compliance with form and decency than with serious resentment, neither
weakened their strength nor relaxed their efforts. The issue of the
whole was, that, what with opposition, and what with success, a violent
and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world, had taken
an entire possession of their minds, and rendered their whole
conversation, which otherwise would have been pleasing and instructive,
perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytism
pervaded all their thoughts, words, and actions. And as controversial
zeal soon turns its thoughts on force, they began to insinuate
themselves into a correspondence with foreign princes,--in hopes,
through their authority, which at first they flattered, they might
bring about the changes they had in view. To them it was indifferent
whether these changes were to be accomplished by the thunderbolt of
despotism or by the earthquake of popular commotion. The correspondence
between this cabal and the late king of Prussia will throw no small
light upon the spirit of all their proceedings.[98] For the same purpose
for which they intrigued with princes, they cultivated, in a
distinguished manner, the moneyed interest of France; and partly through
the means furnished by those whose peculiar offices gave them the most
extensive and certain means of communication, they carefully occupied
all the avenues to opinion.
Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have
great influence on the public mind; the alliance, therefore, of these
writers with the moneyed interest[99] had no small effect in removing
the popular odium and envy which attended that species of wealth. These
writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a great
zeal for the poor and the lower orders, whilst in their satires they
rendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the faults of courts, of
nobility, and of priesthood. They became a sort of demagogues. They
served as a link to unite, in favor of one object, obnoxious wealth to
restless and desperate poverty.
As these two kinds of men appear principal leaders in all the late
transactions, their junction and politics will serve to account, not
upon any principles of law or of policy, but as a _cause_, for the
general fury with which all the landed property of ecclesiastical
corporations has been attacked, and the great care which, contrary to
their pretended principles, has been taken of a moneyed interest
originating from the authority of the crown. All the envy against wealth
and power was artificially directed against other descriptions of
riches. On what other principle than that which I have stated can we
account for an appearance so extraordinary and unnatural as that of the
ecclesiastical possessions, which had stood so many successions of ages
and shocks of civil violences, and were guarded at once by justice and
by prejudice, being applied to the payment of debts comparatively
recent, invidious, and contracted by a decried and subverted government?
Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the public debts? Assume
that it was not, and that a loss _must_ be incurred somewhere. When the
only estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting parties had in
contemplation at the time in which their bargain was made, happens to
fail, who, according to the principles of natural and legal equity,
ought to be the sufferer? Certainly it ought to be either the party who
trusted, or the party who persuaded him to trust, or both; and not third
parties who had no concern with the transaction. Upon any insolvency,
they ought to suffer who were weak enough to lend upon bad security, or
they who fraudulently held out a security that was not valid. Laws are
acquainted with no other rules of decision. But by the new institute of
the rights of men, the only persons who in equity ought to suffer are
the only persons who are to be saved harmless: those are to answer the
debt who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor mortgagees.
What had the clergy to do with these transactions? What had they to do
with any public engagement further than the extent of their own debt? To
that, to be sure, their estates were bound to the last acre. Nothing can
lead more to the true spirit of the Assembly, which sits for public
confiscation with its new equity and its new morality, than an attention
to their proceeding with regard to this debt of the clergy. The body of
confiscators, true to that moneyed interest for which they were false to
every other, have found the clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Of
course they declared them legally entitled to the property which their
power of incurring the debt and mortgaging the estate implied:
recognizing the rights of those persecuted citizens in the very act in
which they were thus grossly violated.
If, as I said, any persons are to mate good deficiencies to the public
creditor, besides the public at large, they must be those who managed
the agreement. Why, therefore, are not the estates of all the
comptrollers-general confiscated?[100] Why not those of the long
succession of ministers, financiers, and bankers who have been enriched
whilst the nation was impoverished by their dealings and their counsels?
