THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIN ,—I have not yet had the pleasure of reading Mrs. Webster's study of the French Revolution, but, to judge from the most interesting review of it which appears in last week's Spectator, it conveys a message urgently needed at the present time. A rather indiscriminate approval of that great and terrible movement has been fashionable ever since Carlyle lent his lurid but misleading pen to its glorification. Carlyle, living himself very comfortably in settled times, enjoyed a vicarious reputation as the supporter of revolutionary movements in centuries other than his own. He was the slave of that inverted-snobbery which can believe no good of a King (unless indeed 'he happens to he an unscrupulous autocrat like Frederick the Great), which sees something contemptible in all obedience to authority and in submission to the claims of loyalty and duty, something intrinsieally praiseworthy in turbulence and bitter self-assertion. So t!ce legend was evolved that the French Revolution was in itself noble and sublime, that it produced a race of men supreme in the art of government, and that it did much for -the development of the world. The most striking thing about the Revolution was its colossal ineptitude. Neither the National Assembly, the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, nor the Convention were ever able to master the very elements of decent government. The proceedings of these bodies were childish and amateurish to a degree. Their meetings were often were orgies of tawdry rhetoric and sickening sentimentality. From the very beginning they tolerated the most disgraceful outrages of the mob on individuals, not because they approved of them, but because they were too cowardly to protest. The Revolution did not even became a great military and destructive force till it had passed successively beneath the control of an oligarchy, a Consulate, -and an Empire; that is, till it had surrendered every principle for whioh it•stood. Then indeed it became efficient, drenched the world with blood and Iears, and brought upon France invasion and defeat. Mirabeau is the greatest of its leaders, yet he was a man whose private life was disgraceful, a plagiarist who declaimed other men's speeches, a Revolutionary leader who secretly received money from the Court and spent it in senseless self-indulgence. His greatest title to fame is that he toiled unceasingly to curb the mad excesses of the democracy, and to return to some of those traditional principles of home and foreign policy which it was the one aim of his colleagues to overthrow. The Revolution was the apotheoeis of self-contradiction. It stood for Liberty— and every citizen had to carry about with him a carte de siirete to be produced on demand under pain of being dragged before the Revolutionary Tribunal; for Equality--and poor priests, who for conscience' sake refused to take an oath approving of the spoliation of the Church, were brutally massacred; for Fraternity—and its own favourite children, Denton, Des Robaspierre, were dragged mercilessly to an ignominious death. The Revolution set out to overthrow Kings, and it ended by seating its own sons, now become, in the jargon of the time, " reactionaries " but efficient rulers, on half the thrones of Europe.
Certain writers are fond of maintaining that -the excesses of the French Revolution were something accidental and exterior to it. Really they were of its very essence. The plain truth is that in three years it inflicted more human misery, agony, and suffering than the -old regime had done in 'the past 200 years. The pre-Revolution Government was far from perfect, 1r it its sins have beengrossly exaggerated. All modern historians are obliged to admit that the French peasant was better off, better educated, better treated, than his brothers in the rest of Europe. When the Bastilin fell only six or seven prisoners were discovered, all of whom seem to have been incarcerated for excellent reasons. But the foolish exclamation of Fox—that incurable political sentimentalist—still rings down the ages. The sombre walls of the Bastille in all its long history never witnessed a darker or more bloody deed than the massacred its faithful defenders and the treacherous murder of the Governor, De Launay. The whole history of the ancien regime can-produce nothing to equal in horaer the September massacres, the Terror, the impedes of Nantes, the butchery of the Glaciers at Avignon, or the slaughter of 150 priests in the Convent des Carmes.
I agree with your reviewer that it is an error to underrate Mr. Morse Stephens's French Revolution. It is a fine and laborious piece of research. The author was far too honest a man to minimize or withhold the facts. But he too had deeply embedded in his mind the idea that a Constitutionalist must defend the Revolution, and it is interesting to notice to what a desperate casuistry -he was often drivel. Take -this passage on the September massacres : " There is an apology for the great Revolutionary leaders, who ought to have interfered, but who yet confidently believed the death of a thousand poor creatures who were foully murdered in the prisons of Paris would pave the way for a stronger and more glorious France." On these lines of course the vilest deeds in history could always be defended. The coming glory of France was, I suppose, the rise of the Napoleonic Empire, with its supreme contempt for all moral and international law. What a price to pay for such an end !
So in our own time it is no doubt some sincere, though confused, recollection of the teaching of Carlyle that led many of us to view with equanimity the murder of the most humane and constitutionally minded ruler that Russia ever possessed, to lend a too ready ear to the manufactured calumny that he and the Empress intended to betray the Allies, and to refrain from protest when a British Government proposed to enter into negotiations at Prinkipo with men whose hands were reeking with the blood of their fellow-citizens and wet with the unavailing tears of women and children. We can only hope it will not lead us to stain our national honour by abandoning to outrage, torture, and death the hapless people of Archangel, whose piteous appeal has just been issued to the
world.—I am, Sir, &c., P. E. ROBERTS. Worcester College, Oxford.
Previous page
