France seemed elevated by the results of the American War, and Great Britain humiliated. Prophecies were frequent about our rapid fall and final extinction. Our own orators were, as usual, the loudest in confessions of our powerlessness and decay. Our institutions were held up to dislike; and if you had believed the speeches and pamphlets of discontented patriots, you would have thought we were the most spiritless and down-trodden, the most unmerciful and dishonest, nation in the world. The whole land was in a fury of self-abasement at the degradation brought upon our name and standing by the treachery and iniquities of Warren Hastings in India; our European glory was crushed by the surrender at Paris. It must be satisfactory to all lovers of their country to know that John Bull has no such satisfaction as in proving that he is utterly exhausted,--always deceived by his friends, always overreached by his enemies, always disappointed in his aims. In this self-depreciating spirit he conducts all his wars and all his treaties; yet somehow it always happens that he gets what he wanted, and the overreaching and deceiving antagonist gives it up. His power is over a sixth of the human race, and he began a hundred years ago with a population of less than fourteen millions; and all the time he has been singing the most doleful ditties of the ill success that always attends him,--of his ruinous losses and heart-breaking disappointments. The men at the head of affairs in the trying years from the Peace of Versailles to 1793 were therefore quite right not to be taken in by the querulous lamentations of the nation. We had lost three millions of colonists, and gained three million independent customers. We were trading to India, and building up and putting down the oldest dynasties of Hindostan. Ships and commerce increased in a remarkable degree; the losses of the war were compensated by the gains of those peaceful pursuits in a very few years; and we were contented to leave to Paris the reputation of the gayest city in the world, and to the French the reputation of the happiest and best-ruled people. But Paris was the wretchedest of towns, and the French the most miserable of peoples. When anybody asks us in future what was the cause of the French Revolution, we need not waste time to discuss the writings of Voltaire, or the unbelief of the clergy, or the immorality of the nobles. We must answer at once by naming the one great cause by which all revolutions are produced,--over-taxation. The French peasant, sighing for liberty, had no higher object than an escape from the intolerable burden of his payments. He cared no more for the rights of man, or the happiness of the human race, than for the quarrels of Achilles and Agamemnon. He wanted to get rid of the "taille," the "corvée," and twenty other imposts which robbed him of his last penny. If he had had a chicken in his pot, and could do as he liked with his own spade and pick-axe, he never would have troubled his head about codes and constitutions. But life had become a burden to him. Everybody had turned against him. The grand old feudal noble, who would have protected and cherished him under the shadow of his castle-wall, was a lord-chamberlain at court. The kind old priest, who would have attended to his wants and fed him, if required, at the church-door, was dancing attendance in the antechamber of a great lady in Paris, or singing improper songs at a jolly supper-party at Versailles. There were intendants and commissaries visiting his wretched hovel at rapidly-decreasing intervals of time, to collect his contributions to the revenue. These men farmed the taxes, and squeezed out the last farthing like a Turkish pasha. But while the small land-owner--and they were already immensely numerous--and the serf--for he was no better--were oppressed by these exactions, the gentry were exempt. The seigneur visited his castle for a month or two in the year, but it was to embitter the countryman's lot by the contrast. His property had many rights, but no duties. In ancient times in France, and at all times in England, those two qualities went together. Our upper classes lived among their tenants and dependants. They had no alleviation of burdens in consequence of their wealth, but they took care that their poorer neighbours should have alleviation in consequence of their poverty. Cottages had no window-tax. The pressure of the public burdens increased with the power to bear them. But in France the reverse was the case. Poverty paid the money, and wealth and luxury spent it. The evil was too deep-rooted to be remedied without pulling up the tree. The wretched millions were starving, toiling, despairing, and the thousands were rioting in extravagance and show.