dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it were, of a
foreign republic: they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king nor from their
legislative power. There they are surrounded by an army not raised
either by the authority of their crown or by their command, and which,
if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them.
There they sit, after a gang of assassins had driven away some hundreds
of the members; whilst those who held the same moderate principles, with
more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous
insults and murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes real,
sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a captive king to issue as
royal edicts, at third hand, the polluted nonsense of their most
licentious and giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is beyond doubt, that,
under the terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the torch to
their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all
conditions, tongues, and nations. Among these are found persons in
comparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a
man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in these clubs alone that the
public measures are deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs,
which are set up in all the places of public resort. In these meetings
of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent
and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and
compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public.
Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered
insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated
or meditated, they are forming plans for the good order of future
society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and
promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they drive
hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to subsist
by beggary or by crime.
The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of deliberation
with as little decency as liberty. They act like the comedians of a
fair, before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of
a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, according
to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and
sometimes mix and take their seats amongst them,--domineering over them
with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous
authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in
the place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows kings and
kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a grave legislative
body,--_nec color imperii, nec frons erat ulla senatûs_. They have a
power given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and
destroy,--but none to construct, except such machines as may be fitted
for further subversion and further destruction.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to national
representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from
such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that sacred
institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it.
The members of your Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny of
which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the
profit. I am sure many of the members who compose even the majority of
that body must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of the
Revolution Society. Miserable king! miserable assembly! How must that
assembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who could
call a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven "_un beau
jour_"![90] How must they be inwardly indignant at hearing others who
thought fit to declare to them, "that the vessel of the state would fly
forward in her course towards regeneration with more speed than ever,"
from the stiff gale of treason and murder which preceded our preacher's
triumph! What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience and
inward indignation, they heard of the slaughter of innocent gentlemen in
their houses, that "the blood spilled was not the most pure"! What must
they have felt, when they were besieged by complaints of disorders which
shook their country to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to
tell the complainants that they were under the protection of the law,
and that they would address the king (the captive king) to cause the
laws to be enforced for their protection, when the enslaved ministers of
that captive king had formally notified to them that there were neither
law nor authority nor power left to protect! What must they have felt at
being obliged, as a felicitation on the present new year, to request
their captive king to forget the stormy period of the last, on account
of the great good which _he_ was likely to produce to his people,--to
the complete attainment of which good they adjourned the practical
demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience when he
should no longer possess any authority to command!
This address was made with much good-nature and affection, to be sure.
But among the revolutions in France must be reckoned a considerable
revolution in their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to learn
manners at second-hand from your side of the water, and that we dress
our behavior in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old
cut, and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian mode of good
breeding as to think it quite in the most refined strain of delicate
compliment (whether in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most
humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that great public
benefits are derived from the murder of his servants, the attempted
assassination of himself and of his wife, and the mortification,
disgrace, and degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a topic
of consolation which our ordinary of Newgate would be too humane to use
to a criminal at the foot of the gallows. I should have thought that the
hangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National
Assembly, and is allowed his rank and arms in the Herald's College of
the rights of men, would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of
the sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting consolation to any
of the persons whom the _lèze-nation_ might bring under the
administration of his _executive powers_.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The anodyne draught
of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a galling
wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus to
administer the opiate potion of amnesty, powdered with all the
ingredients of scorn and contempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of
"the balm of hurt minds," the cup of human misery full to the brim, and
to force him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those which were so
delicately urged in the compliment on the new year, the king of France
will probably endeavor to forget these events and that compliment. But
History, who keeps a durable record of all our acts, and exercises her
awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not
forget either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the
intercourse of mankind. History will record, that, on the morning of the
sixth of October, 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged
security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite,
and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first
startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her
to save herself by flight,--that this was the last proof of fidelity he
could give,--that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was
cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his
blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred
strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted
woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown
to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and
husband not secure of his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant
children, (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and
generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most
splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood,
polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated
carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom.
Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous
slaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who
composed the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade
of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the
block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were
stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who
followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells,
and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and
all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused
shape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by
drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a
journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under a
guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them
through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris,
now converted into a Bastile for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be commemorated with
grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with fervent
prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation?--These Theban and Thracian orgies,
acted in France, and applauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you,
kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this
kingdom: although a saint and apostle, who may have revelations of his
own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of
the heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to compare it
with the entrance into the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed in
an holy temple by a venerable sage, and not long before not worse
announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds.
At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded transport.
