not fear their influence; we have not a man who would or could read them." – When we add to this the relaxed state of public morals, the pains taken in the beginning of the Revolution to eradicate the sentiments of religion, and render its professors ridiculous, and the prevalence of the military character, so conspicuous through France, and so unfavourable to devotion; and when it is further remembered that all the wealth of the Church had fallen into the hands of the laity, which were fast clenched to retain it, and trembling at the same time lest it should be wrested from them – the reader may, from all these causes, form some notion of the low ebb of religion and of the Church in France.
The disposition of the King and Royal Family to restore the formal observances of the Romish Church, as well as to provide the suitable means of educating in future those designed for the ministry, and other religious institutions, excited among the Parisians a feeling of hatred and contempt. It must be owned, also, that though the abstract motive was excellent, there was little wisdom in attempting to bring back the nation to all those mummeries of Popish ceremonial, which, long before the Revolution, only subsisted through inveterate custom, having lost all influence on the public mind.
This general feeling was increased by particular events. Alarming tumults took place, on the subject of enforcing a rule unworthy of Christianity and civilisation, by which theatrical performers are declared in a constant state of excommunication. The rites of sepulture being refused to Mademoiselle Raucour, an actress, but a person of decent character and morals, occasioned a species of insurrection, which compelled from the government an order for interring her with the usual forms.76
The enforcing of the more regular observation of the Sabbath, an order warranted alike by religion and good morals, gave also great offence to the inhabitants of the capital. The solemn obsequies performed for the death of Louis XVI. and his unfortunate queen, when their remains were transferred from their hasty grave to the royal mausoleum at Saint Denis, a fraternal action, and connected with the forms of the Catholic Church – was also construed to the King's prejudice, as if, by the honour paid to these poor relics, he had intended to mark his hatred of the Revolution, and his recollection of the injuries he had sustained from it.77 Some honours and attention bestowed on the few surviving chiefs of La Vendée, were equally the subject of misrepresentation. In short, whatever Louis XVIII. did, which had the least appearance of gratifying those who had lost all for his sake, was accounted an act of treason against freedom and the principles of the Revolution.
None of the circumstances we have noticed had, however, so much effect upon the public feeling as the fear which prevailed, that Louis, in his veneration for religion and its members, might be led to form some scheme of resuming the Church lands, which, having been confiscated by the decrees of the National Assembly, were now occupied by a host of proprietors, who watched, with vigilant jealousy, incipient measures, which they feared might end in resumption of their property. Imprudent priests added to this distrust and jealousy, by denunciations against those who held Church lands, and by refusing to grant them absolution unless they made restitution or compensation for them. This distrust spread far wider than among the actual proprietors of national domains. For if these were threatened with resumption of the property they had acquired under authority of the existing government for the time, it was most probable that the divine right of the clergy to a tithe of the produce of the earth, might next have been brought forward – a claim involving the interest of every landholder and farmer in France to a degree almost incalculable.
It is plain, from what we have stated, that the Royalist party, whether lay or clerical, were so little in a condition to be effectually serviceable to the King in the event of a struggle, that while their adherence and their sufferings claimed his attachment and gratitude, every mark which he afforded them of those feelings was calculated to render his government suspected and unpopular.
Whilst the Royalists rather sapped and encumbered than supported the throne to which they adhered, their errors were carefully pointed out, circulated, and exaggerated, by the Jacobin, or as they called themselves, the Patriotic party. This faction, small in numbers, but formidable from their audacity, their union, and the dreadful recollection of their former power and principles, consisted of ex-generals, whose laurels had faded with the Republic; ex-ministers and functionaries, whose appointments and influence had not survived the downfall of the Directory; men of letters, who hoped again to rule the state by means of proclamations and journals; and philosophers, to whose vanity or enthusiasm abstract principles of unattainable liberty, and undesirable equality, were dearer than all the oceans of blood, and extent of guilt and misery, which they had already cost, and were likely again to occasion. It cannot be denied, that, in the discussion of the original rights of humanity, and constitutions of society, several of this party showed distinguished talent, and that their labours were calculated to keep up a general love of liberty, and to promote inquiry into the principles upon which it is founded. Unfortunately, however, their theoretical labours in framing constitutions diverted their attention from the essential points of government, to its mere external form, and led them, for example, to prefer a republic, where every species of violence was practised by the little dictator of the day, to a limited monarchy, under which life, person, and property, were protected. The chiefs of this party were men of that presumptuous and undoubting class, who, after having failed repeatedly in political experiments, were as ready as ever again to undertake them, with the same unhesitating and self-deceptive confidence of success. They were never satisfied even with what they themselves had done; for as there is no end of aiming at an ideal perfection in any human establishment, they proceeded with alterations on their own work, as if what Butler says of religion had been true in politics, and that a form of government
"was intended
For nothing else but to be mended."
Danger did not appal the sages of this school. Many of them had been familiar with, and hardened to the perils of the most desperate revolutionary intrigues, by their familiar acquaintance with the springs which set each in motion, and were ready to recommence their desperate labours with as little forethought as belongs to the labourers in a powder-mill, which has exploded ten times during their remembrance, and destroyed the greater number of their comrades. In the character of these self-entitled philosophers and busy agitators, vanity as well as egotism were leading principles. The one quality persuaded them, that they might be able, by dint of management, to avert danger from themselves; and the other rendered them indifferent respecting the safety of others.
During the government of Buonaparte, this Jacobinical party was repressed by a strong hand. He knew, by experience of every sort, their restless, intriguing, and dangerous disposition. They also knew and feared his strength, and his unscrupulous use of it. The return of the Bourbons called them into life, like the sun which thaws the frozen adder; but it was only to show how they hated the beams which revived them. The Bourbon dynasty, with all the remembrances it combined, seemed to this faction the very opposite to their favourite Revolution; and they studied with malignant assiduity the degree of liberty afforded by the national charter, not in order to defend or to enjoy it, but to discover how it might be made the vantage-ground for overthrowing both the throne and the constitution.
Carnot and Fouché, formidable names, and revolutionists from their youth upward, were the ostensible leaders of this active party, and most of the surviving revolutionists rallied under their standards. These agitators had preserved some influence over the lees of the people, and were sure to find the means of augmenting it in the moment of popular commotion. The rabble of a great town is democratical and revolutionary by nature; for their vanity is captivated with such phrases as the sovereignty of the people, their sense of poverty and licentious fury tempted by occasion for uproar, and they regard the restraints of laws and good order as their constant and natural enemies. It is upon this envenomed and corrupted mass of evil passions that the experimental philosophers of the Revolution have always exercised their chemical skill. Of late, however, the intercourse between the philosophers of the Revolution and this class of apt and docile scholars had been considerably interrupted. Buonaparte, as we have hinted,
Savary, tom. iv., p. 235.
Annual Register, vol. lvi., p. 51.
