fewer individual opinions would be collected than by an appeal to a limited number.

He was equally frank with regard to the Monarchy and the House of Lords. "But it was said a House of Commons so chosen as to be a complete representation of the people would be too powerful for the House of Lords, and even for the King; they would abolish the one and dismiss the other. If the King and the House of Lords were unnecessary and useless branches of the Constitution, let them be dismissed and abolished; for the people were not made for them, but they for the people. If, on the contrary, the King and the House of Lords were felt and believed by the people, as he was confident they were, to be not only useful, but essential, parts of the Constitution, a House of Commons freely chosen by, and speaking the sentiments of the people, would cherish and protect both, within the limits assigned to them by the Constitution.

The motion was rejected by 282 to 41. Nor, although the sentiments of Mr. Fox would be styled in these days Conservative rather than otherwise, can it be said that the motion was one the House of Commons ought to have adopted. It was a time to adhere to old forms, rather than seek for improvements, however beneficial, in the constitution of Parliament; and Mr. Pitt placed himself on strong ground when he said truly, that the great majority of the people did not wish for any change.

Parliament was prorogued on the 21st of June.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

REIGN OF TERROR.

I PROPOSE here to make some remarks on that appalling course of events ending in what is appropriately called the Reign of Terror.

When Louis first assembled the States-General the wishes of the electors were recorded in the powers given to their representatives. The points on which these wishes were nearly unanimous were the following: 1. The Government of France is a monarchy. 2. The person of the King is inviolable and sacred. 3. The crown is hereditary in the male line. 4. The King is the depository of the executive power. 5. The agents of the royal authority are responsible. 6. The royal sanction is necessary for the promulgation of laws. 7. The nation makes the law with the royal sanction. 8. The consent of the nation is necessary for the imposition of taxes and the making of laws. 9. Taxes can only be granted for the period from one meeting of the States-General to the next. 10. Property is sacred. 11. Individual liberty is sacred.* In the royal sitting of the 23rd of June the King granted in effect all these demands, with the addition of the liberty of the press and provincial States. But he required that the

* See the various histories of the French Revolution, and especially "Abregé Chronologique."

three orders should meet separately, and that the consent of each order should be necessary for any future change of the law.

This was the first stumbling-block of the Revolution. Necker, by his awkwardness, raised it into immense importance; Mirabeau took up the quarrel, and in four days forced the King to surrender.

But Mirabeau was himself an admirer of representative monarchy; his speech in favour of leaving to the Crown the prerogative of peace and war is a masterpiece of reason and eloquence. The men who inherited his influence left to the Crown only a shadow of authority. The transfer of the royal family to Paris introduced the physical force of the mob as an element in framing the Constitution.

In the midst of these agitations, during which the democracy was always encroaching, and royalty always suspected, a new party arose called the Girondins, who, with much eloquence and little wisdom, denounced the monarch in whose feeble hands authority was already expiring. They succeeded in their object. The King was put to death. But they had wished for a republic of riches, of luxury, of literature, and the arts. They had founded a republic of rude force and woollen nightcaps. A member of the Convention said with truth, "These men during the monarchy were always calling out for a republic, and now that they have got a republic they want to restore something like a monarchy." They were, in the natural course of events, deposed, imprisoned, and guillotined.

Now arose the last struggle; what was to be the form and spirit of the new republic? The mind of France had been prepared for the revolution by two men entirely different in their understandings, their tastes, their wishes,

and their habits. Voltaire, "the spoiled child of the world, which he spoilt," excelled in ridiculing the religion and government of his country, while he favoured every licence, indulged every vice, and looked forward to an age of brilliant society, pleasant suppers, and general incredulity. Rousseau, on the other hand, poor, sullen, and suspicious, drew all his philanthropy from his imagination. He held that man is a benevolent being till corrupted by institutions and arts; that despotic governments ought to be overthrown, and every act of sovereignty ought to emanate from the general will, which always means right, and though it may be deceived, can never be corrupted. Liberty and Equality are the great ends of civil society; liberty consists in the possession of sovereignty by the people; equality, in such a distribution of riches, as well as of power, that no man shall be wealthy enough to buy his neighbour, and no man poor enough to fall into dependence. The sovereignty of the people is no mere abstract dogma; man is by nature a benevolent being, and therefore fit to exercise the sovereignty he possesses.

Hitherto, it may be said, the government of France had been in the hands of the disciples of Voltaire. Loménie de Brienne, Mirabeau, Dumouriez, Danton, were all men without faith, without morals, all greedy of getting money, and profuse in spending it; bribed by the Court, faithless to the power which bought them, democrats for interest; selfish in their ends, unscrupulous in their means.

Another school-that of Rousseau-was now to arise. These were men of ardent faith in themselves and in human nature; ferocious and sanguinary in disposition; ready to wade through slaughter in order to realize their theory; hated deeply all that had preceded and now sur

rounded them-court, clergy, nobility; and jealous, above all, of those who competed with them for the government of the State.

In his speech on the 7th of May, 1794, Robespierre proclaimed at once his antipathies and his idolatry. "The Encyclopedists contained some estimable characters; but a much greater number of ambitious rogues. Many of them became leading men in the State. Whoever does not study their influence and policy would form a most imperfect notion of our Revolution. It was they who introduced the frightful doctrine of atheism; they were ever in politics below the dignity of freedom; in morality they went far beyond the detraction of religious prejudices. Their disciples declaimed against despotism, and received the pensions of despots; they composed alternately tirades against kings and madrigals for their mistresses; they were fierce with their pens, and rampant in antechambers. That sect propagated with infinite care the principles of materialism, which spread so rapidly among the great and the beaux-esprits. We owe to them that selfish philosophy which reduced egotism to a system; regarded human society as a game of chance, where success was the sole distinction between what was just and unjust; probity an affair of taste or good breeding; the world as the patrimony of the most dexterous of scoundrels.

"Among the great men of that period was one distinguished by the elevation of his soul and the greatness of his character, who showed himself a worthy preceptor of the human race [Rousseau]. He attacked tyranny with boldness, he spoke with enthusiasm of the Deity. His masculine and upright eloquence drew in colours of fire the charms of virtue; it defended the elevated doctrines which