nt in suppressing these
dangerous publications did not hinder their diffusion, and gave them
the attraction of forbidden fruit. In 1770 the avocat general (Seguier)
acknowledged the futility of the policy. "The philosophers," he said,
"have with one hand sought to shake the throne, with the other to upset
the altars. Their purpose was to change public opinion on civil and
religious institutions, and the revolution has, so to speak, been
effected. History and poetry, romances and even dictionaries, have
been infected with the poison of incredulity. Their writings are hardly
published in the capital before they inundate the provinces like
a torrent. The contagion has spread into workshops and cottages."
[Footnote: Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, p.
278.]

The contagion spread, but the official who wrote these words did not see
that it was successful because it was opportune, and that the minds
of men were prepared to receive the seed of revolutionary ideas by the
unspeakable corruption of the Government and the Church. As Voltaire
remarked about the same time, France was becoming Encyclopaedist, and
Europe too.

2.

The influence of the subversive and rationalistic thinkers in bringing
about the events of 1789 has been variously estimated by historians.
The truth probably lies in the succinct statement of Acton that "the
confluence of French theory with American example caused the Revolution
to break out" when it did. The theorists aimed at reform, not at
political revolution; and it was the stimulus of the Declaration
of Rights of 1774 and the subsequent victory of the Colonies that
precipitated the convulsion, at a time when the country had a better
prospect of improvement than it ever had before 1774, when Louis XVI.
came to the throne. But the theories had prepared France for radical
changes, and they guided the phases of the Revolution. The leaders had
all the optimism of the Encyclopaedists; yet the most powerful single
force was Rousseau, who, though he denied Progress and blasphemed
civilisation, had promulgated the doctrine of the sovereignty of the
people, giving it an attractive appearance of mathematical precision;
and to this doctrine the revolutionaries attached their optimistic
hopes. [Footnote: It is interesting to observe how Robespierre, to whom
the doctrines of Rousseau were oracles, could break out into admiration
of the progress of civilised man, as he did in the opening pa