ABSTRACT
Since the French Revolution liberty and equality have been words to conjure with, perhaps because their meaning is not capable of very precise definition. M. Emile Faguet has written a brilliant essay to prove that to the men of the Revolution liberty and equality meant the same thing. The men of the Revolution were convinced that the glaring inequalities that existed were due to the fact that a man's liberty of action was thwarted and restrained at every turn by quite senseless restraints. The men who formulated the philosophy of the Revolution were mainly of the middle class; and in its earlier and later stages the Revolution was mainly directed by this class—it was what is called a bourgeois movement. To these people the idea of achieving equality through the removal of restraints upon liberty was entirely satisfactory, and to them it remained so long after the lower classes found it entirely unsatisfactory.
