LECTURE VII.

FRANCE.

We must now turn to the French history. The period which we may consider is that which intervened between the accession of Philip of Valois, and the death of Louis the Eleventh.

This period I would wish particularly to recommend to your examination, for it is the most important in the constitutional history of France.

I have already endeavoured to draw your attention to this great subject, -the constitutional history of France. There are few that can be thought of more consequence in the annals of modern Europe. Had France acquired a good form of government while the feudal system was falling into decay, the character of the French nation would have been very different from what, in the result, it afterwards became. All the nations on the continent would have been materially influenced in their views and opinions by such an example. The whole history of France and of those countries would have been changed, and the private and public happiness of the world would have been essentially improved.

The first and great subject of inquiry, therefore, in the French history, is this, What were the circumstances that more particularly affected the civil liberties of France ?

It is quite necessary to remark, that this subject is never properly treated by the French historians. They never seem to feel its importance; to understand its nature. When they advert to the state of France; when they endeavour to consider how the country is to be improved, how advanced to perfection, they content themselves, as their orators seem to have

done in the States-General, with vague declamations about order and virtue, and the discharge of the duties of life; a love of his people must, they think, be found in the sovereign, purity of morals in his subjects. These are the topics on which they harangue. Every political good, they suppose, is to result from the private and individual merits of the monarch and those whom he is to govern. They look no further. It seems never to have occurred to them, that the virtues which they wish for, both in the prince and the subject, are generated by a free government, and that it is in vain to expect them under any other.

From this general observation on the French writers, one illustrious exception must be made, the Abbé de Mably. His work must, therefore, be continually compared with the representations of the historians Velly, Mezeray, and Le Père Daniel. It is in his work, and in his alone, that the philosophy of the French history can be found. Without it an English student would pass through the whole detail, continually misled by his guides, or suffered to move on, without once finding his attention properly directed to the great misfortune of France; the misfortune of her political system; the decline and the destruction of her constitutional liberties.

This subject has not been overlooked by our own great historian, Robertson. In his Introduction to his History of Charles the Fifth, he describes, in a concise and unaffected manner, the means by which the prerogative and the power of the crown were extended, and the alteration that took place in the constitution and government so unfavorable to the general liberty of the subject; the fatal manner in which the ancient national assemblies lost their legislative power, and in which the monarch gradually assumed it, and still more fatally assumed the power of levying taxes. There are three notes (38, 39, 40,) particularly worth reading, in his preface to Charles the Fifth.

With respect to the constitution of France, the great point in that constitution was, as it has been in all the European constitutions, simply this, whether the national assemblies could maintain their importance, and above all, preserve their right of taxation. On this right of taxation every thing depended.

To the general principles of liberty a nation is easily made blind, or can even become indifferent. Such principles are never understood by the multitude; and the interest they excite is of a nature too refined and generous to animate the mass of mankind either long or deeply. But fortunately for them, they who trample upon their rights, generally (as it would be expressed by the people themselves,) want their money; and here, at least, is found a coarser string, which can always vibrate strongly and steadily. The tax-gatherer can at all events be discovered by the people to be an enemy, as they suppose, to their happiness. Popular insurrections have seldom had any other origin; and the unfeeling luxury of the great is thus sometimes most severely punished by the headlong and brutal fury of the multitude. Patriots and legislators are, therefore, the most successfully employed when they are fighting the ignorant selfishness of the low against the vicious selfishness of the high; when they are exchanging tax for privilege, and purchasing what is, in fact, the happiness of both, by converting the mean passions of each to the purposes of a generous and enlightened prudence. But to do this, it is necessary that some body of men, who can sympathize with the people, should have a political existence, and that their assent should be necessary to make taxation legal. Of peaceful, regular, constitutional freedom, which is the only freedom, this is the best and the only practical safeguard.

You must now recall to your minds what I have already said of the French history.

