A.D. 1778.]

469

are famous in the history of those times; but, on the whole, Pitt maintained his predominance. Among the other incidents of this memorable epoch were the Anti-Catholic riots of 1780; the efforts for Parliamentary and economical reform; the growing power of Ireland, and consequent recognition of her claims, owing to the power exercised by the body of Volunteers which she had been permitted to raise; and the mental alienation of the King, lasting from October, 1788, to April, 1789. Char acterised as it was by numerous and grave faults, both of policy and of action, the first half of this long reign exhibits an extraordinary development of English strength and self-reliance; and the dauntless spirit with which, during the latter years of the American War, the country withstood the alliance of France, Spain, and Holland, together with the negative hostility of Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, and the German Empire, must always be remembered among the proudest boasts of Great Britain. It was mainly to her ships and naval commanders that England owed the preservation, not only of her power, but of her independence; and among the Admirals of that time

WILLIAM PITT.

increased by these great works and discoveries, and the distinctive features of modern English civilisation arose in this memorable period of our history.

Lord Chatham died on the 11th of May, 1778, after a fatal attack of illness in the House of Lords, while delivering a speech, on the 7th of April, in opposition to a motion of the Duke of Richmond for an address to the King, entreating his Majesty to withdraw his fleets and armies from the revolted provinces of America, and to make peace with them on such terms as might secure their goodwill. Such was the latest oratorical display of the great statesman whom the Americans had reckoned among their friends; and his illustrious son, William Pitt the younger, soon afterwards commenced that splendid career which has made him the most conspicuous of English Premiers. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from July, 1782, to April, 1783, when only twenty-three years of age, and at the close of the latter year became First Lord of the Treasury. His Parliamentary conflicts with Charles James Fox-a man of greater

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

none occupies a higher position than the gallant Rodney, who repeatedly met and shattered the combined forces of France and Spain.

NEVER was any revolution more blindly brought about, nor yet with greater certainty, than that which convulsed France and agitated the whole of Europe towards the close of the eighteenth century. The corrupt administration of the French kingdom during many generations, the frequent succession of monarchs such as Francis I., Charles IX., and Henry III., the bureaucratic exclusiveness of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, and the unrestrained despotism of Louis XIV., whose conquests were ultimately overshadowed by reverses, and whose ambition cost his subjects a frightful price in blood and treasure,-these facts slowly accumulated in the minds of the French people a store of bitter memories. What was begun in earlier ages received numerous and fatal additions in the reign of Louis XV. That contemptible sovereign exaggerated the vices, while he missed the more respectable qualities, of his great-grandfather and predecessor. He was not merely sensual, but frivolous, and, while his country was involved in numerous troubles, boasted of his skill as a cook, and even prepared dishes for his obsequious courtiers. In all this, there was something of the childish trifling of Nero; and, like Nero, he had exhibited in his younger days a certain amiability, from which the too-confiding were willing to hope much, but which gradually disappeared before the habitual influences of self-indulgence and profligacy. It was a calamity for Louis that he came to the throne when less than six years old, and that the Regent was the debauched and reckless Duke of Orleans, who nearly ruined the nation by encouraging the schemes of the Scottish adventurer, Law. When the King attained his legal majority, which

was in February, 1723, he found himself at the head of a bankrupt State, and of an embarrassed and exasperated people. He was fortunate, however, in his Prime Minister, Cardinal de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, who had been the preceptor of Louis, and who managed the affairs of the monarchy with skill and wisdom from 1726 to his death in 1743. The subsequent Ministers of Louis XV. were often men of inferior character, and the usually unsuccessful issue of his wars (which have been detailed in previous Chapters) increased the national sufferings and the general discontent.

