Massachusetts Federalist, then a member of the House of Representatives, said: "We have near twenty antis, dragons watching the tree of liberty, and who consider every strong measure, and almost every ordinary one, as an attempt to rob it of its fair fruit. We hear incessantly from the old foes of the constitution, This is unconstitutional, and that is. And indeed what is not? I scarce know a point which has not produced this cry, not excepting a motion for adjourning."* Believing that the Federalists were bent on introducing monarchy, the Republicans opposed their measures, step by step, and point by point, with the passionate energy of men who felt that they were making the last stand for the liberties of the human race. The Federalists, realizing that such opposition, if successful, could have but one outcome, the utter overthrow of all effective government,-naturally supposed that to be its aim. And so the fight went on, each side supposing itself to be the champion of the constitution, which the other side was determined to overthrow. The longer the fight continued the bitterer it became, until men in the two parties who had been close personal friends ceased to speak to each other.

*Life and Works of Fisher Ames, I., 114.

WHI

CHAPTER XI.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

HILE the struggle between Federalists and
Republicans was going on in this country, the

champions of power and the champions of

The convoca

States-General.

freedom were engaged in a life-and-death tion of the struggle in France. For years the finances

of the French government had been in a wretched condition. The long and unnecessary wars of the monarchy, the extravagance of the court and nobility, had imposed upon the common people a burden that they were unable to bear. They had to pay the greater part of the taxes, but when they had been taxed even to their utmost capacity the government found itself without the means of indulging its customary extravagance. Finance minister after finance minister had been able to point to but one way out of the difficulty-increased taxation of the privileged classes, the nobles and priests. But these classes obstinately and stupidly refused to help the state in the dilemma which had been created to a great extent by their own extravagance. In consequence of the emergency it was finally decided to call a meeting of the States-General,-representatives of the three great orders in France: nobles, priests, and

commons.

The news that there was to be a meeting of the States-General sounded in the ears of the common people like the voice of hope to the dying.

Oppression of the peasantry.

Under the reign of Louis XV., they had seen justice bought and sold as though it were an ordinary article of commerce. They had seen the money that had been coined out of their very life-blood squandered in presents to the profligate and abandoned, and paid in absurdly high salaries to civil and military officials who made no pretence of performing the duties of their offices. It is said that Louis XV. probably spent more money on his pleasures than was spent during his reign in any one department of the state. The common people saw, says Alison, "the most important operations of agriculture" fettered or prevented by the game laws, and by the other restrictions intended for their support. "Game of the most destructive kind, such as wild boars and herds of deer, was permitted to go at large through spacious districts, without any enclosures to protect the crops. Numerous edicts existed which prohibited hoeing and weeding, lest the young partridges should be disturbed; mowing hay, lest the eggs should be destroyed; taking away the stubble, lest the birds should be deprived of shelter. They had to grind their corn at the landlord's mill, press their grapes at his press, bake their bread in his oven," and then pay what he asked for the privilege. In some provinces they had not even the right to use hand mills without paying

for it, and the nobles had the power to sell to the wretched peasants the right of bruising buckwheat and barley between two stones.

This robbery under the guise of law was made all the harder by the insupportable insolence and arrogance of the robbers. "It was quite usual," we are told, "for the young noblesse of that day to run down the canaille of the streets, and to insult the wives of the bourgeoisie to their husbands' faces" About the middle of the eighteenth century, a grand seigneur thought it a great grievance that Louis XV. should have rebuked him for indulging in the amusement of shooting peasants.

But the twenty-five millions of the French commons, "who counted as nothing in France," and who looked forward with such hopefulness to the meeting of the States-General, were themselves divided by a chasm almost as wide as that which separated them from the nobles. An aristocracy of riches and culture had gradually grown up, composed of professional and business men, and although it was the most intelligent and enlightened part of the state, it was thoroughly imbued with the aristocratic spirit of the nobles, and regarded the toiling multitudes with the utmost contempt.

Roughly speaking, then we may say that the French people, prior to the Revolution was composed of three elements: the first con

sisted of tillers of the soil, whose food

Classes of

which the French people was composed.

in some districts was chiefly grass and the bark of

trees, and who hated with inexpressible intensity the rapacious, grasping, grinding, tyrannical nobles who doomed them to such a life, and, also, of the artisans and laborers of the cities, who had only the bare necessaries of life, and who loathed, as the cause of all their wretchedness, the aristocratic commoners that employed them. The second class was composed of the aristocratic commoners, professional and business men, who despised the people below them, and hated the arrogant and insolent nobles who assumed to be above them. The third class comprised the nobles, clerical and lay, the great majority of whom were infamous, or would have been in any other time, because of their dissoluteness, profligacy, and extravagance.

In May, 1789, the States-General met at Versailles. When they had last met, more than one hundred and seventy years before, the three bodies of

Struggles be

mons and the

other two orders.

tween the com. Which they were composed-nobles, priests, and commoners-had voted separately; so that any two had a veto on the proceedings of the other. But France had been taught by Rousseau that all men are equal; and the commoners, who outnumbered the other two bodies, refused to transact any business unless the nobles and priests would meet with them and vote as one body. When these obstinately and persistently refused, the commoners declared themselves the National Assembly of France, and, as such, proceeded to make a constitution.