Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

The history of France is emphatically a religious history. Every student must be struck with it. To understand even the history of its court, one must get at least an outline of what is meant by Jansenism and Molinism, and Ultramontanism, and the whole tissue of isms which they have created. No historian gives us an exemption from this amount of polemical information. The school of Michelet is as forward as that of de Maistre, in claiming a "religious mission" for France among the nations; and de Stael and Chateaubriand are impressed with the same idea. Her publicists , as well as her statesmen, have been always, in their own way, theologians; and, from Louis IX. to Louis XVI., the spirit of theology was, in some form or other, the spirit of every reign. Not only the Mazarins, but the Pompadours also, have made religion part of their craft; and religion became so entirely political under Louis XV., that irreligion was easily made political in its stead. In the court of France, in fact, theology has been the common trade; the trade of Condé and of Guise, of Huguenot and Papist, of Jansenist and Jesuit, of philosopher and poet, of harlots, and almost of lap-dogs. Even Robespierre must legislate upon the "consoling principle of an Etre Suprême ," and Napoleon elevates himself into "the eldest son of the church." "A peculiar characteristic of this monarchy," says de Maistre, "is that it possesses a certain theocratic element, special to itself, which has given it fourteen centuries of duration." This element has given its colour to reigns and revolutions alike; and if one admit the necessity of religion to the perpetuity of a state, it deserves our attention, in the light of whatever contending parties have advanced upon the subject.

Let us begin with the revolutionists themselves. In the month of June 1844, Monsieur Quinet, "of the college of France," stood in his lecture-room, venting his little utmost against the "impassioned leaven of Reaction," which he declared to be fermenting in French society. His audience was literally the youth of nations; for, as I gather from his oratory, it embraced not only his countrymen, but, besides them, Poles, Russians, Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and a sprinkling of negroes. Upon this interesting assembly, in which black spirits and white must have maintained the proportion, and something of the appearance, of their corresponding ebony and ivory in the key-board of a pianoforte, and which he had tuned to his liking by a series of preparatory exercises, he played, as a grand finale , a most brilliant experimental quick-step, which satisfied him that every chord vibrated in harmony with his own sweet voice. He was closing his instructions, and addressed his pupils, not as disciples, but as friends. His great object seems to have been to convince them of their own importance, as the illuminated school of a new gospel of which he is himself the dispenser, and through which, he promised them, they would become, with him, the regenerators of the world. Having fully indoctrinated them with his new Christianity, it was necessary to work them into fury against the old. He had already established the unity of politics and religion; he had shown, very artfully, that Christianity had identified itself with Ultramontanism, and that France must perish if it should triumph; and he had only to convince them of danger from that quarter, to influence the combustible spirits of his credulous hearers to the heat which his purpose required. This he did by bellowing Reaction , and anathematising Schlegel and de Maistre.

You were mistaken then, my Basil, in supposing this word Reaction altogether a bugbear, and in understanding it with reference only to the counter-spirit in favour of legitimacy, which has been generated by the revolution of last year. You see it was the hobgoblin of a certain class of fanatics, long before Louis Philippe had received his notice to quit. It was an "impassioned leaven" in French society five years ago, in the heated imagination, or else in the artful theory, of Quinet. What was really the case? There was, in his sober opinion, as much danger from the reaction at that time as from the Great Turk, and no more. He merely used it as an academic man-of-straw to play at foils with. He held it up to contempt as an exploded folly, and then pretended it was a living danger, only to increase his own reputation for daring, and to quicken the development of antagonist principles. He little dreamed the manikin would come to life, and show fight for the Bourbons and legitimacy. He cried Wolf for his own purposes, and the actual barking of the pack must be a terrible retribution! The reaction of 1848 must have come upon the professors like doomsday. I can conceive of him, at present, only as of Friar Bacon, when he stumbled upon the discovery of gunpowder. A moment since, he stood in his laboratory compounding the genuine elixir of life, and assuring his gaping disciples of the success of his experiment; but there has been a sudden detonation, and if the professor has miraculously escaped, it is only to find chaos come again, his admiring auditors blown to atoms, and nothing remaining of his philosophical trituration, except his smutty self, and a very bad smell. I speak of him as the personification of his system. Personally, he has been a gainer by the revolution. Guizot put him out of his place, and the Republic has put him back; but the Reaction is upon him, and his theories are already resolved into their original gases. "The college of France" may soon come to a similar dissolution.

