Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-07-15

rTOIu tu6 lhll Ol tu6 Ddbtlle, WHICH
event took place on Tuesday, July IA,
1889, dates the beginning of the French
Revolution. This is one of the great
epochal events in history. In its far
reaching effects and influence upon the
human race it stands side by side with
the signing of the American Declaration
of Independence. Indeed our own Rev
olution did much to SOW the seed
that sprouted with such terrible effect in
France thirteen years afterwards. The
rights of man had been gradually forcing
themselves into the benighted intelli,
gence of the French people from the
time of Louis the Fourteenth. Voltaire.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Encyclo-
pedists had awakened the common mind
to realization of the terrible oppression
and tyranny under which it had been
kept by a system in which royalty and
the privileged classes treated the
people as beasts. The Third Estate,
which under the Feudal system
had enjoyed rough but manly freedom,
had. for a century and a half, been arbi-
trarily deprived of voice in the common
wealth. The last Parliament in which
that es tate had been heard was that of
1911. The Grand Monarch, when be
reached the zenith Of his power, prided
himself that he himself was the State.
The glory of his reign was purchased by
the impoy erishment of the people and
hn hon of hn II
France. The Regency and the reign of
Louis the Fourteenth were ssturr ALA of
crime, corruption, waste and reckless.
ness-still further reducing the means
of the people and increasing the arro-
gance and tyranny of the privileged
classes. The condition of the peasantry
was simply incomprehensible. Suffering
under manorial laws that took away from
them not only all political but even
natural rights they presented picture
OF misery and degradation to which no
down-trodden class in Europe-not even
the kernes of IIeland-could offer a
parallel. They were forbidden to kill
the wild beasts that were depredatiug
upon their fields, lest the noblesse should
be deprived of the pleasures of the chase
night-soil should not be spread
upon their farms, lest it should
impart an unpleasant flavor to the feath-
cred game; they were compelled to keep
the public roads in repair and forbid to
use them they were taxed by the crown,
by the lords of the manor and by the
clergy. There were imposts upon every
petty transaction; octrois at every gate.
Wherever they moved they were con-
fronted with the demand for tribute.
Starved, ground to the dust, they were
the slaves of system which, had it not
been for the Revolution, would have end
ed in reducing them to worse condition
than the fellahs of Egypt or the ryots of
India. Louis the Sixteenth even had he |
been capable and willing could not have
improved the condition of the people. |!
Ages of tyranny and oppression had done
ts work. But the light of intelligence had |
reached the minds Of the masses, and a |
terrible penalty was to be exacted for the
wrongs they had suffered.
In the first mad fury of the awakening,
the terrible energies of the armed people |
were directed against the grim fortress
that stood in the midst of Paris, a sym
Dol of the tyranny which had oppressed
them for generations. They attacked it
with desperation born of the reckless
ness of passion, and its frowning walls
were razed to the ground.
The fall of the Bastile was a protest
against ages of grinding tyranny, and
meant that man should "rise out of the
prison of his mean estate" and assert his |
God-given rights,-it meant that Kings, |
mobiles, peassnts-all-should, in the
great Court of Humanity, be entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of Happi-
ness; that caste should not set itself up
rs the master of caste; that all men
should have equal chances in the
battle of life end equal rights
before the law,-that the prin-
,iples of eternal justice should pre-
vail. and that kings should bow before
hose principles as lowly and as rev.
,rently as the humblest peasants. 1t
meant that thenceforth and forever, not