4. The inst.i.tution of const.i.tutional government and religious freedom in America.
5. The sweeping away of mediaeval abuses in the great Revolution in France.
I. WORK OF THE BENEVOLENT DESPOTS OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE
THE NEW NATIONALISM LEADS TO INTERESTED GOVERNMENT. In England, as we shall trace a little further on, a democratic form of government had for long been developing, but this democratic life had made but little headway on the continent of Europe. There, instead, the democratic tendencies which showed some slight signs of development during the sixteenth century had been stamped out in the period of warfare and the ensuing hatreds of the seventeenth, and in the eighteenth century we find autocratic government at its height. National governments to succeed the earlier government of the Church had developed and grown strong, the kingly power had everywhere been consolidated, Church and State were in close working alliance, and the new spirit of nationality--in government, foreign policy, languages, literature, and culture--was being energetically developed by those responsible for the welfare of the States. Everywhere, almost, on the continent of Europe, the theory of the divine right of kings to rule and the divine duty of subjects to obey seemed to have become fixed, and this theory of government the Church now most a.s.siduously supported. Unlike in England and the American Colonies, the people of the larger countries of continental Europe had not as yet advanced far enough in personal liberty or political thinking to make any demand of consequence for the right to govern themselves. The new spirit of nationality abroad in Europe, though, as well as the new humanitarian ideas beginning to stir thinking men, alike tended to awaken a new interest on the part of many rulers in the welfare of the people they governed. In consequence, during the eighteenth century, we find a number of nations in which the rulers, putting themselves in harmony with the new spirit of the time, made earnest attempts to improve the condition of their peoples as a means of advancing the national welfare. We shall here mention the four nations in which the most conspicuous reform work was attempted.
THE RULERS OF PRUSSIA. Three kings, to whom the nineteenth-century greatness of Prussia was largely due, ruled the country during nearly the whole of the eighteenth century. They were fully as despotic as the kings of France, but, unlike the French kings, they were keenly alive to the needs of the people, anxious to advance the welfare of the State, tolerant in religion, and in sympathy with the new scientific studies. The first, Frederick William I (1713-40), labored earnestly to develop the resources of the country, trained a large army, ordered elementary education made compulsory, and made the beginnings in the royal provinces of the transformation of the schools from the control of the Church to the control of the State. His son, known to history as Frederick the Great, ruled from 1740 to 1786. During his long reign he labored continually to curtail ancient privileges, abolish old abuses, and improve the condition of his people. During the first week of his reign he abolished torture in trials, made the administration of law more equitable, inst.i.tuted a limited freedom for the press, [2] and extended religious toleration. [3]
He also partially abolished serfdom on the royal domains, and tried to uplift the peasantry and citizen cla.s.ses, but in this he met with bitter opposition from the n.o.bles of his realm. He built roads, ca.n.a.ls, and bridges, encouraged skilled artisans to settle in his dominions, developed agriculture and industry, encouraged scientific workers, extended an asylum to thousands of Huguenots fleeing from religious persecution in France, [4] and did more than any previous ruler to provide common schools throughout his kingdom. By the general regulation of education in his kingdom (chapter xxii) he laid the foundations upon which the nineteenth- century Prussian school system was later built.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig 145 FREDERICK THE GREAT]
His rule, though, was thoroughly autocratic. "Every thing for the people, but nothing by the people", was the keynote of his policies. He had no confidence in the ability of the people to rule, and gave them no opportunity to learn the art. He employed the strong army his father built up to wage wars of conquest, seize territory that did not belong to him, and in consequence made himself a great German hero. [5] He may be said to have laid the foundations of modern militarized, socialized, obediently educated, and subject Germany, and also to have begun the "grand-larceny"
and "sc.r.a.p-of-paper" policy which has characterized Prussian international relationships ever since. Frederick William II, who reigned from 1786 to 1797, continued in large measure the enlightened policies of his uncle, reformed the tax system, lightened the burdens of his people, encouraged trade, emphasized the German tongue, quickened the national spirit, actively encouraged schools and universities, and began that centralization of authority over the developing educational system which resulted in the creation in Prussia of the first modern state school system in Europe. The educational work of these three Prussian kings was indeed important, and we shall study it more in detail in a later chapter (Chapter XXII).
