The Eve of the French Revolution

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The idea of equality at first seems simple, but equality may be of many
kinds. Absolute equality in all respects between two human beings, no
one has ever seen, and no one perhaps has ever thought of desiring. All
the relations of life are founded on inequality. By their differences
husband and wife, friend and friend, are made necessary and endeared to
each other; the parent protects and serves the child, the child obeys
and helps the parent; the citizen calls on the magistrate to guard his
rights, the magistrate enforces the laws which have their sanction in
the consent of the body of citizens. Equality as a political ideal is
therefore a limited equality. It may extend to condition, it may be
confined to civil rights, or to opportunities.

The Philosophers of the eighteenth century, followed by a school in our
day, universally assumed that an approximate equality of condition was
desirable. Rousseau agreed with Montesquieu, in believing that a small
republic, none of whose citizens were either very rich or very poor, was
likely to be in a desirable condition. Virtue, they thought, would be
its especial characteristic. In some of the Swiss cantons, and later in
the struggling American colonies of Great Britain, Frenchmen discovered
communities approaching their ideal in respect to the equal distribution
of wealth; and their discovery in the latter case was not without great
results. This kind of equality has since passed away from large portions
of America, as it must always disappear where civilization increases.
Good people mourn its departure; some few, perhaps, would patiently
endure its return. They are about as numerous as those who abandon city
life to dwell permanently in the country, also the home of comparative
equality of condition. The theoretic admiration for this sort of
equality was shared by a large and enlightened part of the French
nobility. Thus the order was weakened by the fact that many of its own
members did not believe in its claims.

Another kind of equality is that of civil rights. Before the Revolution,
France was ruled by law, but all Frenchmen were not ruled by the same
law. There were privileged persons and privileged localities. Of these
anomalies, sometimes working hardship, the minds of intelligent men at
that time were especially impatient. They believed, as has been said, in
natural laws, implanted in every breast, finding their expression in
every conscience; and many of them entertained a crude notion that such
laws could easily be applied to the enormously complicated facts of
actual life. Assuming such laws to exist, as absolute as mathematical
axioms and far easier of application, all variation was error, all
anomaly absurd, all claims of a privileged class unfair and unfounded.

Equality of civil rights is also desired from the fear of oppression; a
very important motive in the eighteenth century, when the great still
had the power to be very oppressive at times. We have seen the treatment
which Voltaire received at the hands of a member of one of the great
families. Outrages still more flagrant appear to have been not uncommon
in the reign of Louis XV., and although there had probably never been a
time in France so free from them as that of his successor, their memory
was still fresh. It is in their decrepitude that political abuses are
most ferociously attacked. When young and lusty they are formidable.

Again, there is equality of opportunity. This is desired as a means of
subverting equality of condition to our own advantage, as a chance to be
more than equal to our fellow-men. This kind is longed for by the able
and ambitious. Where it is denied, the strongest good men will be less
useful to the state, unless they happen to be favorably placed at birth;
the strongest bad men perhaps more dangerous, because more discontented.
It is this sort of equality, more than any other, which the French
Philosophers and their followers actually secured for Frenchmen, and in
a less degree for other Europeans of to-day. By their efforts, the
chance of the poor but talented child to rise to power and wealth has
been somewhat increased. This chance, when they began their labors, was
not so hopeless as it is often represented. It is not now so great as it
is sometimes assumed to be. Still, there has been one decided advance.
We have seen that under the old monarchy many important places were
reserved for members of the noble class, and practically for a few
families among them. Since that monarchy passed away, the opportunity to
serve the state, with the great prizes which public life offers to the
strong and the aspiring, has been thrown open, theoretically at least,
to all Frenchmen.

