The year 1789

The year 1789, more definitely than any other date marks any other transition, marks the close of a society which had existed for some thousands of years as a consistent whole, a society more or less based upon military force, intensely imbued with the spirit of hereditary right, bound up with ideas of theological sanction, sustained by a scheme of supramundane authority; a society based upon caste, on class, on local distinctions and personal privilege, rooted in inequality, political, social, material, and moral; a society of which the hope of salvation was the maintenance of the status quo, and of which the Ten Commandments were Privilege.

And the same year, 1789, saw the official installation of a society which was essentially based on peace, the creed of which was industry, equality, progress; a society where change was the evidence of life, the end of which was social welfare, and the means social co-operation and human equity. Union, communion, equality, equity, merit, labour, justice, consolidation, fraternity — such were the devices and symbols of the new era. It is therefore with justice that modern Europe regards the date 1789 as a date that marks a greater evolution in human history more distinctly than, perhaps, any other single date which could be named between the reign of the first Pharaoh and the reign of Victoria sofia sightseeing.

One of the cardinal pivots in human history we call this epoch, and not at all a French local crisis. The proof of this is complete. All the nations of Europe, and indeed the people of America, contributed their share to the movement, and more or less partook in the movement themselves.

It was hailed as a new dispensation by men of various race; and each nation in turn more or less added to the movement and adopted some element of the movement. The intellectual and social upheaval, which for generations had been preparing the movement, was common to the enlightened spirits of Europe and also to the Transatlantic Continent. The effects of the movement have been shared by all Europe, and the distant consequences of its action are visible in Europe to the third and the fourth generations. And lastly, all the cardinal features of the movement of 1789 are in no sense locally French, or of special national value. They are equally applicable to Europe, and indeed to advanced human societies everywhere. They appeal to men primarily, and to Frenchmen secondarily. They relate to the general society of Europe, and not to specific national institutions.

Common Weal

They concern the transformation of a feudal, hereditary, privileged, authoritative society, based on antique right into a republican, industrial, equalised, humanised society, based on a scientific view of the Common Weal. But this is not a national idea, a French conception of local application. It is European, or rather human. And thus, however disastrous to France may have been the travail of the movement officially proclaimed in 1789, from a European and a human point of view it has abiding and pregnant issues. May we profit by its good whilst we are spared its evil.

Obviously, the salient form of the revolution was French, ultra-French; entirely unique and of inimitable peculiarity in some of its worst as well as its best sides. The delirium, the extravagances, the hysterics, and the brutalities which succeeded one another in a series of strange tragicomic tableaux from 1789 till 1795, were most intensely French, though even they, from Caps of Liberty to Festival of Pikes, have had a singular fascination for the revolutionists of every race. But the picturesque and melodramatic accessories of the revolution have been so copiously over-coloured by the scene-painters and stage- carpenters of history, that we are too often apt to forget how essentially European the revolution was in all its deeper meanings.

A dozen kings and statesmen throughout Europe were, in a way, endeavouring to enter on the same path as Louis xvi. with Turgot and Necker. In spite of the contrast between the government of England and the government of France, between the condition of English industry and that of France, Walpole and Pitt offer many striking points of analogy with Turgot and Necker.