THE AUSTRIAN REFORMERS. Two notably benevolent rulers occupied the Austrian throne for half a century, and did much to improve the condition of the Austrian people. A very remarkable woman, Maria Theresa, came to the throne in 1740, and was followed by her son, Joseph II, in 1780. He ruled until 1790. To Maria Theresa the Austria of the nineteenth century owed most of its development and power. She worked with seemingly tireless energy for the advancement of the welfare of her subjects, and toward the close of her reign laid, as we shall see in a later chapter, the beginnings of Austrian school reform.
Joseph II carried still further his mother"s benevolent work, and strove to introduce "enlightenment and reason" into the administration of his realm. A student of the writings of the eighteenth-century reform philosophers, and deeply imbued with the reform spirit of his time, he attempted to abolish ancient privileges, establish a uniform code of justice, encourage education, free the serfs, abolish feudal tenure, grant religious toleration, curb the power of the Pope and the Church, break the power of the local Diets, centralize the State, and "introduce a uniform level of democratic simplicity under his own absolute sway." He attempted to alter the organization of the Church, abolished six hundred monasteries, [6] and reduced the number of monastic persons in his dominion from 63,000 to 27,000. Attempting too much, he brought down upon his head the wrath of both priest and n.o.ble and died a disappointed man.
The abolition of feudal tenure and serfdom on the distinctively Austrian lands, of all his attempted reforms, alone was permanent. His work stands as an interesting commentary on the temporary character of the results which follow attempts rapidly to improve the conditions surrounding the lives of people, without at the same time educating the people to improve themselves.
THE SPANISH REFORMERS. A very similar result attended the reform efforts of a succession of benevolent rulers thrust upon Spain, during the eighteenth century, by the complications of foreign politics. Over a period of nearly ninety years, extending from the accession of Philip V (1700) to the death of Charles III (1788), remarkable political progress was imposed by a succession of able ministers and with the consent of the kings. [7] The power of the Church, always the crying evil of Spain, was restricted in many ways; the Inquisition was curbed; the Jesuits were driven from the kingdom; the burning of heretics was stopped; prosecution for heresy was reduced and discouraged; the monastic orders were taught to fear the law and curb their pa.s.sions; evils in public administration were removed; national grievances were redressed; the civil service was improved; science and literature were encouraged, in place of barren theological speculations; and an earnest effort was made to regenerate the national life and improve the lot of the common people.
All these reforms, though, were imposed from above, and no attempt was made to introduce schools or to educate the people in the arts of self- government. The result was that the reforms never went beneath the surface, and the national life of the people remained largely untouched.
Within five years of the death of Charles III all had been lost. Under a native Spanish king, thoroughly orthodox, devout, and lacking in any broad national outlook, the Church easily restored itself to power, the priests resumed their earlier importance, the n.o.bles again began to exact their full toll, free discussion was forbidden, scientific studies were abandoned, the universities were ordered to discontinue the study of moral philosophy, and the political and social reforms which had required three generations to build up were lost in half a decade. Not meeting any well- expressed need of the people, and with no schools provided to show to the people the desirable nature of the reforms introduced, it was easy to sweep them aside. In this relapse to mediaevalism, the chance for Spain-- a country rich in possibilities and natural resources--to evolve early into a progressive modern nation was lost. So Spain has remained ever since, and only in the last quarter of a century has reform from within begun to be evident in this until recently priest-ridden and benighted land.
