hearing the magic-lantern in their show of finance compared to the
fraudulent exhibitions of Mr. Law. They cannot bear to hear the sands
of his Mississippi compared with the rock of the Church, on which they
build their system. Pray let them suppress this glorious spirit, until
they show to the world what piece of solid ground there is for their
assignats, which they have not preoccupied by other charges. They do
injustice to that great mother fraud, to compare it with their
degenerate imitation. It is not true that Law built solely on a
speculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the East India trade;
he added the African trade; he added the farms of all the farmed revenue
of France. All these together unquestionably could not support the
structure which the public enthusiasm, not he, chose to build upon these
bases. But these were, however, in comparison, generous delusions. They
supposed, and they aimed at, an increase of the commerce of France. They
opened to it the whole range of the two hemispheres. They did not think
of feeding France from its own substance. A grand imagination found in
this flight of commerce something to captivate. It was wherewithal to
dazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of a
mole, nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is. Men
were not then quite shrunk from their natural dimensions by a degrading
and sordid philosophy, and fitted for low and vulgar deceptions. Above
all, remember, that, in imposing on the imagination, the then managers
of the system made a compliment to the freedom of men. In their fraud
there was no mixture of force. This was reserved to our time, to quench
the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid
darkness of this enlightened age.
On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme of finance which may be
urged in favor of the abilities of these gentlemen, and which has been
introduced with great pomp, though not yet finally adopted in the
National Assembly. It comes with something solid in aid of the credit of
the paper circulation; and much has been said of its utility and its
elegance. I mean the project for coining into money the bells of the
suppressed churches. This is their alchemy. There are some follies which
baffle argument, which go beyond ridicule, and which excite no feeling
in us but disgust; and therefore I say no more upon it.
It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all their drawing and
re-drawing, on their circulation for putting off the evil day, on the
play between the Treasury and the _Caisse d'Escompte_, and on all these
old, exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy
of state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling about the
rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of
gunpowder. Here, then, the metaphysicians descend from their airy
speculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? The
examples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, disgraced, when their
breath, their strength, their inventions, their fancies desert them,
their confidence still maintains its ground. In the manifest failure of
their abilities, they take credit for their benevolence. When the
revenue disappears in their hands, they have the presumption, in some of
their late proceedings, to value _themselves_ on the relief given to the
people. They did not relieve the people. If they entertained such
intentions, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid? The
people relieved themselves, in spite of the Assembly.
But waiving all discussion on the parties who may claim the merit of
this fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, any relief to the
people in any form? M. Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper
circulation, lets you into the nature of this relief. His speech to the
National Assembly contained a high and labored panegyric on the
inhabitants of Paris, for the constancy and unbroken resolution with
which they have borne their distress and misery. A fine picture of
public felicity! What! great courage and unconquerable firmness of mind
to endure benefits and sustain redress? One would think, from the speech
of this learned lord mayor, that the Parisians, for this twelvemonth
past, had been suffering the straits of some dreadful blockade,--that
Henry the Fourth had been stopping up the avenues to their supply, and
Sully thundering with his ordnance at the gates of Paris,--when in
reality they are besieged by no other enemies than their own madness and
folly, their own credulity and perverseness. But M. Bailly will sooner
thaw the eternal ice of his Atlantic regions than restore the central
heat to Paris, whilst it remains "smitten with the cold, dry, petrific
mace" of a false and unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this speech,
that is, on the thirteenth of last August, the same magistrate, giving
an account of his government at the bar of the same Assembly, expresses
himself as follows:--"In the month of July, 1789," (the period of
everlasting commemoration,) "the finances of the city of Paris were
_yet_ in good order; the expenditure was counterbalanced by the receipt,
and she had at that time a million [forty thousand pounds sterling] in
bank. The expenses which she has been constrained to incur, _subsequent
to the Revolution_, amount to 2,500,000 livres. From these expenses, and
the great falling off in the product of the _free gifts_, not only a
momentary, but a _total_, want of money has taken place." This is the
Paris upon whose nourishment, in the course of the last year, such
immense sums, drawn from the vitals of all France, have been expended.
As long as Paris stands in the place of ancient Rome, so long she will
be maintained by the subject provinces. It is an evil inevitably
attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics. As it
happened in Rome, it may survive that republican domination which gave
rise to it. In that case despotism itself must submit to the vices of
popularity. Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems;
and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin.
To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their
public estate is a cruel and insolent imposition. Statesmen, before they
valued themselves on the relief given to the people by the destruction
of their revenue, ought first to have carefully attended to the solution
of this problem:--Whether it be more advantageous to the people to pay
considerably and to gain in proportion, or to gain little or nothing and
to be disburdened of all contribution? My mind is made up to decide in
favor of the first proposition. Experience is with me, and, I believe,
the best opinions also. To keep a balance between the power of
acquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is to answer
on the part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of a true
politician. The means of acquisition are prior in time and in
arrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be
enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable
and obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their
authority. The body of the people must not find the principles of
natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must
respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labor to
obtain what by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they
commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they must be
taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of
this consolation whoever deprives them deadens their industry, and
strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation. He that
does this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and
wretched; at the same time that by his wicked speculations he exposes
the fruits of successful industry and the accumulations of fortune to
the plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous.
Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to see nothing in
revenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities on lives, and
tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop. In a
settled order of the state, these things are not to be slighted, nor is
the skill in them to be held of trivial estimation. They are good, but
then only good when they assume the effects of that settled order, and
are built upon it. But when men think that these beggarly contrivances
may supply a resource for the evils which result from breaking up the
foundations of public order, and from causing or suffering the
principles of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of their
country, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect of
preposterous politics, and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-minded
wisdom.
The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the
great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the
"all-atoning name" of Liberty. In some people I see great liberty,
indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude.
But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the
greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness,
without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is
cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their
having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments
of liberty I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart; they enlarge
and liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time of
conflict. Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneille
with pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the little arts and devices
of popularity. They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment;
they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions;
and they diffuse occasional gayety over the severe brow of moral
freedom. Every politician ought to sacrifice to the Graces, and to join
compliance with reason. But in such an undertaking as that in France all
these subsidiary sentiments and artifices are of little avail. To make a
government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach
obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It
is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to
form a _free government_, that is, to temper together these opposite
elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much
thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
This I do not find in those who take the lead in the National Assembly.
Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear. I rather
believe it. It would put them below the common level of human
understanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at
an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the
state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of
legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people. If any of
them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and
defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his
competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will
be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence
of traitors,--until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable
him to temper and moderate on some occasions, the popular leader is
obliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishing
powers that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he
ultimately might have aimed.
* * * * *
But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that deserves
commendation in the indefatigable labors of this Assembly? I do not
deny, that, among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, some
good may have been done. They who destroy everything certainly will
remove some grievance. They who make everything new have a chance that
they may establish something beneficial. To give them credit for what
they have done in virtue of the authority they have usurped, or to
excuse them in the crimes by which that authority has been acquired, it
must appear that the same things could not have been accomplished
without producing such a revolution. Most assuredly they might; because
almost every one of the regulations made by them, which is not very
equivocal, was either in the cession of the king, voluntarily made at
the meeting of the States, or in the concurrent instructions to the
orders. Some usages have been abolished on just grounds; but they were
such, that, if they had stood as they were to all eternity, they would
little detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. The
improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors
fundamental.
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our
neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models
from them for the improvement of our own. In the former they have got an
invaluable treasure. They are not, I think, without some causes of
apprehension and complaint; but these they do not owe to their
Constitution, but to their own conduct. I think our happy situation
owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any
part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in
our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have altered
or superadded. Our people will find employment enough for a truly
patriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding what they possess
from violation. I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I
changed, it should be to preserve. I should be led to my remedy by a
great grievance. In what I did, I should follow the example of our
ancestors. I would make the reparation as nearly as possible in the
style of the building. A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, a
moral rather than a complexional timidity, were among the ruling
principles of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not being
illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they
have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of
the ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He that had made them thus
fallible rewarded them for having in their conduct attended to their
nature. Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their
fortune or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we please, but let
us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the
British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt
to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of France.
I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to
alter yours. I do not know that they ought. You are young; you cannot
guide, but must follow, the fortune of your country. But hereafter they
may be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealth
may take. In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final
settlement, it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says,
"through great varieties of untried being," and in all its
transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.
I have little to recommend my opinions but long observation and much
impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, no
flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie
the tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whose
public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others,--from one
in whose breast no anger durable or vehement has ever been kindled but
by what he considered as tyranny, and who snatches from his share in the
endeavors which are used by good men to discredit opulent oppression the
hours he has employed on your affairs, and who in so doing persuades
himself he has not departed from his usual office. They come from one
who desires honors, distinctions, and emoluments but little, and who
expects them not at all,--who has no contempt for fame, and no fear of
obloquy,--who shuns contention, though he will hazard an opinion; from
one who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserve
consistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his end,--and,
when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by
overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight
of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] Ps. cxlix.
[78] Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4, 1789, by Dr. Richard
Price, 3d edition, p. 17 and 18.
[79] "Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed by
public authority ought, if they can find _no_ worship _out_ of the
Church which they approve, _to set up a separate worship for
themselves_; and by doing this, and giving an example of a rational and
manly worship, men of _weight_ from their _rank_ and literature may do
the greatest service to society and the world."--P. 18, Dr. Price's
Sermon.
[80] P. 34, Discourse on the Love of our Country, by Dr. Price.
[81] 1st Mary, sess. 3, ch. 1.
