The most vehement sympathies and antipathies were aroused,and showed at least what principles were congenial to the various English parties.To praise or blame the revolution,as if it could be called simply good or bad,is for the historian as absurd as to praise or blame an earthquake.It was simply inevitable under the conditions.We may,of course,take it as an essential stage in a social evolution,which if described as progress is therefore to be blessed,or if as degeneration may provoke lamentation.We may,if we please,ask whether superior statesmanship might have attained the good results without the violent catastrophes,or whether a wise and good man who could appreciate the real position would have approved or condemned the actual policy.But to answer such problems with any confidence would imply a claim to a quasi-omniscience.Partisans at the time,however,answered them without hesitation,and saw in the Revolution the dawn of a new era of reason and justice,or the outburst of the fires of hell.Their view is at any rate indicative of their own position.The extreme opinions need no exposition.They are represented by the controversy between Burke and Paine.
The general doctrine of the 'Rights of Men'--that all men are by nature free and equal --covered at least the doctrine that the inequality and despotism of the existing order was hateful,and people with a taste for abstract principles accepted this short cut to political wisdom.The 'minor'premise being obviously true,they took the major for granted.To Burke,who idealised the traditional element in the British Constitution,and so attached an excessive importance to historical continuity,the new doctrine seemed to imply the breaking up of the very foundations of order and the pulverisation of society.Burke and Paine both assumed too easily that the dogmas which they defended expressed the real and ultimate beliefs,and that the belief was the cause,not the consequence,of the political condition.Without touching upon the logic of either position,I may notice how the problem presented itself to the average English politician whose position implied acceptance of traditional compromises and who yet prided himself on possessing the liberties which were now being claimed by Frenchmen.The Whig could heartily sympathise with the French Revolution so long as it appeared to be an attempt to assimilate British principles.When Fox hailed the fall of the Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever happened,he was expressing a generous enthusiasm shared by all the ardent and enlightened youth of the time.The French,it seemed,were abolishing an arbitrary despotism and adopting the principles of Magna Charta and the 'Habeas Corpus'Act.Difficulties,however,already suggested themselves to the true Whig.Would the French,as Young asked just after the same event,'copy the constitution of England,freed from its faults,or attempt,from theory,to frame something absolutely speculative'?(55)On that issue depended the future of the country.It was soon decided in the sense opposed to young's wishes.The reign of terror alienated the average Whig.But though the argument from atrocities is the popular one,the opposition was really more fundamental.Burke put the case,savagely and coarsely enough,in his 'Letter to a noble Lord.'How would the duke of Bedford like to be treated as the revolutionists were treating the nobility in France?The duke might be a sincere lover of political liberty,but he certainly would not be prepared to approve the confiscation of his estates.The aristocratic Whigs,dependent for their whole property and for every privilege which they prized upon ancient tradition and preion,could not really be in favour of sweeping away the whole complex social structure,levelling Windsor Castle as Burke put it in his famous metaphor,and making a 'Bedford level'of the whole country.The Whigs had to disavow any approval of the Jacobins;Mackintosh,who had given his answer to Burke's diatribes,met Burke himself on friendly terms (9th July 1797),and in 1800took an opportunity of public recantation.
