Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

REVOLUTIONSway, all of them reflect the internationalism of the period: 'liberal' isFranco-Spanish in origin, 'radical' British, 'socialist' Anglo-French.'Conservative' is also partly French in origin; another proof of theuniquely close correlation of British and continental politics in theReform Bill period. The inspiration of the first was the Revolution of1789-91, its political ideal the sort of quasi-British constitutionalmonarchy with a property-qualified, and therefore oligarchic, parliamentarysystem which the Constitution of 1791 introduced, and which,as we have seen, became the standard type of constitution in France,Britain and Belgium after 1830-32. The inspiration of the second couldbest be described as the Revolution of 1792-3, and its political ideal,a democratic republic with a bias towards a 'welfare state' and someanimus against the rich, corresponds to the ideal Jacobin constitutionof 1793. But just as the social groups which stood for radical democracywere a confused and oddly assorted collection, so also it is hard toattach a precise label to its, French Revolutionary model. Elements ofwhat would in 1792-3 have been called Girondism, Jacobinism andeven Sansculottism were combined in it, though perhaps the Jacobinismof the constitution of 1793 represented it best. The inspiration of thethird was the Revolution of the Year II and the post-Thermidorianrisings, above all Babeuf's Conspiracy of the Equals, that significantrising of extreme Jacobins and early communists which marks thebirth of the modern communist tradition in politics. It was the child ofSansculottism and the left wing of Robespierrism, though deriving littlebut its strong hatred of the middle classes and the rich from the former.Politically the Babouvist revolutionary model was in the tradition ofRobespierre and Saint-Just.From the point of view of the absolutist governments all thesemovements were equally subversive of stability and good order, thoughsome seemed more consciously devoted to the propagation of chaosthan others, and some more dangerous than others, because morelikely to inflame the ignorant and impoverished masses. (Metternich'ssecret police in the 1830s therefore paid what seems to us a disproportionateamount of attention to the circulation of Lamennais'Paroles d'un Croyant (1834), for, in speaking the Catholic language of theunpolitical, it might appeal to subjects unaffected by frankly atheisticpropaganda.) 3 In fact, however, the opposition movements were unitedby little more than their common detestation of the regimes of 1815and the traditional common front of all opposed, for whateverreason, to absolute monarchy, church and aristocracy. The historyof the period from 1815-48 is that of the disintegration of that unitedfront.113