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PARTISAN R[VIEW
reform from above was not going to work. The economic crisis that focussed
upon the government's inability to raise additional revenues joined with a
political crisis that had at its center demands for broader "representation" in
elected political bodies and created together a situation ofcontinual instability.
And the error then, as the error today similarly continues to be, was to think
that a solution of the political crisis through an increase or democratization of
representation would in any way lead to a quick, or even not-so-quick,
alleviation of the economic calamities that afflicted the nation.
In
addition, the
political troubles had a life of their own, for their continuous exacerbation
symbolized the circumstance that the Old Regime was gradually being
delegitimized. evertheless, right up through the early phases of the
Revolution two collective voices remain poised in potential connict among the
forces that pressed for change: one was rational, cool, liberal, moderate,
capitalist, and reformist; the other was passionate and moralistic, and articu–
lated desires torjustice, community, fraternity, fairness, and virtue. Put in
larger terms, these may be thought of as Liberal versus Radical, Instrumen–
tal versus Expressive, Rationalistic versus Romantic, or as the ethic of re–
sponsibility versus the ethic of ultimate ends. Because the latter term in each
of these oppositions was given unexampled free play, the French when they
came
to
register their grievances and elect their first representatives in 1789
were able to connect "social distress with political change. That had not hap–
pened in Britain in 1688 nor for that matter in American in 1776, and it
would prove the crucial difference." This connection, of course, created the
explosive mixture that made the French Revolution into an event of world–
shaking importance, and Schama allows that although "social structure did not
cause the French Revolution, social issues did," which seems somehow both
to concede and finesse the question. Nevertheless, because of this connection,
Schama goes on, it was bound to happen that whenever long-term economic
policy needs came into connict with immediate social distress, the demands of
the latter succeeded in gaining priority, and the antimodernizing and antimar–
ket forces and sentiments impelled the Revolution along increasingly Radical
lines. Why this should unfailingly have occurred goes more or less unex–
plained and unexplored.
The first great climax comes, naturally, with the 14th ofJuly, 1789.
Schama writes a fine chapter of vignettes and moments of dramatic action
about that day. He is not very clear or coherent on the continuous deter–
mining pressures that eventuated in particular groups of occurrences - his
narrative is not old-fashioned in that sense. He is, however, exceptionally
good on the drama, the theatricality, the spectacularity and public display of
the great Revolutionary
journeis
-
and on the literalization in people's be–
havior of the drama of history and the stage on which these actors self-con-
