seems certain that throughout the Revolution, the ma-
jority at Center, swayed to Eight or Left, alternately
the captive of one or the other of the contending minor-
ities.
The formidable ally of this minority, the power be-
hind the throne which may be said to have finally ruled
France and given it the principles of revolution, was
8
114
PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
of course the Parisian populace. The people of the great
metropolis were, at the last, the means to enforce the
proclamation of those fundamental laws that gave legal
sanction to the Declaration of Eights, and so completed
the Declaration of the Revolutionary principles. Acting
through the Commune and the sections, the Paris
masses were the real minority which as early as 1789
began to shape French political thinking. Even in
the Constituent Assembly, monarchical ideas grew
weak and retired in face of the fierce invect-
ive and angry demands of the hungry, excited spec-
tators, who daily crowded the tribunes; even at
that time, selfish or patriotic reasons impelled men to
think and talk after the way of those " sans-culottes,"
who acted as chorus to all the proceedings of the As-
sembly. Later, the rumble of opinion which the clubs,
cafes and newspapers sent from outside had no in-
conspicuous share in molding parliamentary opinion.
When club members, frequenters of cafes, and the mot-
ley united to make more or less forcible entrance into
the hall where the Assembly met, bringing almost daily,
by delegations or impromptu personal speeches, insis-
tent protests against half measures, the bulk of the
legislative opinion was frequently caught by sheer force
of suggestion. The Parisians soon learned to reject
any laws which did not entirely recognize the prin-
ciples laid down in the Declaration of Rights; they
likewise learned their power as against that of the As-
sembly. The continual disorder in Paris and the
highly nervous temperament of the Parisian together
constituted the last straw which precipitated the nation,
into absolute democracy.
FINAL STRUGGLE.
In times of social disorganization, political power
usually falls to that group of persons within the na-
tion which is sufficiently in accord as to purpose, suffi-
ciently strong in organization, and sufficiently pliant
in regard to methods of domination. Such a group
rarely fails to appear in human societies; it did not
fail to appear at the period of French history here
under discussion. The dramatic seizure of govern-
ment by the Jacohins is one of the narratives which
history dwells oftenest upon.
It will not do to ascribe the Jacobin control to the
weakness of the Constitution of '91; nor is it solely at-
tributable to the royalist invasion which gave the Ja-
cobins the chord of patriotism to play upon. Each of
these facts aided the Jacobins, but their rise to
power and the consequent adoption of the principles
they advocated was due first of all to this: in a time
of extreme anarchy, a few able men to whom youth
gave the courage to dare, caught the temper of the
Paris mob, won its support and held it. The successive
stages of their struggle to victory a struggle wherein
king, conservative and liberal went down making a
hard fight against opinion whose bulwark was the
Eights of Man need only be recalled. Mirabeau-Ton-
neau and D'Espremenil were forced to retire before
the moderates, who asked for enlightened monarchy;
the Malouets and Lallys went to the wall when Sieyes,
St. Etienne, Talleyrand or La Eochefoucauld put for-
ward the elective principle; these, in their turn, came
to seem conservative as Mirabeau, ready for almost any
lengths, in order to control and bring stability to the
government, played upon the sympathies of the people
PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
with his oratory, 65 and for a time became their idol.
These changes of faction are the successive phases of
the struggle between the majority of the parliamentary
body and the Mountain, the minority who represented
the commune; they need not be dwelt upon. For our
purpose, the interest centers about the moment when
two powers finally stood face to face. When men pres-
ent in the legislative body from the first, had joined
their interests with those of the commonalty which
stood roaring outside, the last stage was reached pre-
liminary to formulating the principles of revolution.
If the Jacobins, with the aid of the Paris clubs and
the Paris sections, came to rule France, it was because
the first gift of the Eevolution to the provinces was an
anarchy that left them the easy prey to a central despot-
ism, and because, in Paris, the Girondins, the party
who represented the whole parliamentary opposition
to the Jacobins, could give, in these days of '93 which
asked for so much more, nothing but a theoretical ac-
quiescence in the revolutionary principles.
