Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844

Guizot has announced, and ably illustrated, a great truth, which, when traced to its legitimate consequences, will be found to go far towards dispelling many of the pernicious innovating dogmas which have so long been afloat in the world. It is this, that whenever an institution, though apparently pernicious in our eyes, has long existed, and under a great variety of circumstances, we may rest assured that it in reality has been attended with some advantages which counterbalance its evils, and that upon the whole it is beneficial in its tendency. This important principle is thus stated: —

"Independent of the efforts of man, there is established by a law of providence, which it is impossible to mistake, and which is analagous to what we witness in the natural world, a certain measure of order, reason, and justice, without which society cannot exist. From the single fact of its endurance we may conclude, with certainty, that a society is not completely absurd, insensate, or iniquitous; that it is not destitute of the elements of reason, truth, and justice – which alone can give life to society. If the more that society developes itself, the stronger does this principle become – if it is daily accepted by a greater number of men, it is a certain proof that in the lapse of time there has been progressively introduced into it more reason, more justice, more right. It is thus that the idea of political legitimacy has arisen.

"This principle has for its foundation, in the first instance, at least in a certain degree, the great principles of moral legitimacy – justice, reason, truth. Then came the sanction of time, which always begets the presumption of reason having directed arrangements which have long endured. In the early periods of society, we too often find force and falsehood ruling the cradles of royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and even the church; but every where you will see this force and falsehood yielding to the reforming hand of time, and right and truth taking their place in the rulers of civilization. It is this progressive infusion of right and truth which has by degrees developed the idea of political legitimacy; it is thus that it has become established in modern civilization. At different times, indeed, attempts have been made to substitute for this idea the banner of despotic power; but, in doing so, they have turned it aside from its true origin. It is so little the banner of despotic power, that it is in the name of right and justice that it has overspread the world. As little is it exclusive: it belongs neither to persons, classes, nor sects; it arises wherever the idea of right has developed itself. We shall meet with this principle in systems the most opposite: in the feudal system, in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany, in the republics of Italy, as well as in simple monarchies. It is a character diffused through the various elements of modern civilization, and the perception of which is indispensable to the right understanding of its history." – (Lecture iii. 9, 11; Civilization Européenne.)

No principle ever was announced of more practical importance in legislating for mankind, than is contained in this passage. The doctrine is somewhat obscurely stated, and not with the precision which in general distinguishes the French writers; but the import of it seems to be this – That no system of government can long exist among men, unless it is substantially, and in the majority of cases, founded in reason and justice, and sanctioned by experienced utility for the people among whom it exists; and therefore, that we may predicate with perfect certainty of any institution which has been generally extended and long established, that it has been upon the whole beneficial, and should be modified or altered with a very cautious hand. That this proposition is true, will probably be disputed by none who have thought much and dispassionately on human affairs; for all human institutions are formed and supported by men, and unless men had some reason for supporting them, they would speedily sink to the ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of the power, and they make use of it to perpetuate these abuses. Doubtless, they are always sufficiently inclined to do so; but a privileged class, or a despot, is always a mere handful against the great body of the people; and unless their power is supported by the force of general opinion, founded on experienced utility upon the whole, it could not maintain its ground a single week. And this explains a fact observed by an able and ingenious writer of the present day,20 that if almost all the great convulsions recorded in history are attentively considered, it will be found, that after a brief period of strenuous, and often almost superhuman effort, on the part of the people, they have terminated in the establishment of a government and institutions differing scarcely, except in name, from that which had preceded the struggle. It is hardly necessary to remark how striking a confirmation the English revolution of 1688, and the French of 1830, afford of this truth.

And this explains what is the true meaning of, and solid foundation for, that reverence for antiquity which is so strongly implanted in human nature, and is never forgotten for any considerable time without inducing the most dreadful disasters upon society. It means that those institutions which have descended to us in actual practice from our ancestors, come sanctioned by the experience of ages; and that they could not have stood so long a test unless they had been recommended, in some degree at least, by their utility. It is not that our ancestors were wiser than we are; they were certainly less informed, and probably were, on that account, in the general case, less judicious. But time has swept away their follies, which were doubtless great enough, as it has done the worthless ephemeral literature with which they, as we, were overwhelmed; and nothing has stood the test of ages, and come down to us through a series of generations, of their ideas or institutions, but what had some utility in human feelings and necessities, and was on the whole expedient at the time when it arose. Its utility may have ceased by the change of manners or of the circumstances of society – that may be a good reason for cautiously modifying or altering it – but rely upon it, it was once useful, if it has existed long; and the presumption of present and continuing utility requires to be strongly outweighed by forcible considerations before it is abandoned. Lord Bacon has told us, in words which can never become trite, so profound is their wisdom, that our changes, to be beneficial, should resemble those of time, which, though the greatest of all innovators, works out its alterations so gradually that they are never perceived. Guizot makes, in the same spirit, the following fine observation on the slow march of Supreme wisdom in the government of the world: —