In the latter years of his reign, when warned by his advisers that so much misery would assuredly lead to a terrible outbreak, Louis used to reply, "Try to make things go on as long as I am likely to live after my death, it may be as it will." The answer shows the deliberate selfishness of the man; but it also reveals the existence of a spirit of gloomy apprehension, since no one gives expression to such thoughts unless they are widely prevalent, and justified by notorious facts The time had passed for mediæval extravagances, or the streets of Paris might have seen another Dance of Death. When Lord Chesterfield was in France, about the middle of the eighteenth century, he prophesied that there would be a revolution before many years had elapsed. He saw an indolent and sensual King, a depraved and cruel aristocracy, and an impoverished and ignorant lower class. Many Frenchmen observed the same facts, and drew the same conclusion; but there was no political power by which such views could be made operative. The States-General had lost all real influence; the Parliament of Paris was little more

A.D. 1771.]

than a court of law, and, together with the provincial Parliaments, was suppressed in 1771, after a long struggle; the interests of the commonalty were unguarded by any representative institutions; and the privileges of the great remained without a check. Nothing could exceed the misery of the peasants. It was not enough that they starved; they were subject in all directions to the cruel and insolent caprice of their lords, who, by means of lettres de cuchet, sealed with the King's little seal (cachet), were enabled to arrest, and send to the Bastille or other State prisons, any one of whom it was convenient to be rid. The peculiar infamy of these letters, or royal ordinances, was that they were made out without reference to any special case, but with a blank for the name, which could afterwards be filled in by the person interested. The Lieutenant-General of Police had a number of forms always ready, and was of course accessible to the rich and titled. When once the prison doors closed upon the victim, it often happened that they never opened again during his life; so that the most substantial injustice was frequently done for the satisfaction of private malice or dishonourable feelings. Lettres de cachet were first issued by Louis XIV. about 1670; but their use increased during the reign of his successor, who was wholly devoid of scruples in the exercise of his power.

The troubles of the State, in the first half of this unhappy reign, were increased by the outbreak of religious dissensions. It will be recollected that the Papal Bull, "Unigenitus," directed against the Jansenist heresy two years before the death of Louis XIV., aroused the most vehement opposition on the part of those who professed the incriminated opinions. The controversy survived to a later period, and a large proportion of Frenchmen sided with the Jansenists. Louis XV. supported the decrees of Rome, and in 1730 enforced a second registration of the Papal commands. The result was a bitter conflict between the Court and the Parliament, in which the latter stood forward as the vindicator of religious freedom. An edict of that body was cancelled by the Council of State, and the King refused to receive a deputation which sought to expostulate with him in person. Four members, who had been particularly earnest in their opposition, were sentenced to banishment; and when the other members refused to proceed with the administration of justice in the absence of their colleagues, it required all the conciliatory arts of Fleury to prevent the King from taking violent measures. At length, in 1732, Louis forbade his councillors of the Parliament to

471

receive appeals upon the matters in dispute-an order which they refused to obey; and the more obstinate were then removed from Paris, and imprisoned in various parts of France. Further struggles ensued in later years, and, on the whole, the great court of law prevailed over the monarch and the Church.

The independent position of Parliament in the Jansenist controversy was one of the sins remembered against it; but it was a totally different set of circumstances which ultimately caused its overthrow. The expulsion of the Jesuits from France, in 1764, had been mainly brought about by the Minister Choiseul, a man of decent character and of liberal views; and the Jesuits determined on revenge. They chose for their instrument a despotic Breton nobleman, the Duke of Aiguillon, whose local tyranny had made him unpopular. His malpractices at last brought him into collision with the Parliament of Paris; the King took the part of the nobleman; Choiseul was deprived of his offices, and banished to his private estate; Aiguillon was put in his place; and a month later on the 19th of January, 1771-the Parliaments, both of Paris and the provinces, were superseded by other tribunals of a subservient character. Choiseul had exhibited great ability as a Minister, and, had he remained much longer in office, might perhaps have carried out a plan which he had conceived for the complete emancipation of the Gallican Church from the despotism of the Popes. Trade and industry were developed by his fostering measures; but as a Minister of War and Foreign Affairs he was less successful. His tendencies were antagonistic to England, and it was he who incited his countrymen in India to attempt the ruin of the British power. It is even said that he encouraged the growing discontent of our American Colonies, and the statement is not improbable.

