VI. CHAP. lost your esteem: believe me, then, I cannot take the oath." M. Fournes was next called. "I glory," said he, "in following my bishop, as St Lawrence did his pastor." Le Clerc was the third named. 1791. viii. 354, he, "of the Apostolic church." "I am a member," said "Swear or refuse!" said "This is Roederer, in a voice almost hoarse with fury. وو A 1 Hist. Parl. quarter of an hour of dead silence ensued, during which no one appeared, and the meeting adjourned. Such was the Jan. v.1791. last public act of the church of France, and never certainly did it more worthily evince the divine spirit of its faith.' 362; and Moniteur, 62. Ruinous effects of this mea sure. From these measures may be traced the violent animosity of the French church against the Revolution, and to this cause ascribed the irreligious spirit which in so remarkable a manner characterised its progress. The clergy being the first class who suffered under the violence of popular spoliation, were the first to raise their voice against its proceedings, and to rouse a portion of the nation to resist its progress; hence the contending parties began to mingle religious rancour with civil dissension. In the cities, in the departments, the people were divided between the refractory and the revolutionary clergy; the faithful deemed none of the exercises of religion duly per The VI. 1791. formed but by the dispossessed ministers; the democrats CHAP. looked upon these nonjuring ecclesiastics as fanatics, alike inacessible to reason and dangerous to society. clergy who refused the oath composed the most respectable part of this body, as might have been expected from men who relinquished rank and fortune for the sake of conscience. Those who accepted it were in part demagogues, whose principles readily succumbed to their ambition. The former influenced a large portion of the community, especially in the remote and rural districts; the latter were followed by the most influential part of the inhabitants, the young, the active, the ambitious. In this way the Revolution split the kingdom into two parties, who have never ceased to be strongly exasperated against each other the one, those who adhered to the religious observances of their fathers; the other, those who opposed them. The latter have proved victorious in the strife, at least in France itself; and the consequence has been, that irreligion has since prevailed for a long period, especially 1 Toul. 262. in the towns, in France to an extent unparalleled in any Mig. i. 122. Christian state.1 law inheritance. This iniquitous measure was speedily followed by 63. another, equally alluring in appearance, and attended in Revolutionthe end by consequences to public freedom fully as disas- any of trous-the abolition of the privilege of primogeniture, and March 18. establishment of the right of equal succession to landed property to the nearest of kin, whether in the descending, ascending, or collateral line, without any regard either to the distinction of the sexes, or of the full and the half blood. This prodigious change, which laid the axe to the root of the aristocracy, and indeed of the whole class of considerable landed proprietors in the kingdom, by providing for the division of their estates on their decease among all their relations in an equal degree of consan See chap. xxxv. § 91 et seq., where a full account is given of the Law of Succession introduced on this occasion, and subsequently adopted in the Code Napoleon. VI. 1791. In 1802. CHAP. guinity, was at the moment so agreeable to the levelling spirit of the times that it met with very little opposition, and proved so acceptable to the revolutionary party throughout the kingdom that it survived all the other changes of the government, and remains the common law of inheritance in France at this hour. Napoleon was compelled to adopt it, under a slight modification, into the code which bears his name; and though fully aware of its dangerous tendency in extinguishing the aristocratic class, who were the only permanent supporters of the throne, or the cause of order, he never felt himself strong enough to propose its repeal. Other changes introduced by the French Revolution have produced consequences more immediately disastrous, none so ultimately fatal to the cause of freedom. It provided for the slow but certain extinction of that grand and characteristic feature of European civilisation, a hereditary and independent body of landed proprietors; removed the barrier which alone has been proved by experience to be permanently adequate to resist the ambition of the commons, or the tyranny of the crown; and left the nation no elements but the burghers in the towns, and the poor and helpless 1 Hist. Parl, peasants in the country, to withstand the encroachments ix. 187, 194. of the central power in the capital, armed, by the shortxxxiii. 150. sighted ambition of the popular party, with almost all the powers in the state. 