THE CAUSES OF REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
THE author of a striking paper in the new Quarterly on the lessons of the French Revolution, a paper deformed only by its excessive and therefore unscientific dislike of modern Democracy as typified in the Commune, tries to trace to a single source all the modern disasters of France, and finds it in the passion for Equality. We very much doubt if it is to be found there, although it has become almost a habit to make some such text the ground-work of a political sermon. Equality before the law the French do like, as do the English —who have with a single exception secured it too—and something also of equality in external address, but we doubt their caring so very much for equality by itself. Frenchmen have always conceded to officials not elected a prerogative which to Englishmen seems oppressive. They have always conceded direct privileges to soldiers. They have always conceded ascendancy to the Church of the majority. They have always maintained, with extraordinary fierceness and malignity, the rights of property, where not feudal, and have always shown a disposition to bow down before wealth not yet manifested to the same extent in Great Britain. A rich man is a potent man in France, while here, at best, he is a conspicuous one. Titles, as the Quarterly Review admits, have proved indestructible, and no income-tax has had a chance of legislative support. It is true, a party in France, ener- getic, domineering, and inclined to fight, has always pleaded the cause of equality ; but physical force, whether expressed through the vote or the bayonet, has always been on the side which promised what Frenchmen believe to be material order. Is it not rather the morbid self-esteem, or sensitiveness, or sense of honour common to the French character, and not the worst quality in it, which has produced the difficulty described by the Reviewer of combining Order with a free Monarchical or a Conservative Republican form of government? Frenchmen are, except under tremendous pressure, absolutely incapable of bearing with the cardinal condition of political progress, free discussion. The Kings who were obeyed for a thousand years never permitted it, even Lotus XVI. sentencing Beaumarchais to imprisonment for an imaginary lampoon. The states- men have always fancied, as regards the Press, that they are dishonoured by an attack, and while the Pompadour sent authors to the galleys for cutting jokes, Robespierre left in his desk a plan for guillotining all but friendly journalists in one batch. It was among the most curious proofs of the small amount of French feeling in Napoleon IH. that he never, as Emperor, severely punished a journalist, the usual sentence being four month's' imprisonment in St. Pelagie, to be taken when you liked as a first-class misdemeanant ; that he enjoyed though he suppressed caricatures of himself, and that he constantly pardoned Rochefort, whose half-child- like, half-poisoned epigrams would have lashed Bis- marck into fury, and made an English Minister long for unconstitutional privileges. He bore a free press, really free, for five months under 011ivier, and was the only Frenchman who ever did so. Thiers suppressed two papers, and winced under attack, and the new Government goes literally wild under discussion. It cannot conceive either of liberty of the Press, or "liberty of the Balcon," or liberty of the Tribune, —that is to say, of either the right of free printing, or free meeting, or free debate. Members of the minority in France have never been thoroughly heard. They have always been suppressed, either by threats, or insults, or factious uproar. On Tuesday, for example, this new Government, with its strong and despotic majority, full control of the Execu- tive, command of the Army, and state of siege in Paris, brought in a mad Bill, which commanded the Twenty-five who represent the Assembly during a recess to prosecute any newspaper criminally which reported a speech calling for the dissolution of the Assembly. It was a scandalous pro- posal, for it would authorise a sentence of four months' impri- sonment on a journalist who reported a grave speech of the kind by Marshal MacMahon, President of the Republic • or an approving sentence by the Comte de Paris, the wished-for King ; or an eloquent piece of advice from M. Thiers, who may be elected by fifty departments ; or a roaring diatribe by Jacques Bonhomme, delivering his mind in a dirty cabaret. -It was a sheer act of despotism, and was acknowledged to be one. Well, of all men, M. Gambetta was the man to be heard about that, for he had been Dictator, he was not very favourable to the Press, and he was known to advise a policy of calm. He began his speech, saying nothing all through but what Mr. Bernal Osborne might have said of his enemies, amidst their approving laughter ; but what he said seemed unendurable to the Right, who put up M. Ernoul to answer it, and failing as their friends admit they always fail in Parliament, created such a fearful hubbub that at last the sitting was closed. We do not say the Left did not join in the riot, on the contrary, they broke out of M. Gambetta's hand, and raised a clamour which would have justified M. Buffet in putting on his hat, but that is not the point. Every President of a French Assembly—M. Grevy included—has had to put on his hat and declare the sitting concluded. The discussion for which the Assembly is created always strikes either the minority or majority as a deliberate insult, and has always to be brought in some fashion to an end. If it is in the Press, the paper is put down ; if in a meeting, the speakers are criminally prosecuted; if in the Assembly, the session is declared closed, or members howl till they are hoarse. The very notion that discussion does no harm, but good, that if debate is free all can hit as hard as they like, is as foreign to the Deputies' minds as the idea of obeying their own elected Speaker, whether he is right or wrong, reserving a right to remove him if he is in- tolerably partial. It is this inability as of public school- boys to bear public scolding which seems to us the danger of France, and not any desire for a potential equality. It is not inability to bear argument. A bureau will listen calmly to statements which cut like sword-thrusts with- out a yell, and the members of a Conseil de Famille will sit like judges under a storm of insult, weeping, and protestation, but the French cannot bear to sit under hard words publicly. Then they sound like insults, to be answered by the sword, and it is only by an allusion to the singular basis of common- sense in the French character that we can explain why weapons are never actually drawn in the Assembly. Why do the majority not kill the minority out, and so terminate the fracas ? It would not be one whit more unfair. Scenes of this kind are fatal to France, for France has no idea of freedom except under an Assembly, and no idea how to keep that Assembly, if free, in decent order. It has never elected a ruler absolute within a limited prerogative. No Assembly there submits to rules when once insulted by free debate, till France, raging with contempt, elects a tyrant, and then breaking loose from him, begins to rage again through an Assembly in an everlasting sterile round. The Government Bill in this case is a monstrous oppression, bat still it is the Bill of the majority, and the Left should accept it as each, instead of howling like demons over their defeat. They are nearly equal to their foes, their own right of speech in the interior is clear, and they can influence opinion by quiet talk almost as strongly as through the Press. Their majority is inevitable if no coup d'e?at is tried, and a coup d'itat requires the support of an army which, be it what it may, is not devoted to the dynasties whom the majority wish to en- throne. They are mad, to abandon the policy of Order which M. Thiers impresses on them, and to wince, and rage, and foam under insults which fall on their more trusted leader, with his Genoese blood, like flakes of snow. They cannot wait, they say, or they will lose their fervour. Ask Venice how long she waited, without loss of one jot or tittle of her passion.
Previous page
