Bible and the French Revolution
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The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor
no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness of the
wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive.
For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble resulted in grinding
extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the poor, and the poor
hated the rich.
In many provinces the estates were held by the nobles, and the
laboring classes were only tenants; they were at the mercy of their
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landlords and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands. The
burden of supporting both the church and the state fell upon the middle
and lower classes, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and
by the clergy. “The pleasure of the nobles was considered the supreme
law; the farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their oppres-
sors cared.... The people were compelled at every turn to consult the
exclusive interest of the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers
were lives of incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if
they ever dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The
courts of justice would always listen to a noble as against a peasant;
bribes were notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice
of the aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of
universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by
the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other,
not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury; the
rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who
thus impoverished their fellow subjects were themselves exempt from
taxation, and entitled by law or custom to all the appointments of the
state. The privileged classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand,
and for their gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and
degrading lives.” (See Appendix.)
The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was little
confidence existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion fas-
tened upon all the measures of the government as designing and selfish.
For more than half a century before the time of the Revolution the
throne was occupied by Louis XV, who, even in those evil times, was
distinguished as an indolent, frivolous, and sensual monarch. With a
depraved and cruel aristocracy and an impoverished and ignorant lower
class, the state financially embarrassed and the people exasperated,
it needed no prophet’s eye to foresee a terrible impending outbreak.