Morning journal and courier., 1889-06-12
FRENCH HISTORY. The Revolution and Hts Eject on
 France and the World.

In estimating the French revolution as an
 event we must regard it from two points of
 view-as it affected the country of it's origin,
 and 1t influenced the world says the Lon-
 don Standard. The results in France have
 not been without their drawbacks; but, on
 the whole, the consequences have been good.
 The old system was rotten to the core; vice
 and corruption reigned in all high places;
 the privileges of princes and nobles were pre-
 posterous; the peasantry were little better
 than serfs; the church was almost as demor-
 alized as the court. Feudalism still fingered
 in the provinces, and the whole country, as
 regards institutions and ideas, was on 8 level
 with the England of the Plantagenets. That
 in few years France should have leaped
 from the era of our Third Richard to the era
 of our Third George naturally excited the
 wonder of the world. Our freedom WAS
 slowly built up by the labors of successive
 generations; French liberty rose, like Alad-
 din's palace, in single night This has giv-
 en to everything connected with the revolu-
 tion it's startling brilliancy and dramatic eff
 feet Then, these are solid advantages.
 Although, as Taine has clearly proved, the
 partition of the soil among many propIietors
 is not conquest of the revolution, yet 1t
 cannot be denied that through and after that
 event freeholding occupiers increased their
 Of the three factors represented in the great
 motto of the time-liberty, equality and
 fraternity-it cannot be said that all have
 been harmoniously advanced. The security of Frenchman against prolonged imprisor- nent without trial is not even now as well
 established as that of an Englishman under the later Stuarts. Fraternity is not much cultivated when we find e very rsnooroas feeling among French workmen toward the capitalists who employ them. Equality, however, has been certainly established, and his achievement of the revolution Is likely tc last. In no country in the world has merit more open career than in France. The son of shopkeeper or an artisian, if endowed with eloquenee and tact, has as good chance of becoming prime minister or President as the son of @ noble, and better chance than I if he were the son of @ prince. If we en. large our view. and regard the revolution not merely in it's French but in its cosmopolitan results, our conclusions must be altered | Many Frenchmen and 8 few Englishmer write and speak as If the whole world were in darkness until, in 1789, France illumina | ted the globe by shaking on high the burn \ ing torch of liberty. Nothing could be more preposterous, nothing more false. The prin ciples of human right and political liberty ! which nanny wise and witty FrenohmeE had enshrined in literature or embodied 1T | in oratory before and during the revolution l were the commonplaces of English opinion { at least a century before. With us they hsd I not remained theories; they had beer l worked into our laws. Our American des cendants had also made them the basis O. 1 their constitution. Therefore it is absurd tt represent France ss holding up in 17S9
 beacon light by which the nations might b. | saved. No doubt the eontagion of her idea 1 and the clash of her victorious arms shattered { to pieces the despotism and bureaucracy O
 the German, Spanish and Italian princes but the good was much more than .neutra | lized by the hatred of France engendered il | German and Spain by Napoleonic aggression tance to Gallic arrogance gave monarchy i1 | Europe a new lease of life, while the excessei of '93 were an argument for toryism in every country of the world from that time dowr \ to at least 1S4S. Even now Liberals fee