TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A LESSON OF HISTORY.
I.—TAE, GENESIS OF REVOLUTION.
(2) There is nothing in the present condition of the country to justify revolution.
(3) It would not prove a remedy, but would vastly aggravate all our social evils.
But though this is without question the position in which we find ourselves to-day, it by no means follows that we shall escape revolution. The unwanted, the unnecessary, the ruinous thing may come all the same. History shows that there have been in previous times nations in almost .exactly our condition in which revolutions instead or reforms have been carried out against the wishes of the people. But it will be asked : "How can this thing be ? How is it possible for revolution to take place against the popular will ? The fact that revolutions have taken place –"nes not, of course, show that revolutions were necessary or wise, but it does show that for the time, at any rate, the people desired them." A complete answer to this plea has been given by recent researches into the origins of the French Revolution, and will, we believe, be given in the same way when the true history of the Revolution in Russia is told. Mrs. Webster, whose pehetrating book on the French Revolution was recently reviewed in these columns (The French Revolution : a Study in Democracy, Constable, 21s. net), shows conclu- sively from her own researches and those of the best and most impartial French historians that the Revolution was not the work of the people, and was not carried out with their consent but against their wishes. How then did it arise ? Mrs. Webster explains very clearly that it arose from three things. First and above all, from a series of con- spiracies, some of them possibly justifiable from the point of view of those who engaged in them, and others of a purely selfish and Machiavellian kind. Next, since conspiracies like other seeds must have ground to grow in, France on the eve of the Revolution was full of social and political unrest caused by a variety of things, but chiefly by the evils which always accompany autocratic rule, and pre-eminently by the deprivation of education in self-government which autocracy involves. The bad political husbandry prevalent in France had injured the soil and made it only too ready to bear a rank crop of weeds. Thirdly, and this is almost as important as the other two causes, there was a decay of governing power in the governing class, a decay again due largely to the fact that the aforesaid class did not believe in itself, and had not courage and self-confidence enough to speak the truth to the people. Thinking that they must be the servants of the people, they became the servants of any one who called out loudly enough that he had a mandate from the people. Mrs. Webster and those whom she follows have not, be it remembered, invented this idea that the French Revolution was due to a series of Conspiracies, popular in naihe but anti-popular in fact. Strangely enough, it was one of the fiercest and most important of the revolutionaries, Saint-Just, who saw and proclaimed the fact. Like so many Frenchmen, Saint-Just had a power of political and social analysis and exposition far beyond his intellectual and moral ability. What is more, and as is so often the case with Frenchmen, the possession of these powers forced him to speak th3 truth when from his own point of view it was extremely inconvenient. Saint-Just says : " La_ revolution populaire etait la surface d'un Volcan de conjurations etrangeres " (" The popular revolution was the surface of a volcano of extraneous conspiracies "). And Mrs. Webster adds : " Consequently the actions of the people seen from the surface only can never be understood."
We must leave our readers to consult Mrs. .Webster's wise and eloquent pages for themselves, and to hrn the history of the five ,conspiracies—conspiracies which had no connexion between themselves but were often indeed mutually destructive. These led up to the final earth- quake of the Terror. According to Mrs. Webster's picturesque analysis, they were : (1) the Siege of the Bastille; (2) the March on Versailles; (3) the two Invasions of the Tuileries ; (4) the Massacres of September ; (5) the Reign of Terror. The first of these conspiracies, the siege of the Bastille, was Orleanist in character, and might almost be described as a Palace plot. The profligate and demoralized Duke of Orleans, the boon companion of Fox and of the Prince of Wales, had of course no true popular sympathies, but was indeed the most unscrupulous of aristocrats and Royalists. He was, however, inflamed by an entourage even more infamous than himself with the idea of overthrowing the King and putting himself in his place. To accomplish this he was to take advantage of the unrest of his times and the excitability of the French people. For carrying out this conspiracy his vast private fortune gave him ample opportunity.
At the same time there was what may be termed a political bourgeois movement for setting up a republic on the lines of " Us instead of you." This tolerably mild (and indeed often sentimental) conspiracy worked at first with the Orleanist conspiracy, if ultimately against it. In both cases the engine employed was Panic. It was used to increase the popular unrest, and so provide an opportunity for revolution. There was also a Socialistic conspiracy of zealots and fanatics, which in many instances was as genuine as it was crazy. Finally there was the conspiracy of black-. guardism, of the debauched, demoralized, and broken men of the old regime who saw vast chances of pillage in the Revolution and of free indulgence of their corrupt and animal instincts. Add to all these influences the genuine desire in many minds for social and political reform on what one may call Voltairean lines. These reformers often persuaded themselves, or were persuaded by designing people, that reform could not take place without revolution.
It is of course a popular belief that none of these conspiracies could have come to fruition if the condition of the people of France had not been so utterly miserable that anything almost was better than the old regime. Mrs. Webster shows conclusively how fallacious is this time- honoured view. The material condition of France was in the years 1787-89 by no means approaching disaster and ruin, as we used to be taught. On the contrary, France was, as things went then, a good deal more flourish- ing than any other part of the Continent. In many ways it compared favourably in material, though of course not in political; conditions with England. In the year of so-called famine there was in reality in France no famine, but only great unrest and a great popular dread of famine upon which the conspirators of all sorts played with the very greatest skill. Ultimately, no doubt, the Revolution converted shortage into the very real famines of the period, of the Convention—famines which in the end reduced the population of France by some two million people. The Orleanist conspirators, by means of paid demagogic agitators, a hireling Press, and unlimited talk about "profiteering" and so forth, rushed the people into the belief that famine was about to come, and that it would be due to the speculations of the Court and nobles, whereas in reality, as far as these operations affected the situation, they were much more due to the corrupt Orleanist speculators of the Palais Royal.
But all these evil influences and evil conspiracies must have failed if the Government had been even reasonably firm and sensible. Unfortunately the French Government were nothing of the kind, even though Louis XVI. can be shown, as Mrs. Webster thinks, to have been far firmer, more reasonable, and more popular in his political sympa- thies than is generally supposed. The French Government were fatally weak. They suffered from the inevitable defect of all Governments that are not based upon true democratic principles. They did not believe in themselves. There had been in the past no proper mechanism for representing the nation, and they could not believe that the mass of the people were as sensible as they really were. Therefore when any demagogue got up and declared that he spoke with the voice of the people and so forth, they were always inclined to be frightened and to give in to him. Even when not frightened they felt from a mistaken sense of self-sacrifice that it was their duty to yield to any demand provided it was violent enough. Indeed, it is one of the greatest pieces of irony in the world that in the French Revolution the working people never had any show at all. Every other section of the community, including even the criminal class, rode them and ruled them in turn, but the people them- selves, the artisans and peasants, were always ruled and ridden either by the fear of the bloodthirsty man who usurped their name or else by the panic which the con- spirators designedly inspired in their victims' hearts. First there was the bogus panic of famine, and then the panic of foreign interference and foreign invasion, panics which at last induced a distracted and ruined people to throw themselves headlong into the arms of the Caesarian saviour of society, the First Consul and Emperor.
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