History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 | Page 3

crimes and follies of its authors; it has
atoned to posterity for all the sorrow that it caused, for all the wrong
that was done in its name. If it killed laughter, it also dried many tears.
By it privilege was slain in France, tyranny rendered more improbable,
almost impossible. The canker of a debased feudalism was swept away.
Men were made equal before the law. Those barriers by which the flow
of economic life in France was checked were broken down. All careers
were thrown open to talent. The right of the producer to a voice in the
distribution of the product was recognised. Above all, a new gospel of
political liberty was expounded. The world, and the princes of the
world, learned that peoples do not exist for the pleasure of some despot
and the profit of his cringing satellites. In the order of nature, nothing
can be born save through suffering; in the order of politics, this is no
less true. From the sorrow of brief months has grown the joy of long
years; the Revolution slew that it might also make alive.
Herein, perhaps, may be found the secret of its complexity, of its
seeming contradictions. The authors of the Revolution pursued an ideal,
an ideal expressed in three words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. That
they might win their quest, they had both to destroy and to construct.
They had to sweep away the past, and from the resultant chaos to
construct a new order. Alike in destruction and construction, they
committed errors; they fell far below their high ideals. The altruistic
enthusiasts of the National Assembly gave place to the practical
politicians of the Convention, the diplomatists of the Directory, the
generals of the Consulate. The Empire was far from realising that
bright vision of a regenerate nation which had dazzled the eyes of
Frenchmen in the first hours of the States-General. Liberty was
sacrificed to efficiency; equality to man's love for titles of honour;
fraternity to desire of glory. So it has been with all human effort. Man
is imperfect, and his imperfection mars his fairest achievements.
Whatever great movement may be considered, its ultimate attainment
has fallen far short of its initial promise. The authors of the Revolution
were but men; they were no more able than their fellows to discover
and to hold fast to the true way of happiness. They wavered between
the two extremes of despotism and anarchy; they declined from the

path of grace. And their task remained unfulfilled. Many of their
dreams were far from attaining realisation; they inaugurated no era of
perfect bliss; they produced no Utopia. But their labour was not in vain.
Despite its disappointments, despite all its crimes and blunders, the
French Revolution was a great, a wonderful event. It did contribute to
the uplifting of humanity, and the world is the better for its occurrence.
That he might indicate this truth, that he might do something to
counteract the distortion of the past, Mignet wrote his _Histoire de la
Révolution Française_. At the moment when he came from Aix to Paris,
the tide of reaction was rising steadily in France. Decazes had fallen;
Louis XVIII. was surrendering to the ultra-royalist cabal. Aided by
such fortuitous events as the murder of the Duc de Berri, and supported
by an artificial majority in the Chamber, Villèle was endeavouring to
bring back the ancien régime. Compensation for the émigrés was
already mooted; ecclesiastical control of education suggested. Direct
criticism of the ministry was rendered difficult, and even dangerous, by
the censorship of the press. Above all, the champions of reaction relied
upon a certain misrepresentation of the recent history of their country.
The memory of the Terror was still vivid; it was sedulously kept alive.
The people were encouraged to dread revolutionary violence, to forget
the abuses by which that violence had been evoked and which it had
swept away. To all complaints of executive tyranny, to all demands for
greater political liberty, the reactionaries made one answer. They
declared that through willingness to hear such complaints Louis XVI.
had lost his throne and life; that through the granting of such demands,
the way had been prepared for the bloody despotism of Robespierre.
And they pointed the apparent moral, that concessions to superficially
mild and legitimate requests would speedily reanimate the forces of
anarchy. They insisted that by strong government and by the sternest
repression of the disaffected alone could France be protected from a
renewal of that nightmare of horror, at the thought of which she still
shuddered. And hence those who would prevent the further progress of
reaction had first of all to induce their fellow-countrymen to realise that
the Revolution was no mere orgy of murder. They had to deliver liberty
from those calumnies by