Part 9

Fortunately the country itself, at a certain rather tardy point, rallied its patriotism in that spontaneous way which always practically reinforces the Conservative party. The "Alabama" claims gave those who did not meddle much in politics their first shock, while for more thoughtful persons it brought back a reminiscence of the surrender of the Ionian Islands; and when, later, the public saw him stand tamely by while Russia tore up the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, every student of our history knew that Mr. Gladstone's fate was sealed. The nation, stirred by arousings of the deeper instincts of the English character, at last reckoned with him on general grounds--dislike of his personal demeanour, and dread of what he was bringing on the country. It refused to be won either by the finest oratory or the prospect of reduced taxation.

The Conservatives came into power on the highest tide of popular feeling which living Englishmen have witnessed. But the change was too late to prevent mischief; Russia, encouraged by England's effacement during Mr. Gladstone's sway, had matured her further plans, and had already put her secret intrigues into motion. The Treaty of San Stefano showed plainly what her plan was, and just as clearly does everybody not blinded by party feeling now know that to Russia's amazement, and amidst the surprised and grateful admiration of the whole civilized globe, the present Ministry have thwarted that plan and made England again safe and famous. It would be a waste of time to retrace the details: a summary of them is to be found in Lord Salisbury's Manchester speech. What alone further concerns us here is the manner in which Mr. Gladstone has borne himself in Opposition. We have already seen how he did so as a Minister. It was understood, indeed, that he had retired, with something which was meant to pass for dignity, though to the eyes of the nation there was never anything which was not sulk which had so much the look of it. However, on the plea that something had happened in the world, he was quickly back again in front, elbowing Lord Hartington aside. Speeches, in Parliament and out, articles in every magazine, republication in pamphlet and volume, letters to everybody, which, practically, meant to all the newspapers: there never was such an active resuscitation of one who had so publicly become politically defunct. It is, however, not for coming to life again that we find fault with Mr. Gladstone, for, in truth, we always expected it.

Our complaint is simply this, that if such a style of opposition as he has resorted to became habitual, the government of the country would be made impossible. No means were left untried to make Russia hope, and other nations fear, that Lord Beaconsfield had not the nation at his back, and, when owing to this encouragement, Russia showed obstinacy, and it was necessary to risk something by exhibiting boldness, that very necessity was sought to be turned into a reproach. Mr. Gladstone's own tactics made it imperative that in the matter of Cyprus, and some other negotiations, secrecy should be observed, and the Government was charged with acting unconstitutionally, as if constitutional usage imposed no limits on the Opposition, or as if those limits had not been transgressed. Just so, again, in the Afghan war. If Lord Northbrook had acted with spirit years before, that war would never have been necessary; but that trifling fact Mr. Gladstone overlooked, he and the Duke of Argyll making it appear that Lord Lytton had been at great pains to get himself and his Government into a difficulty. Why Mr. Gladstone has had so little to say about the Cape war is a mystery, which may be explained some day; all that can now be said of it is that it shows a striking inconsistency. Luckily his efforts, though his industry was gigantic, have failed, and even he must be now aware that his renewal of them, though we suppose it must go on, having been arranged so long and announced so pompously, is a trifle late, with the Cape war ended, our troops in Cabul, those of Austria at Novi Bazar, and checkmated, scolding Russia gnashing her teeth at Germany. However, no doubt we shall have some very fine speeches, proving that nothing of this ought to have happened, or that it won't last long, or that the Beaconsfield Administration did not bring it about, or any thing else, just as reasonable, for fine words can be arranged in many different ways by a practised orator.