"If we turn our eyes to history, we shall find that all the great developments of the human mind have turned to the advantage of society – all the great struggles of humanity to the good of mankind. It is not, indeed, immediately that these efforts take place; ages often elapse, a thousand obstacles intervene, before they are fully developed; but when we survey a long course of ages, we see that all has been accomplished. The march of Providence is not subjected to narrow limits; it cares not to develope to-day the consequences of a principle which it has established yesterday; it will bring them forth in ages, when the appointed hour has arrived; and its course is not the less sure that it is slow. The throne of the Almighty rests on time – it marches through its boundless expanse as the gods of Homer through space – it makes a step, and ages have passed away. How many ages elapsed, how many changes ensued, before the regeneration of the inner man, by means of Christianity, exercised on the social state its great and salutary influence! Nevertheless, it has at length succeeded. No one can mistake its effects at this time." – (Lecture i. 24.)

In surveying the progress of civilization in modern, as compared with ancient times, two features stand prominent as distinguishing the one from the other. These are the church and the feudal system. They were precisely the circumstances which gave the most umbrage to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and which awakened the greatest transports of indignation among the ardent multitudes who, at its close, brought about the French Revolution. Very different is the light in which the eye of true philosophy, enlightened by the experience of their abolition, views these great distinctive features of modern society.

"Immense," says Guizot, "was the influence which the Christian church exercised over the civilization of modern Europe. In the outset, it was an incalculable advantage to have a moral power, a power destitute of physical force, which reposed only on mental convictions and moral feelings, established amidst that deluge of physical force and selfish violence which overwhelmed society at that period. Had the Christian church not existed, the world would have been delivered over to the influence of physical strength, in its coarsest and most revolting form. It alone exercised a moral power. It did more; it spread abroad the idea of a rule of obedience, a heavenly power, to which all human beings, how great soever, were subjected, and which was above all human laws. That of itself was a safeguard against the greatest evils of society; for it affected the minds of those by whom they were brought about; it professed that belief – the foundation of the salvation of humanity – that there is above all existing institutions, superior to all human laws, a permanent and divine law, sometimes called Reason, sometimes Divine Command, but which, under whatever name it goes, is for ever the same.

"Then the church commenced a great work – the separation of the spiritual and temporal power. That separation is the origin of liberty of conscience; it rests on no other principle than that which lies at the bottom of the widest and most extended toleration. The separation of the spiritual and temporal power rests on the principle, that physical force is neither entitled to act, nor can ever have any lasting influence, on thoughts, conviction, truth; it flows from the eternal distinction between the world of thought and the world of action, the world of interior conviction and that of external facts. In truth, that principle of the liberty of conscience, for which Europe has combated and suffered so much, which has so slowly triumphed, and often against the utmost efforts of the clergy themselves, was first founded by the doctrine of the separation of the temporal and spiritual power, in the cradle of European civilization. It is the Christian church which, by the necessities of its situation to defend itself against the assaults of barbarism, introduced and maintained it. The presence of a moral influence, the maintenance of a Divine law, the separation of the temporal and spiritual power, are the three great blessings which the Christian church has diffused in the dark ages over European society.

"The influence of the Christian church was great and beneficent for another reason. The bishop and clergy erelong became the principal municipal magistrates: they were the chancellors and ministers of kings – the rulers, except in the camp and the field, of mankind. When the Roman empire crumbled into dust, when the central power of the emperors and the legions disappeared, there remained, we have seen, no other authority in the state but the municipal functionaries. But they themselves had fallen into a state of apathy and despair; the heavy burdens of despotism, the oppressive taxes of the municipalities, the incursions of the fierce barbarians, had reduced them to despair. No protection to society, no revival of industry, no shielding of innocence, could be expected from their exertions. The clergy, again, formed a society within itself; fresh, young, vigorous, sheltered by the prevailing faith, which speedily drew to itself all the learning and intellectual strength that remained in the state. The bishops and priests, full of life and of zeal, naturally were recurred to in order to fill all civil situations requiring thought or information. It is wrong to reproach their exercise of these powers as an usurpation; they alone were capable of exercising them. Thus has the natural course of things prescribed for all ages and countries. The clergy alone were mentally strong and morally zealous: they became all-powerful. It is the law of the universe." – (Lecture iii. 27, 31; Civilization Européenne.)

