The Eve of the French Revolution

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Enough has been said of the theism of Rousseau to show its great
difference from that of Voltaire and of his followers. His attitude
toward them is not unlike that of Socrates toward the Sophists. Indeed,
Jean Jacques, by whomever inspired, is far more of a prophet than of a
philosopher. He speaks by an authority which he feels to be above
argument. In opposition to Locke and to all his school, he dares to
believe in innate ideas, although he calls them feelings.[Footnote:
"When, first occupied with the object, we think of ourselves only by
reflection, it is an idea; on the other hand, when the impression
received excites our first attention and we think only by reflection on
the object which causes it, it is a sensation." _Oeuvres_, iv. 195
_n_. (_Emile_, liv. iv.).] These innate ideas are love of
self, fear of pain, horror of death, the desire for well-being.
Conscience may well be one of them.

"My son," cries the Savoyard curate, "keep your soul always in a state
to desire that there may be a God, and you will never doubt it.
Moreover, whatever course you may adopt, consider that the true duties
of religion are independent of the institutions of men; that a just
heart is the true temple of Divinity; that in all countries and all
sects, to love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself, is
the sum of the law; that no religion dispenses with the moral duties;
that these are the only duties really essential; that the inward worship
is the first of these duties, and that without faith no true virtue
exists.

"Flee from those who, under the pretense of explaining nature, sow
desolating doctrines in the hearts of men, and whose apparent skepticism
is a hundred times more affirmative and more dogmatic than the decided
tone of their adversaries."

At the time when "Emile" was written, Jean Jacques had quarreled
personally with most of his old associates of the Philosophic school.
Diderot, D'Alembert, Grimm, and their master, Voltaire,--Rousseau had
some real or fancied grievance against them all. But the difference
between him and them was intrinsic, not accidental. By nature and
training they belonged to the rather thin rationalism of the eighteenth
century; a rationalism which was so eager to believe nothing not
acquired through the senses that it preferred to leave half the
phenomena of life not only unaccounted for but unconsidered, because to
account for them by its own methods was difficult, if not impossible.
Rousseau, at least, contemplated the whole of human nature, its
affections, aspirations, and passions, as well as its observations and
reflections, and this was the secret of his influence over men.

CHAPTER XX.

THE PAMPHLETS.

The reign of Louis XVI. was a time of great and rapid change. The old
order was passing away, and the Revolution was taking place both in
manners and laws, for fifteen years before the assembling of the Estates
General. In the previous reigns the rich middle class had approached
social equality with the nobles; and the sons of great families had
consented to repair their broken fortunes by marrying the daughters of
financiers;--"manuring their land," they called it.

Next a new set of persons claimed a place in the social scale. The men
of letters were courted even by courtiers. The doctrines of the
Philosophers had fairly entered the public mind. The nobility and the
middle class, with such of the poor as could read and think, had been
deeply impressed by Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists. All men had not
been affected in the same way. Some were blind followers of these
leaders, eager to push the doctrines of the school to the last possible
results, partisans of Helvetius and Holbach. These were the most
logical. Beside them came the sentimentalists, the worshipers of
Rousseau. They were not a whit less dogmatic than the others, but their
dogmatism took more fanciful and less consistent forms. They believed in
their ideal republics or their social compacts with a religious faith.
Some of them were ready to persecute others and to die themselves for
their chimeras, and subsequently proved it. And in not a few minds the
teachings of Holbach and those of Rousseau were more or less confused,
and co-existed with a lingering belief in the church and her doctrines.
People still went to mass from habit, from education, from an uneasy
feeling that it was a good thing to do; doubting all the while with
Voltaire, dreaming with Rousseau, wondering what might be coming,
believing that the world was speedily to be improved, having no very
definite idea as to how the improvement was to be brought about, but
trusting vaguely to the enlightenment of the age, which was taken for
granted.