[82] "That King James the Second, having endeavored _to subvert the
Constitution_ of the kingdom, by breaking the _original contract_
between king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked
persons, having violated the _fundamental_ laws, and _having withdrawn
himself out of the kingdom_, hath _abdicated_ the government, and the
throne is thereby _vacant_."
[83] P. 23, 23, 24.
[84] See Blackstone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759.
[85] 1 W. and M.
[86] Ecclesiasticus, chap, xxxviii. ver. 24, 25. "The wisdom of a
learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little
business shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the
plough, and that glorieth in the goad; that driveth oxen, and is
occupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks?"
Ver. 27. "So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboreth night and
day," &c.
Ver. 33. "They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high
in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judge's seat, nor
understand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and
judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken."
Ver. 34. "But they will maintain the state of the world."
I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican
Church (till lately) has considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is
taken. I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth.
[87] Discourse on the Love of our Country, 3rd edit. p. 39.
[88] Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some of the
spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself
thus:--"_A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering
subjects_ is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in
the prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification." These gentlemen
agree marvellously in their feelings.
[89] State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
[90] 6th of October, 1789.
[91] "Tous les Évêques à la lanterne!"
[92] It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject by
an eyewitness. That eyewitness was one of the most honest, intelligent,
and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of the most active
and zealous reformers of the state. He was obliged to secede from the
Assembly; and he afterwards became a voluntary exile, on account of the
horrors of this pious triumph, and the dispositions of men, who,
profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead in public
affairs.
_Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend_.
"Parlons du parti que j'ai pris; il est bien justifé dans ma
conscience.--Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assemblée plus coupable
encore, ne méritoient que je me justifie; mais j'ai à cœur que vous, et
les personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me condamnent pas.--Ma santé,
je vous jure, me rendoit mes fonctions impossibles; mais même en les
mettant de côté il a été au-dessus de mes forces de supporter plus
longtems l'horreur que me causoit ce sang,--ces têtes,--cette reine
_presque egorgée_,--ce roi, amené _esclave_, entrant à Paris au milieu
de ses assassins, et précédé des têtes de ses malheureux gardes,--ces
perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales,--ce cri de
TOUS LES ÉVÊQUES À LA LANTERNE, dans le moment où le roi entre sa
capitale avec deux évêques de son conseil dans sa voiture,--un _coup de
fusil_, que j'ai vu tirer dans un _des carrosses de la reine_,--M.
Bailly appellant cela _un beau jour_,--l'assemblée ayant déclaré
froidement le matin, qu'il n'étoit pas de sa dignité d'aller toute
entière environner le roi,--M. Mirabeau disant impunément dans cette
assemblée, que le vaisseau de l'état, loin d'être arrêté dans sa course,
s'élanceroit avec plus de rapidité que jamais vers sa régénération,--M.
Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang couloient autour de
nous,--le vertueux Mounier[A] échappant par miracle à vingt assassins,
qui avoient voulu faire de sa tête un trophée de plus: Voilà ce qui me
fit jurer de ne plus mettre le pied _dans cette caverne d'Antropophages_
[The National Assembly], où je n'avois plus de force d'élever la voix,
où depuis six semaines je l'avois élevée en vain.
"Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnêtes gens, ont pensé que le dernier
effort à faire pour le bien étoit d'en sortir. Aucune idée de crainte ne
s'est approchée de moi. Je rougirois de m'en défendre. J'avois encore
reçû sur la route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que ceux qui
l'ont enivré de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissements, dont
d'autres auroient été flattés, et qui m'ont fait frémir. C'est à
l'indignation, c'est à l'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques, que
le seul aspect du sang me fait éprouver que j'ai cédé. On brave une
seule mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut être utile. Mais
aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou privée
n'ont le droit de me condamner à souffrir inutilement mille supplices
par minute, et à périr de désespoir, de rage, au milieu des _triomphes_,
du crime que je n'ai pu arrêter. Ils me proscriront, ils confisqueront
mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai plus. Voilà ma
justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier; tant
pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera alors moi qui
auroit eu tort de la leur donner."
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen of
the Old Jewry.--See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these transactions: a
man also of honor and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive.
[A] N.B.M. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He has
since been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertors
of liberty.
[93] See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here
particularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and
execution of the former with this prediction.
[94] The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter published
in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a Dissenting
minister. When writing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails at
Paris, he says,--"The spirit of the people in this place has abolished
all the proud _distinctions_ which the _king_ and _nobles_ had usurped
in their minds: whether they talk of _the king, the noble, or the
priest_, their whole language is that of the most _enlightened and
liberal amongst the English_." If this gentleman means to confine the
terms _enlightened and liberal_ to one set of men in England, it may be
true. It is not generally so.
[95] Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium
rerum ac moderatores deos; eaque, quæ gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione,
ac numine; eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quisque
sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat
religiones intueri: piorum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebus
imbutæ mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili et a vera sententia.--Cic.
de Legibus, l. 2.
[96] Quicquid multis peccatur inultum.