230] ANNUAL REGISTER, ISOO. 



looks forward with a mixture of 

 hope and fear. Revolutions must 

 come to pass, and that quickly. 

 But all changes, we know from 

 recent and dreadful experience, are 

 not for the better. The lightning 

 that blasts is as powerful in effect, 

 and as rapid in communication, 

 as the solar rays that sustain and 

 cheer surrounding worlds. 



In characterizing the eighteenth 

 century, by marking the vicissitudes 

 of religious, moral, and political 

 opinion, it will be proper to notice 

 the wonderful effects that have 

 been wrought, in the course of that 

 period, by the progressive influence 

 of the exchange of feudal services 

 for money ; or of a feudal and mili- 

 tary system of contribution for the 

 public service, for one commercial 

 and financial. The exchange of 

 military service in the field for 

 money assessed for the maintenance 

 of standingarraies,hasbeen naturally 

 followed by an increase of armies that 

 seems to defy all bounds, until the 

 whole mass of contending nations 

 shall be converted, as in preceding 

 times of barbarism, into soldiers and 

 slaves ; bi'ave and honourable war- 

 riors, or helotes, villani, or bondmen 

 under other names, whose business 

 it is to cultivate the ground for the 

 use of their lords and masters. 

 Immoderate taxes have been the 

 necessary concomitants of this new 

 order of affairs, immense public 

 debts, a kind of new aristocracy of 

 monied capitalists, who lend money 

 to governments on usurious terms, 

 and a collusion between the govern- 

 ments and these new aristocrats, 

 whereby the interests of the people 

 atlarge are sacrificed to the ambition 

 and pride of the one party, and the 

 avarice and rapacity of the other. 

 This collusion is a source of misery 

 to the oppressed nations; and tends. 



in the end, to the embarrassment 

 and even ruin of the oppressors. 

 It was the financial difficulties of 

 France, that formed the proximate 

 cause, or link in the chain of 

 causes, that involved the revolution. 

 This exchange of baronial personal 

 services in the field, for the means 

 of raising and keeping on foot 

 mercenary armies, did not indeed 

 originate in the eighteenth century ; 

 but its effects were never so fully 

 and extensively displayed : and 

 since no period can be rightly 

 described or characterized, without 

 comparing it with other and pre- 

 ceding periods, it will not be 

 foreign to our present design, to 

 take a short review of the state of 

 Europe, in regard to the subject in 

 hand, from the grand sera of the 

 middle of the fifteenth century. 



Constantinople being taken by 

 Mahommed the Second, in 1543, 

 many learned Greeks sought and 

 found an asylum in Italy. The 

 favourable reception they met with 

 from the popes, princes, and chief 

 men in the republics of that cele- 

 brated country, soon introduced 

 among the better sort of Italians the 

 study of the Greek tongue, and of 

 the ancient authors in that language. 

 About the same time also, though 

 somewhat later, some learned men 

 began to restore the purity of the 

 Latin tongue : but that which con- 

 tributed most to the advancement of 

 all kinds of learning, and particu- 

 larly the study of the ancients, was 

 the art of printing ; which, a few 

 years after the arrival of the Greeks 

 from Constantinople, in Italy, was 

 brought to a great degree of per- 

 fection. By means of the press, the 

 books of the ancients were multi- 

 plied and became common, and 

 their arts generally understood and 

 admired. Italy soon swarmed with 