For this reign of the last absolute king of France was a time of hope
and of belief in human perfectibility. One after another, the schemers
had come forward with their plans for regenerating society. There were
the economists, ready to swear that the world, and especially France,
would be rich, if free trade were adopted, and the taxes were laid--they
could not quite agree how. There were the army reformers, burning to
introduce Prussian discipline; if only you could reconcile blows and
good feeling. There were people calling for Equality, and for government
by the most enlightened; quite unaware that their demands were
inconsistent. There were the philanthropists, perhaps the most genuine
of all the reformers, working at the hospitals and prisons, and reducing
in no small measure the sum of misery in France.[Footnote: Among other
instances of this spirit of hopefulness, notice those volumes of the
_Encyclopedie Methodique_ which were published as early as 1789.
They are largely devoted to telling how things ought to be. See also the
correspondence of Lafayette, who was thoroughly steeped in the spirit of
this time. The feeling of hope was not the only feeling, there was
despondency also. But we must be careful not to be deceived by the tone
of many people who wrote long afterward, when they had undergone the
shock of the great Revolution. In the study of this period, more perhaps
than in that of any other, it is important to distinguish between
contemporary evidence and the evidence of contemporaries given
subsequently.]

These changes in men's minds began to bear fruit in action. The
attempted reforms of Turgot, of Necker, of the Notables; the abolition
of the _corvee_, of monopolies in trade, of judicial torture, the
establishment of provincial assemblies, the civil rights given to
Protestants, have been mentioned already. These things were done in a
weak and inconsistent manner because of the character of the king, who
was drawn in one direction by his courtiers and in another by his
conscience, and satisfied neither.

Man must always look outside of himself for a standard of right and
wrong. He must have something with which to compare the dictates of his
own conscience, some chronometer to set his watch by. In the decay of
religious ideas, the Frenchmen of the eighteenth century had set up a
standard of comparison independent of revelation. They had found it in
public opinion. The sociable population of Paris was ready to accept the
common voice as arbiter. It had always been powerful in France, where
the desire for sympathy is strong. A pamphlet published in 1730 says
that if the episcopate falls into error it should be "instructed,
corrected, even judged by the people." "A halberd leads a kingdom,"
cried a courtier to Quesnay the economist. "And who leads the halberd?"
retorted the latter. "Public opinion." "There are circumstances," say
the venerable and conservative lawyers of the Parliament, "when
magistrates may look on their loss of court favor as an honor. It is
when they are consoled by public esteem." Poor Louis himself, catching
the fever of longing for popularity, proposes to "raise the results of
public opinion to the rank of laws, after they have been submitted to
ripe and profound examination."[Footnote: _Rocquain_, 54.
Lavergne, _Economistes_, 103. Cherest, i. 454 (May 1, 1788).] The
appeal is constantly made from old-fashioned prejudice to some new
notion supposed to be generally current, as if the one proved more than
the other. From this worship of public opinion come extreme irritation
under criticism and cowardly fear of ridicule; Voltaire himself asking
for _lettres de cachet_ against a literary opponent. Seldom,
indeed, do we find any one ready to say: "This is right; thus men ought
to think; and if mankind thinks differently, mankind is mistaken." Such
a tone comes chiefly from the mouth of that exception for good and evil,
Jean Jacques Rousseau.

This dependent state of mind is far removed from virtue. But human
nature is often better than it represents itself to be. Both Quesnay and
the magistrates had in fact a higher standard of right and wrong than
the average feeling of the multitude. Every sect and every party makes,
in a measure, its own public opinion, and the consent for which we seek
is chiefly the consent of those persons whose ideas we respect. The
thinkers of the eighteenth century, after appealing to public opinion,
were quite ready to cast off their allegiance to it when it decided
against them.

Yet Frenchmen paid the penalty for setting up a false god. Having agreed
to worship public opinion, without asking themselves definitely who were
the public, they fell into frequent and fatal errors. The mob often
claimed the place on the pedestal of opinion, and its claims were
allowed. The turbulent populace of Paris, clamorous now for cheap bread,
now for the return of the Parliament from exile, anon for the blood of
men and women whom it chose to consider its enemies, was supposed to be
the voice of the French nation, which was superstitiously assumed to be
the voice of God.

The inhabitants of great cities love to be amused. Those of Paris, being
quicker witted than most mortals, care much to have something happening.
They detest dullness and are fond of wit. In countries where speech and
the press are free, a witticism, or a clever book, is seldom a great
event. But under Louis XVI., as has been said, you could never quite
tell what would come of a paragraph. A minister of state might lose his
temper.

