popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of them display eloquence
in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful
and cultivated talents. But eloquence may exist without a proportionable
degree of wisdom. When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish.
What they have done towards the support of their system bespeaks no
ordinary men. In the system itself, taken as the scheme of a republic
constructed for procuring the prosperity and security of the citizen,
and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confess
myself unable to find out anything which displays, in a single instance,
the work of a comprehensive and disposing mind, or even the provisions
of a vulgar prudence. Their purpose everywhere seems to have been to
evade and slip aside from _difficulty_. This it has been the glory of
the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to overcome,--and
when they had overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into an
instrument for new conquests over new difficulties: thus to enable them
to extend the empire of their science, and even to push forward, beyond
the reach of their original thoughts, the landmarks of the human
understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by
the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows
us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. _Pater ipse
colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit_. He that wrestles with us
strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our
helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate
acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its
relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the want of
nerves of understanding for such a task, it is the degenerate fondness
for tricking short-outs and little fallacious facilities, that has in so
many parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. They
have created the late arbitrary monarchy of France. They have created
the arbitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be
supplied by the plenitude of force. They get nothing by it. Commencing
their labors on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of
slothful men. The difficulties, which they rather had eluded than
escaped, meet them again in their course; they multiply and thicken on
them; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an
industry without limit and without direction; and in conclusion, the
whole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has obliged the
arbitrary Assembly of France to commence their schemes of reform with
abolition and total destruction.[120] But is it in destroying and
pulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do this as well at
least as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand,
is more than equal to that task. Rage and frenzy will pull down more in
half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in
a hundred years. The errors and defects of old establishments are
visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out; and
where absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish
the vice and the establishment together. The same lazy, but restless
disposition, which loves sloth and hates quiet, directs these
politicians, when they come to work for supplying the place of what they
have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen is
quite as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never
been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of
what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all
the wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little
or no opposition.
At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing. When the
useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and what is superadded is
to be fitted to what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady, persevering
attention, various powers of comparison and combination, and the
resources of an understanding fruitful in expedients are to be
exercised; they are to be exercised in a continued conflict with the
combined force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that rejects all
improvement, and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted with
everything of which it is in possession. But you may object,--"A process
of this kind is slow. It is not fit for an Assembly which glories in
performing in a few months the work of ages. Such a mode of reforming,
possibly, might take up many years." Without question it might; and it
ought. It is one of the excellences of a method in which time is amongst
the assistants, that its operation is slow, and in some cases almost
imperceptible. If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom, when
we work only upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part of duty
too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick
and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose
state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable. But
it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling
heart and an undoubting confidence are the sole qualifications for a
perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The
true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to
love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his
temperament to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but
his movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement,
as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means.
There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that
union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our
patience will achieve more than our force. If I might venture to appeal
to what is so much out of fashion in Paris,--I mean to experience,--I
should tell you, that in my course I have known, and, according to my
measure, have coöperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any
plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were
much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the
business. By a slow, but well-sustained progress, the effect of each
step is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives light to us
in the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safety
through the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do not
clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided
for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to
another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to
unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending
principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence
arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an
excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are
concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession
ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeply
to affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires the
aid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view of
things that the best legislators have been often satisfied with the
establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in
government,--a power like that which some of the philosophers have
called a plastic Nature; and having fixed the principle, they have left
it afterwards to its own operation.
To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a presiding
principle and a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of profound
wisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius
are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By their violent haste,
and their defiance of the process of Nature, they are delivered over
blindly to every projector and adventurer, to every alchemist and
empiric. They despair of turning to account anything that is common.
