as
imbued with a different spirit, and inspired different sentiments; the
administration of the state spread in all directions upon the ruin of
local authorities; the organised array of public officers superseded
more and more the government of the nobles.

This view of the state of things, which prevailed throughout Europe as
well as within the boundaries of France, is essential to the
comprehension of what is about to follow, for no one who has seen and
studied France only can ever, I affirm, understand anything of the
French Revolution.

What was the real object of the revolution? What was its peculiar
character? For what precise reason was it made, and what did it effect?
The revolution was not made, as some have supposed, in order to destroy
the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was
essentially a social and political revolution; and within the circle of
social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate and give
stability to disorder, or--as one of its chief adversaries has said--to
methodise anarchy.

However radical the revolution may have been, its innovations were, in
fact, much less than have been commonly supposed, as I shall show
hereafter. What may truly be said is that it entirely destroyed, or is
still destroying--for it is not at an end--every part of the ancient
state of society that owed its origin to aristocratic and feudal
institutions.

But why, we may ask, did this revolution, which was imminent throughout
Europe, break out in France rather than elsewhere? And why did it
display certain characteristics which have appeared nowhere else, or, at
least, have appeared only in part?

One circumstance excites at first sight surprise. The revolution, whose
peculiar object it was, as we have seen, everywhere to abolish the
remnant of the institutions of the Middle Ages, did not break out in the
countries in which these institutions, still in better preservation,
caused the people most to feel their constraint and their rigour, but,
on the contrary, in the countries where their effects were least felt;
so that the burden seemed most intolerable where it was in reality least
heavy.

In no part of Germany, for instance, at the close of the eighteenth
century, was serfdom as yet completely abolished. Nothing of the kind
had existed in France for a long period of time. The peasant came, and
went, and bought and sold, and dealt and laboured as he pleased. The
last tr