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As in 1672, the French invasion had been the signal for a political revolution in Holland; the aristocratical burgessdom, which had resumed power, succumbed once more beneath the efforts of the popular party, directed by the house of Nassau and supported by England.
The University of Paris, under the direction of Rollin, was developing the intelligence and lively powers of burgessdom; and Montesquieu, as yet full young, was shooting his missiles in the Lettres persanes at the men and the things of his country with an almost cynical freedom, which was, as it were, the alarum and prelude of all the liberties which he scarcely dared to claim, but of which he already let a glimpse be seen.
Brittany possessed neither a Mounier nor a Mirabeau; the noblesse there were numerous, bellicose, and haughty, the burgessdom rich and independent. Discord was manifested at the commencement of the states-provincial assembled at Rennes in the latter part of December, 1788. The governor wanted to suspend the sessions, the two upper orders persisted in meeting; there was fighting in the streets.
The insurrection of the Camisards, in the Cevennes, had been entirely of a popular character; the Jansenists had penitents amongst the great of this world, though none properly belonged to them or retired to their convents or their solitudes; it was the great French burgessdom, issue for the most part of the magistracy, which supplied their most fervent associates.
The French commons, under that name and in their season of special activity, were certainly far from rising to that importance in politics and that rank in history. And yet it is in France that the people of the commons, the burgessdom, became most completely, most powerfully developed, and ended by acquiring, in the general social body, the most decided preponderance.
In our daily meetings one with another we cried aloud for a great voice to awaken the little folk in Great Britain from their selfish lethargy the little folk in high office, in smug burgessdom, in seditious factory and shipyard. They were months of sordid bargaining between all sections of our national life, in the murk of which the glow of patriotism seemed to be eclipsed.
Not only is this fact novel, but it has for France quite a special interest; for, to make use of an expression which is much abused in our day, it is a fact eminently French, essentially national. Nowhere has burgessdom had a destiny so vast, so fertile as that which has fallen to it in France.
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