I am astonished how any persons could dream of holding out anything done
in it as an example for Great Britain. With you there is little, or
rather no, connection between the last representative and the first
constituent. The member who goes to the National Assembly is not chosen
by the people, nor accountable to them. There are three elections before
he is chosen; two sets of magistracy intervene between him and the
primary assembly, so as to render him, as I have said, an ambassador of
a state, and not the representative of the people within a state. By
this the whole spirit of the election is changed; nor can any corrective
your Constitution-mongers have devised render him anything else than
what he is. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce a
confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no way to
make a connection between the original constituent and the
representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidate
to apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in order that by
their authoritative instructions (and something more perhaps) these
primary electors may force the two succeeding bodies of electors to make
a choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would plainly subvert the
whole scheme. It would be to plunge them back into that tumult and
confusion of popular election, which, by their interposed gradation of
elections, they mean to avoid, and at length to risk the whole fortune
of the state with those who have the least knowledge of it and the
least interest in it. This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are
thrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they have
chosen. Unless the people break up and level this gradation, it is plain
that they do not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed,
they elect as little in appearance as reality.
What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes,
you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and
then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or
dependence. For what end are these primary electors complimented, or
rather mocked, with a choice? They can never know anything of the
qualities of him that is to serve them, nor has he any obligation
whatsoever to them. Of all the powers unfit to be delegated by those who
have any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is what
relates to a _personal_ choice. In case of abuse, that body of primary
electors never can call the representative to an account for his
conduct. He is too far removed from them in the chain of representation.
If he acts improperly at the end of his two years' lease, it does not
concern him for two years more. By the new French Constitution the best
and the wisest representatives go equally with the worst into this
_Limbus Patrum_. Their bottoms are supposed foul, and they must go into
dock to be refitted. Every man who has served in an Assembly is
ineligible for two years after. Just as these magistrates begin to learn
their trade, like chimney-sweepers, they are disqualified for exercising
it. Superficial, new, petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish,
broken, ill recollection, is to be the destined character of all your
future governors. Your Constitution has too much of jealousy to have
much of sense in it. You consider the breach of trust in the
representative so principally that you do not at all regard the question
of his fitness to execute it.
This purgatory interval is not unfavorable to a faithless
representative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a bad governor.
In this time he may cabal himself into a superiority over the wisest and
most virtuous. As, in the end, all the members of this elective
Constitution are equally fugitive, and exist only for the election, they
may be no longer the same persons who had chosen him, to whom he is to
be responsible when he solicits for a renewal of his trust. To call all
the secondary electors of the _commune_ to account is ridiculous,
impracticable, and unjust: they may themselves have been deceived in
their choice, as the third set of electors, those of the _department_,
may be in theirs. In your elections responsibility cannot exist.
Finding no sort of principle of coherence with each other in the nature
and constitution of the several new republics of France, I considered
what cement the legislators had provided for them from any extraneous
materials. Their confederations, their _spectacles_, their civic feasts,
and their enthusiasm I take no notice of; they are nothing but mere
tricks; but tracing their policy through their actions, I think I can
distinguish the arrangements by which they propose to hold these
republics together. The first is the _confiscation_, with the compulsory
paper currency annexed to it; the second is the supreme power of the
city of Paris; the third is the general army of the state. Of this last
I shall reserve what I have to say, until I come to consider the army
as an head by itself.
As to the operation of the first (the confiscation and paper currency)
merely as a cement, I cannot deny that these, the one depending on the
other, may for some time compose some sort of cement, if their madness
and folly in the management, and in the tempering of the parts together,
does not produce a repulsion in the very outset. But allowing to the
scheme some coherence and some duration, it appears to me, that, if,
after a while, the confiscation should not be found sufficient to
support the paper coinage, (as I am morally certain it will not,) then,
instead of cementing, it will add infinitely to the dissociation,
distraction, and confusion of these confederate republics, both with
relation to each other and to the several parts within themselves. But
if the confiscation should so far succeed as to sink the paper currency,
the cement is gone with the circulation. In the mean time its binding
force will be very uncertain, and it will straiten or relax with every
variation in the credit of the paper.
One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is an effect seemingly
collateral, but direct, I have no doubt, in the minds of those who
conduct this business; that is, its effect in producing an _oligarchy_
in every one of the republics. A paper circulation, not founded on any
real money deposited or engaged for, amounting already to four-and-forty
millions of English money, and this currency by force substituted in the
place of the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby the substance of its
revenue, as well as the medium of all its commercial and civil
intercourse, must put the whole of what power, authority, and influence
is left, in any form whatsoever it may assume, into the hands of the
managers and conductors of this circulation.
In England we feel the influence of the Bank, though it is only the
centre of a voluntary dealing. He knows little, indeed, of the influence
of money upon mankind, who does not see the force of the management of a
moneyed concern which is so much more extensive, and in its nature so
much more depending on the managers, than any of ours. But this is not
merely a money concern. There is another member in the system
inseparably connected with this money management. It consists in the
means of drawing out at discretion portions of the confiscated lands for
sale, and carrying on a process of continual transmutation of paper into
land and land into paper. When we follow this process in its effects, we
may conceive something of the intensity of the force with which this
system must operate. By this means the spirit of money-jobbing and
speculation goes into the mass of land itself, and incorporates with it.