Diet is nothing in their system of remedy. The worst of it is, that this
their despair of curing common distempers by regular methods arises not
only from defect of comprehension, but, I fear, from some malignity of
disposition. Your legislators seem to have taken their opinions of all
professions, ranks, and offices from the declamations and buffooneries
of satirists,--who would themselves be astonished, if they were held to
the letter of their own descriptions. By listening only to these, your
leaders regard all things only on the side of their vices and faults,
and view those vices and faults under every color of exaggeration. It is
undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general,
those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are
unqualified for the work of reformation; because their minds are not
only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they
come to take no delight in the contemplation of those things. By hating
vices too much, they come to love men too little. It is therefore not
wonderful that they should be indisposed and unable to serve them. From
hence arises the complexional disposition of some of your guides to pull
everything in pieces. At this malicious game they display the whole of
their _quadrimanous_ activity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent
writers, brought forth purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents,
to rouse attention, and excite surprise, are taken up by these
gentlemen, not in the spirit of the original authors, as means of
cultivating their taste and improving their style: these paradoxes
become with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in
regulating the most important concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrously
describes Cato as endeavoring to act in the commonwealth upon the school
paradoxes which exercised the wits of the junior students in the Stoic
philosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in
the manner of some persons who lived about his time,--_pede nudo
Catonem_. Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the secret
of his principles of composition. That acute, though eccentric observer,
had perceived, that, to strike and interest the public, the marvellous
must be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long
since lost its effects; that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of
romance, which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which
belonged to their age; that now nothing was left to a writer but that
species of the marvellous, which might still be produced, and with as
great an effect as ever, though in another way,--that is, the marvellous
in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations,
giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. I
believe, that, were Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals,
he would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars, who in
their paradoxes are servile imitators, and even in their incredulity
discover an implicit faith.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to
give us ground to presume ability. But the physician of the state, who,
not satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to regenerate
constitutions, ought to show uncommon powers. Some very unusual
appearances of wisdom ought to display themselves on the face of the
designs of those who appeal to no practice and who copy after no model.
Has any such been manifested? I shall take a view (it shall for the
subject be a very short one) of what the Assembly has done, with regard,
first, to the constitution of the legislature; in the next place, to
that of the executive power; then to that of the judicature; afterwards
to the model of the army; and conclude with the system of finance: to
see whether we can discover in any part of their schemes the portentous
ability which may justify these bold undertakers in the superiority
which they assume over mankind.
It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding part of this new
republic that we should expect their grand display. Here they were to
prove their title to their proud demands. For the plan itself at large,
and for the reasons on which it is grounded, I refer to the journals of
the Assembly of the 29th of September, 1789, and to the subsequent
proceedings which have made any alterations in the plan. So far as in a
matter somewhat confused I can see light, the system remains
substantially as it has been originally framed. My few remarks will be
such as regard its spirit, its tendency, and its fitness for framing a
popular commonwealth, which they profess theirs to be, suited to the
ends for which any commonwealth, and particularly such a commonwealth,
is made. At the same time I mean to consider its consistency with itself
and its own principles.
Old establishments are tried by their effects. If the people are happy,
united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to
be good from whence good is derived. In old establishments various
correctives have been found for their aberrations from theory. Indeed,
they are the results of various necessities and expediences. They are
not often constructed after any theory: theories are rather drawn from
them. In them we often see the end best obtained, where the means seem
not perfectly reconcilable to what we may fancy was the original scheme.
The means taught by experience may be better suited to political ends
than those contrived in the original project. They again react upon the
primitive constitution, and sometimes improve the design itself, from
which they seem to have departed. I think all this might be curiously
exemplified in the British Constitution. At worst, the errors and
deviations of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, and the
ship proceeds in her course. This is the case of old establishments; but
in a new and merely theoretic system, it is expected that every
contrivance shall appear, on the face of it, to answer its ends,
especially where the projectors are no way embarrassed with an endeavor
to accommodate the new building to an old one, either in the walls or on
the foundations.
The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbish whatever they found,
and, like their ornamental gardeners, forming everything into an exact
level, propose to rest the whole local and general legislature on three
bases of three different kinds,--one geometrical, one arithmetical, and
the third financial; the first of which they call _the basis of
territory_; the second, _the basis of population_; and the third, _the
basis of contribution_. For the accomplishment of the first of these
purposes, they divide the area of their country into eighty-three
pieces, regularly square, of eighteen leagues by eighteen. These large
divisions are called _Departments_. These they portion, proceeding by
square measurement, into seventeen hundred and twenty districts, called
_Communes_. These again they subdivide, still proceeding by square
measurement, into smaller districts, called _Cantons_, making in all
6,400.
At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not much to
admire or to blame. It calls for no great legislative talents. Nothing
more than an accurate land-surveyor, with his chain, sight, and
theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In the old divisions
of the country, various accidents at times, and the ebb and flow of
various properties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These bounds
were not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly. They were subject to
some inconveniences; but they were inconveniences for which use had
found remedies, and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. In
this new pavement of square within square, and this organization and
semi-organization, made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and not
upon any politic principle, it is impossible that innumerable local
inconveniences, to which men are not habituated, must not arise. But
these I pass over, because it requires an accurate knowledge of the
country, which I do not possess, to specify them.