A writer might have to spend a few weeks in Holland, or even in the
Bastille. This was not much to suffer for the sake of notoriety, but it
gave the charm of uncertainty. There was just enough danger in saying
"strong things" to make them attractive, and to make it popular to say
them. With a free press, men whose opinions are either valuable or
dangerous get very tired of "strong things," and prefer less spice in
their intellectual fare.

The most famous satirical piece of the reign is also its most remarkable
literary production. The "Mariage de Figaro," of Beaumarchais, has
acquired importance apart from its merits as a comedy, both from its
political history and from its good fortune in being set to immortal
music. The plot is poor and intricate, but the dialogue is uniformly
sparkling, and two of the characters will live as typical. In Cherubin
we have the dissolute boy whose vice has not yet wrinkled into ugliness,
best known to English readers under the name of Don Juan, but fresher
and more ingenuous than Byron's young rake. Figaro, the hero of the
play, is the comic servant, familiar to the stage from the time of
Plautus, impudent, daring, plausible; likely to be overreached, if at
all, by his own unscrupulousness. But he is also the adventurer of the
last age of the French monarchy, full of liberal ideas and ready to give
a decided opinion on anything that concerns society or politics; a
Scapin, who has brushed the clothes of Voltaire. He is a shabby, younger
brother of Beaumarchais himself, immensely clever and not without kindly
feeling, a rascal you can be fond of. "Intrigue and money; you are in
your element!" cries Susanne to Figaro, in the first act. "A hundred
times I have seen you march on to fortune, but never walk straight,"
says the Count to him, in the third. We laugh when the blows meant for
others smack loud on his cheeks; but we grudge him neither his money nor
his pretty wife.

It is through this character that Beaumarchais tells the nobility, the
court, and the government of France what is being said about them in the
street. He repays with bitter gibes the insolence which he himself, the
clever, ambitious man of the middle class, has received, in his long
struggle for notoriety and wealth, from people whose personal claims to
respect were no better than his own. "What have you done to have so much
wealth?" cries Figaro in his soliloquy, apostrophizing the Count, who is
trying to steal his mistress, "You have taken the trouble to be born,
nothing more!" "I was spoken of, for an office," he says again, "but
unfortunately I was fitted for it. An accountant was needed, and a
dancer got it." And in another place: "I was born to be a courtier;
receiving, taking and asking, are the whole secret in three words."

As for the limitations on the liberty of the press: "They tell me," says
Figaro, "that if in my writing I will mention neither the government,
nor public worship, nor politics, nor morals, nor people in office, nor
influential corporations, nor the Opera, nor the other theatres, nor
anybody that belongs to anything, I may print everything freely, subject
to the approval of two or three censors." "How I should like to get hold
of one of those people that are powerful for a few days, and that give
evil orders so lightly, after a good reverse of favor had sobered him of
his pride! I would tell him, that foolish things in print are important
only where their circulation is interfered with; that without freedom to
blame, no praise is flattering, and that none but little men are afraid
of little writings."

The "Marriage of Figaro" was accepted by the great Parisian theatre, the
Comedie Francaise, toward the end of 1781. The wit of the piece itself
and the notoriety of the author made its success almost inevitable. The
permission of the censor was of course necessary before the play could
be put on the boards; but the first censor to whom the work was
submitted pronounced that, with a few alterations, it might be given.
The piece was already exciting much attention. As an advertisement,
Beaumarchais had read it aloud in several houses of note. It was the
talk of the town and of the court. The nobles were enchanted. To be
laughed at so wittily was a new sensation. Old Maurepas, the prime
minister, heard the play and spoke of it to his royal master. The king's
curiosity was excited. He sent for a copy, and the queen's waiting
woman, Madame Campan, was ordered to be at Her Majesty's apartment at
three o'clock in the afternoon, but to be sure and take her dinner
first, as she would be kept a long time.

