The Eve of the French Revolution | Page 3

simple laws, obvious and uniform. These natural
laws they did not make any great effort to discover; they rather took
them for granted; and while they disagreed in their statement of
principles, they still believed their principles to be axiomatic. They
therefore undertook to demolish simultaneously all established things
which to their minds did not rest on absolute logical right. They bent
themselves to their task with ardent faith and hope.
The larger number of people, who had been living quietly in the
existing order, were amused and interested. The attacks of the
Philosophers seemed to them just in many cases, the reasoning
conclusive. But in their hearts they could not believe in the reality and
importance of the assault. Some of those most interested in keeping the
world as it was, honestly or frivolously joined in the cry for reform and
for destruction.
At last an attempt was made to put the new theories into practice. The
social edifice, slowly constructed through centuries, to meet the various
needs of different generations, began to tumble about the astonished
ears of its occupants. Then all who recognized that they had something
at stake in civilization as it existed were startled and alarmed. Believers
in the old religion, in old forms of government, in old manners and
morals, men in fear for their heads and men in fear for their estates,
were driven together. Absolutism and aristocracy, although entirely

opposed to each other in principle, were forced into an unnatural
alliance. From that day to this, the history of the world has been largely
made up of the contests of the supporters of the new ideas, resting on
natural law and on logic, with those of the older forms of thought and
customs of life, having their sanctions in experience. It was in France
that the long struggle began and took its form. It is therefore interesting
to consider the government of that country, and its material and moral
condition, at the time when the new ideas first became prominent and
forced their way toward fulfillment.
It is seldom in the time of the generation in which they are propounded
that new theories of life and its relations bear their full fruit. Only those
doctrines which a man learns in his early youth seem to him so
completely certain as to deserve to be pushed nearly to their last
conclusions. The Frenchman of the reign of Louis XV. listened eagerly
to Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Their descendants, in the time
of his grandson, first attempted to apply the ideas of those teachers.
While I shall endeavor in this book to deal with social and political
conditions existing in the reign of Louis XVI., I shall be obliged to turn
to that of his predecessor for the origin of French thoughts which acted
only in the last quarter of the century.

CHAPTER I.
THE KING AND THE ADMINISTRATION.
When Louis XVI. came to the throne in the year 1774, he inherited a
power nearly absolute in theory over all the temporal affairs of his
kingdom. In certain parts of the country the old assemblies or
Provincial Estates still met at fixed times, but their functions were very
closely limited. The Parliaments, or high courts of justice, which had
claimed the right to impose some check on legislation, had been
browbeaten by Louis XIV., and the principal one, that of Paris, had
been dissolved by his successor. The young king appeared, therefore, to
be left face to face with a nation over which he was to exercise direct
and despotic power. It was a recognized maxim that the royal was law.
[Footnote: Si veut le roi, si veut la loi.] Moreover, for more than two
centuries, the tendency of continental governments had been toward

absolutism. Among the great desires of men in those ages had been
organization and strong government. A despotism was considered more
favorable to these things than an aristocracy. Democracy existed as yet
only in the dreams of philosophers, the history of antiquity, and the
example of a few inconsiderable countries, like the Swiss cantons. It
was soon to be brought into greater prominence by the American
Revolution. As yet, however, the French nation looked hopefully to the
king for government, and for such measures of reform as were deemed
necessary. A king of France who had reigned justly and strongly would
have received the moral support of the most respectable part of his
subjects. These longed for a fair distribution of public burdens and for
freedom from unnecessary restraint, rather than for a share in the
government. The admiration for the English constitution, which was
commonly expressed, was as yet rather theoretic than practical, and
was not of a nature to detract from the loyalty undoubtedly felt for the
French crown.