Between 1789 and '91, the national life had been
shaken to its foundations. Custom and tradition had
been arraigned and men had been told that they had
a right to question both; custom and tradition had
been declared at fault in the light of the Eights of
Man; and this idea had, above all others, been per-
sistently popularized. Anarchy was practically the
first result of the proclamation of these rights. The
nation was left without a guide, for the new rulers, in
65 Compare Von Hoist, op. cit., Vol. II, passim.
ANARCHY IN FRANCE.
their inexperience, could not both make constitutions
and supervise local administration. Each provincial
governor followed his own notion of government; in
many cases he had no clear idea on the subject, and
thus, presently, the communes legislated each one for
itself. Demagogues, preaching the new creed, spread
over the coufttry, bringing with them the news of the
doings in Paris, telling how the people had captured
the Bastille and taken their king to Paris; how the
People were now to rule France and have their rights.
Scarcity of work and scarcity of food are first-rate as-
sistants for the political orator who wishes to decry
an old civilization and proclaim a new order, and
neither aid failed at this time. When wayfarers and
paupers, homeless and half-starved, heard of the
Eights of Man, these rights became at once the rights
of the needy and hungry; having nothing to lose, none
were more ready than they to rally to the new order.
Not only the oppressed, but the outcast and destitute
fall in with the rebellion against any but democratic
law. Soon all over the country it had become com-
mon to refuse to pay any taxes at all; a new levy had
not been made, and to pay the old feudal burdens had
been declared at variance with the Eights of Man.
The military caught the new enthusiasm, and, in most
of the provinces, recruits and old soldiers alike be-
came unreliable in view of their new-found right
to individual judgment. The noble who had not al-
ready gone to raise a foreign army against his country
was at best alienated from any share in the national
life, for he had been abruptly and opprobriously shorn
PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
of everything which he had most prized, and was, be-
sides, in many of the provinces, the object of a more
and more vindictive hatred. Worst of all, the clergy
in many parts of the country were greatly disaffected.
No part of this story of the spread of anarchy is so
pitiable and terrible as the story of the struggle be-
tween the constitutional and the non-juror priests; no-
where more than in the districts in which this form of
dissension prevailed was the quarrel so bitter or the
factional division so fatal to life and property. With
the appropriation of the church lands and the civil
constitution of the clergy, the baneful element of re-
ligious difference, than which there is nothing more
terrible between man and man, added a note of bitter-
ness to the noisy anarchy of the nation.
And that anarchy, as has been said, was the oppor-
tunity of the Paris commune and its leaders. It was
because the country was all divided between the dis-
heartened, the disaffected, and the lawless, that the
Jacobin society was able to spread its network over
France and make, for a time, the despotism of a Paris
faction, a national despotism. When the nation is in
the throes of a complete upheaval; when the cry for
food comes from thousands of starving men and
women, and the call for democracy is raised by more
than a hundred newspapers urging their demands as
a demand of the nation; when 745 men, for the most
part keyed up to believe in an imminent millennium
incident to the legalization of new-found principles,
are called, most of them from advocates' desks, to di-
rect a heaving, uncertain national life, a strong and
able faction finds its opportunity. Strengthened be-
THE GI RON DIN 8.
cause France was uneasy and discordant, and Paris yet
more restless, hungry and dissentient, the Jacobins,
and chief among them, the deputies of the communes
of the Paris clubs, faced and vanquished the Girondins,
their last surviving competitors in the race to give
France a pure^democracy.
The history of the Gironde 66 will always move the
imagination. The sharp contrast between the begin-
ning and the end of the party's existence is an episode
whose dramatic pathos can never be overlooked. A
group of young, enthusiastic, talented men controlled
the majority in the Assembly for almost a year, pre-
dominated in the ministry, counted one of their num-
ber mayor of Paris, and the press and public, their
enthusiastic allies. Then, with a swift turn in the tide
of opinion, this Gironde fell from a favor which they
made no unworthy fight to retain, and finally be-
came fugitives from mob-law or went to the guillotine
singing the Marseillaise. In no part of the parliamentary
records are there to be found orations more perfect in
form and more able in thought than those of Vergniaud
and Guadet; no fire and passion stir one in the read-
ing as does that which vibrates in the speeches of Is-
nard; no subtility of argument, and sage, clear reason-
ing in the whole revolutionary period quite equals that
of Gensonne or Condorcet; no picture of stolid, pains-
taking patriotism can surpass the one for which Roland
66 On the Girondins, beside Lamartine, who is too par-
tisan to be of real value, see Vatel, Charlotte Corday et les
Girondins; J. Guadet, Les Girondins; and the admirable chap-
ter on the fall of the Girondins in Morse-Stephens, op. cit.
