Two Parliaments Escape Reform 215
the subjects of government: the Maupeou administration overcame the parlements
in France, Gustav III ended the noble hegemony in Sweden, Maria Theresa sought
to circumvent the various diets and councils of her composite realms. On the other
hand, at Geneva, a kind of democratic or burgher party had asserted itself against
the patricians with some success. In England the parliamentary patriciate saw its
independence endangered both by King George III, who was determined to sub-
due the Whig magnates, and by the beginnings of a democratic agitation which
held that the House of Commons should be really elected by, and reflect the wishes
of, the people whom it was deemed to represent. The American Revolution broke
with both Parliament and King. It put into effect many of the ideas of the Enlight-
enment, and offered the example, through its written constitutions and its consti-
tutional conventions, of the people acting as a constituent power.
In the years between 1774 and 1789, or between the beginnings of the Ameri-
can and of the French Revolutions, the stresses and conflicts grew more acute.
Events in America aroused the sense of a new era in Europe, encouraged a nega-
tive attitude in Europe toward European institutions, and induced a belief in the
possibility of change in the directions desired by persons hitherto excluded from
political life. The influence of America, and of much indigenous European de-
velopment, operated in general in a democratic direction. But real events in Eu-
rope, as distinguished from the stirring up of ideas, seemed to be going the op-
posite way.
It has become commonplace among writers of French history to think of an
“aristocratic resurgence” in France before the Revolution. It is illuminating to apply
the same concept to a wider area. In the fifteen years before the French Revolution
the British and Irish parliaments escaped even a moderate reform, the Dutch Pa-
triots rose and were suppressed, the Genevese patriciate drove out the democrats,
the Swedish nobility chafed against Gustav III (who was assassinated by a noble-
man in 1792), the Maupeou program collapsed in France, the Belgian and Hun-
garian estates revolted against the Hapsburg monarchy, the Russian nobility re-
ceived a charter from Catherine II, the Polish nobility began to build a gentry
republic, and the lawyers of Prussia labored to codify the Ständestaat in the Freus-
sisches Allgemeine Landrecht, which was promulgated in 1791, and stands as an in-
structive counterpart to the first French revolutionary constitution issued in that
year. A philosophy of what was to be called conservatism began to appear. In the
circumstances of the day, it was in effect a defense of the existing constituted bod-
ies, hence heavily historical, and aristocratic. Edmund Burke first gave a full ex-
pression to his major ideas, not in writing against the French Revolution of 1789,
but in opposing the reform of Parliament in 1784.
There was, in short, a widespread aristocratic resurgence, or perhaps only a “sur-
gence,” a rising bid for power and recognition, or successful offensive against anti-
aristocratic forces, whether monarchic or democratic, at the very time when other
developments, one of which was the impact of the American Revolution, made a
great many people less willing than ever to accept any such drift of affairs. The
great disturbance of the 1790’s can be understood only against the background of
these conflicting trends.
We begin with what happened in the British Isles.