LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 248, 17 September 1940, Page 8

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.

One thing which lias struck deeply on English and American imagination in connection with the French “revolution of -Vichy” is the disappearance of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” from the “motto” of the French Government. But what is the origin of those words P It is generally supposed that they were invented for the first French Revolution of 1789, but (says “Lucio” in the Manchester Guardian) this does not seem to be the case. Bodley, in a note to his “France,” points out that the words seem to have come from London, not Paris, and from Montesquieu, not from the revolutionaries. Montesquieu wrote from England in 1729, sixty years before the Revolution, “A Londres Liberte et Egnlite.” The next step is the coat-nf-arms of the Museum of Bordeaux engraved in 1783. also before the Revolution, in which the words “Liberte. Egalite” arc engraved, in honour, it is conjectured, of Montesquieu. The only word of the three belonging entirely to the Revolution was Fraternity, and, that came late, during the Terror. Writing of the year 1793. Carlvle (in Volume 111. Of his “French Revolution”) notes: “Doctrine of Fraternity, out of old Catholicism, does, it is true, very strangely in the vehicle of Jean-Jaeques Evangel, suddenly plump down out of its cloud firmament; and from a theorem determine to make itself a practice.”