CHAPTER II.

Immediate Causes, and remote Sources, of the French Revolution→→ Louis XIV-The Regency-Louis XV.-Louis XVI.-Convocation of the States General in 1789.

THE French Revolution has been of such prodigious extent, and protracted so long, so com plicated also in its events and characters; so many passions, at once dangerous aud generous, base and terrible, have displayed their enthusiasm or frenzy, sometimes counteracting and sometimes promoting each other's effect, that thirty writers might, from speculative or metaphysical notions, ascribe each a different cause for the shock which the world has received, and every one support his argument with plausibility.

The truth is, there are so many causes to be alledged, that it may be easily observed, "with

"out this or that the Revolution had not taken

place;" but there exists no single cause to which the Revolution can be exclusively attributed.

I have watched the events with all the minuteness my comprehension would permit; I have read every thing printed on the subject; I have looked carefully over many manuscripts, from which I have been permitted to collect intelligence; and as I always seek the most simple positions whereon to rest my ideas, I discovered three primary and immediate causes of the Revolution: disorder in the finances; predisposition of the public mind; and the American war.

Had regularity been observed as it ought, in the management of the public treasury, had a constant balance been kept up between expenditure and revenue, all those ideas of independence with which the mind of the country was taken up, would have evaporated in private circles, or in the meetings of academic societies, or perhaps have passed off in a few parliamentary remonstrances; they would have probably given way to tranquil habits, and would have submitted to a reciprocal restraint; or they might have arranged themselves under a new

system of subordination in being directed towards public affairs, and by those new administrative bodies which were forming in every part of the kingdom, and remained under the immediate authority of the King.

Had the general temperament of the public mind been the same in the reign of Louis XVI. as it was under the government of Louis XIV. and even as far down as the middle of the reign of Louis XV. the derangement of the finances had not brought on any political convulfion. The deficiency in the treasury might have been supplied by measures more or less prompt, as the occasion required; suppression of salaries might have been enacted; investigations, more or less strict, instituted; some men in office might then have been alarmed, and perhaps punished; but no one would have thought of planning an insurrection against the authority and throne of the Monarch.

And, after all, if in this combination of circumstances there had been no American war; if, in the national debt, no such sum as sixteen hundred millions had appeared, the minds of the people would not have been hurried away

from theories of pacific independence, to the convulsive fury, and mad excess, of practical revolt.

To have prevented the Revolution, therefore, one of the three following steps was necessary: a better arrangement of the finances; a command over the general disposition of the country; or to have left the American insurgents to themselves. One of these causes of overthrow avoided, would have rendered the other two of no effect: but so contrary was the event, that all three were made to operate together with the most active efficiency. A Leopold, a Frederic, a Gustavus, would perhaps have devised means to have triumphed over them; but Louis XVI. was born to be the father of an obedient people, not the subjugator of rebellious subjects. Heaven, that destined him to be an awful example, had, in its wisdom, strengthened his heart with the magnanimous constancy of martyrs, rather than with the decisive boldness of heroes; with the confiding purity of angels, more than with the suspicious sagacity of mortals, and in the crisis into which he was thrown, no one else could supply the decision, action, character of the Master.

This is a consideration which, however painful to add, must not be withheld. The personal character of the ill-fated Louis XVI, the virtues of his heart, but little calculated for the peculiar exigencies of the times, constituted so material a source, whence the Revolution deduced its success, that I may with much propriety regard this as a fourth, and principal cause, in addition to the three I have already pointed out. Except these, in my opinion, every other circumstance, or individual agency, co-operated as secondary causes.-Consequences inevitably followed; and the knowledge of names. that they implicated is altogether a matter of indifference—if one agent had not stepped forward, another would. Indeed it must ever be expected, that when in any powerful State the sources of the public treasury are exhausted, the constituent principles of society confounded, the ancient restraints of gradual subordination broken through, and no firm hand found to supply others at the instant; vice, passion, and even virtuous principle, will communicate in one common ferment, and produce events whose effects can neither be regulated nor foreseen. At such a crisis it is, that men, rigidly just in