By this kind of operation, that species of property becomes, as it were,
volatilized; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous activity, and thereby
throws into the hands of the several managers, principal and
subordinate, Parisian and provincial, all the representative of money,
and perhaps a full tenth part of all the land in France, which has now
acquired the worst and most pernicious part of the evil of a paper
circulation, the greatest possible uncertainty in its value. They have
reversed the Latonian kindness to the landed property of Delos. They
have sent theirs to be blown about, like the light fragments of a wreck,
_oras et littora circum_.
The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers, and without any fixed
habits or local predilections, will purchase to job out again, as the
market of paper or of money or of land shall present an advantage. For
though a holy bishop thinks that agriculture will derive great
advantages from the "_enlightened_" usurers who are to purchase the
Church confiscations, I, who am not a good, but an old farmer, with
great humility beg leave to tell his late Lordship that usury is not a
tutor of agriculture; and if the word "enlightened" be understood
according to the new dictionary, as it always is in your new schools, I
cannot conceive how a man's not believing in God can teach him to
cultivate the earth with the least of any additional skill or
encouragement. "_Diis immortalibus sero_," said an old Roman, when he
held one handle of the plough, whilst Death held the other. Though you
were to join in the commission all the directors of the two Academies to
the directors of the _Caisse d'Escompte_, an old experienced peasant is
worth them all. I have got more information upon a curious and
interesting branch of husbandry, in one short conversation with an old
Carthusian monk, than I have derived from all the bank directors that I
have ever conversed with. However, there is no cause for apprehension
from the meddling of money-dealers with rural economy. These gentlemen
are too wise in their generation. At first, perhaps, their tender and
susceptible imaginations may be captivated with the innocent and
unprofitable delights of a pastoral life; but in a little time they will
find that agriculture is a trade much more laborious and much less
lucrative than that which they had left. After making its panegyric,
they will turn their backs on it, like their great precursor and
prototype. They may, like him, begin by singing, "_Beatus ille_"--but
what will be the end?
Hæc ubi locutus fœnerator Alphius,
Jam jam futurus rusticus,
Omnem relegit Idibus pecuniam,
Quærit Calendis ponere.
They will cultivate the _Caisse d'Église_, under the sacred auspices of
this prelate, with much more profit than its vineyards and its
corn-fields. They will employ their talents according to their habits
and their interests. They will not follow the plough, whilst they can
direct treasuries and govern provinces.
Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who have founded
a commonwealth upon gaming, and infused this spirit into it as its vital
breath. The great object in these politics is to metamorphose France
from a great kingdom into one great play-table,--to turn its inhabitants
into a nation of gamesters,--to make speculation as extensive as
life,--to mix it with all its concerns,--and to divert the whole of the
hopes and fears of the people from their usual channels into the
impulses, passions, and superstitions of those who live on chances. They
loudly proclaim their opinion, that this their present system of a
republic cannot possibly exist without this kind of gaming fund, and
that the very thread of its life is spun out of the staple of these
speculations. The old gaming in funds was mischievous enough,
undoubtedly; but it was so only to individuals. Even when it had its
greatest extent, in the Mississippi and South Sea, it affected but few,
comparatively; where it extends further, as in lotteries, the spirit has
but a single object. But where the law, which in most circumstances
forbids, and in none countenances gaming, is itself debauched, so as to
reverse its nature and policy, and expressly to force the subject to
this destructive table, by bringing the spirit and symbols of gaming
into the minutest matters, and engaging everybody in it, and in
everything, a more dreadful epidemic distemper of that kind is spread
than yet has appeared in the world. With you a man can neither earn nor
buy his dinner without a speculation. What he receives in the morning
will not have the same value at night. What he is compelled to take as
pay for an old debt will not be received as the same, when he comes to
pay a debt contracted by himself; nor will it be the same, when by
prompt payment he would avoid contracting any debt at all. Industry must
wither away. Economy must be driven from your country. Careful provision
will have no existence. Who will labor without knowing the amount of his
pay? Who will study to increase what none can estimate? Who will
accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he saves? If you
abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth
would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a
jackdaw.
The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a
nation of gamesters is this,--that, though all are forced to play, few
can understand the game, and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of that knowledge. The many must be the dupes of the few who
conduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it must have on
the country-people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day to
day; not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first brings
his corn to market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to take the
assignat at par; when he goes to the shop with this money, he finds it
seven per cent the worse for crossing the way. This market he will not
readily resort to again. The towns-people will be inflamed; they will
force the country-people to bring their corn. Resistance will begin, and
the murders of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all France.
What signifies the empty compliment paid to the country, by giving it,
perhaps, more than its share in the theory of your representation? Where
have you placed the real power over moneyed and landed circulation?