If the idea of equality be comparatively simple, that of liberty is very
much the reverse. The word, in its general sense, signifies little more
than the absence of external control. In politics it is used, in the
first place, for the absence of foreign conquest, and in this sense a
country may be called free although it is governed by a despot. The next
signification of liberty is political right, and this is the sense in
which it has been most used until recent years. When a tyrant overthrew
the liberties of a Greek city, he substituted his own personal rule for
the rights of an oligarchy. The mass of the inhabitants may have been
neither better nor worse off than before. When Hampden resisted the
encroachments of King Charles I, he was fighting the battle of the upper
and middle classes against despotism, and we hold him one of the
principal champions of liberty. Indeed, liberty in this sense is so far
from being identical with equality, that many of those who have been
foremost in its defense have been members of aristocracies and holders
of slaves. To accuse them of inconsistency is to be misled by the
ambiguous meaning of a word. They fought for rights which they believed
to be their own; they denied that the rights of all men were identical.
During the eighteenth century in France, certain bodies, such as the
clergy and the Parliament of Paris, were struggling for political
liberties in this older sense, and before the outbreak of the French
Revolution many of the most enlightened of the nobility hoped to acquire
such liberties. Much blood and confusion might have been spared, and
many useful reforms accomplished, had Frenchmen clutched less wildly at
the phantom of equality, and sought the safer goal of political liberty.

Another sort of liberty, although it has undoubtedly been desired by
individuals in all ages, is almost entirely modern as an ideal for
civilized communities. This is the absence of interference, not only of
a foreign power or of a lawless oppressor, but of the very law itself.
The desire for such freedom as this, would in almost all ages of the
world have been held inconsistent with proper respect for order and
security. It would have been considered no more than the wicked longing
of an unchastened spirit, the temptation of the Evil One himself. In the
eighteenth century, however, we see the rise of new opinions. It may be
that order had become so firmly established in the European world that a
reaction could safely set in. At any rate we find a new way of looking
at things. "Independence," a word which had been often used by the
clerical party, and always as a term of reproach, is treated by the
Philosophers with favor. Toleration of all kinds of opinions, and of
most kinds of spoken words, is making way.[Footnote: In spite of the
impatience shown by Voltaire of any criticism of himself, he and his
followers did more than any other men that ever lived to make criticism
free to all writers.] A new school of thinkers is adapting the new form
of thought to economical matters. _Laissez faire; laissez passer_.
Restrict the functions of government. Order will arise from the average
of contending interests; right direction is produced by the sum of
conflicting forces. The doctrine has exerted enormous influence since
the French Revolution in resisting the claims of socialism,--that new
form of tyranny in which all are to be the despot and each the slave.
But few of the Philosophers accepted it entirely. Most of them desired
the constant interference of the government for one purpose or another,
and many believed in the power, almost the omnipotence, of a mythical
personage, borrowed in part from Plutarch and commonly called the
Legislator.

The history and action of this personage may be roughly stated as
follows. Every nation now civilized was in early days in a barbarous
condition. Once upon a time, a great man came from somewhere, and
brought a complete set of laws, morals, and manners with him. To these
laws and customs he generally ascribed a divine origin. The nation to
which they were proclaimed adopted them, and the people's subsequent
happiness and prosperity were in proportion to their excellence. The
reasons which are supposed to have induced the barbarous tribe to change
all its habits at the bidding of one man are seldom given, or if given,
are ludicrously inadequate. The theory of the legislator is now out of
date. It is generally held that the institutions of every race have
grown up with it, that they are appropriate to its nature and history,
gradually modified sometimes by act of the national will, and more or
less changed under foreign influences, but that their general character
cannot suddenly be subverted. Its institutions thus as truly belong to a
civilized race, as the skin without fur or the erect position belong to
mankind. There is some evidence in support of either theory, and the
truth will probably be found to lie between them, although nearer to the
latter. Yet the effect of a higher civilization implanted on a lower one
seems at times singularly rapid. The story of the legislator is a part
of most early histories and mythologies. The classical model has
generally been held to be either Minos or Lycurgus. There were few
clever men in France between the years 1740 and 1790 who did not dream
of trying on the sandals of those worthies.