THE INTELLIGENT DESPOTS OF RUSSIA. The greatest of these were Peter the Great, who ruled from 1689 to 1725, and Catherine II, who ruled from 1762 to 1796. Catching something of the new eighteenth-century western spirit, these rulers tried to introduce some western enlightenment into their as yet almost barbarous land. Each tried earnestly to lift their people to a higher level of living, and to start them on the road toward civilization and learning. By a series of edicts, despotically enforced, Peter tried to introduce the civilization of the western world into his country. He brought in numbers of skilled artisans, doctors, merchants, teachers, printers, and soldiers; introduced many western skills and trades; and made the beginnings of western secondary education for the governing cla.s.ses by the establishment in the cities of a number of German-type _gymnasia_. [8] Later Catherine II had the French philosopher Diderot (p.
482) draw up a plan for her for the organization of a state system of higher schools, but the plan was never put into effect. The beginnings of Russian higher civilization really date from this eighteenth-century work.
The power of the formidable Greek or Eastern Church remained, however, untouched, and this continued, until after the Russian revolution of 1917, as one of the most serious obstacles to Russian intellectual and educational progress. The serfs, too, remained serfs--tied to the land, ignorant, superst.i.tious, and obedient.
By the close of the eighteenth century Russia, largely under Prussian training, had become a very formidable military power, and by the close of the nineteenth century was beginning to make some progress of importance in the arts of peace. Just at present Russia is going through a stage of national evolution quite comparable to that which took place in France a century and a quarter ago, and the educational importance of this great people, as we shall point out further on, lies in their future evolution rather than in any contribution they have as yet made to western development.
II. THE UNSATISFIED DEMAND FOR REFORM IN FRANCE
THE SETTING OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE. Eighteenth-century France, on the contrary, developed no benevolent despot to mitigate abuses, reform the laws, abolish privileges, temper the rule of the Church, [9] (R. 247), curb the monastic orders, develop the natural resources, begin the establishment of schools, and alleviate the hard lot of the serf and the peasant. There, instead, absolute monarchy in Europe reached its most complete triumph during the long reigns of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and Louis XV (1715-74), and the splendor of the court life of France captivated all Europe and served to hide the misery which made the splendor possible.
There the power of the n.o.bles had been completely broken, and the power of the parliaments completely destroyed. "I am the State," exclaimed Louis XIV, and the almost unlimited despotism of the King and his ministers and favorites fully supported the statement. Local liberties had been suppressed, and the lot of the common people--ignorant, hard-working, downtrodden, but intensely patriotic--was wretched in the extreme.
Approximately 140,000 n.o.bles [10] and 130,000 monks, nuns, and clergy owned two fifths of the landed property of France, and controlled the destinies of a nation of approximately 25,000,000 people. Agriculture was the great industry of the time, but this was so taxed by the agents of King and Church that over one half of the net profits from farming were taken for taxation.
CHURCH AND STATE WERE IN CLOSE WORKING ALLIANCE. The higher offices of the Church were commonly held by appointed n.o.blemen, who drew large incomes [11] led worldly lives, and neglected their priestly functions much as the Italian appointees in German lands had done before the Reformation.
Between the n.o.bles and upper clergy on the one hand and the peasant-born lower clergy and the ma.s.ses of the people on the other a great gulf existed. The real brains of France were to be found among a small bourgeois cla.s.s of bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, minor officials, lawyers, and skilled artisans, who lived in the cities and who, ambitious and discontented, did much to stimulate the increasing unrest and demand for reform which in time pervaded the whole nation. A king, constantly in need of increasing sums of money; an idle, selfish, corrupt, and discredited n.o.bility and upper clergy, incapable of aiding the king, many of whom, too, had been influenced by the new philosophic and scientific thinking and were willing to help destroy their own orders; an aggressive, discontented, and patriotic bourgeoisie, full of new political and social ideas, and patriotically anxious to reform France; and a vast unorganized peasantry and city rabble, suffering much and resisting little, but capable of a terrible fury and senseless destruction, once they were aroused and their suppressed rage let loose;--these were the main elements in the setting of eighteenth-century France.
