the age, and only secondarily a cause of them, in that it may accelerate and strengthen the movement by which it is itself produced. Probably no writer has ever exercised so great an influence upon his own age as Voltaire did upon his. But even when this has been said, it must be remembered that Voltaire was, after all, but a product of the intellectual tendencies of his day; and the secret of his prodigious success was that he gave utterance, in a style of wonderful clearness and classic simplicity, to the thoughts which, though less distinctly, were already in the minds of his readers. The old edifice of French society had become rotten from top to bottom, and therefore the strokes that were dealt it by the writers of the eighteenth century were sufficient to overturn it. But in England religious radicalism was confined to the intellectual classes; the broad base of society standing firm, because the condition of the middle and lower classes was more favorable than in France.

In France, too, there was political as well as ecclesiastical tyranny; and about the middle of the century the French writers began to attack the State as well as the Church. In England, on the contrary, whatever occasional abuses there may have been, there was more political freedom than in any other country at that time. Since the expulsion of James II, in 1688, the country had ceased to be a monarchy except in name, and had become an aristocratic republic. Representative government in Parliament, local administration of justice in the counties, and other free institutions were safety-valves by which the steam of revolutionary ideas could gradually escape. In France, on the contrary, literature was the only such valve; and literature was ruthlessly

persecuted. What wonder, then, that in 1789 the boiler burst, and the long pent-up steam rushed forth with terrific force?

248. Voitaire on the Relations of Church and State

(Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif; art. Loi; trans. by Robinson, in his Readings in European History, vol. II, p. 380. Ginn & Co., Boston. Reproduced by permission)

Under the title Law, in a dictionary published anonymously in 1764, Voltaire outlined what he conceived to be proper relationships, and indicated the reforms which ought to be made.

No law made by the Church should ever have the least force unless expressly sanctioned by the government. It was owing to this tion that Athens and Rome escaped all religious quarrels.

Such religious quarrels are the trait of

barbarous nations or such as have become barbarians.

The civil magistrate alone may permit or prohibit labor on religious festivals, since it is not the function of the priest to forbid men to cultivate their fields.

Everything relating to marriage should depend entirely upon the civil magistrate. The priests should confine themselves to the august function of blessing the union.

Lending money at interest should be regulated entirely by the civil law, since trade is governed by civil law.

All ecclesiastics should be subject in every case to the government, since they are subjects of the state.

precau

Never should the ridiculous and shameful custom be maintained of paying to a foreign priest the first year's revenue of land given to a priest by his fellow-citizens.

No priest can deprive a citizen of the least of his rights on the ground that the citizen is a sinner, since the priest - himself a sinner - should pray for other sinners, not judge them.

Officials, laborers, and priests should all alike pay the taxes of the state, since they all alike belong to the state.

There should be but one standard of weights and measures and one system of law.

Let the punishment of criminals be useful. A man when hanged is good for nothing: a man condemned to hard labor continues to serve his country and furnish a living lesson.

Every law should be clear, uniform, and precise. To interpret law is almost always to corrupt it.

Nothing should be regarded as infamous except vice.

The taxes should never be otherwise than proportional to the resources of him who pays.

249. The Social Contract of Rousseau

(Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Contrat social. Paris, 1762)

Probably no single book did more to undermine the authority of the French Government and make the French Revolution possible than did the Social Contract of Rousseau, published in 1762. It has been said that it became the Bible of the French Revolutionists. In it Rousseau declared open warfare upon the Government of his day, though much that he described were but the phantoms of his own brain. Burning with a desire to overthrow society and carry men back to his imaginary state of "Nature," he conjured up in his imagination much of what he wrote. Still, conditions in France in his day were so bad that an element of truth ran through it all and gave the book its great popularity. The following extracts, the first dealing with political inequality and the second with ecclesiastical intolerance, are illustrative of the character of the volume.

(a) Political Inequality

Are not all the advantages of society for the benefit of the powerful and the rich? Are not all lucrative employments filled by them alone? And is not public authority entirely in their favor? When one of them robs his creditors or commits other rascalities, is he not sure of impunity? Are not the clubbings that he administers, the acts of violence that he commits, the murders and assassinations of which he is guilty, mere matters that are hushed up, and after six months no longer mentioned? But let this same man be robbed, and the entire police force is immediately on the alert; and woe to the innocent man whom he chances to suspect. - A rich man has to pass a dangerous place? See how many escorts he has. one flies to his assistance. word, and silence reigns.

The axle of his carriage breaks? Every -There is a noise at his door? He speaks a The crowd incommodes him? He makes a