Section VI.: Speculations on the probable consequences of the French Revolution in Europe.

There is perhaps only one opinion about the French Revolution in which its friends and its enemies agree:—they both conceive that its influence will not be confined to France; they both predict that it will produce important changes in the general state of Europe. This is the theme of the exultation of its admirers; this is the source of the alarms of its detractors. It were indeed difficult to suppose that a Revolution so unparalleled should take place in the most renowned of the European nations, without spreading its influence throughout the Christian commonwealth; connected as it is by the multiplied relations of politics, by the common interest of commerce, by the wide intercourse of curiosity and of literature, by similar arts, and by congenial manners. The channels by which the prevailing sentiments of France may enter into the other nations of Europe, are so obvious and so numerous, that it would be unnecessary and tedious to detail them; but I may remark, as among the most conspicuous, a central situation, a predominating language, and an authority almost legislative in the ceremonial of the private intercourse of life. These and many other causes must facilitate the diffusion of French politics among neighbouring nations: but it will be justly remarked, that their effect must in a great measure depend on the stability of the Revolution. The suppression of an honourable revolt would strengthen all the governments of Europe: the view of a splendid revolution would be the signal of insurrection to their subjects. Any reasonings on the influence of the French Revolution may therefore be supposed to be premature until its permanence be ascertained. Of that permanence my conviction is firm: but I am sensible that in the field of political prediction, where veteran sagacity has so often been deceived, it becomes me to harbour with distrust, and to propose with diffidence, a conviction influenced by partial enthusiasm, and perhaps produced by the inexperienced ardour of youth.

The moment at which I write (August 25th, 1791,) is peculiarly critical. The invasion of France is now spoken of as immediate by the exiles and their partisans; and a confederacy of despots is announced with new confidence. Notwithstanding these threats, I retain my doubts whether the jarring interests of the European Courts will permit this alliance to have much energy or cordiality; and whether the cautious prudence of despots will send their military slaves to a school of freedom in France. But if there be doubts about the likelihood of the enterprise being undertaken, there be few about the probability of its event. History celebrates many conquests of obscure tribes, whose valour was animated by enthusiasm; but she records no example where a foreign force has subjugated a powerful and gallant people, governed by the most imperious passion that can sway the human breast.—Whatever wonders fanaticism has performed, may be again effected by a passion as ardent, though not so transitory, because it is sanctioned by virtue and reason. To animate patriotism,—to silence tumult,—to banish division,—would be the only effects of an invasion in the present state of France. A people abandoned to its own inconstancy, have often courted the yoke which they had thrown off: but to oppose foreign hostility to the enthusiasm of a nation, can only have the effect of adding to it ardour, and constancy, and force. These and similar views must offer themselves to the European Cabinets; but perhaps they perceive themselves to be placed in so peculiar a situation, that exertion and inactivity are equally perilous. If they fail in the attempt to crush the infant liberty of France, the ineffectual effort will recoil on their own governments: if they tamely suffer a school of freedom to be founded in the centre of Europe, they must foresee the hosts of disciples that are to issue from it for the subversion of their despotism.

They cannot be blind to a species of danger which the history of Europe reveals to them in legible characters. They see, indeed, that the negotiations, the wars, and the revolutions of vulgar policy, pass away without leaving behind them any vestige of their transitory and ignominious operation: but they must remark also, that besides this monotonous villany, there are cases in which Europe, actuated by a common passion, has appeared as one nation. The religious passion animated and guided the spirit of chivalry:—hence arose the Crusades. “A nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.” In the same manner the Reformation gave rise to religious wars, the duration of which exceeded a century and a half. Both examples prove the existence of that sympathy, by the means of which a great passion, taking its rise in any considerable state of Europe, must circulate through the whole Christian commonwealth. Illusion is, however, transient, while truth is immortal. The epidemical fanaticism of former times was short-lived, for it could only flourish in the eclipse of reason: but the virtuous enthusiasm of liberty, though it be like that fanaticism contagious, is not like it transitory.