While the ideas attached to equality and to liberty were vague and
indefinite, it was generally assumed that they would coincide. Liberty
and equality, however, have tendencies naturally opposed to each other.
Remove the exterior forces which control the wills of men, overturn
foreign domination, give every citizen political rights, reduce the
interference of laws to a minimum, and the natural differences and
inequalities of physical, mental, and moral strength, or power of will,
inherent in mankind, will have the fuller opportunity to act. The strong
improve their natural advantage, they acquire dominion over their weaker
neighbors, they monopolize opportunities for themselves, their friends
and their children. Only by keeping all men in strict subjection to
something outside of themselves can all be kept in comparative equality.
This fact was instinctively apprehended by one school of French
thinkers. We shall see that the followers of Rousseau, while posing as
champions of Liberty, were in fact the founders of a system which is the
very antithesis of individual freedom.[Footnote: It is perhaps needless
to remark that I have touched here only on the political meanings of the
word Liberty. In the eighteenth century the word was much used in its
philosophical sense, and the eternal problem of necessity and free-will
was warmly discussed.]

CHAPTER X.

MONTESQUIEU.

One man stands out among the French nobility of the gown in the
eighteenth century, influencing human thought beyond the walls of the
court-room; one Philosopher who looks on existing society as something
to be saved and directed. The work of Voltaire and his followers was
principally negative. Their favorite task was demolition. The ugly and
uninhabitable edifices of Rousseau's genius required for their erection
a field from which all possible traces of civilized building had been
removed. But Montesquieu, while he satirized the vices of the society
which he saw about him, yet appreciated at their full value the benefits
of civilization. He recognized that change is always accompanied by
evil, even if its preponderating result be good, and that it should be
attempted only with care and caution. His ideas influenced the leading
men of the second half of the century somewhat in proportion to their
judgment and in inverse proportion to their enthusiasm.

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu, born in 1689, was by
inheritance one of the presidents of the Parliament of Bordeaux.
[Footnote: In his youth he was known as Charles Louis de la Brede, the
name being taken from a fief of his mother. The name of Montesquieu he
inherited from an uncle, together with his place of _president a
mortier_. Vian, _Histoire de Montesquieu_, 16, 30.] He was recognized
in early life as a rising man, a respectable magistrate, sensible and
brilliant rather than learned; a man of the world, rich and thrifty,
not very happily married, and fond of the society of ladies. In
appearance he was ugly, with a large head, weak eyes, a big nose, a
retreating forehead and chin. In temperament he was calm and cheerful.
"I have had very few sorrows," he says, "and still less
ennui."--"Study has been to me a sovereign remedy against the troubles
of life, and I have never had a grief that an hour's reading would not
dissipate." He was shy, he tells us, but less among bright people than
among stupid ones. Good-natured he appears to have been, and somewhat
selfish; easily amused, less by what people said than by their way of
saying it. He was a good landlord and a kind master. It is told of him
that one day, while scolding one of his servants, he turned round with
a laugh to a friend standing by. "They are like clocks," said he, "and
need winding up now and then".[Footnote: See the medallion given in
Vian, and said by the _Biographie universelle_ to be the only
authentic portrait. Also Montesq. vii. 150, (_Pensees diverses.
Portrait de M. par lui-meme_, apparently written when he was about
forty). Also Vian, 141.]

Montesquieu set himself a high standard of duty. In a paper intended
only for his son, he writes: "If I knew something which was useful to
myself and injurious to my family, I should reject it from my mind. If I
knew of anything which was useful to my family and which was not so to
my country, I should try to forget it. If I knew something useful to my
country, which was injurious to Europe and the human race, I should
consider it a crime."[Footnote: Montesq., vii. 157.]

Montesquieu's first book appeared in 1721, a book very different from
those which followed it. It is witty and licentious after a rather
stately fashion, full of keen observation and cutting satire. In
contrast to the books of other famous writers of the century, the
"Persian Letters" are eminently the work of a gentleman;--of a French
gentleman, when the Duke of Orleans was Regent.

