act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had
everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising
everything that belonged to you. You set up your trade without a
capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much
lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your
claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection
for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a
standard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar practice of the hour;
and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation you
aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to
respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider the French as
a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born, servile wretches until
the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the expense of
your honor, an excuse to your apologists here for several enormities of
yours, you would not have been content to be represented as a gang of
Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage, and
therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty to which you were
not accustomed, and were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend,
have been wiser to have you thought, what I for one always thought you,
a generous and gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by your
high and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty; that
events had been unfavorable to you, but that you were not enslaved
through any illiberal or servile disposition; that, in your most devoted
submission, you were actuated by a principle of public spirit; and that
it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you
made it to be understood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error,
you had gone further than your wise ancestors,--that you were resolved
to resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit of
your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of
yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated
Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this
land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the old
common law of Europe, meliorated and adapted to its present state,--by
following wise examples you would have given new examples of wisdom to
the world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the
eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed
despotism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not only
reconcilable, but, as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law.
You would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would
have had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free
Constitution, a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed and
venerated clergy,--a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your
virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of
commons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility; you would have had a
protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and
to recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all
conditions,--in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and
not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain
expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of
laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real
inequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil life
establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an
humble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more
splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of
felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond anything recorded in the
history of the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good for
man.
Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and
presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all
their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By
following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities
at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal
blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed
her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she
might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of
a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing
originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or other
of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom
in severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine
morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority,
doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an
insolent irreligion in opinions and practices,--and has extended through
all ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, or
laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that
usually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new
principles of equality in France.
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone of
lenient council in the cabinets of princes, and disarmed it of its most
potent topics. She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at (what will hereafter
be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns
will consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in
their people as subverters of their thrones,--as traitors who aim at
their destruction, by leading their easy good-nature, under specious
pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faithless men into a
participation of their power. This alone (if there were nothing else) is
an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind. Remember that your
Parliament of Paris told your king, that, in calling the states
together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excess of their zeal
in providing for the support of the throne. It is right that these men
should hide their heads. It is right that they should bear their part in
the ruin which their counsel has brought on their sovereign and their
country. Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,--to
encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried
policy,--to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions
which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man
can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or
of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state
corrupted into its poison. They have seen the French rebel against a
mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult than ever
any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper or
the most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession;
their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at a hand holding
out graces, favors, and immunities.
This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their
punishment in their success. Laws overturned; tribunals subverted;
industry without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the
people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil
and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything
human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national
bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown all, the paper securities of
new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of
impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the
support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that
represent the lasting, conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared
and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the
principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was
systematically subverted.
Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were they the inevitable
results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to
wade through blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil and
prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France,
which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the
devastation of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of
rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the
display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and
irresistible authority. The persons who have thus squandered away the
precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made this
prodigal and wild waste of public evils, (the last stake reserved for
the ultimate ransom of the state,) have met in their progress with
little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their whole march was more
like a triumphal procession than the progress of a war. Their pioneers
have gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their
feet. Not one drop of _their_ blood have they shed in the cause of the
country they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects
of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they were
imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow-citizens, and bathing in
tears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men and
worthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the base result of
fear. It has been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in
authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and
burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain
from the beginning.
* * * * *
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly
unaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of the National
Assembly: I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it now
stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great
measure it is composed, which is of ten thousand times greater
consequence than all the formalities in the world. If we were to know
nothing of this assembly but by its title and function, no colors could
paint to the imagination anything more venerable. In that light, the
mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the
virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, would
pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect.
Instead of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, no
power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the
men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God,
and Nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them.
Capacities beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdom
may be the objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither the
one nor the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands.
They have not the engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of
Revelation for any such powers.
After I had read over the list of the persons and descriptions elected
into the _Tiers État_, nothing which they afterwards did could appear
astonishing. Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank, some of
shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not one
man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. But whatever the
distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and mass of the
body which constitutes its character, and must finally determine its
direction. In all bodies, those who will lead must also, in a
considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the
taste, talent, and disposition of those whom they wish to conduct:
therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very
great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very
rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into
calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it
from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, what
is the more likely event, instead of that unusual degree of virtue, they
should be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious
glory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom at first they
conform, becomes, in its turn, the dupe and instrument of their designs.
In this political traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the
ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become subservient to
the worst designs of their leaders.
To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the leaders
in any public assembly, they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to
fear, those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly, the
followers must be qualified, if not for actors, at least for judges;
they must also be judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing can
secure a steady and moderate conduct in such assemblies, but that the
body of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition in
life, of permanent property, of education, and of such habits as enlarge
and liberalize the understanding.
In the calling of the States-General of France, the first thing that
struck me was a great departure from the ancient course. I found the
representation for the third estate composed of six hundred persons.
They were equal in number to the representatives of both the other
orders. If the orders were to act separately, the number would not,
beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But when it
became apparent that the three orders were to be melted down into one,
the policy and necessary effect of this numerous representation became
obvious. A very small desertion from either of the other two orders
must throw the power of both into the hands of the third. In fact, the
whole power of the state was soon resolved into that body. Its due
composition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater importance.
Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great proportion of
the Assembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) was
composed of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of
distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to their country of
their science, prudence, and integrity,--not of leading advocates, the
glory of the bar,--not of renowned professors in universities,--but for
the far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior,
unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession.
There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of
obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions,
country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of
municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of
village vexation. From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and
very nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.
The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the
standard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves.
Whatever the personal merits of many individual lawyers might have been,
(and in many it was undoubtedly very considerable,) in that military
kingdom no part of the profession had been much regarded, except the
highest of all, who often united to their professional offices great
family splendor, and were invested with great power and authority. These
certainly were highly respected, and even with no small degree of awe.
The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very
low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so composed, it must
evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the
hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,--who had no
previous fortune in character at stake,--who could not be expected to
bear with moderation or to conduct with discretion a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised to find in their
hands. Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it
were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination,
would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could
conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active,
of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into
their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and
unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the
state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private
interests, which they understood but too well? It was not an event
depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary;
it was planted in the nature of things. They must _join_ (if their
capacity did not permit them to _lead_) in any project which could
procure to them a _litigious constitution_,--which could lay open to
them those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train of all
great convulsions and revolutions in the state, and particularly in all
great and violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected that
they would attend to the stability of property, whose existence had
always depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous,
and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but
their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs
must remain the same.
Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other
descriptions, of more sober minds and more enlarged understandings. Were
they, then, to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful dignity
of a handful of country clowns, who have seats in that assembly, some of
whom are said not to be able to read and write,--and by not a greater
number of traders, who, though somewhat more instructed, and more
conspicuous in the order of society, had never known anything beyond
their counting-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be
overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers than to
become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous disproportion, the
whole must needs be governed by them.
To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of the
faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the
law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors, therefore,
must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they
do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming
statesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds,
who must be eager, at any expense, to change their ideal paper wealth
for the more solid substance of land. To these were joined men of other
descriptions, from whom as little knowledge of or attention to the
interests of a great state was to be expected, and as little regard to
the stability of any institution,--men formed to be instruments, not
controls.--Such, in general, was the composition of the _Tiers État_ in
the National Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the
slightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the
country.
We know that the British House of Commons, without shutting its doors to
any merit in any class, is, by the sure operation of adequate causes,
filled with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditary
and in acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil,
naval, and politic distinction, that the country can afford. But
supposing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House of
Commons should be composed in the same manner with the _Tiers État_ in
France,--would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even
conceived without horror? God forbid I should insinuate anything
derogatory to that profession which is another priesthood, administering
the rights of sacred justice! But whilst I revere men in the functions
which belong to them, and would do as much as one man can do to prevent
their exclusion from any, I cannot, to flatter them, give the lie to
Nature. They are good and useful in the composition; they must be
mischievous, if they preponderate so as virtually to become the whole.
Their very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from a
qualification for others. It cannot escape observation, that, when men
are too much confined to professional and faculty habits, and, as it
were, inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they
are rather disabled than qualified for whatever depends on the
knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, on a
comprehensive, connected view of the various, complicated, external, and
internal interests which go to the formation of that multifarious thing
called a State.
After all, if the House of Commons were to have an wholly professional
and faculty composition, what is the power of the House of Commons,
circumscribed and shut in by the immovable barriers of laws, usages,
positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House of
Lords, and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the crown
to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of the House of
Commons, direct or indirect, is, indeed, great: and long may it be able
to preserve its greatness, and the spirit belonging to true greatness,
at the full!--and it will do so, as long as it can keep the breakers of
law in India from becoming the makers of law for England. The power,
however, of the House of Commons, when least diminished, is as a drop of
water in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled majority of
your National Assembly. That assembly, since the destruction of the
orders, has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage
to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a
fixed constitution, they have a power to make a constitution which shall
conform to their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as a
control on them. What ought to be the heads, the hearts, the
dispositions, that are qualified, or that dare, not only to make laws
under a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new
constitution for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from the
monarch on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined and undefinable
purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man
to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the
management of human affairs.
Having considered the composition of the third estate, as it stood in
its original frame, I took a view of the representatives of the clergy.
There, too, it appeared that full as little regard was had to the
general security of property, or to the aptitude of the deputies for
their public purposes, in the principles of their election. That
election was so contrived as to send a very large proportion of mere
country curates to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state:
men who never had seen the state so much as in a picture; men who knew
nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who,
immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether secular
or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy; among whom must
be many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in plunder,
would readily join in any attempts upon a body of wealth in which they
could hardly look to have any share, except in a general scramble.
Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners in the other
assembly, these curates must necessarily become the active coadjutors,
or at best the passive instruments, of those by whom they had been
habitually guided in their petty village concerns. They, too, could
hardly be the most conscientious of their kind, who, presuming upon
their incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a trust which led
them from their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural
spheres of action, to undertake the regeneration of kingdoms. This
preponderating weight, being added to the force of the body of chicane
in the _Tiers État_, completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness,
presumption, and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.