What, then, we may finally ask, was the secret of Mr. Gladstone's success so long as he was prosperous, and what was the explanation of his fall when it so suddenly arrived? The thrifty skill of calculation in estimating the growth of questions which his whole career so irresistibly points to was spoken of early in this sketch; but a man, no matter how judicious in the management of his own approaches to a party, cannot impose himself upon it. The Liberals, on the successive occasions, welcomed Mr. Gladstone, and did so gladly, never making his very late conversions a reproach. Its leaders were more vociferous in hailing him at each renewed arrival one stage farther on than were the rank and file, though some of them, as the thing was repeated, must have been struck with the unfailing punctuality of his approach. Not that we are professing to sympathize with these gentlemen. If it satisfied them that whenever they had upset a Government, be it that of Aberdeen or of Palmerston, the inevitable Mr. Gladstone always emerged out of the wreck, just a little more Liberal than the day before, ready to take the first pick of places in the new Cabinet, all well and good. But the fact was that his arrival always was a convenience, for, no matter how the sections differed among themselves, the rallying round Mr. Gladstone as a further seceder from Toryism was a proceeding in which they could all join, and it gave them, again and again, an appearance of unanimity and cohesion. This was, in fact, his great function, and in it he has been very valuable to the party. Besides, though so late and seemingly slow in politics, he had from the first been great, and at the outset even precocious, in finance; and, further, he was a wonderful orator, even quicker in debating than Mr. Bright. Such a personage, so largely prudent and so highly gifted, was sure to succeed, and to do so for a long time; but he was also certain to fail in the end, and that completely.

His temperament made that nearly certain. He was always too busy making speeches, or writing for the press, or answering letters, to be any power in social life. A strange kind of semi-recluse, but combining with bookworm habits a passion for speechifying and for using the penny post, was not likely to conciliate London, and he never did. By-and-by he was railing at the Clubs, because they did not agree with him; and then he had next to appeal from the metropolitan journals to the superior politicians and brighter wits who preside over the provincial newspapers. All this prognosticated failure. Even his special gifts and the kind of successes which fell to him turned into the means of helping it. His turn for figures not unnaturally made immediate economy his great object, forgetful of the larger connection in such a land as ours between an imperial position in the world and the preservation of our commerce, and overlooking also the costliness of reasserting our position when a crisis came; while his ready eloquence, having no longer open to it the old patriotic themes, had to expend itself in the adornment of British abnegation, and the excited applause given to his rhetoric was mistaken by him for assent to his views, till he was amazed to find himself suddenly quite out of accord with the nation, and falling, he knew not why, headlong from power.

Even to this hour he seems never to have had the least misgiving that the man who could speak with such complacency of the trading supremacy of the world passing to America (see his article on "Kin Beyond the Sea"), and who could urge as a reason for our not caring to interfere in Egypt that it would be the egg of a North African empire (see his article on "Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East"), was not the man to be England's Minister. But the country had found it out even before he wrote those articles; his threatening his countrymen with the calamity of finding another empire on their hands, in the only part of the world yet remaining to be explored and civilized, has only proved that they were right, and will not terrify Englishmen.

But a fluent orator has always left to him a kind of gambler's hope of retrieving everything by talking. Mr. Gladstone is going to alter everything by making a dozen or two of speeches in Scotland. Are these Midlothian harangues to be longer than that made at Greenwich, or more numerous than those uttered in Lancashire? They may be as fine as they will for anything it signifies to Conservatives, if the result is only again the same as on the other occasions, and it is hardly likely that he will persuade Englishmen now amidst their returning renown to despair of the future of England.

A CONSERVATIVE.

THE ANCIEN REGIME AND THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.

_Histoire de l'Ancien Regime_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris. _Histoire de la Revolution francaise_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.

When De Tocqueville,in his celebrated work upon the Ancien Regime and the Revolution, had described the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy, he ended with these words:--"I have now reached the threshold of the great Revolution; on this occasion I shall not cross it, but perhaps I may soon be in a position to do so, and then I shall no longer consider its causes, but its nature, and shall finally venture to pass judgment on the society that has proceeded from it."