That the great writers are too voluminous, and that you must, therefore, meditate the incidents that appear in the abridgments of Hénault and Millot, or the concise history of D'Antequil; and, when they seem likely to be of importance, consult, if you please, the great historians.

An instance of this kind occurs early in the period we are now considering. You will see in the abridgments that the states-general assemble; an important circumstance always. You will turn to Mably, and you will find that a very remarkable struggle, as he conceives, took place between the crown and the people; and you might here, therefore, turn to Velly and the regular historians. The fact seems to be, that a

great crisis in the French constitution did really take place during the reigns of the earlier princes of the house of Valois, particularly of John, when the country was oppressed by the successful and unjust inroads of our Edward the Third. The states-general were called; and the opportunity was taken by the third estate, and more particularly by Marcel, the Parisian, and his associates, to raise the public into importance, and to balance, or, as the French historians represent it, to overpower, the authority of the prince.

Here, then, is evidently a period that cannot be too deeply meditated. The historian Villaret, the successor of Velly, seems to have taken due pains with this part of his undertaking. Le Père Daniel appears unfortunately to have no just apprehension of its importance, and, indeed, not to be animated by any principles of legislation and government, sufficiently favorable to the rights of the people. The political sentiments of Mezeray are more accurate; but he is too concise in his narrative, and too sparing of his observations. These are the great historians. But the Abbé de Mably is well aware how important to the liberties of France was the conduct of the states-general on this occasion; and he states, explains, and criticizes their views and their feelings apparently with great penetration and propriety.

The student will contrast these writers with each other, and form his own estimate of these memorable transactions.

The narrative in Velly or Villaret, opens with a history of the states-general, to which there seems nothing to object. But the moment the historian arrives at the particular point we are considering, his inadequacy to the subject appears. He speaks of the third estate as having gradually learned to discuss the rights and encroach on the limits of the royal authority; and their efforts to improve the constitution by managing the taxation, and by bargaining for the reformation of various abuses, he calls the first essay of a power usurped. He observes that many writers have seen a parallel between these transactions and those of the English at Runnymede; and he therefore very properly gives an estimate of all those proceedings in our own country.

When this estimate is considered, the parallel is, no doubt, most striking and complete; the requisitions of the states

and the concessions of each party seem all of the same nature as those between our own King John and his barons.

I must now mention, that, in the first course of lectures which I delivered, I went through many particulars of this remarkable struggle, drawing my narrative from Velly and the Abbé de Mably, but I begin to doubt whether I may not hope to employ your time better. I am not sure that I then made, or that any effort of mine could possibly make, a detail of this kind sufficiently intelligible; all that I believe you would carry away from the lecture, if I were to repeat it, would be a general impression, that there was in this part of the French history a constitutional struggle, worth your attention, and that you must consider it for yourselves, in the Abbé de Mably. This would be the right impression, no doubt; but I may perhaps produce this impression sufficiently by simply assuring you, without any further occupation of your time, that this is the case, and that you must meditate this period well. Do not regard the slight manner in which you may see it mentioned in French authors. You can easily conceive what an event it would have been to Europe and mankind, if the French nation had, like our own, obtained a free government, and from what you have yourselves heard and remember of the affairs of the world, for the last five and twenty years, this subject of the free constitution of France will only derive a new and more effective interest.

The contest in the reign of King John of France has distinct stages, in some of which it resembles the struggle between our own King John and the barons; in others, the struggle between Charles the First and his parliament; and, at length, it assumes an appearance precisely the same, which it did in the frightful and disgraceful periods of the late French revolution; every thing at the disposal of the multitude; and even the outrages carried on in a manner very similar. The dauphin's officers murdered in his presence, and the party-colored cap placed upon his head, as was, in a similar irruption into the palace, the bonnet rouge on the head of the late most amiable and most unfortunate monarch, Louis the Sixteenth. The result was but too certain; either the erection of some military despotism, or the restoration of their ancient govern