Why is not the estate of M. Laborde declared forfeited rather than of
the Archbishop of Paris, who has had nothing to do in the creation or in
the jobbing of the public funds? Or, if you must confiscate old landed
estates in favor of the money-jobbers, why is the penalty confined to
one description? I do not know whether the expenses of the Duke de
Choiseul have left anything of the infinite sums which he had derived
from the bounty of his master, during the transactions of a reign which
contributed largely, by every species of prodigality in war and peace,
to the present debt of France. If any such remains, why is not this
confiscated? I remember to have been in Paris during the time of the old
government. I was there just after the Duke d'Aiguillon had been
snatched (as it was generally thought) from the block by the hand of a
protecting despotism. He was a minister, and had some concern in the
affairs of that prodigal period. Why do I not see his estate delivered
up to the municipalities in which it is situated? The noble family of
Noailles have long been servants (meritorious servants I admit) to the
crown of France, and have had of course some share in its bounties. Why
do I hear nothing of the application of their estates to the public
debt? Why is the estate of the Duke de Rochefoucault more sacred than
that of the Cardinal de Rochefoucault? The former is, I doubt not, a
worthy person; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness to talk of the
use, as affecting the title to property) he makes a good use of his
revenues; but it is no disrespect to him to say, what authentic
information well warrants me in saying, that the use made of a property
equally valid, by his brother,[101] the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen,
was far more laudable and far more public-spirited. Can one hear of the
proscription of such persons, and the confiscation of their effects,
without indignation, and horror? He is not a man who does not feel such
emotions on such occasions. He does not deserve the name of a free man
who will not express them.
Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible a revolution in
property. None of the heads of the Roman factions, when they established
_crudelem illam hastam_ in all their auctions of rapine, have ever set
up to sale the goods of the conquered citizen to such an enormous
amount. It must be allowed in favor of those tyrants of antiquity, that
what was done by them could hardly be said to be done in cold blood.
Their passions were inflamed, their tempers soured, their understandings
confused with the spirit of revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated
and recent inflictions and retaliations of blood and rapine. They were
driven beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the return
of power with the return of property to the families of those they had
injured beyond all hope of forgiveness.
These Roman confiscators, who were yet only in the elements of tyranny,
and were not instructed in the rights of men to exercise all sorts of
cruelties on each other without provocation, thought it necessary to
spread a sort of color over their injustice. They considered the
vanquished party as composed of traitors, who had borne arms, or
otherwise had acted with hostility, against the commonwealth. They
regarded them as persons who had forfeited their property by their
crimes. With you, in your improved state of the human mind, there was no
such formality. You seized upon five millions sterling of annual rent,
and turned forty or fifty thousand human creatures out of their houses,
because "such was your pleasure." The tyrant Harry the Eighth of
England, as he was not better enlightened than the Roman Mariuses and
Syllas, and had not studied in your new schools, did not know what an
effectual instrument of despotism was to be found in that grand
magazine of offensive weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved to
rob the abbeys, as the club of the Jacobins have robbed all the
ecclesiastics, he began by setting on foot a commission to examine into
the crimes and abuses which prevailed in those communities. As it might
be expected, his commission reported truths, exaggerations, and
falsehoods. But truly or falsely, it reported abuses and offences.
However, as abuses might be corrected, as every crime of persons does
not infer a forfeiture with regard to communities, and as property, in
that dark age, was not discovered to be a creature of prejudice, all
those abuses (and there were enough of them) were hardly thought
sufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for his purposes to
make. He therefore procured the formal surrender of these estates. All
these operose proceedings were adopted by one of the most decided
tyrants in the rolls of history, as necessary preliminaries, before he
could venture, by bribing the members of his two servile Houses with a
share of the spoil, and holding out to them an eternal immunity from
taxation, to demand a confirmation of his iniquitous proceedings by an
act of Parliament. Had fate reserved him to our times, four technical
terms would have done his business, and saved him all this trouble; he
needed nothing more than one short form of incantation:--"_Philosophy,
Light, Liberality, the Rights of Men_."
I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny, which no voice has
hitherto ever commended under any of their false colors; yet in these
false colors an homage was paid by despotism to justice. The power which
was above all fear and all remorse was not set above all shame. Whilst
shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart,
nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections with our
political poet on that occasion, and will pray to avert the omen,
whenever these acts of rapacious despotism present themselves to his
view or his imagination:--
"May no such storm
Fall on our times, where rain must reform!
Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous, dire offence,
What crime could any Christian king incense
To such a rage? Was't luxury, or lust
Was _he_ so temperate, so chaste, so just?
Were these their crimes? They were his own much more:
But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor."[102]
This same wealth, which is at all times treason and _lèze-nation_ to
indigent and rapacious despotism, under all modes of polity, was your
temptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in one
object. But was the state of France so wretched and undone, that no
other resource but rapine remained to preserve its existence? On this
point I wish to receive some information. When the States met, was the
condition of the finances of France such, that, after economizing, on
principles of justice and mercy, through all departments, no fair
repartition of burdens upon all the orders could possibly restore them?
If such an equal imposition would have been sufficient, you well know it
might easily have been made. M. Necker, in the budget which he laid
before the orders assembled at Versailles, made a detailed exposition of
the state of the French nation.[103]
If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have recourse to any
new impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts of France on a balance
with its expenses. He stated the permanent charges of all descriptions,
including the interest of a new loan of four hundred millions, at
531,444,000 livres; the fixed revenue at 475,294,000: making the
deficiency 56,150,000, or short of 2,200,000 _l._ sterling. But to
balance it, he brought forward savings and improvements of revenue
(considered as entirely certain) to rather more than the amount of that
deficiency; and he concludes with these emphatical words (p. 39):--"Quel
pays, Messieurs, que celui, où, _sans impôts_ et avec de simples objets
_inaperçus_, on peut faire disparoître un déficit qui a fait tant de
bruit en Europe!" As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and the
other great objects of public credit and political arrangement indicated
in Monsieur Necker's speech, no doubt could be entertained but that a
very moderate and proportioned assessment on the citizens without
distinction would have provided for all of them to the fullest extent of
their demand.
If this representation of M. Necker was false, then the Assembly are in
the highest degree culpable for having forced the king to accept as his
minister, and, since the king's deposition, for having employed as
_their_ minister, a man who had been capable of abusing so notoriously
the confidence of his master and their own: in a matter, too, of the
highest moment, and directly appertaining to his particular office. But
if the representation was exact, (as, having always, along with you,
conceived a high degree of respect for M. Necker, I make no doubt it
was,) then what can be said in favor of those who, instead of moderate,
reasonable, and general contribution, have in cold blood, and impelled
by no necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel confiscation?
Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on the
part of the clergy, or on that of the nobility? No, certainly. As to the
clergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order. Previous to
the meeting of the States, they had in all their instructions expressly
directed their deputies to renounce every immunity which put them upon a
footing distinct from the condition of their fellow-subjects. In this
renunciation the clergy were even more explicit than the nobility.
But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the fifty-six
millions, (or 2,200,000 _l._ sterling,) as at first stated by M. Necker.
Let us allow that all the resources he opposed to that deficiency were
impudent and groundless fictions, and that the Assembly (or their lords
of articles[104] at the Jacobins) were from thence justified in laying
the whole burden of that deficiency on the clergy,--yet allowing all
this, a necessity of 2,200,000 _l._ sterling will not support a
confiscation to the amount of five millions. The imposition of 2,200,000
_l._ on the clergy, as partial, would have been oppressive and unjust,
but it would not have been altogether ruinous to those on whom it was
imposed; and therefore it would not have answered the real purpose of
the managers.
Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on hearing the
clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation, may be led
to imagine, that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies had
contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They
certainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of them
equally with the commons. They both, however, contributed largely.
Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the excise on
consumable commodities, from duties of custom, or from any of the other
numerous _indirect_ impositions, which in France, as well as here, make
so very large a proportion of all payments to the public. The noblesse
paid the capitation. They paid also a land-tax, called the twentieth
penny, to the height sometimes of three, sometimes of four shillings in
the pound: both of them _direct_ impositions, of no light nature, and no
trivial produce. The clergy of the provinces annexed by conquest to
France (which in extent make about an eighth part of the whole, but in
wealth a much larger proportion) paid likewise to the capitation and the
twentieth penny, at the rate paid by the nobility. The clergy in the old
provinces did not pay the capitation; but they had redeemed themselves
at the expense of about twenty-four millions, or a little more than a
million sterling. They were exempted from the twentieths: but then they
made free gifts; they contracted debts for the state; and they were
subject to some other charges, the whole computed at about a thirteenth
part of their clear income. They ought to have paid annually about forty
thousand pounds more, to put them on a par with the contribution of the
nobility.