The "Lettres Persanes" are, as their name suggests, the supposed
correspondence of two rich Persians, Usbek and Rica, traveling in France
and exchanging letters with their friends and their eunuchs in Persia.
The letters which the travelers receive, containing the gossip of their
harems, form but the smaller portion of the book, and are evidently
intended to give it variety and lightness. In the letters which they
write to their Persian correspondents we have the satirical picture of
French society. How far had the ruling, infallible church sunk in the
minds of Frenchmen, when a well-placed and rather selfish man could
write what follows.

"The Pope is the chief of the Christians. He is an old idol, to which
people burn incense from the force of habit. In old times he was
formidable even to princes; for he deposed them as easily as our
magnificent Sultans depose the kings of Irimette and of Georgia. But he
is no longer feared. He calls himself the successor of one of the
earliest Christians, known as Saint Peter; and it is certainly a rich
inheritance, for he has enormous treasures and a rich country under his
dominion."

The bishops are legists, subordinate to the Pope. They have two
functions. When assembled they make articles of faith as he does. When
separate, they dispense people from obeying the law. For the Christian
religion is full of difficult observances; and it is thought to be
harder to do your duty than to have bishops to give you dispensation.
The doctors, bishops, and monks are constantly raising questions on
religious subjects, and dispute for a long time, until at last an
assembly is held to decide among them. In no kingdom have there been as
many civil wars as in that of Christ.[Footnote: Montesq., i. 124.
Letter xxix.]

Farther on we have a picture of the way in which religion is regarded in
French society. It is less a subject of sanctification than of dispute.
Courtiers, soldiers, even women, rise up against ecclesiastics and ask
them to prove what the others have resolved not to believe. This is not
because people have determined their minds by reason, nor that they have
taken the trouble to examine the truth or falsehood of this religion
which they reject. They are rebels who have felt the yoke and who have
shaken it off before they have known it. They are, therefore, no firmer
in their unbelief than in their faith. They live in an ebbing and
flowing tide, which unceasingly carries them from one to the other.
[Footnote: Montesq., i. 251. Letter lxxv.] Making a large allowance for
satire, we have yet an interesting and doleful picture of a small but
important part of the French nation. And it is noticeable that the
Persian Letters precede by thirteen years Voltaire's "Philosophical," or
"English Letters."[Footnote: 1721-1734.]

Montesquieu argues that it is well to have several sects in a country,
as they keep a watch on each other, and every man is anxious not to
disgrace his party. But it is for toleration and not for equality that
the author pleads. A state church seemed almost necessary to thought in
the early part of the eighteenth century. Yet Montesquieu has no great
liking for any form of dogmatic religion; in this he belongs distinctly
with the Philosophers; morality is, in his eyes, the great, perhaps the
only thing to be desired; obedience to law, love to men, filial piety,
those, he says, are the first acts of all religions; ceremonies are good
only on the supposition that God has commanded them; but about the
commands of God it is easy to be mistaken, for there are two thousand
religions, each of which puts in its claim. Thus was the great argument
of the Catholics, that the multiplicity of Protestant sects--provided
their falsity, turned against its inventors.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 164.
Letter xlvi. Compare with Montesquieu's opinion, expressed in the
_Spirit of the Laws_, that the sovereign should neither allow the
establishment of a new form of religion, nor persecute one already
established.]

The licentiousness of the "Persian Letters" has been mentioned. It is
one of the most noticeable features of the writings of the Philosophers
of the eighteenth century that the whole subject of sexual morality is
viewed by them from a standpoint different from that taken by ourselves.
The thinking Frenchmen of that age believed that there was a system of
natural morals, imposed on man by his own nature and the nature of
things. They believed that there was also an artificial system resting
only on positive law, or on the ordinances of the church. It was the
tendency of the ecclesiastical mind to ignore that distinction. That
tendency had been pushed too far and had produced a reaction.

