The Story of Mankind [126]
it was followed by an official Declaration of Independence,
which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and exceedingly
capable student of both politics and government and
destined to be one of the most famous of out American presidents.
When news of this event reached Europe, and was followed
by the final victory of the colonists and the adoption of
the famous Constitution of the year 1787 (the first of all written
constitutions) it caused great interest. The dynastic system
of the highly centralised states which had been developed
after the great religious wars of the seventeenth century had
reached the height of its power. Everywhere the palace of
the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities
of the royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing
acres of slums. The inhabitants of those slums were showing
signs of restlessness. They were quite helpless. But the
higher classes, the nobles and the professional men, they too
were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and
political conditions under which they lived. The success of
the American colonists showed them that many things were
possible which had been held impossible only a short time
before.
According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle
of Lexington was ``heard around the world.'' That was a bit
of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the
Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been
re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his
trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the
Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder house of European
discontent and in France it caused an explosion which rocked
the entire continent from Petrograd to Madrid and buried the
representatives of the old statecraft and the old diplomacy
under several tons of democratic bricks.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS
THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY,
FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL
THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH
BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that
we explain just what this word means. In the terms of a
great Russian writer (and Russians ought to know what they
are talking about in this field) a revolution is ``a swift overthrow,
in a few years, of institutions which have taken centuries
to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and immovable that
even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them in
their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence
of social, religious, political and economic life in a nation.''
Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth
century when the old civilisation of the country had grown
stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become
EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly
the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any
duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.
This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost
incredible sums of money. This money had to be produced
in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the kings of France had
not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clergy
to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid
entirely by the agricultural population. But the peasants
living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with their
former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they
work and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their
land merely meant more taxes and nothing for themselves
and therefore they neglected their fields as much as they dared.
Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour
through the vast halls of his palaces, habitually followed by
hungry office seekers, all of whom live upon the revenue obtained
from peasants who are