See, also, the Memoirs of Madame Roland, Dumouriez, Bar-
baroux and Louvet.
120 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
stands as the original. It thus happens that, in the
esthetic emotion which these facts arouse, the con-
spicuous weakness of the Gironde as a political party
is often forgotten. It is one thing to put forward, in
a hrilliant style, a doctrine of progress, the principle
of the sovereignty of the people, the dream of a classic
republic; it is another to be willing to put those
doctrines into law and to be able to make such law
effective. The philosopher may be permitted to out-
line principles without pointing the method for apply-
ing them; such a course is fatal to a politician. In
spite of their undoubted abilities, the speculative
quality of mind which distinguished most of the
Girondists made them, as a party, badly disciplined
and without any precise program. The consequent un-
certainty of their action made their failure inevitable.
Failure is not a crime, and the Gironde would not, of
necessity, be discredited because they went down be-
fore the Jacobins; but, stripped of its perfect literary
form, little that they advocated can be regarded as
sound doctrine. However, it was not because of the
unsoundness of their theories that the Jacobins turned
against them. The Jacobins had little fault to find with
the principles advocated by their rivals; what they at-
tacked was their lukewarm support of them. The
want of unity among the Girondins was the opportunity
of the Jacobins.
Unlike the Girondists, the Montagnards were first
of all tacticians; they were strongly organized and
ready, each and all, to use any means which came to
hand. The Jacobin party spoke the language of the
THE JACOBINS.
people; they played with the ideals of equality of pos-
session and of position; they winked at violence, even
when they did not join in it. There was more of
scholarship among them than their enemies will allow;
more real patriotism than madness or sedition in their
aims. They were thoroughly in earnest and not too
scrupulous as to the means they were willing to em-
ploy in order to secure that public weal for which, it
seems fair to think, most of them were sincerely striv-
ing. When the Girondins opposed the September mas-
sacres, because of their illegal aspects, the Jacobins
urged that if these were illegal, then the fall of the
Bastille, many of the acts of the States-General, the
overthrow of royalty, in fact, the whole revolution,
was also illegal. 67 While the Girondins saw in the
Eevolutionary Tribunal and the Committee of Public
Safety, deplorable tendencies to high-handed and des-
potic acts of government, and in any laws which
seemed coercive in relation to trade or money, so many
unjustifiable interferences with individual liberty, the
Jacobins unswervingly proposed and carried out these
measures as the only immediate means to the well-
being of the majority. The general method of the
Eevolution was attack upon established institutions,
upon the emigres, 68 upon the priests, 69 upon the king.
Up to this point in the offensive war upon old institu-
tions, the Gironde was ready to follow or even to lead
the Jacobins; but after the tenth of August, the
Gironde called a halt. The Jacobins, on the contrary,,
67 See Thiers. Histoire de la Revolution, III, p. 99.
68 Decree of November 9, 1791.
69 Decree of September, 1792.
122 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
went the whole length. It was these Jacobins who
prepared for pitiless war on all who were not ready to
accept the equality of condition as well as the new re-
ligion and the form of government which the class
newly come to power proposed to establish. It was
the Jacobins who, goaded by the foreign war, and
starting from the principle of "making royalists
afraid," went almost unintentionally, by way of the
prison-massacres, into the Eeign of Terror. And what
is most to the present purpose, it was the Jacobins
who, with the aid of the revolutionary committees of
Paris, and backed by the martial power of the Com-
mune, secured the overthrow of the Girondins, and
then, in the space of eight days, drew up the Constitu-
tion of '93.
The Jacobin constitution of '93, which had waited
almost a year to be put together, and was then hastily
formulated in a burst of democratic enthusiasm, marks
the complete development of the revolutionary doc-
trine. This " most popular constitution ever given to
men," 70 is, in a sense, the epitome of the principles
of the Eevolution. The Constitution of '93 has been
the objective point in this search after the facts
connected with the immediate cause for the develop-
ment of the principles of revolution, because in that
instrument men aimed to give legal sanction to the
new theories of liberty, equality and fraternity. After
the date of its publication, the public policy was
70 Herault de Sechelles. Stance of June 10, 1793. Moniteur,
XVI, p. 616. It will be remembered that the Constitution
of '93 was only put before men's imagination; it was never
used as the basis of government.