Nothing can be more just or important than these observations; and they throw a new and consoling light on the progress and ultimate destiny of European society. They are as original as they are momentous. Robertson, with his honest horror of the innumerable corruptions which, in the time of Leo X. and Luther, brought about the Reformation – Sismondi, with his natural detestation of a faith which had urged on the dreadful cruelties of the crusade of the Albigenses, and which produced the revocation of the edict of Nantes – have alike overlooked these important truths, so essential to a right understanding of the history of modern society. They saw that the arrogance and cruelty of the Roman clergy had produced innumerable evils in later times; that their venality in regard to indulgences and abuse of absolution had brought religion itself into discredit; that the absurd and incredible tenets which they still attempted to force on mankind, had gone far to alienate the intellectual strength of modern Europe, during the last century, from their support. Seeing this, they condemned it absolutely, for all times and in all places. They fell into the usual error of men in reasoning on former from their own times. They could not make "the past and the future predominate over the present." They felt the absurdity of many of the legends which the devout Catholics received as undoubted truths, and they saw no use in perpetuating the belief in them; and thence they conceived that they must always have been equally unserviceable, forgetting that the eighteenth was not the eighth century; and that, during the dark ages, violence would have rioted without control, if, when reason was in abeyance, knowledge scanty, and military strength alone in estimation, superstition had not thrown its unseen fetters over the barbarian's arms. They saw that the Romish clergy, during five centuries, had laboured strenuously, and often with the most frightful cruelty, to crush independence of thought in matters of faith, and chain the human mind to the tenets, often absurd and erroneous, of her Papal creed; and they forgot that, during five preceding centuries, the Christian church had laboured as assiduously to establish the independence of thought from physical coercion, and had alone kept alive, during the interregnum of reason, the sparks of knowledge and the principles of freedom.

In the same liberal and enlightened spirit Guizot views the feudal system, the next grand characteristic of modern times.

"A decisive proof that, in the tenth century, the feudal system had become necessary, and was, in truth, the only social state possible, is to be found in the universality of its adoption. Universally, upon the cessation of barbarism, the feudal forms were adopted. At the first moment of barbarian conquest, men saw only the triumph of chaos. All unity, all general civilization disappeared, on all sides was seen society falling into dissolution; and, in its stead, arising a multitude of little, obscure, isolated communities. This appeared to all the contemporaries nothing short of universal anarchy. The poets, the chroniclers of the time, viewed it as the approach of the end of the world. It was, in truth, the end of the ancient world; but the commencement of a new one, placed on a broad basis, and with large means of social improvement and individual happiness.

"Then it was that the feudal system became necessary, inevitable. It was the only possible means of emerging from the general chaos. The whole of Europe, accordingly, at the same time adopted it. Even those portions of society which were most strangers, apparently, to that system, entered warmly into its spirit, and were fain to share in its protection. The crown, the church, the communities, were constrained to accommodate themselves to it. The churches became suzerain or vassal; the burghs had their lords and their feuars; the monasteries and abbeys had their feudal retainers, as well as the temporal barons. Royalty itself was disguised under the name of a feudal superior. Every thing was given in fief; not only lands, but certain rights flowing from them, as that of cutting wood, fisheries, or the like. The church made subinfeudations of their casual revenues, as the dues on marriages, funerals, and baptisms."

The establishment of the feudal system thus universally in Europe, produced one effect, the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated. Hitherto the mass of mankind had been collected under the municipal institutions which had been universal in antiquity, in cities, or wandered in vagabond hordes through the country. Under the feudal system these men lived isolated, each in his own habitation, at a great distance from each other. A glance will show that this single circumstance must have exercised on the character of society, and the course of civilization, the social preponderance; the government of society passed at once from the towns to the country – private took the lead of public property – private prevailed over public life. Such was the first effect, and it was an effect purely material, of the establishment of the feudal system. But other effects, still more material, followed, of a moral kind, which have exercised the most important effects on the European manners and mind.

"The feudal proprietor established himself in an isolated place, which, for his own protection, he rendered secure. He lived there, with his wife, his children, and a few faithful friends, who shared his hospitality, and contributed to his defence. Around the castle, in its vicinity, were established the farmers and serfs who cultivated his domain. In the midst of that inferior, but yet allied and protected population, religion planted a church, and introduced a priest. He was usually the chaplain of the castle, and at the same time the curate of the village; in subsequent ages these two characters were separated; the village pastor resided beside his church. This was the primitive feudal society – the cradle, as it were, of the European and Christian world.