THE FRENCH REFORM PHILOSOPHERS. During the middle decades of the eighteenth century a small but very influential group of reform philosophers in France attacked with their pens the ancient abuses in Church and State, and did much to pave the way for genuine political and religious reform. In a series of widely read articles and books, characterized for the most part by clear reasoning and telling arguments, these political philosophers attacked the power of the absolute monarchy on the one hand, and the existing privileges of the n.o.bles and clergy on the other, as both unjust and inimical to the welfare of society (R. 248).
The leaders in the reform movement were Montesquieu (1689-1755), Turgot (1727-81), Voltaire (1694-1778), Diderot (1713-84), and Rousseau (1712- 78).
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 147. MONTESQUIEU(1689-1755)]
_Montesquieu_. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu"s famous book, the _Spirit of Laws_. In this he pointed out the many excellent features of the const.i.tutional government which the English had developed, and compared English conditions with the many abuses to which the French people were subject. He argued that laws should be expressive of the wishes and needs of the people governed, and that the education of a people "ought to be relative to the principles of good government." Montesquieu also stands, with Turgot as the founder of the sciences of comparative politics [12]
and the philosophy of history--new studies which helped to shape the political thinking of eighteenth-century France.
_Turgot_. Two years after the publication of Montesquieu"s book, Turgot delivered (1750) a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, in Paris, in which he virtually created the science of history. Looking at human history comprehensively, seeing clearly that there had been a hitherto unrecognized regularity of march amid the confusion of the past, and that it was possible to grasp the history of the progress of man as a whole, he saw and stated the possibility of society to improve itself through intelligent government, and the need for wise laws and general education to enable it to do so. [13]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 148. TURGOT (1727-81)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 149. VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)]
In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance by the new King, Louis XVI, and during the two years before he was removed from office he attempted to carry out many needed political and social reforms. Duruy [14] has summarized his suggested reforms as follows:
1. Gradual introduction of a complete system of local self-government.
2. Imposition of a land tax on n.o.bility and clergy.
3. Suppression of the greater part of the monasteries.
4. Amelioration of the condition of the minor clergy.
5. Equalization of the burdens of taxation.
6. Liberty of conscience, and the recall of the Protestants to France.
7. A uniform system of weights and measures.
8. Freedom for commerce and industry.
9. A single and uniform code of laws.
10. A vast plan for the organization of a system of public instruction throughout France.
This list is indicative of the reform philosophy in the light of which he worked. Arousing the natural hostility of the n.o.bility and higher clergy, he was soon dismissed, and the reforms he had proposed were abandoned by the King.
_Voltaire._ The keenest and most unsparing critic of the old order was Voltaire. In clear and forceful French he exposed existing conditions in society and government, and particularly the control of affairs exercised by the most ancient and most powerful organization of his day--the Church.
