ensions of revolution that
had risen in the minds of many shrewd men, good and bad, in the course
of the previous half century. No great event in history ever comes
wholly unforeseen. The antecedent causes are so wide-reaching, many, and
continuous, that their direction is always sure to strike the eye of one
or more observers in all its significance. Lewis the Fifteenth, whose
invincible weariness and heavy disgust veiled a penetrating discernment,
measured accurately the scope of the conflict between the crown and the
parlements: but, said he, things as they are will last my time. Under
the roof of his own palace at Versailles, in the apartment of Madame de
Pompadour's famous physician, one of Quesnai's economic disciples had
cried out, 'The realm is in a sore way; it will never be cured without a
great internal commotion; but woe to those who have to do with it; into
such work the French go with no slack hand.' Rousseau, in a passage in
the Confessions, not only divines a speedy convulsion, but with striking
practical sagacity enumerates the political and social causes that were
unavoidably drawing France to the edge of the abyss. Lord Chesterfield,
so different a man from Rousseau, declared as early as 1752, that he saw
in France every symptom that history had taught him to regard as the
forerunner of deep change; before the end of the century, so his
prediction ran, both the trade of king and the trade of priest in France
would be shorn of half their glory. D'Argenson in the same year declared
a revolution inevitable, and with a curious precision of anticipation
assured himself that if once the necessity arose of convoking the
States-General, they would not assemble in vain: _qu'on y prenne, garde!
ils seraient fort serieux!_ Oliver Goldsmith, idly wandering through
France, towards 1755, discerned in the mutinous attitude of the judicial
corporations, that the genius of freedom was entering the kingdom in
disguise, and that a succession of three weak monarchs would end in the
emancipation of the people of France. The most touching of all these
presentiments is to be found in a private letter of the great Empress,
the mother of Marie Antoinette herself. Maria Theresa describes the
ruined state of the French monarchy, and only prays that if it be doomed
to ruin still more utter, at least the blame may not fall upon her
daughter. The Empress had not learnt that when the giants of social
force are advancing from the somb