History of the Girondists, Volume I | Page 9

the reign of the people.
A Gospel of social rights.
A Gospel of duties, a charter of humanity.
France declared itself the apostle of this creed. In this war of ideas
France had allies every where, and even on thrones themselves.
VIII.
There are epochs in the history of the human race, when the decayed
branches fall from the tree of humanity; and when institutions grown
old and exhausted, sink and leave space for fresh institutions full of sap,
which renew the youth and recast the ideas of a people. Antiquity is
replete with this transformation, of which we only catch a glimpse in
the relics of history. Each decadence of effete ideas carries with it an
old world, and gives its name to a new order of civilisation. The East.
China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, have seen these ruins and these renewals.
The West experienced them when the Druidical theocracy gave way to
the gods and government of the Romans. Byzantium, Rome, and the
Empire effected them rapidly, and as it were instinctively by
themselves when, wearied with, and blushing at, polytheism, they rose
at the voice of Constantine against their gods, and swept away, like an
angry tempest, those temples, those ideas and forms of worship, to
which the people still clung, but which the superior portion of human
thought had already abandoned. The Civilisation of Constantine and
Charlemagne grew old in its turn, and the beliefs which for eighteen

centuries had supported altars and thrones, menaced the religious world,
as well as the political world, with a catastrophe which rarely leaves
power standing when faith is staggered. Monarchical Europe was the
handiwork of catholicism; politics were fashioned after the image of
the Church; authority was founded on a mystery. Rights came to it
from on high, and power, like faith, was reputed divine. The obedience
of the people was consecrated to it, and from that very reason inquiry
was a blasphemy, and servitude a virtue. The spirit of philosophy,
which had silently revolted against this for three centuries, as a doctrine
which the scandals, tyrannies, and crimes of the two powers belied
daily, refused any longer to recognise a divine title in those authorities
which deny reason and subjugate a people. So long as catholicism had
been the sole legal doctrine in Europe, these murmuring revolts of mind
had not overset empires. They had been punished by the hands of rulers.
Dungeons, punishments, inquisitions, fire, and faggot, had intimidated
reason, and preserved erect the two-fold dogma on which the two
governments reposed.
But printing, that unceasing outpouring of the human mind, was to the
people a second revelation. Employed at first exclusively for the
Church, for the propagation of ruling ideas, it had begun to sap them.
The dogmata of temporal power, and spiritual power, incessantly
assailed by these floods of light, could not be long without being
shaken, first in the human mind and afterwards in things, to the very
foundations. Guttemberg; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the
New World. In creating the communication of ideas, he had assured the
independence of reason. Every letter of this alphabet which left his
fingers, contained in it, more power than the armies of kings, and the
thunders of pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language.
These two powers were the mistresses of man, as they were hereafter of
mankind. The intellectual world was born of a material invention, and
it had grown rapidly. The reformed religion was one of its early
offspring.
The empire of catholic Christianity had undergone extensive
dismemberments. Switzerland, a part of Germany, Holland, England,
whole provinces of France, had been drawn away from the centre of

religious authority, and passed over to the doctrine of free examination.
Divine authority attacked and contested in catholicism, the authority of
the throne remained at the mercy of the people. Philosophy, more
potent than sedition, approached it more and more near, with less
respect, less fear. History had actually written of the weaknesses and
crimes of kings. Public writers had dared to comment upon it, and the
people to draw conclusions. Social institutions had been weighed by
their real value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had
spoken to sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy
boldness of Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit,
in the presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the
ancient synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV.
with some of those austere warnings which console persons for their
abasement. Fénélon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law,
had written his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the
palace of the king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The
political philosophy of Christianity, that