Death prevented this admirable inquirer from accomplishing his purpose, a loss to the historical literature of Europe for ever to be regretted, and certainly not least by the author who has now undertaken to fill up the blank, and complete De Tocqueville's projected task--the description, namely, of modern France as the outcome of the immense transformation which the Revolution brought upon the Old French State. The fundamental principles which appear so clearly and sharply in Tocqueville's development are prominent in Taine's; the activity of the earlier author prepared the ground for the later to build on. But we must admit that Taine's work is pre-eminently independent, and his descriptions more striking, broad, and richly coloured than those of his precursor, while the material contents of his work are often different. But what, in spite of this, constitutes the resemblance between the two men is, their having for basis a common conception both of the State and what it presupposes, and of the historian and his task. It is the very opposite of the manner of thinking entertained in the eighteenth century which, without any heed to the peculiar character of the necessities of a given people, was bent on constructing, according to simple rules of reason and natural law, the best State for all time. Taine, in a very striking manner, declares himself free from such an error. "In 1849," he observes, "I was an elector, and had to take part in the naming of a large number of Deputies. Therefore it was necessary not only to decide as to persons, but as to theories as well; I was required to be Royalist or Republican, Democrat or Conservative, Socialist or Bonapartist, and I was nothing of the kind--nay, I was nothing at all, and envied those who had the luck to be something. These worthy men built a constitution as they would a house, on the most ornamental, most new, or most simple plan; a row of models stood ready for choice, a baronial castle, a burgher's house, a workshop, a barrack, a phalanstery, a cottage, and each said of his favourite model: 'That is the only proper dwelling, the only one a rational man would inhabit.' To me this seemed an utter mistake. A people, as I thought, may indeed be able to say what house they admire, but some experience is needed to teach them what house they need, whether it be commodious and lasting, stands the weather well, and harmonizes with the customs, occupations, and fancy of its occupant. We here in France have never been content with our political erections; in the course of eighty years we have pulled them down and rebuilt them thirteen times. Other nations have acted differently, and found their advantage in so doing. They have preserved an old, substantial building, enlarged, built around, and beautified it according to their needs, but never attempted to build an ideal house at one stroke, according to the rules of pure reason. It would therefore appear that the sudden invention of an entirely new, and at the same time suitable and durable constitution is an undertaking that transcends human capacity. The political and social form which a people permanently assumes is no matter of choice, but fixed by its character and its past. It must be suited to its idiosyncrasy, even in the minutest points, or it will crack and fall. Therefore we must know ourselves before we can discover what the proper constitution for us is. We must invert the accustomed method, and first form to ourselves a picture of the nation before we sketch a constitution. At the same time this is a far harder and wider task than the one hitherto in favour. What inquiries into past and present, what labour in all domains of thought and action, are needed to understand with precision and completeness the nature and growth of a great people through centuries! But it is the only way to avoid putting out first empty discussions and then incoherent constructions; and, as regards myself, I shall not think of a political opinion until I have learnt to know France."

From this rejection of the rationalistic State theory, it follows, of course, that the author declines the style of historical writing that corresponds with it. We all know how parties who contended in the course of the Revolution have gone on attempting to justify their historical representation of it--Emigrants and Feuillans, Girondists and Montagnards, Bonapartists and Communists. They all knew exactly at the beginning of their historical labours what the conclusions arrived at would be. Their own party had the ideal of the only healthy State cut and dry, and hence the sentence upon companions, allies, and enemies was pronounced beforehand. The desirable aspects of the Revolution were owing to the activity of that party, the undesirable to the worthlessness of its adversaries. The study of isolated facts only awoke real interest in so far as it sharpened the perception of the main point--our party is right, all others are wrong. To this disposition of mind more than to any other hindrances we may attribute the small advance made, up to the middle of our century, in the knowledge of facts, in the history of the Revolution; this is what explains the else inexplicable phenomenon that, spite of the large interest felt in the period, no history of Louis XVI. drawn from authentic documents has as yet been written. For that even the books of De Tocqueville and Taine, spite of the strength of their authors' intellect and the wealth of their material, have not afforded us this, we shall soon convincingly see.