SUMMARY, t 123
marked by methods increasingly at variance with the
revolutionary doctrines. With the fall of the Gironde
and the development of the policy of terror, the princi-
ples which instigated revolution lose their meaning and
are constantly disputed by practice. Tyranny in order
to liberty is not a principle of revolution but a practice ;
when that practice was inaugurated, the revolutionary
principles had been finally expressed and the reaction
had set in.
The social growth which characterized France dur-
ing the century preceding the Kevolution has now been
reviewed, in an attempt to show an unfolding-process
that developed a new social theory. The facts in sum-
mary are these: Two important influences of the
eighteenth century collaborated in the growth of a new
type of social thought : On the one hand, a new philos-
ophy gradually penetrated the current opinion; on the
other hand, an unqualified need of a material reorder-
ing of the national life came to give a final character
and emphasis to the intellectual change. A group of
thinkers raised a literary revolt against much that was
held to be unalterable usage; their ideas became the
first mediums to disseminate a new sentiment. The
complete break-up of the machinery of government and
the incapacity of the single hand to which, at the end
of the century, the guidance of the political machine
was left, cleared the way by which the disciples of this
new critical philosophy were able to give popularity to
their creed. The vital fact at the end of the century
was the important role played by one class of the na-
tion, a class whose development seems always to have
influenced the growth of the whole nation. At the
124: PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
close of the eighteenth century, the whole energies of
the Third Estate seemed to center finally on an irre-
pressible struggle for political independence. Certain
peculiarities of life and manners in the metropolis of
the nation determined and precipitated the action of
this class, and of that still disfranchised class whose
aid it managed to secure. Finally, certain factions
within this class met in a struggle, a struggle which
ended in the domination of that section of the Third
Estate which held the most extreme views. Thus gen-
eral and particular influences developed and modified
social thinking, until it effectually settled upon the
principles of the Eevolution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER II.
Alger. Glimpses of the Revolution, ed. Sampson, Low,
Marston & Co., London, 1894. Babeau. La vie rurale dans
1'ancienne France, ed. Emile Perrin, Paris, 1885: Le Village
sous 1'ancien Regime, Didier et Cie., Paris, 1882; La ville sous
1'ancien regime, Didier et Cie., Paris, 1884; Paris en 1780; ed.
Firmin, Didier et Cie., Paris, 1891. Bailly. Memoirs, ed.
Baudouin freTes, Paris, 1827. Barbaroux. Memoires, ed.
Baudouin freTes, Paris, 1827. Blanc. Histoire de la Resolu-
tion frangaise, ed. Furne et Cie., Paris, 1869. Belloc. Dan-
ton, ed. Scribner's Sons, 1899. Beaumarchais. Me*moiros, ed.
Laplace, Paris, 1876. Bire. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris
pendant la Terreur. Perrin, Paris, 1898. Boiteau.' Etat de
la France en 1789, ed. Guillaumin et Cie., Paris, 1889. Buchez
et Roux. Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution franoaise,
ed. Picard et flls, 1834-38. Burke. Reflections on the French
Revolution. Brunetiere. Le Paysan sous 1'ancien regime, in
Histoire et litterature, Paris, 1893. Campan. Memoires, ed.
Baudouin frSres, Paris, 1826. Carlyle. French Revolution,
ed. Chas. Scribner's Sons. Cherest. La Chute de 1'Ancien
Regime, ed. Hachette, Paris, 1884. Clery. Journal de ce qui
s'est passe 1 a la Tour du Temple, ed. Michaud, Paris, 1823.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER II. 125
Christie. Letters on the French Revolution, ed. London, 1791.
CherueL Dictionnaire des Institutions de la France, ed.
Hachette, Paris, 1880. De Goncourt. (Edmond et Jules) La
Societe franchise pendant la Revolution, ed. Dentu, Paris, 1854.
De Tocqueville. L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution. Michel
Levy, Paris, 1857. Dumont. Recollections of Mirabeau, ed.
London, Edwin Bull, 1832. Dumouriez. Memoires, Baudouin
frres, Paris, 1823. Desmoulins. Vieux Cordelier, reprint by
Baudouin frres, Paris, 1825. Desnoiresterres. Voltaire et
la Societe au XVIIIe si&cle, Didier et Cie., Paris, 1871-76.
Droz. Histoire du Regne de Louis XVI. Renouard, Paris,
1860. Ferrieres. Memoires, ed. Baudouin frgres, Paris, 1822.
Gaudet. Les Girondins, ed. Perrin & Cie., Paris, 1889.