Where have you placed the means of raising and falling the value of
every man's freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add ten
per cent to the possessions of every man in France must be the masters
of every man in France. The whole of the power obtained by this
Revolution will settle in the towns among the burghers, and the moneyed
directors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the
peasant have, none of them, habits or inclinations or experience which
can lead them to any share in this the sole source of power and
influence now left in France. The very nature of a country life, the
very nature of landed property, in all the occupations and all the
pleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the sole way
of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossible amongst
country-people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the
industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the
nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope,
fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business and
dies in a day, all these things, which are the reins and spurs by which
leaders check or urge the minds of followers, are not easily employed,
or hardly at all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm,
they act, with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their
efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot
proceed systematically. If the country-gentlemen attempt an influence
through the mere income of their property, what is it to that of those
who have ten times their income to sell, and who can ruin their property
by bringing their plunder to meet it at market? If the landed man wishes
to mortgage, he falls the value of his land and raises the value of
assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he must
take to contend with him. The country-gentleman, therefore, the officer
by sea and land, the man of liberal views and habits, attached to no
profession, will be as completely excluded from the government of his
country as if he were legislatively proscribed. It is obvious, that, in
the towns, all the things which conspire against the country-gentleman
combine in favor of the money manager and director. In towns combination
is natural. The habits of burghers, their occupations, their diversion,
their business, their idleness, continually bring them into mutual
contact. Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are always in
garrison; and they come embodied and half-disciplined into the hands of
those who mean to form them for civil or military action.
All these considerations leave no doubt on my mind, that, if this
monster of a Constitution can continue, France will be wholly governed
by the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns, formed of
directors in assignats, and trustees for the sale of Church lands,
attorneys, agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers,
composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown,
the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all the deceitful
dreams and visions of the equality and rights of men. In "the Serbonian
bog" of this base oligarchy they are all absorbed, sunk, and lost
forever.
Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would be tempted to think some
great offences in France must cry to Heaven, which has thought fit to
punish it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious domination, in
which no comfort or compensation is to be found in any even of those
false splendors which, playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind
from feeling themselves dishonored even whilst they are oppressed. I
must confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed with some indignation, at
the conduct of a few men, once of great rank, and still of great
character, who, deluded with specious names, have engaged in a business
too deep for the line of their understanding to fathom,--who have lent
their fair reputation and the authority of their high-sounding names to
the designs of men with whom they could not be acquainted, and have
thereby made their very virtues operate to the ruin of their country.
So far as to the first cementing principle.
The second material of cement for their new republic is the superiority
of the city of Paris; and this, I admit, is strongly connected with the
other cementing principle of paper circulation and confiscation. It is
in this part of the project we must look for the cause of the
destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions,
ecclesiastical and secular, and the dissolution of all ancient
combinations of things, as well as the formation of so many small
unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one
great spring of all their politics. It is through the power of Paris,
now become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of this
faction direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and the whole
executive government. Everything, therefore, must be done which can
confirm the authority of that city over the other republics. Paris is
compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the
force of any of the square republics; and this strength is collected and
condensed within a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connection of its parts, which will not be affected by any scheme of a
geometrical constitution; nor does it much signify whether its
proportion of representation be more or less, since it has the whole
draught of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the kingdom,
being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual
means and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least,
confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate
members, but weakness, disconnection, and confusion. To confirm this
part of the plan, the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that no
two of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of Paris, thus
formed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is boasted that the
geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should be
sunk, and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons,
Normans,--but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one Assembly.
But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater likelihood is that the
inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever was
attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a
description of square measurement. He never will glory in belonging to
the chequer No. 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public
affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We
pass on to our neighborhoods, and our habitual provincial connections.
These are inns and resting-places. Such divisions of our country as have
been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were so
many little images of the great country, in which the heart found
something which it could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished
by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elemental
training to those higher and more large regards by which alone men come
to be affected, as with their own concern, in the prosperity of a
kingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general territory
itself, as in the old name of Provinces, the citizens are interested
from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the
geometric properties of its figure. The power and preëminence of Paris
does certainly press down and hold these republics together as long as
it lasts: but, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it can
not last very long.
Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing principles of
this Constitution to the National Assembly, which is to appear and act
as sovereign, we see a body in its constitution with every possible
power and no possible external control. We see a body without
fundamental laws, without established maxims, without respected rules of
proceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever. Their
idea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of
legislative competency, and their examples for common cases from the
exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in most
respects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode of the new
elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of
the small degree of internal control existing in a minority chosen
originally from various interests, and preserving something of their
spirit. If possible, the next Assembly must be worse than the present.
The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to their
successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by
emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd. To
suppose such an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do everything at
once, have forgot one thing that seems essential, and which, I believe,
never has been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by any
projector of a republic. They have forgot to constitute a _senate_, or
something of that nature and character. Never, before this time, was
heard of a body politic composed of one legislative and active assembly,
and its executive officers, without such a council: without something to
which foreign states might connect themselves,--something to which, in
the ordinary detail of government, the people could look up,--something
which might give a bias and steadiness, and preserve something like
consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally
have as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but it seems to be
in the very essence of a republican government. It holds a sort of
middle place between the supreme power exercised by the people, or
immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive. Of this there
are no traces in your Constitution; and in providing nothing of this
kind, your Solons and Numas have, as much as in anything else,
discovered a sovereign incapacity.