The Press. — London, England, 1857-12-05 00:00:00

f ittraturt. Essays on the Early Period of the French Revo lution. By the late Right Hon. John Wilson Croker. London : Murray. THESE essays are of great value, although exhibiting some of the defects of the accom plished writer's peculiar turn of mind. It is to be specially noted that they are upon " the early" history of the French Revolution, a sub ject on which there have been innumerable errors. Mr. Croker performed signal services in exposing the inaccurate delineation and the blundering chronology of several of the revo lutionary writers, who sought to destroy the personal credit of Louis XVI. and his hapless Queen. He was particularly familiar with the details of the French Revolution. These essays (which we carefully read on their first ap pearance) are distinguished by great literary acumen, much historical research, and by not a little of the professional adroitness which accompany the talents of a practising bar • rister. In some special passages, their success was completely annihilating. In our long recollection of periodical literature, we do not remember any case of such a perfectly crushing review as Mr. Croker's masterly and decisive exposure of the slanders and stupid mistakes of Lord Holland's memoirs. We cannot conceive that anything more destruc tive could be written than, the essay of Mr. Croker on Lord Holland, and its publication had a great effect with the public. The sel fishness, malignity, and intemperance of the whole school of revolutionary agitators in France was laid bare by Mr. Croker with con summate skill, and we rejoice that there was so formidable a literary Attorney-General in England to impeach the reckless statements of the Jacobin school of writers. Mr. Croker has glanced at his own fitness for his mission in the preface to this post humous publication of his essays. He was born and raised in the old Protestant Academy of Ireland, yet he wished that a qualified sys tem of " Emancipation" should be offered to the Roman Catholics of his native country. Between the French Revolution and the Irish Rebellion there were electric affinities, and it is not unnatural to suppose that young Wilson Croker, who witnessed the spread of the United Irish conspiracy, should have enter tained strong prejudices against the working of the French Revolution. Mr. Croker began life a Royalist in feelings, a Tory in opinions, and a Pittite in connection. In talents, he was brilliant, able, and various. He wrote satiric verse with much effect. His tracts were so terse, and pregnant with political thought, that some of them are highly valued. He was a successful speaker in Parliament, and it would be impossible to overrate the value of his admirable debating during the Reform Bill period. We do not recol lect any man of his generation who had so ver satile an understanding. He could deal with arguments either logically or satirically ; his stock of anecdotes and personal allusions was copious ; and, from his education for the legal profession, he had acquired the art of bold and forcible cross-examination. The literary style of these papers partakes of such qualities as might be anticipated from such antecedents. They are more polemical than pictorial, more argumentative than narrative. They must be classified under " criticism " rather than his tory. Their value as commentaries is very great. In alluding to his own recollections of the Freneh Revolution, Mr. Croker observes in the preface to the volume: — My memory and observations of public affairs are about coeval with that event. I was in my ninth year when the Bastille was taken; it naturally made a great impression on me, and the bloody scenes that so rapidly followed rendered that impression unfavourable. Such also was the feeling of my wise and excellent parents, and an alliance between our family and that of Mr. Burke helped to con firm us in that great man's prophetic opinions,which every event from that day to this appears to me to have wonder fully illustrated and fulfilled. I have thought it Lair to say thus much of my own personal feeling, that the reader may be aware of the bias under which I may be suspected of writing, but I must at the same time most conscientiously protest that I have not knowingly allowed it to warp my judgment, nor, as I still more confidently affirm, to misrepresent either by THE PRESS, DECEMBER 5, 1857. attenuation or aggravation any personal motive or Any historical fact. 1 have endeavoured to be, ust—l am sure that I have not written a word that Ido nut believe to be the truth ! The early attention which I was thus led to pay to the Revolution has been actively sustained through a long life, and made me a collector (I believe to a much greater extent than any other person in England) of the innu merable pamphlets and periodical and other publications that I may say deluged France as long as anything like a freedom of opinion existed, as well as of those which were afterwards published under the corrupt and intimidating influence of the successive tyrannies, which found little difficulty in converting a licentious and disgraced press into a rigorous and shameless engine of despotism. These publications, however ephemeral in interest, or apocryphal as authorities, are still valuable and important as contem poraneous evidence, both positive and negative, for what they tell, and, for what they do not, are often as instructive in their falsehood as in their truth. We must, however, remark that Mr. Croker allowed feelings of " class" to interfere with his judgments. That such should be the case was not unnatural in one who must have re collected how the ascendancy of property in his native country was menaced by a combi nation of the revolutionary agent:les in Ire land and by the French Directory. Through all his career, Mr. Croker retained sincerely much of the feelings of an " alarmist." He saw how " revolution" was disguised under soft words, and how conventional lan guage was employed to forward anti-con stitutional measures. The coarse and fierce passions which impelled the masses in France were not exaggerated by Mr. Croker, but we do not think that lie looked profoundly into some of the chief causes by which France was powerfully influenced. The centralisation of all the political life at Paris made the capital of disproportioued im portance. Whoever mastered Paris possessed France, and, with weak sovereigns or trea cherous ministers, revolutions in such a country might always be anticipated. The social structure in France, the comparative equality of conditions, the absence of a terri torial aristocracy and of a great provincial gentry, and the want of large towns like Bir mingham, Liverpool, and Each other seats of activity, leave Paris unbalanced, and that com position of society in France can be clearly traced to the original policy of Richelieu. The difference between the social structures in England and France must never be overlooked, because there is considerable resemblance between some of the