But there are other circumstances which entitle us to expect, that the example of France will have a mighty influence on the subjects of despotic governments. The Gothic governments of Europe have lived their time. “Man, and for ever!” is the sage exclamation of Mr. Hume. Limits are no less rigorously prescribed by Nature to the age of governments than to that of individuals. The Heroic governments of Greece yielded to a body of legislative republics: these were in their turn swallowed up by the conquests of Rome. That great empire itself, under the same forms, passed through various modes of government. The first usurpers concealed it under a republican disguise: their successors threw off the mask, and avowed a military despotism: it expired in the ostentatious feebleness of an Asiatic monarchy. It was overthrown by savages, whose rude institutions and barbarous manners have, until our days, influenced Europe with a permanance refused to wiser and milder laws. But, unless historical analogy be altogether delusive, the decease of the Gothic governments cannot be distant. Their maturity is long past: and symptoms of their decrepitude are rapidly accumulating. Whether they are to be succeeded by more beneficial or more injurious forms may be doubted; but that they are about to perish, we are authorized to suppose, from the usual age to which the governments recorded in history have arrived.

There are also other presumptions furnished by historical analogy, which favour the supposition that legislative governments are about to succeed to the rude usurpations of Gothic Europe. The commonwealths which in the sixth and seventh centuries before the Christian era were erected on the ruins of the heroic monarchies of Greece, are perhaps the only genuine example of governments truly legislative recorded in history. A close inspection will, perhaps, discover some coincidence between the circumstances which formed them and those which now influence the state of Europe. The Phenician and Egyptian colonies were not like our colonies in America, populous enough to subdue or extirpate the native savages of Greece: they were, however, sufficiently so to instruct and civilize them. From that alone could their power be derived: to that therefore were their efforts directed. Imparting the arts and the knowledge of polished nations to rude tribes, they attracted, by avowed superiority of knowledge, a submission necessary to the effect of their legislation,—a submission which impostors acquire through superstition, and conquerors derive from force. An age of legislation supposes great inequality of knowledge between the legislators and those who receive their institutions. The Asiatic colonists, who first scattered the seeds of refinement, possessed this superiority over the Pelasgic hordes; and the legislators who in subsequent periods organised the Grecian commonwealths, acquired from their travels in the polished states of the East, that reputation of superior knowledge, which enabled them to dictate laws to their fellow-citizens. Let us then compare Egypt and Phenicia with the enlightened part of Europe,—separated as widely from the general mass by the moral difference of instruction, as these countries were from Greece by the physical obstacles which impeded a rude navigation,—and we must discern, that philosophers become legislators are colonists from an enlightened country reforming the institutions of rude tribes. The present moment indeed resembles with wonderful exactness the legislative age of Greece. The multitude have attained sufficient knowledge to value the superiority of enlightened men; and they retain a sufficient consciousness of ignorance to preclude rebellion against their dictates. Philosophers have meanwhile long remained a distinct nation in the midst of an unenlightened multitude. It is only now that the conquests of the press are enlarging the dominion of reason; as the vessels of Cadmus and Cecrops spread the arts and the wisdom of the East among the Pelasgic barbarians.

These general causes,—the unity of the European commonwealth, the decrepitude on which its fortuitous governments are verging, and the similarity between cut age and the only recorded period when the ascendant of philosophy dictated laws,—entitle us to hope that freedom and reason will be rapidly propagated from their source in France. And there are not wanting symptoms which justify the speculation. The first symptoms which indicate the approach of a contagious disease are the precautions adopted against it: the first marks of the probable progress of French principles are the alarms betrayed by despots. The Courts of Europe seem to look on France, and to exclaim in their despair,—

The King of Spain already seems to tremble for his throne, though it be erected on so firm a basis of general ignorance and triumphant priestcraft. By expelling foreigners, and by subjecting the entrance of travellers to such multiplied restraints, he seeks the preservation of his despotism in a vain attempt to convert his kingdom into a Bastile, and to banish his subjects from the European commonwealth. The Chinese government has indeed thus maintained its permanency; but it is insulated by Nature more effectually than by policy. Let the Court of Madrid recall her ambassadors, shut up her ports, abandon her commerce, sever every tie that unites her to Europe: the effect of such shallow policy must be that of all ineffectual rigour (and all rigour short of extirpation is here ineffectual), to awaken reflection,—to stimulate inquiry,—to aggravate discontent,—and to provoke convulsion. “There are no longer Pyrenees,” said Louis XIV., on the accession of his grandson to the Spanish throne: “There are no longer Pyrenees,” exclaimed the alarmed statesmen of Aranjuez,—“to protect our despotism from being consumed by the sun of liberty.” The alarm of the Pope for the little remnant of his authority naturally increases with the probability of the diffusion of French principles. Even the mild and temperate aristocracies of Switzerland seem to apprehend the arrival of that period, when men will not be content to owe the benefits of government to the fortuitous character of their governors, but to its own intrinsic excellence. Even the unsuccessful struggle of Liege, and the theocratic insurrection of Brabant, have left behind them traces of a patriotic party, whom a more favourable moment may call into more successful action. The despotic Court of the Hague is betraying alarm that the Dutch republic may yet revive, on the destruction of a government odious and intolerable to an immense majority of the people. Every where then are those alarms discernible, which are the most evident symptoms of the approaching downfall of the European despotisms.

