CHAP. 1832. 169. Which is In either case a limit is imposed, when this difference of price has become considerable, to the growth of the state and the extension of its population in the one case by the check given to the industry of towns by dear limit popu- corn, in the other to the inhabitants of the country by later stages cheap; in the former case by the rivalry of foreign manuof society. facturers, in the latter by that of foreign cultivators. intended to lation in the France has recently exhibited an example of the former; ! CHAPTER XXIV. FRANCE AND EUROPE FROM THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS PHIL- XXIV. 1830. 1. movements As great popular movements, such as the first French CHAP. Revolution, or the Reform passion in England, never arise but from the experience of serious public evils, so they never fail to terminate, when successful, in the removal of what objects to which great appeared to have been the cause, and generally was SO, popular of the public suffering. The insurrection of 1789 was have been occasioned by the pride of the noblesse, and directed directed. against the distinctions of rank; and it terminated in their abolition. The reform movement of England was induced by the selfish policy of the holders of realised wealth, and it was directed against the borough proprietors, through whom their power had been exercised; and it led to their abolition. The Revolution of 1830 was occasioned by the dread of Jesuitical usurpation, and was meant to assert the freedom of thought; and it was directed against Charles X. and Prince Polignac, who were conceived to be the instruments in the hands of that party. They accordingly were overthrown, and the throne of France remained open, exposed to become the prize of some fortunate soldier, some audacious demagogue. But it is by no means equally certain that a successful revolution will remove the real evils which afflict society, or that, even if it does really eradicate those which have XXIV. 1830. 2. The real CHAP. previously been experienced, it may not induce others still more widespread and irremediable. The remedy is sometimes worse than the disease. The warmest partisans of the Revolution now admit that it has done little for ciety are not the real causes of human distress, and that under another removed by name, and belonging to a different class, the oppressors of these con- mankind have reappeared with undiminished power on evils of so so certainly vulsions. 3. the theatre of human events. The guillotine of the Committee of Public Salvation, the confiscations of the Convention, the revolutionary law of succession, had destroyed the great proprietors, and rendered impossible the reconstruction of their estates; but they had done nothing for the condition of the workmen, or the interests of the twenty-five millions of rural cultivators. On the contrary their condition had become greatly worse than it was before the convulsions began; for the destruction of capital had deprived industry of support, the division of income had halved its market. Nothing remained to the poor but the cultivation of their little bits of land, for the most part unequal to the support of a family, and the fruits of which were wrenched from them by the ruinous land-tax, often amounting to 20 per cent, but which was altogether irremovable, for it had become the main stay of the revenue of the state. In the general confusion produced by the destruction Prosperity of mercantile and the confiscation of landed property, geois class, one class only had prospered, and exhibited the signs of of the bour general prosperity, amidst the penury with which it was surrounded. All the little wealth that remained in the provinces had been amassed in the hands of the merchants and shopkeepers; and in Paris the bankers and bourgeois class had been immensely enriched by the effects of the very pacification which to the nation generally had been the occasion of such bitter mortification. The bankers of the Chaussée d'Antin, the jewellers of the Palais Royal, the dressmakers of the Rue St Honoré, had for the most part made large fortunes from XXIV. 1830. the expenditure of foreigners, chiefly English and Rus- CHAP. sians, who had flocked to Paris during the Restoration. Nor was this prosperity in that class confined to the metropolis; it had extended also to the principal commercial and manufacturing towns. The silk-manufacturers of Lyons, the wine-merchants of Epernay and Bordeaux, the cotton-spinners of Rouen, had been enriched by the increasing demand for their various productions springing from the long peace of the Continent, and the growth of wealth which had in consequence taken place both in France and the adjoining states. In a word, the bourgeoisie of France had risen into wealth and importance during the peace; an importance arising not less from its own prosperity, than from the contrast afforded by the general penury with which it was surrounded. 4. rests of the were ad verse to labour. But from this very prosperity had arisen another evil, which shook the very foundations of society, and induced The intea series of causes and effects that imbittered and at bourgeoisie length terminated the reign of the succeeding sovereign. The bourgeois in towns, thus powerful by means of their those of wealth, their sway in elections, and their influence with the press, of which they were the chief, often the sole readers, had no interests in common with labour; on the contrary, their interests were adverse to it. Living by trade in goods or money, their interest was to buy cheap and sell dear; the very reverse of the workman, whose interest was to produce dear and buy cheap. Their chief, often their only purchasers, were found among the dwellers in towns the six millions of peasants, living on freeholds which yielded them from £2 to £10 each, took little or nothing off their hands in the way of purchases. Hence the policy which the Government pursued to please the one, necessarily gave dissatisfaction to the other. The working classes trusted to the promises of the popular leaders, and the representations of the press generally supported the movement which overthrew Charles X. and acquiesced in the installation of the Citizen King. But XXIV. 1830. CHAP. they soon discovered their mistake, and long and bitter were the regrets which the discovery occasioned. The reign of Louis Philippe was nothing but a long contest between labour and capital-between the interests of production and those of consumption; and the animosity between these different classes in the end became so great that it overturned his throne, and for a brief season established that of "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité" in its stead. 5. spread of steam, and railways. This direful social contest, the most widespread which Effect of the can agitate any community, was rendered the more violent machinery, in France at this period from the effect of the immense discoveries which they were compelled to adopt from their industrious neighbours. Steam was then altering the face of the world; the discovery of Watt was changing the destinies of mankind. However much the powers of that mighty agent and the multiplication of machinery may augment the industrial capabilities of a nation, and add to the sum total of its wealth, it is in vain to assert that in the first instance at least it is not a very great drawback to the interests of labour. If one man or woman can be brought by the aid of machinery to do the work of fifty men, what is to become of the remaining forty-nine, especially in a country which has no colonies or external outlets for its industry? The entire produce may be greatly increased by such application, but it never can be so in anything like the proportion in which the demand for labour is diminished. The common sense and experience of mankind have everywhere taught them the sophistry of the hackneyed arguments put forth on this subject by the economical writers on the side of the capitalists, whose interest is cheap production; and thence the constant hostility of the working classes in every country to the introduction of the machinery by which their labour is to be supplanted. Perhaps in the end the rival interests of capital and labour may be adjusted, and the workmen thrown out by machinery in one line may find |