madness,
anarchy, and crimes?

The second cause of the French revolution was the diffusion of the
ideas of democratic liberty. Rousseau was a republican in his
politics, as he was a sentimentalist in religion. Thomas Paine's Age
of Reason had a great influence on the French mind, as it also had on
the English and American. Moreover, the apostles of liberty in France
were much excited in view of the success of the American Revolution,
and fancied that the words "popular liberty," "sovereignty of the
people," the "rights of man," "liberty and equality," meant the same
in America as they did when pronounced by a Parisian mob. The French
people were unduly flattered, and made to believe, by the demagogues,
that they were philosophers, and that they were as fit for liberty as
the American nation itself. Moreover, it must be confessed that the
people had really made considerable advances, and discovered that
there was no right or justice in the oppressions under which they
groaned. The exhortations of popular leaders and the example of
American patriots prepared the people to make a desperate effort to
shake off their fetters. What were rights, in the abstract, if they
were to be ground down to the dust? What a mockery was the watchword
of liberty and equality, if they were obliged to submit to a despotism
which they knew to be, in the highest degree, oppressive and
tyrannical?

[Sidenote: Sufferings of the People.]

Hence the real and physical evils which the people of France endured,
had no small effect in producing the revolution. Abstract ideas
prepared the way, and sustained the souls of the oppressed; but the
absolute burdens which they bore aroused them to resistance.

[Sidenote: Degradation of the People.]

These evils were so great, that general discontent prevailed among the
middle and lower classes through the kingdom. The agricultural
population was fettered by game laws and odious privileges to the
aristocracy. "Game of the most destructive kind, such as wild boars
and herds of deer, were permitted to go at large through spacious
districts, in order that the nobles might hunt as in a savage
wilderness." Numerous edicts prohibited weeding, lest young partridges
should be disturbed, and mowing of hay even, lest their eggs should be
destroyed. Complaints for the infraction of these edicts were carried
before courts where every species of oppression and fraud prevailed.
Fines were imposed at every change of pr