When these state surveyors came to take a view of their work of
measurement, they soon found that in politics the most fallacious of all
things was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse to another
basis (or rather buttress) to support the building, which tottered on
that false foundation. It was evident that the goodness of the soil, the
number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their
contribution, made such infinite variations between square and square
as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power in the
commonwealth, and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measures
in the distribution of men. However, they could not give it up,--but,
dividing their political and civil representation into three parts, they
allotted one of those parts to the square measurement, without a single
fact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial proportion of
representation was fairly assigned, and ought upon any principle really
to be a third. Having, however, given to geometry this portion, (of a
third for her dower,) out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime
science, they left the other two to be scuffled for between the other
parts, population and contribution.
When they came to provide for population, they were not able to proceed
quite so smoothly as they had done in the field of their geometry. Here
their arithmetic came to bear upon their juridical metaphysics. Had they
stuck to their metaphysic principles, the arithmetical process would be
simple indeed. Men, with them, are strictly equal, and are entitled to
equal rights in their own government. Each head, on this system, would
have its vote, and every man would vote directly for the person who was
to represent him in the legislature. "But soft,--by regular degrees, not
yet." This metaphysic principle, to which law, custom, usage, policy,
reason, were to yield, is to yield itself to their pleasure. There must
be many degrees, and some stages, before the representative can come in
contact with his constituent. Indeed, as we shall soon see, these two
persons are to have no sort of communion with each other. First, the
voters in the _Canton_, who compose what they call _primary
assemblies_, are to have a _qualification_. What! a qualification on the
indefeasible rights of men? Yes; but it shall be a very small
qualification. Our injustice shall be very little oppressive: only the
local valuation of three days' labor paid to the public. Why, this is
not much, I readily admit, for anything but the utter subversion of your
equalizing principle. As a qualification it might as well be let alone;
for it answers no one purpose for which qualifications are established;
and, on your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of all others whose
natural equality stands the most in need of protection and defence: I
mean the man who has nothing else but his natural equality to guard him.
You order him to buy the right which you before told him Nature had
given to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which no authority on
earth could lawfully deprive him. With regard to the person who cannot
come up to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, is
established at the very outset, by you who pretend to be its sworn foe.
The gradation proceeds. These primary assemblies of the _Canton_ elect
deputies to the _Commune_,--one for every two hundred qualified
inhabitants. Here is the first medium put between the primary elector
and the representative legislator; and here a new turnpike is fixed for
taxing the rights of men with a second qualification: for none can be
elected into the _Commune_ who does not pay the amount of ten days'
labor. Nor have we yet done. There is still to be another
gradation.[121] These _Communes_, chosen by the _Canton_, choose to the
_Department_; and the deputies of the _Department_ choose their deputies
to the _National Assembly_. Here is a third barrier of a senseless
qualification. Every deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in direct
contribution, to the value of a _mark of silver_. Of all these
qualifying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent to
secure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of men.
In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects to
consider only _population_, upon a principle of natural right, there is
a manifest attention to _property_,--which, however just and reasonable
on other schemes, is on theirs perfectly unsupportable.
When they come to their third basis, that of _Contribution_, we find
that they have more completely lost sight of the rights of men. This
last basis rests _entirely_ on property. A principle totally different
from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby
admitted: but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is
subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to
approximate the inequality of riches to the level of Nature. The
additional share in the third portion of representation (a portion
reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the
_district_ only, and not the individuals in it who pay. It is easy to
perceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they were
embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men and the
privileges of riches. The Committee of Constitution do as good as admit
that they are wholly irreconcilable. "The relation with regard to the
contributions is without doubt _null_, (say they,) when the question is
on the balance of the political rights as between individual and
individual; without which _personal equality would be destroyed_, and
_an aristocracy of the rich_ would be established. But this
inconvenience entirely disappears, when the proportional relation of the
contribution is only considered in the _great masses_, and is solely
between province and province; it serves in that case only to form a
just reciprocal proportion between the cities, without affecting the
personal rights of the citizens."
Here the principle of _contribution_, as taken between man and man, is
reprobated as _null_, and destructive to equality,--and as pernicious,
too, because it leads to the establishment of an _aristocracy of the
rich_. However, it must not be abandoned. And the way of getting rid of
the difficulty is to establish the inequality as between department and
department, leaving all the individuals in each department upon an exact
par. Observe, that this parity between individuals had been before
destroyed, when the qualifications within the departments were settled;
nor does it seem a matter of great importance whether the equality of
men be injured by masses or individually. An individual is not of the
same importance in a mass represented by a few as in a mass represented
by many. It would be too much to tell a man jealous of his equality,
that the elector has the same franchise who votes for three members as
he who votes for ten.