more

During the long reign of Louis XIV., the Court had become more corrupt, the nobles were arrogant and heartless, and the common people were proportionally discontented; but under the rule of his great-grandson, Louis XV., France reached her lowest point of moral and social degradation. The King himself exceeded in vices and follies all who had preceded him. He gave himself up to unrestrained debauchery, and neglected every duty as head of the State. On attaining his majority, he had married Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus I., ex-King of Poland; but this princess seems to have had no influence over the conduct of her husband. She was treated with insolent neglect, while the monarch himself was

ruled by a succession of unworthy favourites, who demoralised society by their profligacy, and brought the State to the verge of ruin by their extravagance. The most remarkable of these mistresses was the famous Marchioness of Pompadour, a person of low birth, but of marked intellectual power. For twenty years this woman virtually ruled France. Her influence with the King was unbounded; all the great personages paid court to her, for to neglect this would have been to incur her hatred, which implied ruin. The most important affairs of State were discussed and arranged in her apartments; her ambition and extravagance were boundless, and she is said to have cost the nation annually nearly a million and a half of livres, besides hotels, palaces, and estates. The successful competitor of the Queen made and unmade Ministers, dispensed the whole patronage of Church and State, received ambassadors, and rewarded those artists and philosophers who flattered her vanity, or extolled her intellectual powers. It was at her instigation that Louis instituted the infamous Parc-aux-Cerfs, which was in reality a seraglio after the Oriental fashion, formed in a beautiful domain at Versailles, where Madame de Pompadour had a house. It is supposed that when the charms of the Marchioness began to fade, she conceived the idea of such an establishment, as a means of securing herself against the rise of any rival in the King's favour; and in this she was successful, for, until her death, at the age of forty-four, in April, 1764, she held complete sway over the mind and fortunes of Louis.

Four years later, the Queen died, and, for a time, Louis seems to have been really affected by her loss, and desirous of amending his course of life. But the feeling was transient, and in less than a year he resumed his former habits, descending even lower in the scale of infamy by forming a connection with a person of abandoned character, who was introduced at court as the Countess du Barry. The new favourite soon obtained a complete ascendency over the monarch, and in her turn controlled the destinies of France. Choiseul, however, refused to bow before the new Sultana, and her resentment contributed to the ruin of the Minister. From the date of Choiseul's retirement, in December, 1770, du Barry reigned supreme, and France sank deeper and deeper into that abyss of vice and misery from which only the terrible, retributive cry of the Revolution was able to rouse her. Several bad harvests in succession had caused a near approach to famine. The scarcity of corn became intolerable; alarming riots

people was

ensued; and the rage of the particularly directed against the King, who was supposed to be a shareholder in an association popularly called the "Pact of Famine," the object of which was to buy up all the corn in plentiful years, and re-sell it at exorbitant prices in times of dearth. The people were brought to extreme misery; but the least complaint was punished by imprisonment in the Bastille. Feelings of fierce and bitter hatred were set up in the minds of the lower classes against their debased King and his equally profligate courtiers; and reform was urgently demanded by all whose vices had not blunted their perceptions. An ominous desire for change penetrated the French people. Every class was alienated from the others, and even the King himself could not wholly shut his eyes to the tendencies of the epoch. Still, he had neither the courage nor the power to face them, but, conscious of his weakness, exclaimed to his courtiers, "After me the deluge." So low had this monarch sunk in the estimation of his people that his successor was already styled "Louis the Desired." The nation, however, had not much longer to bear in patience a hated rule, in which impotence was joined to debauchery; for, on the 10th of May, 1774, Louis XV. breathed his last, after a melancholy reign of fifty-eight

years.

The period thus defined is, for the most part, associated with lamentable or disgraceful facts: but it was certainly not wanting in intellectual glory. The creativeness of French genius, which showed signs of flagging towards the end of the preceding reign, burst forth with fresh energy under the sceptre of a monarch who would at any moment have preferred the smiles of a courtesan to the highest expositions of literature, philosophy, or art. It is not easy to say what were the circumstances which favoured this development of mental power, but the development unquestionably took place. There may have been something in the very feeling of opposition to the disgraceful character of the sovereign and his surroundings which stimulated the energy of genius; indeed, Hume was of opinion that the persecutions of the press in France were more favourable to intellectual progress than the liberty enjoyed in England. Whatever the cause, it is certain that under the rule of Louis XV. the pen became a formidable potentate in France. Voltaire and Rousseau alone exercised an extraordinary influence over the minds of Frenchmen: the one as a satirical critic, eager to detect the superstitions and false pretences of society; the other as a sentimen