But the impression produced by the French Revolution in England,—in an enlightened country, which had long boasted of its freedom,—merits more particular remark. Before the publication of Mr. Burke, the public were not recovered from that astonishment into which they had been plunged by unexampled events, and the general opinion could not have been collected with precision. But that performance has divided the nation into marked parties. It has produced a controversy, which may be regarded as the trial of the French Revolution before the enlightened and independent tribunal of the English public. What its decision has been I shall not presume to decide; for it does not become an advocate to announce the decision of the judge. But this I may be permitted to remark, that the conduct of our enemies has not resembled the usual triumph of those who have been victorious in the war of reason. Instead of the triumphant calmness that is ever inspired by conscious superiority, they have betrayed the bitterness of defeat, and the ferocity of resentment, which are peculiar to the black revenge of detected imposture. Priestcraft and Toryism have been supported only by literary advocates of the most miserable description: but they have been ably aided by auxiliaries of another kind. Of the two great classes of enemies to political reform,—the interested and the prejudiced,—the activity of the first usually supplies what may be wanting in the talents of the last. Judges have forgotten the dignity of their function,—priests the mildness of their religion; the Bench, which should have spoken with the serene temper of justice, the Pulpit, whence only should have issued the healing sounds of charity, have been prostituted to party purposes, and polluted with invectives against freedom. The churches have resounded with language at which Laud would have shuddered, and Sacheverell would have blushed: the most profane comparisons between our duty to the Divinity and to kings, have been unblushingly pronounced: flattery of the Ministers has been mixed with the solemnities of religion, by the servants, and in the temple of God. These profligate proceedings have not been limited to a single spot: they have been general over England. In many churches the French Revolution has been expressly named: in a majority it was the constant theme of invective for many weeks before its intended celebration. Yet these are the peaceful pastors, who so sincerely and meekly deprecate political sermons.

Nor was this sufficient. The grossness of the popular mind, on which political invective made but a faint impression, was to be roused into action by religious fanaticism,—the most intractable and domineering of all destructive passions. A clamour which had for half a century lain dormant has been revived:—the Church was in danger! The spirit of persecution against an unpopular sect has been artfully excited; and the friends of freedom, whom it might be odious and dangerous professedly to attack, are to be overwhelmed as Dissenters. That the majority of the advocates for the French Revolution are not Dissenters is, indeed, sufficiently known to their enemies. They are well known to be philosophers and friends of humanity, superior to the creed of any sect, and indifferent to the dogmas of any popular faith. But it has suited the purpose of their profligate adversaries to confound them with the Dissenters, and to animate against them the fury of prejudices which those very adversaries despised.

The diffusion of these invectives has produced those obvious and inevitable effects, which it may require something more than candour to suppose not foreseen and desired. A banditti, which had been previously stimulated, as it has since been excused and panegyrized by incendiary libellers, have wreaked their vengeance on a philosopher, illustrious by his talents and his writings, venerable for the spotless purity of his life, and amiable for the unoffending simplicity of his manners. The excesses of this mob of churchmen and loyalists are to be poorly expiated by the few misguided victims who are sacrificed to the vengeance of the law.

We are, however, only concerned with these facts, as they are evidence from our enemies of the probable progress of freedom. The probability of that progress they all conspire to prove. The briefs of the Pope, and the pamphlets of Mr. Burke, the edicts of the Spanish Court, and the mandates of the Spanish inquisition, the Birmingham rioters, and the Oxford graduates, equally render to Liberty the involuntary homage of their alarm.