Hamel. Vie de Robespierre, ed. Lacroix Verboeckhoven & Cie.,
Paris, 1895. H6lie. Les Constitutions de la France, ed. Mar-
escaine, Paris, 1875. Houssaye. La Revolution, ed. Bib.
Charpentier, Paris, 1891. Jobcz. La France sous Louis XVI,
Didier et Cie., Paris, 1877. Lamartine. Histoire des Giron-
dins, in (Euvres, ed. de Pauteur, Paris, 1861. Laurent. La
Revolution Franchise, in Etudes sur Phistoire de PHumanite,
ed. Meiine, Cans & Cie., Bruxelles, 1861. Lavergne. Les As-
semblees Provincales sous Louis XVI, ed. Caiman Levy, Paris,
1879. Lecky. England in the eighteenth century, Vols. V-VI,
ed. Appleton, N. Y., 1882. Lewes. Life of Robespierre, Lon-
don, Chapman & Hall, 1849. Lomenie. Beaumarchais, et son
temps, Eng. ed., Harper, 1857. Louvet. Memoires, ed. Bau-
douin fr&res, Paris, 1823. Lowell. The Eve of the Revolu-
tion, ed. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893. Martin. Histoire de
France, ed. Fume, Paris, 1865, Vols. XIV, XV, XVI. Mich-
elet. La Revolution frangaise, ed. Lacroix & Cie., Paris, 1877.
Mignet. La Revolution frangaise, Eng. edition. Morse-
Stephens. The French Revolution, ed. Scribner's Sons, 1886.
Memoires de Mirabeau. Par lui-me"me, par son p6re, son oncle
et son fils adoptif, precedes d'une etude de Mirabeau par Vic-
tor Hugo, ed. Meline, Bruxelles, 1834. Olivier. La France
avant la Revolution, Guillaumin & Cie., Paris, 1889. Perkins.
France under the Regency, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston,
1896; France under Louis XV, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Bos-
ton, 1897. Quinet. La Revolution, Lacroix, Verboeckhoven
& Cie., Paris, 1865. Rocquain. L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant
la Revolution, Plon & Cie., Paris, 1878. Roland. (Madame)
Memoires, ed. Baudouin frSres, Paris, 1821. Saint Simon.
L. de Rouvroy, de. Memoires. ed. 1856-58. Sorel. L'Europe
et la Revolution franchise, Plon, Nourrit et Cie., Paris, 1897.
Taine. Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, ed. Hach-
ette & Cie., Paris, 1899. Thiers. Histoire de la Revolution
frangaise, ed. Fumes, Jouvet & Cie., Paris. 1872. Thierry.
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12(5 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
1868. Von Sybel. French Revolution, Eng. ed., Murray, Lon-
don, 1867. Vatel. Charlotte Corday et les Girondins, Plon
et Cie., Paris, 1864-72. Von Hoist. The French Revolution
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George Bell & Sons, London, 1890.
CHAPTER III.
THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION.
CHAPTEE III.
THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION.
I. THE INCLUSIVE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PRIN-
CIPLES.
II. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS.
III. THE RIGHTS OF MAN.
IV. THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
I.
WITH regard to the theories whose immediate causes
have now been considered, it is plain, first of all, that
they are principles put forward in a spirit of vital and
radical change. The disposition of mind, now gener-
ally called the Voltairean, growing through the eigh-
teenth century, penetrated deep and with cumulative
force into the social mind; by the end of the cen-
tury nothing was sacred. It was not merely question
of changing the form of government. The attack
struck at the very fundamentals of national thought.
The religious doctrine impugned, men asked over again
and sought replies to questions which, it had been sup-
posed, religion had settled finally. During the progress
of the Revolution, as during the preceding century, all
the problems of life were turned over and new theories
were advanced concerning the origin of man, and the
reasons for his existence, both as an individual and
as a member of society; above all, concerning the ques-
tion underlying all others, the question as to what is
the end of both man and society, and what is the pur-
9 129
130 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
pose of the universe. From the weightiest problems
which can present themselves to human thinking, down
to the most trivial queries of every-day life, all as-
pects of social existence were called into question and
pronounced upon. The principles of the Kevolution
are synonymous with an attempt to reorder, not merely
the positive law of the country, but the positive moral-