Rights In Civil society
Appendix 6. (2080).
Shortly before the period of the French revolution, civil society had given clear indications in almost every European nation of readiness to move forward. But the unjust violence into which it erupted in France horrified good people and alarmed every powerful family, who saw themselves attacked by a gang of assassins. Another cause which did great harm to civil progress was the fact that the revolution was led throughout by false philosophers, thanks to whom Frederick said, `The greatest punishment possible for a province is to entrust its government to philosophers' (Dialogues des Morts par le roi de Prusse), adding that he `feared philosophical principles might bring back the barbarities from which Europe had only recently emerged' (Lettres à D'Alembert). The civil movement under discussion was led disastrously by the sophists of the time. We refer the reader to C. L. Haller's excellent description in his Ristorazione, t. 1, c. 7 & 8. In Russia, progress was revealed through the influence of contemporary ideas and needs not on the people but on the monarch who took the initiative. Haller says:
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A little later, at the opposite end of Europe,
Catherine II presented the rare spectacle of a kind of National Convention
in order to form a new code of law (1776 AD). Because she was unsuccessful,
this code has not been discussed as much as the French code, but it remains a
phenomenon worthy of recall, if the dominant sprit of the period is to be
known. |
Finally, the French movement was irreligious and wicked, the foremost reason why France struggles even today to have a clear conception of real social freedoms and, while bitterly opposing some of them, equally often mistakes licence for freedom.