At the appointed hour, Madame Campan found no one in the chamber but the
king and the queen. A big pile of manuscript, covered with corrections,
was on the table. As Madame Campan read, the king frequently
interrupted. He praised some passages, and blamed others as in bad
taste. At last, however, near the end of the play, occurred the long
soliloquy in which Figaro has brought together his bitterest complaints.
Early in the scene there is a description of the arbitrary imprisonment
which was so common in those days. "A question arises concerning the
nature of riches," says Figaro, "and as you do not need to have a thing
in order to talk about it, I, who have not a penny, write on the value
of money and its net product. Presently, from the inside of a cab, I see
the drawbridge of a prison let down for me; and leave, as I go in, both
hope and liberty behind." On hearing this tirade, King Louis XVI. leaped
from his chair, and exclaimed: "It is detestable; it shall never be
played! Not to have the production of this play a dangerous piece of
inconsistency, we should have to destroy the Bastille. This man makes
sport of everything that should be respected in a government."

"Then it will not be played?" asked the queen.

"Certainly not!" answered Louis; "you may be sure of it."

For two years a contest was kept up between the king of France and the
dramatic author as to whether the "Marriage of Figaro" should be acted
or not. The king had on his side absolute power to forbid the
performance or to impose any conditions he pleased; but he stood almost
alone in his opinion, and Louis XVI. never could stand long alone. The
author had for auxiliaries some of the princes, most of the nobility,
the court and the town. Public curiosity was aroused, and no one knew
better than Beaumarchais how to keep it awake. He continued to read the
play at private parties, but it required so much begging to induce him
to do so that the favor never became a cheap one. Those people who heard
it were loud in its praise, and less favored persons talked of tyranny
and oppression, because they were not permitted to see themselves and
their neighbors delightfully laughed at by Figaro. Poor Louis held out
against the solicitations of the people about him with a pertinacity
which he seldom showed in greater matters. At last his resolution
weakened, and permission was accorded to play the piece at a private
entertainment given by the Count of Vaudreuil. After that, the public
performance became only a question of time and of the suppression of
obnoxious passages. On the 27th of April, 1784, the theatre-goers of
Paris thronged from early morning about the doors of the Comedie
Francaise; three persons were crushed to death; great ladies dined in
the theatre, to keep their places. At half past five the curtain rose.
The success was unbounded, in spite of savage criticism, which spared
neither the play nor the author.[Footnote: Campan, i. 277. Lomenie,
_Beaumarchais_, ii. 293. Grimm, xiii. 517. La Harpe, _Corresp.
litt._ iv. 227.]

As the people of Paris liked violent language, they also enjoyed
opposition to the government, whatever form that opposition might
assume. The Parliament, as we have seen, although contending for
privileges and against measures beneficial to most people in the
country, was yet popular, for it was continually defying the court. But
many privileged persons went farther than the conservative lawyers of
the city. It was indeed such people who took the lead both in
proclaiming equality and in denouncing courtiers. From the nobility and
the rich citizens of Paris, discontent with existing conditions and the
habit of opposition to constituted authorities spread to the lower
classes and to the inhabitants of provincial towns.

Louis XVI. had not been long on the throne when a series of events
occurred in a distant part of the world which excited in a high degree
both the spirit of insubordination and the love of equality in French
minds. The American colonies of Great Britain broke into open revolt,
and presently declared their independence of the mother country. The
sympathy of Frenchmen was almost universal and was loudly expressed.
Here was a nation of farmers constituting little communities that
Rousseau might not have disowned, at least if he had looked at them no
nearer than across the ocean. They were in arms for their rights and
liberties, and in revolt against arbitrary power. And the oppressor
was the king of England, the monarch of the nation that had inflicted
on France, only a few years before, a humiliating defeat. Much that
was generous in French character, and much that was sentimental, love
of liberty, admiration of equality, hatred of the hereditary enemy,
conspired to favor the cause of the "Insurgents." The people who
wished for political reforms could point to the model commonwealths of
the New World. Their constitutions were translated into French, and
several editions were sold in Paris.[Footnote: _Recueil des loix
constitutives. Constitutions des treize Etats Unis de l'Amerique_.
Franklin to Samuel Cooper, May 1, 1777. _Works_ vi. 96.] The people
that adored King Louis could cry out for the abasement of King
George. A few prudent heads in high places were shaken at the thought
of assisting rebellion. The Emperor Joseph II., brother-in-law to the
king of France, was not quite the only man whose business it was to be
a royalist. Ministers might deprecate war on economical grounds, and
advise that just enough help be given to the Americans to prolong
their struggle with England until both parties should be exhausted.
But the heart of the French nation had gone into the war. It was for
the sake of his own country that the Count of Vergennes, the foreign
minister of Louis XVI., induced her to take up arms against Great
Britain, and in the negotiations for peace he would willingly have
sacrificed the interests of his American to those of his Spanish
allies; yet the part taken by France was the almost inevitable result
of the sympathy and enthusiasm of the French nation. Never was a war
not strictly of defense more completely national in its character.
Frenchmen fought in Virginia because they loved American ideas, and
hated the enemy of America. [Footnote: Rosenthal, _America and
France_,--an excellent monograph.]

