1939-08-10 — Page 15

1939

e French Revolution

volution there would have been no industrial transformation. That made possible, Saint-Simon and Fourier, Buret and Sismondi. They, in their turn, built the ideological foundations out of which Marx and Engels forged the fighting philo- sophy of the working class in the next age.

A TRIUMPH OF REASON

The liberation of 1789, in short, was a pivotal incident in the on- ward march of that recognition of the worth of individual personality which, ever since the Reformation, had been seeking categories of effective expression. It is not with- out justification that the Revolution conceived itself as a battle for liberty and equality and fraternity. That it built more narrowly than it knew must not blind us to the great- ness of what it built. When all its sins and errors are remembered, it yet added a new richness to the hu- man spirit and a new sense of the dignity of the human adventure that were immense gains on any- thing that had gone before. It was a great thing to compel old institu- tions to justify themselves; it was a greater to insist upon their re- novation where rational justifica- tion was wanting. From this angle the triumph of the Revolution was, with all its limitation, a triumph of supreme summary of the Revolu-

Reason itself. For it established a tion, to which he gave its decisive freedom of critical inquiry into so- foundations. A change in the cial foundations by the beneficent character of property relations re- consequences of which we still live quired a change in the character and have our civilised being. of political institutions. The aristo- cracy resisted that change, and what, therefore, could not be ef- fected, by compromise was effected by violence. Property relations, as Barnave emphasised, are sovereign, and they are bound in the end to establish their political empire.

at Rochester, Kent on July 21. The huge vessel n a weekly mail service between England, Canada ndland. Photo shows an unusual picture as the om Rochester for her first trial flight.

LASKI

the re- anniver- s to ad- hieved by ution in gress to- mocracy.

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Or rather, it may be suggested, can still have it if we repel the as- sault upon that freedom of inquiry which is central to Fascist theory, In this sense Fascism is nothing so much as an attack upon what has been permanent in the gains 1789. It seeks to displace the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity from the high empire they have the men of 1789 proclaimed them held over men's minds ever since

so courageously as their faith. By attacking them it attacks a tradi- tion that, with wavering fortune, has been the highroad down which mankind has marched since, with the Greek city State, men sought to rationalise the principles of col-

This does not mean that the Re- volution was not an immense achievement, even though ita character was more narrow than its founders conceived. It widened hown in many enormously the boundaries of pri- stant affirmation vilege, so that a population more It is the main numerous than ever before shared in its benefita. And by widening tes in the Na- those boundaries it extended the nd the Conven- empire of reason not merely in into a thousand France but all

over the Western all, in that re- world. The conquests of the French

action a la Re- bourgeoisie may have meant imme. e" of Barnave, diate reaction in England and Ger- ays the most re- many and the United States; in the

over of a privileged class

men's lives. It attempted to break down the barriers of religious prejudice.

t upon the Re- long run they meant the triumph of lective living. The French Revolu- ho was an out- the Benthamites, the critical as- tion sought to abridge the authority it. Respect for sault of the young Hegelians, the of property is a victory of the Jeffersonians over bespierre's philo- narrow conceptions of Federalism. nates the whole More, by the impulse they gave to

days of power. the victory of that new class they It was in its large outlines not least the constitutive widened the horizons even of those a plea for constitutional govern- rench civil code upon whom they imposed so rigor- a provided the ous an authority. Without the Re-

By George McManus

I WAS JUST THINKING- WOULDN'T IT BE TOO- TOO LOVELY IF OUR DALIGHTER AND HIS SON WOULD FALL

IN LOVE?

KNEW

YOU WUZ THINKIN’ ABOUT THAT-

ment as against arbitrary discre-

tion in human affairs. With all its weaknesses, no movement in mo- dern history until our own day has done so much to elevate the com- mon man or to make the recogni- tion of his right to self-respect an established part of the objectives of civilisation. It is against these pur- poses and these achievements that Fascism has set its face. It differs from the antagonisms the Re volution encountered, that of Burke or Bonald or De Maistre, in that it appeals to no principle and denies the validity of any rational analysis of its claims. In this sense, just as the French Revolution was, on the one hand, the culmination of three centuries of history and set, on the other, the keynote of human endeavour for the next hundred and

years, so Fascism, set in the perspective of the revolutionary Ideals, seems to be at war with the most permanent elements in human good.

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