Both these works, however, are invaluable preparations for the writing of such a history. With firm and decided political principles of their own, both authors have determined to serve no party, but knowledge only. Both desire to know men and circumstances before they judge of the political experiments made. Both are full of the spirit of the old saying: "Human affairs are neither to be wept over nor laughed at, but to be understood." It is only when we know the soil and the seed from which the Revolution sprang that we can understand its nature and working, and only from the understanding of the whole can we pronounce upon the details with which factions have hitherto concerned themselves in endless and unprofitable debate. We will illustrate our meaning by a contrary procedure. I have not unfrequently heard the question: "How can Taine, whose first volume reveals more fully than any previous work the utter corruption of the Ancien Regime, place the Revolution in his second in an equally unfavourable light? If the old state were so completely good for nothing, the French were perfectly right in utterly destroying it." Accordingly, there has been no want of critics who, after the appearance of the first volume, declared the author to be a thorough Liberal, and, after the second, in deep disappointment, proclaimed him a thoroughly reactionary politician. There are, indeed, certain passages that might lead to such a conclusion, certain inconsistencies do appear, but on the whole it is self-evident, from an historical standpoint, that out of so evil a condition as the first volume paints the dark pictures of the second must needs grow. Rather should we have had cause to wonder if from a diseased root there had sprung a healthy tree. The men of the Revolution had grown up on no other soil and in no other atmosphere than that of the Ancien Regime; it was under it that their notions had arisen, their passions been fostered, and their ideal formed; it was there that their nature had received its stamp and their strivings their direction; and if all relations were dislocated, political feeling perverted, all portions of the people filled with bitter hatred against the State and each other, how should pupils in such a school amidst the final shock of catastrophes show themselves men of ripe experience, practical wisdom, and determined energy? He who has once taken in this simple truth will be much inclined to a mild judgment of individual men and parties; at all events, he will not be able abruptly to take sides either for or against the Ancien Regime or the Revolution. For one thing will have grown clear to him, that the Revolution was not the destroyer alone, but the undeniable offspring, of the old condition of things.

That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are cited, as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only French, but foreign authorities--English more especially--while German are hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of thoroughly explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge is frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt to follow the general line of thought running through the book, and now and then to controvert it on certain points.

It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's inquiries led. The centralized government of France is by no means a creation of our century, but a production of the Ancien Regime. Since the days of Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and delegates had taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public works and plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people. The elementary principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution, of independent local administration and commercial freedom, were destroyed thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost sovereigns in the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government, preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests, and consequently imposed taxes and corvees upon their dependents, while often successfully resisting royal aggression--all these magnates were now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the royal bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity--thenceforth, as hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation for their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents--always at the cost of the people--were heaped upon them. Thus the popular hatred went on intensifying with every generation, and was at length the source and essential element of the great Revolution.

It is on this thesis that Taine bases his representation of the subject. Privileges were once the reward of political service done by the heads and leaders of the people in their own territories. Then, the landlord lived in the midst of his dependents--his own interest was identical with their welfare, he was linked with them by natural and traditional ties, and appeared as their powerful advocate whenever the State attempted any arbitrary and oppressive measure. Now bureaucratic government divided the landowners from the people, and by the unjustified continuance of their privileges set the two henceforth in opposition. For because the nobleman paid no taxes, the burgher and farmer had to make up the deficit. Because he retained the right of chase, his game had to be fed on the crops of his tenants. If a not inconsiderable number of the higher middle classes gained the special privileges of nobility, the burthens of the rest of the people were only increased thereby. The author has rendered us praiseworthy service by exposing the extent of privileges and feudal rights on one hand, and of the increase of taxes and duties on the other, more fully and precisely than any other writer has done. Thorough investigation has brought out a still more appalling condition than had been imagined. After the State, the Church, and the landlord had received their rates, the share of the farmer in the proceeds of his land never amounted to more than a half, and often his taxes rose to eighty per cent. of his income. On the other hand, the privileged classes paid at least a fifth less than the just proportion, and knew how to obtain on a yearly average at least a hundred millions in the shape of presents, pensions, &c. With increasingly few exceptions, there was no more thought of any care to be taken of the lower classes by the higher. Prelates and magnates streamed towards Versailles; all that the peasants knew of them was from their unmerciful agents coming for rent and taxes. Thus France fell asunder into two worlds without, unfortunately, any reciprocal knowledge or common interest, divided by contempt and hatred--worlds that lived on side by side, the smaller in wealth, enjoyment, elegance, and luxury, and, above all, brilliant idleness; the larger in poverty, wretchedness, ignorance, savagery, and, above all, in ever-growing and devouring bitterness of heart--a condition such as no other nation of Christian Europe had ever before come to.

Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led into error.