A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

THE REVOLUTIONARY DOGMA.

A CENTURY has passed away since the Duke of Liancourt brought to Louis XVI. the tidings of the capture of the Bastille by the Parisian mob. "It is a revolt!" exclaimed the ill-fated monarch. "Sire," replied the Duke, "it is a Revolution." A Revolution indeed: or, rather, the Revolution of these latter days: the greatest which the world has experienced for well-nigh two thousand years, and which therefore we are accustomed to speak of, not inappropriately, without descriptive date or adjective. The movement which thus received its baptism of blood and fire has since been manifesting itself to the world. The subsequent history

history of its endeavour

of France is essentially the "to mix itself with life." This is the movement which, first distinctly formulated in 1789, and

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speedily realised as a principle of action in 1791, had free course until, on the 5th of October, 1795, Napoleon opposed to it those iron floodgates whereby it was, more or less effectually, held in check for five-and-thirty years. This is the movement which, running subterraneously, but, in Royer Collard's picturesque phrase, "with full stream," swept away in 1830 the throne of Charles X. This is the movement which in 1848 subverted the monarchy of July, and which, thwarted for eighteen years by · the Second Empire, and for five years more by the Marshalate, has since borne France victoriously before it. It is this movement-French, indeed, in its origin, but œcumenical in its influence— which has shaken to the foundation the political order throughout continental Europe, and which aspires everywhere to re-make human society in its own image and likeness. The French Revolution of 1789 opens a new chapter in the world's history. How are we to judge of it by the experience of the century with which that chapter begins?

It is a question of great pith and moment. To read aright the signs of the times is the problem with which each successive generation is confronted; the ever-renewed Sphinx's riddle, not to guess which is to die. To know the phenomena of history profiteth little. Rassemblons les faits pour avoir des ideés," says Buffon. The dictum applies as much to the social as to the physical order. Facts! But ideas, rights-abstractions if

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you will—are facts too; and most potent facts; nay, strictly, the only real facts; the substance of those shadows which flit across the world's stage. If we would obtain that political instruction which Thucydides accounted the true end of historical research, we must discern ideas in their roots and relations and results. So only can we "from the apparent what infer the why." It must, indeed, be admitted that we do not know, that we can but dimly conjecture, the secret reasons, the obscure instincts, the confused motives, whereby particular acts of any man were determined. What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him? And even a man's own knowledge of his own mental evolution is usually vague and imperfect. The Unconscious here counts for a hol! great deal. Still, by attentive study of a man's deeds and words, we may infer, not unsoundly,, concerning his affections, his affinities, his aspirations. en Of a nation of men this is also true, nay, far truer, because the manifestations of national character are much more conspicuous and more instinctive-that is, less reasoned—than are the manifestations of individual character. It is pre-eminently true of the French Revolution, which was avowedly, in the words of Burke, "a revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma, bearing," as he justly adds, "a great resemblance to those changes which have been wrought on purely religious grounds, in which a spirit of proselytism bears an essential part."

Human society reposes upon ideas. Aristotle pointed out, two thousand years ago, that it is not in man's choice whether he will philosophise or not; philosophise he must. He thinks; he believes; and therefore he acts. Without some faith-even if it be but in "the inalienable nature of purchased beef"-he could not act at all. What then is the idea, the faith, the dogma, underlying the Revolution?

Before answering that question, let us look a little at the public order which the Revolution found and destroyed. Corrupt and outworn as it was, it rested upon certain definite principles. It had lived upon them for fourteen hundred years, and owed to them such vitality as it still possessed. And at the very root of them lay this conviction : that man, naturally of imperfect inclinations to good and of strong propensities to evil, is encompassed by duties, divinely prescribed, and resting upon the most august and momentous sanctions. Take that venerable document which so well sums up the fundamental religious and ethical conceptions, unquestioningly received throughout Christendom, while Christendom was, the Catechism or Instruction prescribed by. the Established Church of this country "to be learned of every person before he be brought to be confirmed by the Bishop." Duty is the keynote of it. It is nothing

but an exposition of what the neophyte is "bound to believe and to do." It takes the child in the place in which it finds him; a Christian, and so under religious obligations; a human being, and so under obligations to his fellows of the race of man; a member of a family, and so under obligations to its head; a member of a body politic, and so under obligations to those set in public authority; a member of a social order, and so bound by the obligations attaching to his place in the same. Here is the fundamental doctrine of the old world order which the Revolution found in its decadence and decrepitude: the doctrine of duty pervading the whole of man's existence, dominating every human being, from the king to the peasant. Of course ethical ideas existed in Europe long before Christianity subdued it. But Christianity wrought a momentous change in them. Pagan antiquity conceived of the citizen as appertaining wholly to the State. But the State itself had been founded upon a religion and constituted as a church; the religion which had brought forth the State and the State which maintained (entretenait) the religion, mutually upheld one another, and constituted but one homogeneous whole; and these two powers, thus united, blended, formed one almost superhuman power, to which body and soul were alike subject." * Hence the law of

La Cité Antique, par Fustel de Coulanges, 1. iii. c. 17. I shall have to glance again at this subject in the next chapter.