Let us look for a while at foreign conservatism through Monsieur Quinet's glasses. I have introduced you to de Maistre, and de Maistre is to him what the Pope was to Luther. Quinet is, in his own way, another reformer; in fact, he announces his system, in its relations to Protestantism, as another noon risen upon mid-day. The theological character of foreign politics is as prominent in his writings as in those of his antagonists. Thus, to illustrate the character of the French Revolution, he takes us to the Council of Trent; and to demolish French Tories, he attacks Ultramontanism. This is indeed philosophical, considering the actual history of Europe, and the affinities of its Conservative party. Action and reaction are always equal. The cold infidelity of Great Britain was met by the cool reason of Butler, and sufficiently counteracted by even the frigid apologies of Watson, and the mechanical faith of Paley. But the passionate unbelief of the Encyclopædists produced the unbalanced credulity of the reaction; and Diderot, d'Alembert, and Voltaire, have almost, by fatality, involved the noble spirits of their correctors in that wrongheaded habit of believing, which shows its vigorous weakness in the mild Ballanche and the wavering Lamennais, and develops all its weak vigour in de Maistre and de Bonald. Thus it happens that Mons. Quinet gives to his published lectures the title of Ultramontanism ; for he prefers to meet his antagonists on the untenable field of their superstition, and there to win a virtual victory over their philosophical and political wisdom. His book has reached me through the translation of Mr Cocks, 2 2 Ultramontanism; or the Roman Church and Modern Society. By E. Quinet, of the College of France. Translated from the French. Third edition, with the author's approbation, by C. Cocks, B.L. London: John Chapman. 1845. who has kindly favoured the literature of England with several similar importations from "the College of France," and who seems to be the chosen mouthpiece of the benevolent author himself, in addressing the besotted self-sufficiency of John Bull. So far, indeed, as it discusses Ultramontanism in itself, the work may have its use. It shows, with some force and more vociferation, that it has been the death of Spain, and of every state in which it has been allowed to work; and that, moreover, it has been the persevering foe of law, of science, and of morality. This is a true bill; but of him, as of his master Michelet, it may be said with emphasis, Tout, jusqu' à la vérité, trompe dans ses écrits . It does not follow, as he would argue, that political wisdom and Christian truth fall with Ultramontanism; nor does he prove it be so, by proving that de Maistre and others have thought so. The school of the Reaction are convicted of a mistake, into which their masters in Great Britain never fell. That is all that Quinet has gained, though he crows lustily for victory, and proceeds to construct his own political religion, as if Christianity were confessedly defunct. As to the style of the Professor, so far as I can judge it from a tumid and verbose translation, it is not wanting in the hectic brilliancy of rhetoric raised to fever-heat, or of French run mad. Even its argument, I doubt not, sounded logical and satisfactory, when its slender postulate of truth was set off with oratorical sophistry, enforced with professorial shrugs of the shoulders, or driven home with conclusive raps upon the auxiliary tabatière . But the inanimate logic, as it lies coffined in the version of Mr Cocks, looks very revolting. In fact, stripped of its false ornament, all its practical part is simply the revolutionism of the Chartists. Worse stuff was never declaimed to a subterranean conclave of insurgent operatives by a drunken Barabbas, with Tom Paine for his text, and a faggot of pikes for his rostrum. The results have been too immediate for even Mons. Quinet's ambition. From hearing sedition in the "College of France," his motley and party-coloured audience has broken up to enforce it behind the barricades. They turned revolutionists against reaction in posse , and reaction in esse is the very natural consequence.