incorrigible and envenomed animosity with which they had hunted down men and women whose only sin was the disbelief of a portion of their creed. No curse fell upon them, which they were not at that last moment eager to inflict upon unoffending Calvinists. "When not possessed of power," asked their defender, "were they filled with the vices of those who envy it? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests of other descriptions, and to make their way over the ruins of subverted governments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes flattering, sometimes forcing the consciences of men from the jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission to their personal authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and ending with an abuse of power?" Divesting this of its rhetorical turn of phrase, and considering the attitude and voice of the clergy, both high and low, in reference to the Edict of 1787, we may answer the question thus put in the triumphant expectation of a negative, with a very decisive affirmative.

The men who, in the last year of the old epoch, could speak of toleration as the climax of evil and bitterness, proved that it was they who maintained. anarchy, and that the men who drove them from their

seats were performing a process indispensable for the restoration of a lasting order. The modern inquirer who reflects on these events, will be disposed only to complain that the Revolution treated its spiritual enemy with but too little resolution. It was not by such forbearance and fostering as the Convention extended to Catholicism, that Catholicism vanquished Paganism, or that the Reformers vanquished Catholicism. "The French Revolution," said De Maistre, "was commenced against Catholicism, and for democracy: the result will be for Catholicism against democracy." It may end so for our time. If it does, this will be partly due to the reluctance of democracy to falsify its own principles by resorting to the ignoble but effective weapons employed by its desperate foe.

In the secular order we find equally that there could be no worse blunder than to impute anarchy to the movement which only made it visible, but was innocent of all share in its origin. (The thin decorous veil of a settled administration, with divisions of function and just varieties of rank and place, sufficed to hide from Burke, and from many who have thought and written since his time, the profound disorder, confusion, and wrong which ravaged France behind the veil. If we think upon lettres-de-cachet, upon the

system of secret police and of secret procedure, upon the exceptional tribunals, upon the vexatious and tyrannical interference of military and fiscal officers with the private liberty of the citizen, upon the forced services of various kinds-in a word, upon all the grievances which figure so monotonously and so grievously in the documents of '89, and if we realise what they all mean, we shall admit that the sin of anarchy lies, not at the door of those who could endure it no longer, and rose up with flaming eyes and laid resolute hands upon it, but with those others who had first created this evil and tempestuous chaos. To interfere with the property of a large order collectively, is no worse than habitual interference with the property of individuals taken singly. If the revolutionists did the first, not less certainly the king, nobles, and clergy had done the second. If the confiscation of the Church lands was anarchic, when its proceeds went to the purposes of the nation, what can we say of the petty but prolonged private confiscation of the possessions of individuals, when its proceeds went to foster the pride of the nobles, and to support the monstrous extravagances of the court? The revolutionists did not plunder the Church and the nobles for themselves. They did not turn to the faith of the Revolution as the English

aristocracy turned to the faith of the Reformation, to glut themselves on abbey lands, and batten on the proceeds of a selfish spoliation. Marat was found by Charlotte Corday in a squalid garret, with elevenpence halfpenny in ready money. Saint Just fed, like a Spartan, on black-broth. Robespierre lodged humbly with a cabinet-maker. And it was the samewith the rest. None of them gained anything, except the few that by and by took service under the man who came up and scotched the Revolution, and plundered its goods. The revolutionists did not despoil the people in the name of the people, as others have done since, nor in the name of the king, as had been done before, for the private gain of the spoilers. Whatever was taken went to the common stock.

The body of the people, according to Burke, and very truly so far, must respect the property of which they cannot partake. "They must labour," he continues, "to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice." This was the way in which the great proletarian tragedy presented itself to him. Unmistakably

he was here falling into slavery to those metaphysical abstractions from which in every other part he keeps so free. What was eternal justice to eighteen millions of creatures, perishing of hunger? A Lyons silkweaver, working as hard as he could for over seventeen hours a day, could not earn money enough to procure the most urgent and bare necessaries of subsistence. With what benignity of brow must Eternal Justice have presented herself in the garret of that hapless wretch. The Lyons electors in '89 showed this in their documents. If, they argued, we only look upon the silk-weavers as mechanical instruments requisite for the manufacture of stuffs, if one only treated them as domestic animals kept for the sake of their labour, even then it would be necessary to furnish them with such means of living as we give to the domestic animals.1

Again, are we to be so overwhelmed with sorrow over the pitiful destiny of the men of exalted rank and sacred function, as to have no tears for the forty thousand serfs on the slopes and in the gorges of the Jura, who were held in dead-hand by the Bishop and chapter of Saint-Claude? 'Enfin," they closed the exposition of their woes, "enfin c'est justice que nous

1 Chassin, i. 181-205.