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CHAP. VIII.

French Liberals and Liberalism in the 18th Century.

WHOSO aspireth to a correct knowledge of your true liberal, should study the men and manners we shall now bring upon the tapis.

For never, since the creation of the world, was any country, at any one time, so bountifully blessed with liberals, or liberal sentiments, sayings, and doings, as was France during the last thirty years of the last century.

Liberals would hence conclude that she ought to have been superlatively happy. But that conclusion agrees not with the truth, for she was in fact superlatively miserable. Indeed we doubt whether, during the greater part of that time, there was a

really happy man in France: we are sure there was not one such who was a politician. This is a bold assertion, but we will risk it. The reader, however, shall judge for himself. "Much would have more" is an old saying, and was an old saying when we were young, and also when our great-grandfather was young too, or we should think it had been invented post et propter the French Revolution: so completely was it exemplified through the whole course of that extraordinary proceeding. Now just let us see whether it was, or was not. The tiers-état, or commons, as we should say, having been treated, as they alleged, in a somewhat scurvy manner during the reigns of the predecessors of Louis XVI., took advantage of the weakness of that good-natured Prince and assumed a degree of importance which they had never known, and scarcely ever dreamt of before. This was all right; for, to say the truth, which is a paramount duty with the candid

historian-the commons, up to this time, had been rather below than above par in respect of political influence. However, being liberals, they were not content with the juste milieu, which very few liberals are. Therefore, having got an inch (so to speak, though it was a great deal more,) they wisely resolved to take an ell. And accordingly some of them began to adopt the requisite meaThis was the signal for a general

sures. move.

The grande nation wanted no other. Intoxicated, beyond all power of disinebriation, by the godless rationalism of Voltaire, and the whimsies of the social Rousseau, all classes burned to reduce some favourite theory or another into practice. One man proposed one thing, and another another; but all the real, genuine liberals, faithful to their fundamental principles of action, were stedfast allies, and cordially combined to promote the main object which they always have in view-the abasement of their superiors, the exaltation of themselves.

Having got into parliament-or the statesgeneral, as it was called-the commons conceived an ardent desire to be placed on a level with the noblesse and the clergy: while most of the former and some of the latter, as also the King and his ministers, wished to to have something after the Westminster fashion. But the distinctions known and approved in St. Stephens, did not fall in with the views of the newly-fledged Gallican law-makers. They spurned, altogether, the very idea of having a room to themselves. A lower chamber, indeed! and an upper chamber, indeed! What an insult to the genius of equality! If there was to be an upper chamber, they would sit in it; yes, that they would. Ay! in the most exalted cock-loft of legislation; and there they took their stand, crying Cæsar aut nullus, instead of taking the seats intended for them. There was a capital reason for all this punctilio. The commons were a majority of the whole, parliament. And, if the whole parliament

sat together, the commons could beat the clergy and the nobs into fits; while if they voted separately, they would be about a match for each other. To this the nobility, who had the best right to object, did not object at all; but the commons objected very decidedly. Neither party would yield. So, after discussing the matter almost without end, and all to no end, the commons, one fine day, got possession of the senate house, and, after inviting the patricians to join them, said they would legislate for themselves if nobody came to help them. No body came. The commons, therefore, voted themselves the parliament, under the name of the national assembly; whereby the statesgeneral underwent a curious transmutation both in name and nature.

Hereupon some of the noblesse, and a good few of the clergy, hoping to make the best of a bad job, came and took their seats cheek-by-jole with the members of the tiersétat. The assembly of the states thus

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