THE NEW FRANCE.* Ma. LILLY'S judgments and opinions are always
interesting, for they at any rate do not suffer from indeterminateness. He knows what he likes and—most clearly—what he dislikes. His views on philosophy, religion, and ethics are so explicitly stated that we are left in no doubt as to the basis of his deductions. To read Mr. Lilly on a historical subject is, therefore, refreshing, though we may differ widely from both his axioms and deductions. Our chief complaint against the collection of revised magazine articles which constitute the present book is that the title makes an assumption for which he scarcely provides sufficient proof. We may or may not accept his view of the French Revolution, but for the view that the worse side of the Revolution move- ment is still the dominant spirit in the France of to-day we should want a great deal more evidence than he is inclined to give us. Like many other people he is so disgusted with the atrocities of the Terror that he cannot look at any part of that epoch with calm eyes, and the anti-clericalism of M. Combes and his followers has blinded him to the enormous spiritual gap between it and the anti-clericalism of men like Rewbel. There are people to-day in France, no doubt, to whom Sainte-Beuve's description of Condorcet might apply- " fanatique d'irreligion et atteint d'une sorts d'hydrophobie sur ce point "—but they are few and not very important. The dominant spirit to-day, under the guidance of men like Henri Poincare and Bergson, is free from the old scientific dog- matism, and is inclined to be modest in the face of the world's mysteries, and, while very little clerical, to be by no means irreligious.
We are far from agreeing, too, with Mr. Lilly's view of the work of the Revolution. He examines the famous Declaration of the Rights of 37an, and has little difficulty in showing that its principles are inadequate. But the same would be true of any other summary of political truth in seventeen para- graphs and a preamble. The world is moving away from dogmatism about " rights," which at the best was only a half- truth, and we agree that men are not born equal in rights in any intelligible sense of the word. But to fight an abuse an exaggeration is necessary, and this very indefensible concep- tion of rights was a most potent instrument in the overthrow of a system which was not even a half-truth. It was a political overstatement which was needed to accomplish the task in hand. It is true, again, to say that " Law is the expression of the general will" is an inadequate doctrine. There exists something behind the will of the multitude, what old English lawyers used to call the " law fundamental," the eternal common sense of civilization. A people may tamper with this law, but it is at their peril. "True liberty," as Mr. Lilly quotes from George Eliot, "is nought but the transfer of obedience from the rule of one or of a few men to that will which is the norm or rule for all men." But supposing Burke had sat down to embody our own British Constitution in a few principles, we are far from certain that he would not have defined law as the constitution-makers of 1789 defined it, for, after all, it is pretty good formal definition. You cannot state the whole philosophical connotations of a term like " law " in a couple of lines. The principles of 1789 were not great truths perhaps, but we cannot agree with Mr. Lilly that they were, " palpable lies." Their mischief lay less in the doctrines than in the spirit which lay behind them, the shallow heroics of Rousseau, and in the way in which they were put into practice. Here Mr. Lilly is on stronger ground. Article IV. defined liberty as "the power of doing whatever does not injure another." It is an extreme doctrine of individualism, but in practice this lack of any organic conception of the State tended to destroy individualism. Liberty came to lie in re- stricting the liberties of others ; as Gambetta is reported to have said, it became "one of the prerogatives of power." Mr. Lilly finds this legacy from the Revolution still a damnosa haereditas to modern France. It may be so, but we should have thought it more evident in a country like Germany, which owes no allegiance to the doctrinaires of 1789. The truth is that the • The New France. By William Samuel Lilly. London: Chapman and Hall. [128. ed.]
undue interference of the State with private life has become pretty universal now, and it seems a straining of historical perspective to deduce it directly from the Revolution.
The valuable paper on "The Revolution and Religion" is marred by the same overladen thesis. After a lurid descrip- tion of the absurdities of the Fetes of Reason and the atrocities of the persecution, Mr. Lilly declares, "The ethos of the men in power to-day in France is precisely that of their predecessors at whose deeds we have been glancing." For reasons that we have already given we think the judgment extravagant. But the chapter provides an interesting and often brilliant narrative of the Revolution policy towards Christianity. It begins with a highly coloured picture of the mediaeval Church in France. Mr. Lilly does not spare the faults of the high ecclesiastics under the Ancien Regime, but be finds in the humbler clergy a high level of devoutness and capacity. There was something to be said from the point of view of the Revolution for objecting to Catholicism, which, as Rousseau pointed out, gave one "two legislations, two chiefs, two countries"; but presently, having destroyed the Church, they proceeded to destroy Christianity and then to invent substitutes for it. First came a Goddess of Reason from the Opera, and then an Etre-Supreme from Robespierre's brain, compared with which, as Carlyle said, " Mumbo Jumbo of the African woods seems venerable." Last came Larevelliere Lepeaux with his cult of Neophilanthropy, till Napoleon put an end to such whimsies. That eminent man bad no doubt on the matter. " On nest pas homme sans Dieu. L'homme sans Dieu, je rai vu ii rceuvre en 1793. Cet homme-lii, on ne le gouverne pas : on le fusille." Mr. Lilly's account of the sufferings of the clergy at that epoch, largely taken from M. Bire's work, is a worthy record of one of the most heroic pages in human history.
The remaining chapters are biographical studies, and to our mind form the best part of the book. Mr. Lilly is eager to destroy the Revolution legend, and he agrees with Royer- Collard that " the men of 1793 who have been transformed into Titans were simply canaille." But some of them he admits were canaille of genius. He tells the amazing tale of Fouche, the prince of arrivietes, who saved his head and amassed a fortune on the slipperiest road that any mortal ever trod. He gives us a comparatively friendly picture of Talleyrand, that "priest in spite of himself," and examines his final reconcilia- tion with the Church, which, as Renan said, was possibly the cause of joy to the angels and certainly to the Faubourg St. Germain. He thinks the Bishop of Autun the supreme type of the political gambler, handicapped by no assets which be could not stake in the game. Then follows a delightful paper• on Chateaubriand, whom he calls "a paladin of the Restoration." The phrase is not unjust, for in spite of poses and absurdities there was a core of genuine manhood in that brilliant impressionist, and be twice gave up his livelihood for his principles. The last chapter, which Mr. Lilly calls, " L'Ame Moderne," after a phrase of M. Bordeaux, is occupied with an analysis of M. Paul Bourget's talent and of two of his most celebrated novels. It contains some acute criticism and much excellent good sense on the subject of the sexual crudities of even the best French fiction. " In my judgment they proceed not from excess of imagination but from defect of it. It is the very office of the imaginative faculty to suggest. French novelists—it is a fault common to well nigh all of them—seem to suppose that no one will understand the thing to be impressed, unless he is taken by the throat, so to speak, and made to look at it by force."
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