Thus France, while still an absolute monarchy, undertook a war in
defense of political rights. Such an action could not be without
results. Writers of a later time, belonging to the monarchical party,
have not liked the results and have blamed the course of the French
upper classes in embarking in the war. But it was because they were
already inclined to revolutionary ideas in politics that the nobility
did so embark. Poor Louis was dragged along, feebly protesting. He was
no radical, and to him change could mean nothing but harm; if it be harm
to be deprived of authority beyond your strength, and of responsibility
exceeding your moral power. The war, in its turn, fed the prevailing
passions. Young Frenchmen, who had first become warlike because they
were adventurous and high-spirited, adopted the cries of "liberty" and
"equality" as the watchwords of the struggle into which they entered,
and were then interested to study the principles which they so loudly
proclaimed. Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, even Montesquieu, became
more widely read than ever. Officers returning from the capture of
Yorktown were flushed with success and ready to praise all they had
seen. They told of the simplicity of republican manners, of the respect
shown for virtuous women. Even Lauzun forgot to be lewd in speaking of
the ladies of Newport. So unusual a state of mind could not last long. A
reaction set in after the peace with England. Anglomania became the
ruling fashion. The change was more apparent than real. London was
nearer than Philadelphia and more easily visited. Political freedom
existed there also, if not in so perfect a form, yet in one quite as
well suited to the tastes of fashionable young men. Had not Montesquieu
looked on England as the model state?[Footnote: Segur, i. 87. The
French officers who were in the Revolutionary war often express
dissatisfaction with the Americans, but their voices appear to have been
drowned in France in the chorus of praise. See Kalb's letters to Broglie
in Stevens's MSS., vii., and Mauroy to Broglie, _ibid_., No. 838.
The foreign politics of the reign of Louis XVI. are admirably considered
by Albert Sorel, _L'Europe et la Revolution francaise_, i. 297.]

Thus English political ideas were adopted with more or less accuracy and
were accompanied by English fashions: horses and horseracing, short
stirrups, plain clothes, linen dresses, and bread and butter. Clubs also
are an English invention. The first one in Paris was opened in 1782. The
Duke of Chartres had recently cut down the trees of his garden to build
the porticoes and shops of the Palais Royal. The people who had been in
the habit of lounging under the trees were thus dispossessed. A
speculator opened a reading-room for their benefit, and provided them
with newspapers, pamphlets, and current literature. The duke himself
encouraged the enterprise, and overcame the resistance which the police
naturally made to any new project. The reading-room, which seems to have
had a regular list of subscribers, was called the Political Club. In
spite of the name, the regulations of the police forbade conversation
within its walls on the subjects of religion and politics; but such
rules were seldom enforced in Paris. Other clubs were soon founded, some
large and open, some small and private. A certain number of them took
the name of literary, scientific, or benevolent associations. Some
appear to have been secret societies with oaths and pledges. The habit
of talking about matters of government spread more and more.[Footnote:
Cherest, ii. 101. Droz, i. 326. See in Brissot ii. 415, an account of a
club to discuss political questions, under pretense of studying animal
magnetism. Lafayette, d'Espresmenil, and others were members. Their
ideas were vague enough. Brissot was for a republic, D'Espresmenil for
giving the power to the Parliament, Bergasse for a new form of
government of which he was to be the Lycurgus. Morellet, i. 346. Lameth,
i. 34 _n_. Sainte-Beuve, x. 104 (_Senac de Meilhan_).]

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