The revolutionary French democracy
proclaimed a creed, not merely subversive of all monarchical and
aristocratic institutions, but inimical to the substance and the spirit
of nationality. Indeed it did not perceive any essential distinction
between the monarchical or legitimist and the national principles; and
the error was under the circumstances not unnatural. In the European
political landscape of 1793 despotic royalty was a much more conspicuous
fact than the centuries of political association in which these
monarchies had been developed. But the eyes of the French democrats had
been partially blinded by their own political interests and theories.
Their democracy was in theory chiefly a matter of abstract political
rights which remitted logically in a sort of revolutionary anarchy. The
actual bonds whereby men were united were ignored. All traditional
authority fell under suspicion. Frenchmen, in their devotion to their
ideas and in their distrust of every institution, idea, or person
associated with the Old Regime, hacked at the roots of their national
cohesion and undermined the foundations of social order.
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