When the terrors of this tremendous proscription hung over the clergy,
they made an offer of a contribution, through the Archbishop of Aix,
which, for its extravagance, ought not to have been accepted. But it was
evidently and obviously more advantageous to the public creditor than
anything which could rationally be promised by the confiscation. Why was
it not accepted? The reason is plain:--There was no desire that the
Church should be brought to serve the State. The service of the State
was made a pretext to destroy the Church. In their way to the
destruction of the Church they would not scruple to destroy their
country: and they have destroyed it. One great end in the project would
have been defeated, if the plan of extortion had been adopted in lieu of
the scheme of confiscation. The new landed interest connected with the
new republic, and connected with it for its very being, could not have
been created. This was among the reasons why that extravagant ransom was
not accepted.
The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan that was first
pretended, soon became apparent. To bring this unwieldy mass of landed
property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast landed domain of
the crown, at once into market was obviously to defeat the profits
proposed by the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands,
and indeed of all the landed estates throughout France. Such a sudden
diversion of all its circulating money from trade to land must be an
additional mischief. What step was taken? Did the Assembly, on becoming
sensible of the inevitable ill effects of their projected sale, revert
to the offers of the clergy? No distress could oblige them to travel in
a course which was disgraced by any appearance of justice. Giving over
all hopes from a general immediate sale, another project seems to have
succeeded. They proposed to take stock in exchange for the Church lands.
In that project great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be
exchanged. Other obstacles also presented themselves, which threw them
back again upon some project of sale. The municipalities had taken an
alarm. They would not hear of transferring the whole plunder of the
kingdom to the stockholders in Paris. Many of those municipalities had
been (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indigence. Money was
nowhere to be seen. They were therefore led to the point that was so
ardently desired. They panted for a currency of any kind which might
revive their perishing industry. The municipalities were, then, to be
admitted to a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the first
scheme (if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether
impracticable. Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The Minister of
Finance reiterated his call for supply with, a most urgent, anxious, and
boding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of
converting their bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the
old debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent, creating a new
paper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands. They
issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the
demands made upon them by the _bank of discount_, the great machine or
paper-mill of their fictitious wealth.
The spoil of the Church was now become the only resource of all their
operations in finance, the vital principle of all their politics, the
sole security for the existence of their power. It was necessary, by
all, even the most violent means, to put every individual on the same
bottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty interest to uphold this
act, and the authority of those by whom it was done. In order to force
the most reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered
their paper circulation compulsory in all payments. Those who consider
the general tendency of their schemes to this one object as a centre,
and a centre from which afterwards all their measures radiate, will not
think that I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings of the
National Assembly.
To cut off all appearance of connection between the crown and public
justice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to the
dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the Parliaments,
with all its merits and all its faults, was wholly abolished. Whilst the
Parliaments existed, it was evident that the people might some time or
other come to resort to them, and rally under the standard of their
ancient laws. It became, however, a matter of consideration, that the
magistrates and officers in the courts now abolished _had purchased
their places_ at a very high rate, for which, as well as for the duty
they performed, they received but a very low return of interest. Simple
confiscation is a boon only for the clergy: to the lawyers some
appearances of equity are to be observed; and they are to receive
compensation to an immense amount. Their compensation becomes part of
the national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one
exhaustless fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compensation in the
new Church paper, which is to march with the new principles of
judicature and legislature. The dismissed magistrates are to take their
share of martyrdom with the ecclesiastics, or to receive their own
property from such a fund and in such a manner as all those who have
been seasoned with the ancient principles of jurisprudence, and had been
the sworn guardians of property, must look upon with horror. Even the
clergy are to receive their miserable allowance out of the depreciated
paper, which is stamped with the indelible character of sacrilege, and
with the symbols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an
outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory paper
currency, has seldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy and
tyranny, at any time, or in any nation.