TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FETE OF THE REVOLUTION. THE Great Powers of Europe have, it is said, decided not to swell the pomp of the French Fete of the Revolution by sending their representatives to attend it. They will not, of course, decline to send them, unless com- pelled to do so, because that would be to pass a needless and discourteous opinion upon the internal proceedings of an independent State ; but the Ambassadors will be all away on the 5th inst., when M. Carnot proceeds in state to Versailles, to preside over the centenary cere- monial. One Ambassador will be on leave, another will not arrive in time, a third will be indisposed, a fourth will just then be summoned out of Paris on peremptory business, and our own Minister will find the 5th the only time when he can conveniently take a holiday. Paris is a little annoyed, though she finds satisfaction in declaring that Ambassadors would be out of place in such a function, which does not suggest, as they do, the separa- tion of peoples ; and everywhere in Europe there is a party which complains that the Monarchies are in the wrong. Lord Salisbury is, for instance, accused here by many Radicals of displaying pettiness and spite, in ignoring a celebration which nevertheless he cannot deprive of any of its grandeur. We think, on the whole, it can be shown that the Monarchies are in the right. Suppose it happened, as it might easily have happened, that we celebrated annually the festival of the Stuart Restoration, should we be surprised if the representative of the French Republic, which dreads nothing so much as a Restoration, should find himself obliged on that particular day to seek instructions in Paris ? We should think that a courteous evasion of an impossible situation, and should esteem him on his return all the more for his suave adroitness in not sanctioning and not condemning a scene intended to cele- brate the funeral of the principle by which his own Government lives. Monarchies have just as much right as Republics to be consistent. The theory of all Monarchies, even our own, is that they have a moral right to be re- spected, that revolutions to overthrow them are necessarily bad, and that even if they condone or accept their results, they would, in showing them special honour, implicitly question their own best reasons for existence. The Monarchies of Europe, moreover, cannot forget that the French Revolution was not only an internal movement, but that its leaders declared war on all thrones, that they brought unnumbered miseries on all neighbouring States, and that the movement they made so aggressive has not ended yet. To ask of the Kings that they should honour such an assailant, is to ask of them an exhibition not of friendliness, but of weakness,—a declaration that in politics, principles, however fundamental, are of no importance. The Pope may pardon Luther, or even, in his private capacity, esteem him an indiscreet reformer ; but he could hardly be expected to send a Nuncio to assist in paying honour to his statue. It is alleged, of course, that the day of the Fete marks the anniversary not of the Revolution, but of the overthrow of despotic power ; but that is a quibble which in France is raised only by ultra-Legitimists. The Repub- licans are too logical, and know too well what they mean by the Revolution. It is not of the momentary reign of Louis X VI. as constitutional Sovereign that they are proud, but of the movement which sent him to the guillo- tine, and his dynasty into exile, and which even now pro- tests more warmly against moderated monarchy than against any dictatorship, however militant or military in its tone. It is not because M. Carnot's grandfather was a constitutionalist, but because he was a Jacobin, that his grandson will open the Fete as President of the French Republic ; and the Monarchies have surely some right to decline to swell his train.
A great many confident opinions are expressed every day upon the net result of the French Revolution, but they are seldom proofs of the wisdom or the insight of those who express them. The series of events so described is not only too large for the grasp of the historian, but is coraplicate4 by too ranch of the great "Might Have Been." It is probable that most men of our day under-estimate the miseries caused by the (olden, regime in Central and Southern Europe, and that the release of the populations of France, Italy, and Western Germany not only from their petty tPa4Itir bk4 from tho f.TiOthAl eccoRonlic and swita
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ditions which were bound up with those tyrannies, was a full compensation for the less lasting miseries which the Revolution inflicted upon the European world. The death of privilege may have been worth all that its funeral cost. But it is foolish and arrogant to affirm that the Monarchies have nothing to say for their own aide, or to deny that the historians who believe that the Revolution was about as beneficial as an earthquake, have plenty of evidence to produce. The Revolution undoubtedly lifted from Western Europe, and in a degree from the whole world, the heavy burden of privilege which had become in many countries intolerable both to the toilers who were taxed by it, and the thinkers who were fettered and insulted by it ; but then, on the other hand, it broke the charm of authority, and compelled all Governments, Republican as well as Royal, to maintain order by physical force. Obedience through deference has nearly disappeared, and as there must be obedience, has been replaced over a larger area than superficial observers imagine, by obedience through fear. There is no discipline so stern as the discipline of a democratic army, because there is no army in which stern discipline is so indispensable. No estate was ever governed under the old ideas as a factory is governed,—that is, by a sort of martial law enforced by pecuniary penalties. The Revolution broke down caste, which was no doubt a. burden ; but also it broke into fragments the hierarchical chain which once bound society together, and which was in many ways a support. It pulverised the great boulders which interfered with cultivation, but it left the community sand. The Church of France, with its degraded upper clergy, its absurd revenues, and its neglect of duty, may have been as great a curse to the people as its adversaries contended ; but the Revolution, in declaring itself atheistic, inflicted a terrible wound on the consciences of Western mankind, and left them for generations perceptibly weaker guides. The Goddess of Reason is enthroned still, and there is small help in that Astarte. It was, however, by destroying confidence between rulers and ruled that the Revolution did most to destroy the value of the undoubted blessings it brought with it in its train. From the days of the Terror, all Governments, and all who possess property, have secretly dreaded the body of the people, have regarded them as possessed of a force ultimately irresistible, but often liable to be guided by directly insane impulses. If they trust the motives of the populace, they do not trust their judgment. So universal is this feeling of suspicion, that it is one main prop of the conscription, the special and exhausting burden of the modern world, the new substitute for the old corree, and that at this moment Paris, the capital of a Republic under universal suffrage, is more directly held down by military force than Vienna, the capital of a military Monarchy. Armies, philosophers say, are waste, and the Army of Republican France is triple the Army of Louis XIV. The special product of the Revo- lution was Jacobinism, and the dread of Jacobinism is the first cause of the suspicion with which every great popular demand is now regarded, and especially every popular demand for localised power, and therefore of the long delay, the exasperating friction which precedes the concession of any great reform. Who would have resisted the English Reform Bill, but for the French Revolution ? The earth- quake character which the Revolution assumed secured certain results with extraordinary rapidity—for instance, it revolutionised tenure, as it were, in a night—but it is at least arguable whether that character has not prevented slower results more beneficial in their effect. Rulers have no interest in preventing either the growth of prosperity or its wide diffusion ; indeed, their interest is to diffuse it, and could they have worked throughout the century in unfearing unity with the masses, and carrying with them the depositaries of capital, Western Europe might be a happier place to live in than it is now. For the Monarchies have at least this much to say for their side which Radicals will not deny, that the Revolution, with all its terrific expenditure of energy, human life, and class happiness, has not finally solved any problem, either social or political. It is Paris in which its centenary is to be celebrated ; and of all cities of earth, Paris is the one in which the social problem is least regarded as settled, in which men desire most and dread most another social cataclysm. And it is Paris, the home and centre of the Revolution, which at this moment most fiercely debates, and debates, too, with menace of bloodshed in its eyes, whether government by representatives, or by a monarch, or by a dictator, is best for French mankind ; and indicates by its votes that the balance of opinion inclines heavily to the personal rule which the Revolution was, among other things, supposed to have overthrown. The Foreign Offices of Europe may be influenced in their disfavour for the Fête of the Revolution by mixed motives, one of them certainly being the caste pride of dynasties ; but at least they are reasonable when they say that such a Fete is as yet a little premature. Boulanger is not so great an im provement on the Bourbon, or the Socialists of Paris on the men who accepted in a delirium of thankfulness the Constitution of 1790.
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