For this he was execrated and hated by the clergy, and in return he made it the chief task of his life to destroy the reign of the priest. Having lived for a time in England, he appreciated the vast difference between the English and French forms of government. With a keen and unsparing pen he exposed the scholasticism, despotism, dogmatism, superst.i.tion, hypocrisy, servility, and deep injustice of his age, and poured out the vials of his scorn upon the grubbing pedantry of the Academicians who doted upon the past because ignorant of the present. In particular he stood for the abolition of that relic of feudalism--serfdom--which still seriously oppressed the peasantry of France; for liberty in thought and action for the individual; for curbing the powers and privileges of both State and Church; for an equalization of the burdens of taxation between the different cla.s.ses in French society; and for the organization of a system of public education throughout the nation. He died before the outbreak of the Revolution he had done so much to bring about, but by the time he died the "Ancient Regime" of privilege and corruption and oppression was already tottering to its fall. His conception of the relations that should exist between Church and State are well set forth in a short article from his pen on the subject (R. 248) reprinted from the _Encyclopaedia_ of Diderot.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 150. DIDEROT (1713-84)]
_Diderot._ Another able thinker and writer was Diderot. Besides other works of importance, he gave twenty years of his life (1751-72) to the editing (with D"Alembert) of an _Encyclopaedia_ of seventeen volumes of text and eleven of plates. Many of the articles were written by himself, and were expressive of his ideas as to reform. Many were frankly critical of existing privileges, abuses, and pretensions. Many interpreted to the French the science of Newton and the discoveries of the age, and awakened a new interest in scientific study. Because of its reform ideas the publication was suppressed, in 1759, after the publication of the seventh volume, and had to be carried on surrept.i.tiously thereafter. Viscount Morley, writing recently on Diderot, summarizes the nature and influence of the _Encyclopaedia_ in the following words:
The ecclesiastical party detested the _Encyclopaedia_, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophical enemies. To any one who turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it seems surprising that their doctrine should have stirred such portentous alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the cardinal mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the notorious abuses of the Church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet learnt to encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. The _Encyclopaedia_ takes for granted the justice of religious toleration and speculative freedom. It a.s.serts in distinct tones the democratic doctrine that it is the common people in a nation whose lot ought to be the chief concern of the nation"s government. From beginning to end it is one unbroken process of exaltation of scientific knowledge on the one hand, and pacific industry on the other. All these things were odious to the old governing cla.s.ses of France. [15]
_Rousseau._ The fifth reform writer mentioned as exercising a large influence was Rousseau. In 1749 the Academy at Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the subject: _Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals?_ Rousseau took the negative side and won the prize. His essay attracted widespread attention. In 1753 he competed for a second prize on _The Origin of Inequality among Men_, in which he took the same negative att.i.tude. In 1762 appeared both his _Social Contract_ and _emile_. In the former he contended that early men had given to selected leaders the right to conduct their government for them, and that these had in time become autocratic and had virtually enslaved the people (R. 249 a). He held that men were not bound to submit to government against their wills, and to remedy existing abuses he advocated the overthrow of the usurping government and the establishment of a republic, with universal suffrage based on "liberty, fraternity, and equality." The ideal State lay in a society controlled by the people, where artificiality and aristocracy and the tyranny of society over man did not exist. Nor could Rousseau distinguish between political and ecclesiastical tyranny, holding that the former inevitably followed from the latter (R. 249 b).
Crude as were his theories, and impractical as were many of his ideas, to an age tired of absurdities and pretensions and injustice, and suffering deeply from the abuses of both Church and State, his attractively written book seemed almost inspired. The _Social Contract_ virtually became the Bible of the French Revolutionists. In the _emile_, a book which will be referred to more at length in chapter XXI, Rousseau held that we should revert, in education, to a state of nature to secure the needed educational reforms, and that education to prepare for life in the existing society was both wrong and useless.
A REVOLUTION IN FRENCH THINKING. These five men--Montesquieu, Turgot, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau--and many other less influential followers, portrayed the abuses of the time in Church and State and pointed out the lines of political and ecclesiastical reform. Those who read their writings understood better why the existing privileges of the n.o.bility and clergy were no longer right, and the need for reform in matters of taxation and government. Their writings added to the spirit of unrest of the century, and were deeply influential, not only in France, but in the American Colonies as well. Though the attack was at first against the evils in Church and State, the new critical philosophy soon led to intellectual developments of importance in many other directions.
At the death of Louis XIV (1715) France was intellectually prostrate.
Great as was his long reign from the point of view of the splendor of his court, and large as was the quant.i.ty of literature produced, his age was nevertheless an age of misery, religious intolerance, political oppression, and intellectual decline. It was a reign of centralized and highly personal government. Men no longer dared to think for themselves, or to discuss with any freedom questions either of politics or religion.
"There was no popular liberty; there were no great men; there was no science; there was no literature; there were no arts. The largest intellects lost their energy; the national spirit died away." Between the death of Louis XIV and the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) an intellectual revolution took place in France, and for this revolution English political progress and political and scientific thinking were largely responsible.