HISTORY INTERPRETED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19049, 30 June 1924, Page 12

HISTORY INTERPRETED

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURE. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, Mr Ernest Mander, A.R.C.S., continued his series of University extension lectures under the auspices of W.E.A. last evening. The lecturer dealt with the French revolution. Mr Mander discussed in detail the difference between the general situations in England and that in France towards the end of the eighteenth century. In England the excessive holdings of church land had been confiscated at the time of the Reformation, leaving the church with only just sufficient endowments to support its clergy. In France, the church still held vast estates, which were exempt from taxation, and the chief clergy lived like princes, like millionaires. The burden on the peasants in France was therefore correspondingly heavier.

The second estate in France consisted of the aristocracy, the nobles. In England the rule of primogeniture applied to the nobility; that was, the eldest son of a noble inherited his father’s rank, but the other sons were ordinary commoners. This kept the class of nobles in England from growing any larger. But in France, on the other hand, all the sons of a noble inherited noble rank; so the class of the nobility grew larger and larger. By 1789, it was estimated that there were over 100,000 nobles in France; one man in every 500 was either a count or a baron. But even that would not have mattered had it not been that in France these nobles were also exempted from taxation, even as landowners; so again the burden on the bourgeoisie and the peasants was made heavier still. This exemption of the nobles in France from taxation was accounted for by the fact that in France, unlike England, the King had never allied himself with the “squire and merchant” class to subject the baronS.

In 1774 the king’s chief minister was Turgot, a very able statesman, who saw the danger-light ahead and proposed such reforms as would have saved the situation. However, he was thrown overboard; and successor went on financing the French Court by raising loans—until at last it became impossible for the Court even to borrow any more, and the king was faced with bankruptcy. As a panic measure the States-gen-eral was summoned, a body representing all three estates, a body which had not met for nearly two centuries. The third estate after some wrangling finally declared itself the National Assembly and claimed all the rights and powers of the Parliament of England. The king had summoned this body to get him out of his financial difficulties; it replied by declaring that no further taxes should be raised without its consent, and that it would not consent to any taxation at all until France had a parliamentary system. The king’s answer to this was to summon some of his foreign troops to dissolve the National Assembly by force. “What we see so far,” said the lecturer, “is simply a constitutional movement oh the part of the middle class, proceeding on the traditional lines of similar movements in England. But now rioting broke out, and for a month mob-law and anarchy prevailed. The State prison, the Bastille, was stormed, and in the country peasants attacked, sacked and burned the houses of the landowning nobles, j lynching such of the aristocrats as could be caught. After a month of this, the National Assembly regained control, and order was restored. And now it was 4 up to’ that Assembly to make a new constitution and set-to in ernest to do the constructive work of bringing in the new order. It had a glorious opportunity; and had it been capable of taking it, France might have won through to a sane, stable, democratic system. * “The king was virtually a prisoner. Most of the aristocrats had fled the country and the rest were cowed by that month’s violence and anarchy. The National Assembly was in a position then to settle down to hard work —the building-up of a new France. “Instead, it settled down to a feast of rhetoric. Wonderful resolutions, couched in high-sounding language were proposed and debated. Eloquent speeches were made, the speakers talking all sorts of emotional, sentimental, flowery, sensational nonsense. There were dramatic scenes,passionate declamations, arms going like windmills. In those days the French had had no training whatever in the art of self-government and so, at this hour of national crisis, instead of getting Sown to practical Questions and dealing with them in a practical, prosaic way, they simply indulged in mere meaningless heroics. “Meanwhile the nobles who had fled from the country were preparing to return in force. The King was plotting to restore the old regime. Meanwhile the people of France were waiting impatiently for results—not words, and the savage underworld of Paris, the Vile, diseased anddrink-sodden riff-raff of the city, was thirsting for another orgy of violence and bloodshed. The King and Queen tried to escape—and failed. Then the Kings of Austria and Prussia forced war upon Franco and their armies invaded the country to restore the old regime. And then in Paris, Hell broke loose. The Moderate Party in the Chamber was overthrown and the Jacobins got control. A ragged army was sent to fight the invaders, and, finding them paralysed with dysentery, it was able to defeat them. “Meanwhile in Paris was a reign of terror. The city mob—inflamed by madmen —set np a Revolutionary Tribunal which for a whole year indulged | its thirst for blood. The King and| Queen were beheaded. All vhe aristo--crats that could be caught were guillo-

tined, and so were all who were suspected of sympathy with them. Then the leaders of the Moderate Revolutionary Party went to the guillotine. Then the leaders of the Jacobins themselves, getting jealous of one another, began to denounce one another; and one by one they went to the guillotine Until at last Robespierre himself was guillotined, and that was the end of it. After the death of Robespierre the terror came to an end. Tho reaction put the Moderates onco more in power; and once more they had a chance of getting down to the practical work of making a new France. But once more they threw away their opportunity in a sea of words and heroics. “But while they were talking this time—when the whole country was ready for any strong man who knew his own mind—France was delivered into the hands of such a man, a man who, whatever his faults, did know his own mind and did believe in deeds, not Bonaparte.” It was that the subject of next week’s public lecture would be: “One hundred and twenty years ago in England.”