as the leaders in the revolutionary movement said over and over again, was the expression of that sovereignty. It was also the instrument by which the people were aroused to oppose oppression. Having taken unto themselves the right to question authority, they could not even understand the attitude of those who still looked to the king as the sole source of authority. It was not conceivable to them that only a few years before Louis XIV, entering the French Parliament in his hunting-dress and great boots, with whip in hand, had been in a position to declare: "The mischievous consequences of your assemblies are well known. I therefore order this, which is met to discuss my edict, to be at an end,"[1] or that their own king, Henry VII, when Parliament refused to pass his appropriation bill, had sent for the members and, glowering at them, declared that if the bill failed to pass he would chop off their heads.
There were many, not only in England but in the colonies who still believed that the king represented this same kind of power and authority; but the men who were leading public opinion, who were insistent on the rights of the people, were men who had developed a point of view that could little comprehend such authority.
The Provinces in this short pre-Revolutionary periodpresented a spectacle unusual in political history, ana particularly unheard-of at that time. The law-mak-l ing body in England did not have the right of publicity.] Public meetings and the press were still controlled. In', France, the people were a negligible element, and in Germany there was little free discussion of political affairs. This revolution by public opinion was therefore, to those who were out of sympathy with it, like some strange apparition.
- ↑ Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV, ii, 2.
