people.  Minister of a monarch in retirement, his own had been utter defeat.  His last step conducted him out of the kingdom.  The disarmed king had remained the hostage of the ancient regime in the hands of the nation.  The declaration of the rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution to this time, had given it a social and universal signification.  This declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors, and confused in terms the state of nature and the state of society; but it was, notwithstanding, the very essence of the new dogma.

VI

There are objects in nature, the forms of which can only be accurately ascertained when contemplated afar off.  Too near, as well as too far off, prevents a correct view.  Thus it is with great events.  The hand of God is visible in human things, but this hand itself has a shadow which conceals what it accomplishes.  All that could then be seen of the French Revolution announced all that was great in this world, the advent of a new idea in human kind, the democratic idea, and afterwards the democratic government.

This idea was an emanation of Christianity.  Christianity finding men in serfage and degraded all over the earth, had arisen on the fall of the Roman Empire, like a mighty vengeance, though under the aspect of a resignation.  It had proclaimed the three words which 2000 years afterwards was re-echoed by French philosophy—­liberty, equality, fraternity—­amongst mankind.  But it had for a time hidden this idea in the recesses of the Christian heart.  As yet too weak to attack civil laws, it had said to the powers—­“I leave you still for a short space of time possession of the political world, confining myself to the moral world.  Continue if you can to enchain, class, keep in bondage, degrade the people, I am engaged in the emancipation of souls.  I shall occupy 2000 years, perchance, in renewing men’s minds before I become apparent in human institutions.  But the day will come when my doctrines will escape from the temple, and will enter into the councils of the people; on that day the social world will be renewed.”

This day had now arrived; it had been prepared by an age of philosophy, sceptical in appearance but in reality replete with belief.  The scepticism of the 18th century only affected exterior forms, and the supernatural dogmata of Christianity, whilst it adopted with enthusiasm, morality and the social sense.  What Christianity called revelation, philosophy called reason.  The words were different, the meaning identical.  The emancipation of individuals, of castes, of people, were alike derived from it.  Only the ancient world had been enfranchised in the name of Christ, whilst the modern world was freed in the name of the rights which every human creature has received from the hand of God; and from both flowed the enfranchisement of God or nature.  The political