phases of the English revolution in the seventeenth century and the changes in France from 1789 to 1848. Mr. Croker has ably indicated these points of re semblance : Charles I. Louis XVI. Unpopularity of the Queen. Unpopularity of the Queen. The Long Parliament. The y. self-constituted Assem bl Flight to the Isle of Wight. Flight to Varennes. Trial and execution. Trial and execution. Government by the Parlia- Government by the Conven ment. lion. Cromwell. Tiuonaparte. Expels the Parliament. Expels the Assemblies. Military despotism. Military despotism. Richard Cromwell set aside. Napoleon 11. set aside. Restoration of Charles 11. Restoration of Louis XVIII. Amnesty to all but regicides. Amnesty to all but regicides. Popish and Ryehouse plots. Conspiracies of Berton, Buries, 6:c. Unpopularity of the Duke of Unpopularity of Count York. d'Artois. Outcry against the Jesuits. Outcry against the Jesuits. James 11., late King's Charles X., late King's brother. brother. Suspected birth of the Pre- Suspected birth of D. of tender. Bordeaux. Royal Declarations of indul- Royal Ordinances. gence. Convention Parliament. Meeting of the dissolved Chamber. _ _ ..... Flight and abdication of the Flight and abdication of the King. King. Expulsion of him and his Expulsion of him and his fam il y family. They take refuge in France. They take refuge in Eng land. This is certainly very curious, but the resem blance is rather one between effects than one between causes. There was no social revolution under Cromwell, and the laws of property and criminal procedure remained the same. In France, on the other hand, there had been a total revolution in opinions and sentiments, and in no age of civilisation had there ever been witnessed such fearfully rapid transitions of society. Nor can we forget that the parallel breaks down in one most important point iu relation to the dy- 1183 nasties. In 1688, and subsequently, there was not the least desire amongst any portion of the English to re-establish the family of Cromwell in the Protectorate, while in France an enormous majority elected Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the Republic in preference to General Cavaignac, and afterwards the whole nation acquiesced in the installation of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon 111. In this valuable volume, the leading essays are upon the mistakes of Thiers, the false hoods of Lord Holland, and on various pas sages in the martyrdom of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette ; and the article on " Tho Guillotine" is added. Mr. Croker does not appear to have reviewed the letters and cor respondence of Mirabeau published at Paris in 1851. if the plan given by Mirabeau secretly to the Court had been followed, there was a chance of turning the revolution. The plan proposed a rapid flight to Fontainebleau, having first stationed there a regiment of ascer tained fidelity to the King. Once at Fontaine. bleau, the King should have issued a procla mation appealing to the people of all France, promising improved measures for their social welfare, but peremptori'.y declining to be coerced by the populace of Paris. But Louis XVI. then, as afterwards, was wanting to him self in vigour. Mr. Croker's deliberate opinion on the King's feebleness is worth specially noting. He first states the manner in which the King was arrested at Varennes : All the accounts represent the town as buried in sleep, so that not only the courier, but even the King and Queen, knocked up the inhabitants of the suburb to inquire for their horses : in the meanwhile Drouet arriies, passes the royal carriages in the suburb, ordering the postilions not to proceed further; while he and Guilleautne enter the town, where he appears to have conducted his enterprise with a coolness and sagacity that would have done him honour in a better cause. He gave no alarm, but quietly collecting half-a-dozen other persons, whose principles he probably knew to be his own, they first pushed on to the bridge, which they barricaded by overturning on it a waggon laden with furniture, which they happened to find there : they also barricaded the road, alarmed the town, assembled the magistrates, collected the mob, and arrested the carriages under the gatcless arch of the town-wall, and finally, forcing the travellers to alight, took them to the house of one Sausse, the Procureur de la Commune, in a bye-street, where they were finally arrested. In all these preliminary proceedings Drouet expressly says that " they were in al'. but eight patriots, de bonne vol4mte." And Madame Royale wrote : We then alighted, and in crossing the street six mounted dragoons passed us, but unfortunately they had no officer with them ; if there had been, six resolute men would have intimidated them all, and might have saved the King. On which Mr. Croker makes this remark : There were not merely six bat sixty men in barracks in the next street. We believe with Madame that six, or even one, resolute man would have had then, and for an honr or two later, a chance of saving the King, but the King him self wanted the resolution even to consent to be saved. We quite concur with Mr. Croker. It is utterly impossible that such events as those of the French Revolution could have happened if Louis XVI. bad the personal spirit of our English King, George 111. Louis was ready to meet death with the fortitude of a Chris tian, but he wanted the spirit of a French monarch. On the peculiarly exposed position of the Tuileries, Mr. Croker observes, in an original note appended to this edition : The great work of completing the projected junction of the Tuileries and the Louvre has been of late carried out with great architectural magnificence and effect ; and the palaces are better protected from a popular coup-de-main by the inclosure on the north aide, which makes the whole something of a fortress; but I do not understand how it can ever be made more than a palace for show and cere mony. If Louis Philippe, too confident in his popularity with so changeable a people, hail not made it a family resi dence, and been thereby embarrassed with a crowd of women and chhlren, whose safety could not be perilled, the •. I .4th February•, 1848, would probably have had a diffe rent result. And he adds this curious story : M. de Talleyrand seems to have foreseen something of this danger to which the Palais Royal was also liable. The day or two after his arrival in London, in 1830, as ambassador, I met him at dinner at the Duke of Welling ton's. He talked freely and not reverently of the new revolution, and represented the King as very little his own master in the whole affair. Some one mentioning the inconvenience of his position in Paris, Talleyrand said " Oui ;" and then added, with his peculiar look and tone of grave pleasantry, " avant de part ir j'ai pris la liberte de conseiller a Sa Majesto de fair nn grand coup politique— rnais un tres grand coup." We wire all attention and curiosity. " Ceuta d'aller passer, aussitOt qu'elle l• pourrait, quelques jours a Neuilly."