I knew, indeed, that the sufferings of monarchs make a delicious repast
to some sort of palates. There were reflections which might serve to
keep this appetite within some bounds of temperance. But when I took one
circumstance into my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much
allowance ought to be made for the society, and that the temptation was
too strong for common discretion: I mean, the circumstance of the Io
Pæan of the triumph, the animating cry which called for "_all_ the
BISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts,"[91] might well have brought
forth a burst of enthusiasm on the foreseen consequences of this happy
day. I allow to so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence.
I allow this prophet to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgiving
on an event which appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and the
projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of all Church
establishments. There was, however, (as in all human affairs there is,)
in the midst of this joy, something to exercise the patience of these
worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their faith. The
actual murder of the king and queen, and their child, was wanting to the
other auspicious circumstances of this "_beautiful day_". The actual
murder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations,
was also wanting. A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was,
indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily was left
unfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre of innocents.
What hardy pencil of a great master, from the school of the rights of
men, will finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not yet the
complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined
superstition and error; and the king of France wants another object or
two to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is to
arise from his own sufferings, and the patriotic crimes of an
enlightened age.[92]
Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go to the
length that in all probability it was intended it should be carried, yet
I must think that such treatment of any human creatures must be shocking
to any but those who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But I
cannot stop here. Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, and
not being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung modern light,
I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted rank of the persons suffering,
and particularly the sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of the
descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender age of royal
infants, insensible only through infancy and innocence of the cruel
outrages to which their parents were exposed, instead of being a subject
of exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that most
melancholy occasion.
I hear that the august person who was the principal object of our
preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that
shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his
children, and the faithful guards of his person that were massacred in
cold blood about him; as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange
and frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be more
grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little from
his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. I
am very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such personages are in
a situation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues of
the great.
I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object of
the triumph, has borne that day, (one is interested that beings made for
suffering should suffer well,) and that she bears all the succeeding
days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own
captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the insulting adulation of
addresses, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene
patience, in a manner suited to her rank and race, and becoming the
offspring of a sovereign distinguished for her piety and her courage;
that, like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with the
dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save
herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she will
fall by no ignoble hand.
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France,
then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this
orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw
her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere
she just began to move in,--glittering like the morning-star, full of
life and splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must
I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall!
Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of
enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged
to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom!
little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen
upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of
cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their
scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators
has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never,
never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that
proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the
heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an
exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of
nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which
felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated
ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice
itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness!
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient
chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the
varying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long
succession of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should
ever be totally extinguished, the loss, I fear, will be great. It is
this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which
has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and
distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly
from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the
antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had
produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations
of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into
companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without
force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it
obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem,
compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination,
vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made
power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different
shades of life, and which by a bland assimilation incorporated into
politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are
to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All
the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded
ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the
heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the
defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in
our own estimation, are to be exploded, as a ridiculous, absurd, and
antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman, a
woman is but an animal,--and an animal not of the highest order. All
homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views,
is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and
sacrilege, are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by
destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a
bishop, or a father, are only common homicide,--and if the people are by
any chance or in any way gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most
pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of
cold hearts and muddy understandings and which is as void of solid
wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be
supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each
individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can
spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of _their_
academy, at the end of every visto, you see nothing but the gallows.
Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the
commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our
institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in
persons,--so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or
attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is
incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with
manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as
correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as
well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true
as to states:--"_Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto_."
There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a
well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our
country, our country ought to be lovely.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which
manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for
its support. The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancient
institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts
similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and
chivalrous spirit of _fealty_, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed
both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be
extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be
anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that
long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all
power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to
obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels
from principle.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot
possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us,
nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly,
taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your
Revolution was completed. How much of that prosperous state was owing to
the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as
such causes cannot be indifferent in their operation, we must presume,
that, on the whole, their operation was beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find
them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have
been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain than
that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are
connected with manners and with, civilization, have, in this European
world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and were, indeed,
the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the
spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession,
and the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the
midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in
their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to
nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging their
ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy, if they had all continued
to know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy, if
learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the
instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural
protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire and
trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.[93]
If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willing
to own to ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full as
much as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the
gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but
creatures, are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose
to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning
flourished. They, too, may decay with their natural protecting
principles. With you, for the present at least, they all threaten to
disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a
people, and the spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentiment
supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and
the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may
stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing
must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poor
and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride,
possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter?