are the ordinary source of veneration; and the way in which they arise is obvious. We wonder because we are ignorant, and we fear because we are weak. It is therefore natural, that in former times, when men were more ignorant and more weak than they now are, they should likewise have been more given to veneration, more inclined to those habits of reverence, which if carried into religion, cause superstition, and if carried into politics, cause despotism. In the ordinary march of society, those evils are remedied by that progress of knowledge, which at once lessens our ignorance and increases our resources: in other words, which diminishes our proneness to wonder and to fear, and thus weakening our feelings of veneration, strengthens, in the same proportion, our feelings of independence. But in France, this natural tendency was, as we have already seen, counteracted by an opposite tendency; so that while, on the one hand, the protective spirit was enfeebled by the advance of knowledge, it was, on the other hand, invigorated by those social and political circumstances which I have attempted to trace; and by virtue of which, each class exercising great power over the one below it, the subordination and subserviency of the whole were completely maintained. Hence the mind became accustomed to look upwards, and to rely, not on its own resources, but on the resources of others. Hence that pliant and submissive disposition, for which the French, until the eighteenth century, were always remarkable. Hence, too, that inordinate respect for the opinions of others, on which vanity, as one of their national characteristics, is founded.430 For, the feelings of vanity and of veneration have evidently this in common, that they induce each man to measure his actions by a standard external to himself; while the opposite feelings of pride and of independence would make him prefer that internal standard which his own mind alone can supply. The result of all this was, that when, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the intellectual movement stimulated the French to rebellion, its effect was neutralized by that social tendency which, even in the midst of the struggle, kept alive the habits of their old subservience. Thus it was that, while the war went on, there still remained a constant inclination on the part of the people to look up to the nobles, on the part of the nobles to look up to the crown. Both classes relied upon what they saw immediately above them. The people believed that without the nobles there was no safety; the nobles believed that without the crown there was no honour. In the case of the nobles, this opinion can hardly be blamed; for as their distinctions proceed from the crown, they have a direct interest in upholding the ancient notion that the sovereign is the fountain of honour. They have a direct interest in that preposterous doctrine, according to which, the true source of honour being overlooked, our attention is directed to an imaginary source, by whose operation it is believed, that in a moment, and at the mere will of a prince, the highest honours may be conferred upon the meanest men. This, indeed, is but part of the old scheme to create distinctions for which nature has given no warrant; to substitute a superiority which is conventional for that which is real; and thus try to raise little minds above the level of great ones. The utter failure, and, as society advances, the eventual cessation of all such attempts, is certain; but it is evident, that as long as the attempts are made, they who profit by them must be inclined to value those from whom they proceed. Unless counteracting circumstances interpose, there must be between the two parties that sympathy which is caused by the memory of past favours, and the hope of future ones. In France, this natural feeling being strengthened by that protective spirit which induced men to cling to those above them, it is not strange that the nobles, even in the midst of their turbulence, should seek the slightest favours of the crown with an eagerness of which some examples have just been given. They had been so long accustomed to look up to the sovereign as the source of their own dignity, that they believed there was some hidden dignity even in his commonest actions; so that, to their minds, it was a matter of the greatest importance which of them should hand him his napkin, which of them should hold his basin, and which of them should put on his shirt.431 It is not, however, for the sake of casting ridicule upon these idle and frivolous men, that I have collected evidence respecting the disputes with which they were engrossed. So far from this, they are rather to be pitied than blamed: they acted according to their instincts; they even exerted such slender abilities as nature had given to them. But we may well feel for that great country whose interests depended on their care. And it is solely in reference to the fate of the French people that the historian need trouble himself with the history of the French nobles. At the same time, evidence of this sort, by disclosing the tendencies of the old nobility, displays in one of its most active forms that protective and aristocratic spirit, of which they know little who only know it in its present reduced and waning condition. Such facts are to be regarded as the symptoms of a cruel disease, by which Europe is indeed still afflicted, but which we now see only in a very mitigated form, and of whose native virulence no one can have an idea, unless he has studied it in those early stages, when, raging uncontrolled, it obtained such a mastery as to check the growth of liberty, stop the progress of nations, and dwarf the energies of the human mind.
It is hardly necessary to trace at greater length the way in which France and England diverged from each other, or to point out what I hope will henceforth be considered the obvious difference between the civil wars in the two countries. It is evident that the low-born and plebeian leaders of our rebellion could have no sympathy with those matters which perplexed the understanding of the great French nobles. Men like Cromwell and his co-adjutors were not much versed in the mysteries of genealogy, or in the subtleties of heraldic lore. They had paid small attention to the etiquette of courts; they had not even studied the rules of precedence. All this was foreign to their design. On the other hand, what they did was done thoroughly. They knew that they had a great work to perform; and they performed it well.432 They had risen in arms against a corrupt and despotic government, and they would not stay their hands until they had pulled down those who were in high places; until they had not only removed the evil, but had likewise chastised those bad men by whom the evil was committed. And although in this, their glorious undertaking, they did undoubtedly display some of the infirmities to which even the highest minds are subject; we, at least, ought never to speak of them but with that unfeigned respect which is due to those who taught the first great lesson to the kings of Europe, and who, in language not to be mistaken, proclaimed to them that the impunity which they had long enjoyed was now come to an end, and that against their transgressions the people possessed a remedy, sharper, and more decisive, than any they had hitherto ventured to use.
CHAPTER IV
THE PROTECTIVE SPIRIT CARRIED BY LOUIS XIV. INTO LITERATURE. EXAMINATION OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE INTELLECTUAL CLASSES AND THE GOVERNING CLASSES
The reader will now be able to understand how it was that the protective system, and the notions of subordination connected with it, gained in France a strength unknown in England, and caused an essential divergence between the two countries. To complete the comparison, it seems necessary to examine how this same spirit influenced the purely intellectual history of France as well as its social and political history. For the ideas of dependence upon which the protective scheme is based, encouraged a belief that the subordination which existed in politics and in society ought also to exist in literature; and that the paternal, inquisitive, and centralizing system which regulated the material interests of the country, should likewise regulate the interests of its knowledge. When, therefore, the Fronde was finally overthrown, everything was prepared for that singular intellectual polity which, during fifty years characterised the reign of Louis XIV., and which was to French literature what feudalism was to French politics. In both cases, homage was paid by one party, and protection and favour accorded by the other. Every man of letters became a vassal of the French crown. Every book was written with a view to the royal favour; and to obtain the patronage of the king was considered the most decisive proof of intellectual eminence. The effects produced by this system will be examined in the present chapter. The apparent cause of the system was the personal character of Louis XIV.; but the real and overruling causes were those circumstances which I have already pointed out, and which established in the French mind associations that remained undisturbed until the eighteenth century. To invigorate those associations, and to carry them into every department of life, was the great aim of Louis XIV.; and in that he was completely successful. It is on this account that the
Also connected with the institution of chivalry, both being cognate symptoms of the same spirit.
Even just before the French Revolution, these feelings still existed. See, for instance the extraordinary details in
Ludlow thus expresses the sentiments which induced him to make war upon the crown: ‘The question in dispute between the king's party and us being, as I apprehend, whether the king should govern as a god by his will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts? or whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and live under a government derived from their own consent? being fully persuaded, that an accommodation with the king was unsafe to the people of England, and unjust and wicked in the nature of it.’
