which produced them. It would perhaps be rash to affirm that by no
possibility could the face of things have been otherwise; but it is
certain that the revolution, taking its rise from such causes, and
employing and arousing such passions, naturally took that course, and
ended in that result. Before we enter upon its history, let us see what
led to the convocation of the states-general, which themselves brought on
all that followed. In retracing the preliminary causes of the revolution,
I hope to show that it was as impossible to avoid as to guide it.

From its establishment the French monarchy had had no settled form, no
fixed and recognised public right. Under the first races the crown was
elective, the nation sovereign, and the king a mere military chief,
depending on the common voice for all decisions to be made, and all the
enterprises to be undertaken. The nation elected its chief, exercised the
legislative power in the Champs de Mars under the presidentship of the
king, and the judicial power in the courts under the direction of one of
his officers. Under the feudal regime, this royal democracy gave way to a
royal aristocracy. Absolute power ascended higher, the nobles stripped the
people of it, as the prince afterwards despoiled the nobles. At this
period the monarch had become hereditary; not as king, but as individually
possessor of a fief; the legislative authority belonged to the seigneurs,
in their vast territories or in the barons' parliaments; and the judicial
authority to the vassals in the manorial courts. In a word, power had
become more and more concentrated, and as it had passed from the many to
the few, it came at last from the few to be invested in one alone. During
centuries of continuous efforts, the kings of France were battering down
the feudal edifice, and at length they established themselves on its
ruins, having step by step usurped the fiefs, subdued the vassals,
suppressed the parliaments of barons, annulled or subjected the manorial
courts, assumed the legislative power, and effected that judicial