1 Ann. Reg. 64. Clubs of Paris. Ja Monarch iens. About the same period, the clubs of Paris began to assume that formidable influence which they subsequently cobins and exercised in the Revolution. They consisted merely of voluntary associations of individuals who met to discuss public affairs; but, from the number and talent of their members, they soon became of great importance. The most powerful of these was the famous Club of the JACOBINS, which, after the translation of the Assembly to Paris, rapidly extended its ramifications through the provinces, and by the admission of every citizen, indiscriminately, became the great focus of revolutionary prin VI. 1791. ciples. The moderate party, to counterbalance its influ- CHAP. ence, established a new club, entitled the Club of 1789, at the head of which were Sièyes, Chapelier, Lafayette, and La Rochefoucauld. The latter at first prevailed in the Assembly; the former was the favourite of the people. But as the tendency of all public convulsions is to run into extremes, from the incessant efforts of the lower classes to dispossess their superiors, and of the latter to recover their authority, the moderate club soon fell into obscurity; while the Jacobins went on, increasing in number and energy, until at length it overturned the government, and sent forth the sanguinary despots who established the Reign of Terror. The Royalists in vain endeavoured to establish clubs as a counterpoise to these assemblies. Their influence was too inconsiderable, their numbers too small, to keep alive the flame; the leaders of their party had gone into exile-those who remained laboured under the depression incident to a declining cause. A club entitled Le Monarchique had some success at its first opening; but its numbers gradually fell off, and it at length was closed by the municipal authority, under pretence of putting an end to the seditious assemblages which it occasioned among the people. Hist. Parl. Even during its continuance it was mainly supported by Deux Amis, money from the court, to which it cost enormous sums. Mig. i. 123. Mirabeau incessantly recommended the distribution of Marcke,176. money as the only mode of checking the Revolution.1* ix. 118, 122. iv. 271, 278. De la 65. Rome of the Prin cesses Ade The increasing emigration of the noblesse augmented the distrust and suspicions of the nation. It was openly Departure announced at the Jacobin club that the King was about for Ro to fly from Paris. The departure of the Princesses Adelaide and Victoria, aunts of the King, who had set out for Rome, gave rise to a rumour that the whole royal family were about to depart; and to such a height did * Les moyens que Mirabeau voulait employer étaient de l'argent, toujours de l'argent. Je voulait qu'on le repandit à grandes masses et sur plusieurs points." DE LA MARCKE, i. 175. laide and April 18. VI. 1791. CHAP. the public anxiety rise, that the mob forcibly prevented a visit to St Cloud, which the King, whose health was now seriously impaired by his long confinement in the Tuileries, was desirous to make. Lafayette, who wished to prove the personal liberty of the monarch, endeavoured in vain to prevail on his guards to allow him to depart; his orders were disobeyed by his own troops, and openly derided by the assembled multitude: "Hold your tongue!" they exclaimed, "the King shall not go." The popularity of this once adored leader was already gone, in consequence of a vigorous and successful attack which he had made, on the 28th February, on a body of rioters who had issued from the Faubourg St-Antoine, and were beginning to demolish the castle of Vincennes. Disgusted at his want of success with the troops, he resigned the command of the national guard, and was only prevailed on to resume it by the earnest entreaties of the whole regiments of Paris. The Assembly, alarmed at the posnsibility of the King's escaping, passed a decree, declaring Deux Amis, that the person of the King was inviolable; that the conHist. Parl. stitutional regent should be the nearest male heir of the crown; and that the flight of the monarch should be equivalent to his dethronement.1 ii. 117, vi. 22, 24. ix. 118, 411, 414. 66. The emigration of the nobility, however, meanwhile Continued continued with unabated violence. The heads of the first emigration. families in France repaired to Coblentz, where a large body of emigrants was assembled; no disguise was attempted of their destination; several young noblemen, on leaving the opera, ordered their coachmen to drive to that city. The fever of departure became so general, that the roads leading to the Rhine were crowded with elegant equipages, conveying away those who had hitherto remained of the noble families of France. They did not, as in the time of the Crusades, sell their estates, but abandoned them to the first occupant, trusting soon to regain them by the sword. Vain hope! The Assembly confiscated their properties; the republican armies van |