_I.---The Last Days of Feudal Institutions_
The French people made, in 1789, the greatest effort which was ever attempted by any nation to cut, so to speak, their destiny in halves, and to separate by an abyss that which they had heretofore been from that which they sought to become hereafter.
The municipal institutions, which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had raised the chief towns of Germany into rich and enlightened small republics, still existed in the eighteenth; but they were a mere semblance of the past.
All the powers of the Middle Ages which were still in existence seemed to be affected by the same disease; all showed symptoms of the same languor and decay.
Wherever the provincial assemblies had maintained their ancient constitution unchanged, they checked instead of furthering the progress of civilisation.
Royalty no longer had anything in common with the royalty of the Middle Ages; it enjoyed other prerogatives, occupied a different place, was imbued with a different spirit, and inspired different sentiments; the administration of the state spread in all directions upon the ruin of local authorities; the organised array of public officers superseded more and more the government of the nobles.
This view of the state of things, which prevailed throughout Europe as well as within the boundaries of France, is essential to the comprehension of what is about to follow, for no one who has seen and studied France only can ever, I affirm, understand anything of the French Revolution.
What was the real object of the revolution? What was its peculiar character? For what precise reason was it made, and what did it effect? The revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was essentially a social and political revolution; and within the circle of social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate and give stability to disorder, or--as one of its chief adversaries has said--to methodise anarchy.
However radical the revolution may have been, its innovations were, in fact, much less than have been commonly supposed, as I shall show hereafter. What may truly be said is that it entirely destroyed, or is still destroying--for it is not at an end--every part of the ancient state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal institutions.