The distinction is one which is not quite disregarded even by men of
those races which have most respect for law. Nobody feels that the
injunction to keep off the grass in a public park, or the rule to pass
to the right in driving, is of quite the same sort of obligation as
the precept to keep your hands from picking and stealing. A far
greater amount of odium is incurred by the known breach of a rule of
natural morals, than by that of a rule depending solely on the
ordinance of the legislative power. Smuggling may be mentioned as a
crime coming near the dividing line in the popular feeling of most
countries. Few men would feel as much disgraced at being caught by a
custom-house officer, with a box of cigars hidden under the trowsers
at the bottom of their trunk, as at being seized in the act of
stealing the same box from the counter of a tobacconist. In countries
where the laws are arbitrary and the law-making power distrusted, this
distinction is more strongly marked than where the government has the
full confidence and approbation of the community. The more progressive
Frenchmen of a hundred and fifty years ago believed the laws of their
country to be bad in many respects. They therefore thought that there
was a great difference between what jurists call _prohibited wrong_
and _wrong in itself_.

Now, admitting this distinction to exist in men's minds, there is one
large class of crimes and vices which is put in one category by most
Anglo-Saxons and which was put in the other by the French Philosophers.
These are the breaches of the sexual laws. It is one of the greatest
services of the church to Christendom that she has always laid
particular emphasis on the duty of chastity. It is one of her greatest
errors, that she has exalted the practice of celibacy over that of
conjugal fidelity. The Philosophers, as was their custom, looked abroad
on the practice of various nations. They found that some of the ancients
granted divorce freely at the request of either party. They learned that
Orientals generally allowed polygamy. They saw in their own country a
low state of sexual morals among the highest classes, partly due perhaps
to the example of a depraved court. Observation and desire concurred
with hatred of the clergy to warp their judgments. They forgot, at least
in part, that chastity is the foundation of the family and the civilized
state; that divorce and polygamy, although of momentous importance, are
but secondary questions; that on sexual self-restraint civilization
rests, as much as on respect for life and property. On the false theory
that unchastity is but an artificial crime, the delusive invention of an
ascetic church, will, I think, be found to depend much that has been
worst in the practice of Frenchmen, much that is most disgusting in
their literature.[Footnote: The commandment "Thou shalt not commit
adultery" is equally applicable to polygamists and monogamists. It was
originally promulgated to the former, and to a nation in which a man
could put away his wife.]

This theory is seldom held unreservedly. In the "Persian Letters" it
goes no farther than an elaborate apology for divorce, a scathing
denunciation of celibacy, and a general licentiousness of tone. The
later writings of Montesquieu are free from indecency. But it is
noticeable of him, perhaps the most high-minded of the Philosophers, and
of the rest of them, that while they constantly insist on the importance
of virtue, they hardly rank chastity among the virtues.[Footnote: See
the story of a Guebir who marries his sister, Montesq., i. 226, Letter
lxvii. The point appears to be that the laws forbidding marriage in
cases of consanguinity are arbitrary.]

The monarchy fares little better than the church in the "Persian
Letters." "The King of France," says Rica, "is the most powerful prince
in Europe. He has no gold-mines like his neighbor the King of Spain; but
he has more wealth than the latter, for he draws it from the vanity of
his subjects, more inexhaustible than mines. He has been known to
undertake and carry on great wars, with no other resource than titles of
honor to sell; and by a prodigy of human pride, his troops were paid,
his forts furnished, his fleets equipped."

"Moreover, this king is a great magician; he rules the very minds of his
subjects; he makes them think as he pleases. If he has only one million
dollars in his treasury and needs two, he has but to assure them that
one dollar is worth two, and they believe him. If he has a difficult war
to carry on, and has no money, he has but to put it into their heads
that a piece of paper is bullion, and immediately they are convinced. He
even goes so far as to make them believe that he cures them of all
manner of diseases by touching them. Such is the strength and power that
he has over their minds."[Footnote: Ibid., i. 110, Letter xxiv.
Referring to the sale of offices and titles, to the habit of debasing
the coinage, and to that of touching for scrofula.]

"What I tell you of this prince need not astonish you, There is another
magician stronger than he; who is no less master of the king's spirit,
than the king himself is of that of others. This magician is called the
Pope. Sometimes he makes the king believe that three are only one; that
the bread people eat is not bread, that the wine that they drink is not
wine, and many things of the same kind."

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