M. de Tocqueville, when he wrote these words, was lamenting that in France, “freedom was forsaken;” “a thing for which it is said that no one any longer cares in France.”  He did not, it seems to me, perceive that, as in America the best guarantee of freedom is the reverence for a religion or religions, which are free themselves, and which teach men to be free; so in other countries the best guarantee of slavery is, reverence for religions which are not free, and which teach men to be slaves.

But what M. de Tocqueville did not see, there are others who will see; who will say:  “If religion be the pillar of political and social order, there is an order which is best supported by a religion which is adverse to free thought, free speech, free conscience, free communion between man and God.  The more enervating the superstition, the more exacting and tyrannous its priesthood, the more it will do our work, if we help it to do its own.  If it permit us to enslave the body, we will permit it to enslave the soul.”

And so may be inaugurated a period of that organised anarchy of which the poet says: 

   It is not life, but death, when nothing stirs.

LECTURE II—­CENTRALISATION

The degradation of the European nobility caused, of course, the increase of the kingly power, and opened the way to central despotisms.  The bourgeoisie, the commercial middle class, whatever were its virtues, its value, its real courage, were never able to stand alone against the kings.  Their capital, being invested in trade, was necessarily subject to such sudden dangers from war, political change, bad seasons, and so forth, that its holders, however individually brave, were timid as a class.  They could never hold out on strike against the governments, and had to submit to the powers that were, whatever they were, under penalty of ruin.

But on the Continent, and especially in France and Germany, unable to strengthen itself by intermarriage with the noblesse, they retained that timidity which is the fruit of the insecurity of trade; and had to submit to a more and more centralised despotism, and grow up as they could, in the face of exasperating hindrances to wealth, to education, to the possession, in many parts of France, of large landed estates; leaving the noblesse to decay in isolated uselessness and weakness, and in many cases debt and poverty.

The system—­or rather anarchy—­according to which France was governed during this transitional period, may be read in that work of M. de Tocqueville’s which I have already quoted, and which is accessible to all classes, through Mr. H. Reeve’s excellent translation.  Every student of history is, of course, well acquainted with that book.  But as there is reason to fear, from language which is becoming once more too common, both in speech and writing, that the general public either do not know it, or have not understood it, I shall take the liberty of quoting from it somewhat largely.  I am justified in so doing by the fact that M. de Tocqueville’s book is founded on researches into the French Archives, which have been made (as far as I am aware) only by him; and contains innumerable significant facts, which are to be found (as far as I am aware) in no other accessible work.