"From this state of things necessarily arose a prodigious superiority on the part of the possessor of the fief, alike in his own eyes, and in the eyes of those who surrounded him. The feeling of individual importance, of personal freedom, was the ruling principle of savage life; but here a new feeling was introduced – the importance of a proprietor, of the chief of a family, of a master, predominated over that of an individual. From this situation arose an immense feeling of superiority – a superiority peculiar to the feudal ages, and entirely different from any thing which had yet been experienced in the world. Like the feudal lord, the Roman patrician was the head of a family, a master, a landlord. He was, moreover, a religious magistrate, a pontiff in the interior of his family. He was, moreover, a member of the municipality in which his property was situated, and perhaps one of the august senate, which, in name at least, still ruled the empire. But all this importance and dignity was derived from without – the patrician shared it with the other members of his municipality – with the corporation of which he formed a part. The importance of the feudal lord, again, was purely individual – he owed nothing to another; all the power he enjoyed emanated from himself alone. What a feeling of individual consequence must such a situation have inspired – what pride, what insolence, must it have engendered in his mind! Above him was no superior, of whose orders he was to be the mere interpreter or organ – around him were no equals. No all-powerful municipality made his wishes bend to its own – no superior authority exercised a control over his wishes, he knew no bridle on his inclinations, but the limits of his power, or the presence of danger.

"Another consequence, hitherto not sufficiently attended to, but of vast importance, flowed from this society.

"The patriarchal society, of which the Bible and the Oriental monuments offer the model, was the first combination of men. The chief of a tribe lived with his children, his relations, the different generations who have assembled around him. This was the situation of Abraham – of the patriarchs: it is still that of the Arab tribes which perpetuate their manners. The clan, of which remains still exist in the mountains of Scotland, and the sept of Ireland, is a modification of the patriarchal society: it is the family of the chief, expanded during a succession of generations, and forming a little aggregation of dependents, still influenced by the same attachments, and subjected to the same authority. But the feudal community was very different. Allied at first to the clan, it was yet in many essential particulars dissimilar. There did not exist between its members the bond of relationship; they were not of the same blood; they often did not speak the same language. The feudal lord belonged to a foreign and conquering, his serfs to a domestic and vanquished race. Their employments were as various as their feelings and their traditions. The lord lived in his castle, with his wife, his children, and relations: the serfs on the estate, of a different race, of different names, toiled in the cottages around. This difference was prodigious – it exercised a most powerful effect on the domestic habits of modern Europe. It engendered the attachments of home: it brought women into their proper sphere in domestic life. The little society of freemen, who lived in the midst of an alien race in the castle, were all in all to each other. No forum or theatres were at hand, with their cares or their pleasures; no city enjoyments were a counterpoise to the pleasures of country life. War and the chase broke in, it is true, grievously at times, upon this scene of domestic peace. But war and the chase could not last for ever; and, in the long intervals of undisturbed repose, family attachments formed the chief solace of life. Thus it was that WOMEN acquired their paramount influence – thence the manners of chivalry, and the gallantry of modern times; they were but an extension of the courtesy and habits of the castle. The word courtesy shows it – it was in the court of the castle that the habits it denotes were learned." – (Lecture iv. 13, 17; Civilization Européenne.)

We have exhausted, perhaps exceeded, our limits; and we have only extracted a few of the most striking ideas from the first hundred pages of one of Guizot's works —ex uno disce omnes. The translation of them has been an agreeable occupation for a few evenings; but they awake one mournful impression – the voice which uttered so many noble and enlightened sentiments is now silent; the genius which once cast abroad light on the history of man, is lost in the vortex of present politics. The philosopher, the historian, are merged in the statesman – the instructor of all in the governor of one generation. Great as have been his services, brilliant his course in the new career into which he has been launched, it is as nothing compared to that which he has left; for the one confers present distinction, the other immortal fame.

END OF VOL. LVI

1

Little girl – or girl, merely.

2

Mr O'Connell stated in his speech, after "the liberation," that that most unexpected and miraculous event had been publicly prayed for in all the churches of Belgium.

3

Taken from Lewis's Statistics of the Four Reformed Parliaments.

4

The following account of the number of freeholders on the register, in 1837, when the number was largest, and in 1841, taken from Lewis's tables, will show an immense decrease in those counties completely under the control of the priests and agitators, and where their power is unassailable.