THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE IRISH

Utopia of Userers, et al

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE IRISH, UTOPIA OF USERERS, ET AL by Gilbert K. Chesterton
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It will be long before the poison of the Party System is worked out of the
body politic. Some of its most indirect effects are the most dangerous.
One that is very dangerous just now is this: that for most Englishmen the
Party System falsifies history, and especially the history of revolutions.
It falsifies history because it simplifies history. It paints everything
either Blue or Buff in the style of its own silly circus politics: while a
real revolution has as many colours as the sunrise--or the end of the
world. And if we do not get rid of this error we shall make very bad
blunders about the real revolution which seems to grow more and more
probable, especially among the Irish. And any human familiarity with
history will teach a man this first of all: that Party practically does
not exist in a real revolution. It is a game for quiet times.

If you take a boy who has been to one of those big private schools which
are falsely called the Public Schools, and another boy who has been to one
of those large public schools which are falsely called the Board Schools,
you will find some differences between the two, chiefly a difference in
the management of the voice. But you will find they are both English in a
special way, and that their education has been essentially the same. They
are ignorant on the same subjects. They have never heard of the same
plain facts. They have been taught the wrong answer to the same confusing
question. There is one fundamental element in the attitude of the Eton
master talking about "playing the game," and the elementary teacher
training gutter-snipes to sing, "What is the Meaning of Empire Day?" And
the name of that element is "unhistoric." It knows nothing really about
England, still less about Ireland or France, and, least of all, of course,
about anything like the French Revolution.


Revolution by Snap Division

Now what general notion does the ordinary English boy, thus taught to
utter one ignorance in one of two accents, get and keep through life about
the French Revolution? It is the notion of the English House of Commons
with an enormous Radical majority on one side of the table and a small
Tory minority on the other; the majority voting solid for a Republic, the
minority voting solid for a Monarchy; two teams tramping through two
lobbies with no difference between their methods and ours, except that
(owing to some habit peculiar to Gaul) the brief intervals were brightened
by a riot or a massacre, instead of by a whisky and soda and a Marconi tip.
Novels are much more reliable than histories in such matters. For
though an English novel about France does not tell the truth about France,
it does tell the truth about England; and more than half the histories
never tell the truth about anything. And popular fiction, I think, bears
witness to the general English impression. The French Revolution is a
snap division with an unusual turnover of votes. On the one side stand a
king and queen who are good but weak, surrounded by nobles with rapiers
drawn; some of whom are good, many of whom are wicked, all of whom are
good-looking. Against these there is a formless mob of human beings,
wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all blindly follow ruffians who
are also rhetoricians; some of whom die repentant and others unrepentant
towards the end of the fourth act. The leaders of this boiling mass of
all men melted into one are called Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat,
and so on. And it is conceded that their united frenzy may have been
forced on them by the evils of the old regime.

That, I think, is the commonest English view of the French Revolution; and
it will not survive the reading of two pages of any real speech or letter
of the period. These human beings were human; varied, complex and
inconsistent. But the rich Englishman, ignorant of revolutions, would
hardly believe you if you told him some of the common human subtleties of
the case. Tell him that Robespierre threw the red cap in the dirt in
disgust, while the king had worn it with a broad grin, so to speak; tell
him that Danton, the fierce founder of the Republic of the Terror, said
quite sincerely to a noble, "I am more monarchist than you;" tell him that
the Terror really seems to have been brought to an end chiefly by the
efforts of people who particularly wanted to go on with it--and he will
not believe these things. He will not believe them because he has no
humility, and therefore no realism. He has never been inside himself; and
so could never be inside another man. The truth is that in the French
affair everybody occupied an individual position. Every man talked
sincerely, if not because he was sincere, then because he was angry.
Robespierre talked even more about God than about the Republic because he
cared even more about God than about the Republic. Danton talked even
more about France than about the Republic because he cared even more about
France than about the Republic. Marat talked more about Humanity than
either, because that physician (though himself somewhat needing a
physician) really cared about it. The nobles were divided, each man from
the next. The attitude of the king was quite different from the attitude
of the queen; certainly much more different than any differences between
our Liberals and Tories for the last twenty years. And it will sadden
_some_ of my friends to remember that it was the king who was the Liberal
and the queen who was the Tory. There were not two people, I think, in
that most practical crisis who stood in precisely the same attitude
towards the situation. And that is why, between them, they saved Europe.
It is when you really perceive the unity of mankind that you really
perceive its variety. It is not a flippancy, it is a very sacred truth,
to say that when men really understand that they are brothers they
instantly begin to fight.


The Revival of Reality

Now these things are repeating themselves with an enormous reality in the
Irish Revolution. You will not be able to make a Party System out of the
matter. Everybody is in revolt; therefore everybody is telling the truth.
The Nationalists will go on caring most for the nation, as Danton and
the defenders of the frontier went on caring most for the nation. The
priests will go on caring most for religion, as Robespierre went on caring
most for religgion. The Socialists will go on caring most for the cure of
physical suffering, as Marat went on caring most for it. It is out of
these real differences that real things can be made, such as the modern
French democracy. For by such tenacity everyone sees at last that there
is something in the other person's position. And those drilled in party
discipline see nothing either past or present. And where there is nothing
there is Satan.

For a long time past in our politics there has not only been no real
battle, but no real bargain. No two men have bargained as Gladstone and
Parnell bargained--each knowing the other to be a power. But in real
revolutions men discover that no one man can really agree with another man
until he has disagreed with him.