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Updated: May 19, 2025
Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke the chains of the ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men, since, and can never be gods again, but only figureheads, and answerable for their acts like common clay.
Thus if any one, in justification of the Reformation and the British hatred of Popery during the sixteenth century, should dare to detail the undoubted facts of the Inquisition, and to comment on them dramatically enough to make his readers feel about them what men who witnessed them felt, he would be accused of a 'morbid love of horrors. If any one, in order to show how the French Revolution of 1793 was really God's judgment on the profligacy of the ancien regirne, were to paint that profligacy as the men of the ancien regime unblushingly painted it themselves, respectability would have a right to demand, 'How dare you, sir, drag such disgusting facts from their merited oblivion? Those, again, who are really acquainted with the history of Henry the Eighth's marriages, are well aware of facts which prove him to have been, not a man of violent and lawless passions, but of a cold temperament and a scrupulous conscience; but which cannot be stated in print, save in the most delicate and passing hints, to be taken only by those who at once understand such matters, and really wish to know the truth; while young ladies in general will still look on Henry as a monster in human form, because no one dares, or indeed ought, to undeceive them by anything beyond bare assertion without proof.
Under the ancien régime, the trade of the French portion of San Domingo is reported to have represented more than half of her oceanic commerce. But during the Revolution the prosperity of that colony reeled under a terrible blow.
His agents of government ministers, priests, magistrates, &c. were taken indifferently from among the Liberals, Royalists, Jacobites, &c., having regard only to their capacities. While accepting the assistance of men of the ancien regime, Bonaparte took care to make it understood that he intended to maintain the fundamental principles of the Revolution.
During the Ancien Régime in France, matters of taste were considered all-important; an entire court would consult on the shade of a brocade, and hail a new coiffure as an event. The great ladies who had left their youth behind never then committed the blunder, so common among our middle-aged ladies, of aping the maidens of the day.
At any rate, the danger which Haldimand feared did not take form; and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 made it more unlikely than ever. The French Revolution profoundly affected the attitude of the French Canadians toward France. Canada was the child of the ancien régime. Within her borders the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau had found no shelter.
But the fundamental ideas which caused the revolution were invented by a few brilliant minds, and they were at first introduced into the charming drawing-rooms of the "Ancien Regime" to provide amiable diversion for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his Majesty's court.
The attempts, made at different times for the re-union of Christians, are the subject of a learned and interesting work, published at Paris, with the title of "Histoire critique des projéts formés depuis trois cents ans pour la Reunion des communions Chretiennes, par M. Tabaraud, ancien Prétre de L'Oratoire, Paris, 1824."
Meanwhile, behind all classes and social forces I had almost said, above them all stands a fourth estate, which will, ultimately, decide the form which English society is to take: a Press as different from the literary class of the Ancien Regime as is everything else English; and different in this that it is free.
Only the consciousness of its increasing power exasperated it against the resistance of the king; but it dared not overthrow him. Life under the Ancien Regime. It is difficult to form a very clear idea of life under the ancien regime, and, above all, of the real situation of the peasants.
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