FIRST STAY IN FRANCE.
After a hard winter passage of forty days' length Morris reached France,
and arrived in Paris on February 3, 1789. He remained there a year on
his private business; but his prominence in America, and his intimate
friendship with many distinguished Frenchmen, at once admitted him to
the highest social and political circles, where his brilliant talents
secured him immediate importance.
The next nine years of his life were spent in Europe, and it was during
this time that he unknowingly rendered his especial and peculiar service
to the public. As an American statesman he has many rivals, and not a
few superiors; but as a penetrating observer and recorder of
contemporary events, he stands alone among the men of his time. He kept
a full diary during his stay abroad, and was a most voluminous
correspondent; and his capacity for keen, shrewd observation, his
truthfulness, his wonderful insight into character, his sense of humor,
and his power of graphic description, all combine to make his comments
on the chief men and events of the day a unique record of the inside
history of Western Europe during the tremendous convulsions of the
French Revolution. He is always an entertaining and in all matters of
fact a trustworthy writer. His letters and diary together form a real
mine of wealth for the student either of the social life of the upper
classes in France just before the outbreak, or of the events of the
Revolution itself.
In the first place, it must be premised that from the outset Morris was
hostile to the spirit of the French Revolution, and his hostility grew
in proportion to its excesses until at last it completely swallowed up
his original antipathy to England, and made him regard France as
normally our enemy, not our ally. This was perfectly natural, and indeed
inevitable: in all really free countries, the best friends of freedom
regarded the revolutionists, when they had fairly begun their bloody
career, with horror and anger. It was only to oppressed, debased, and
priest-ridden peoples that the French Revolution could come as the
embodiment of liberty. Compared to the freedom already enjoyed by
Americans, it was sheer tyranny of the most dreadful kind.
Morris saw clearly that the popular party in France, composed in part of
amiable visionaries, theoretic philanthropists, and closet
constitution-mongers, and in part of a brutal, sodden populace, maddened
by the grinding wrongs of ages, knew not whither its own steps tended;
and he also saw that the then existing generation of Frenchmen were not,
and never would be, fitted to use liberty aright. It is small matter for
wonder that he could not see as clearly the good which lay behind the
movement; that he could not as readily foretell the real and great
improvement it was finally to bring about, though only after a
generation of hideous convulsions. Even as it was, he discerned what was
happening, and what was about to happen, more distinctly than did any
one else. The wild friends of the French Revolution, especially in
America, supported it blindly, with but a very slight notion of what it
really signified. Keen though Morris's intellectual vision was, it was
impossible for him to see what future lay beyond the quarter of a
century of impending tumult. It did not lie within his powers to applaud
the fiendish atrocities of the Red Terror for the sake of the
problematical good that would come to the next generation. To do so he
would have needed the granite heart of a zealot, as well as the
prophetic vision of a seer.
The French Revolution was in its essence a struggle for the abolition of
privilege, and for equality in civil rights. This Morris perceived,
almost alone among the statesmen of his day; and he also perceived that
most Frenchmen were willing to submit to any kind of government that
would secure them the things for which they strove. As he wrote to
Jefferson, when the republic was well under weigh: "The great mass of
the French nation is less solicitous to preserve the present order of
things than to prevent the return of the ancient oppression, and of
course would more readily submit to a pure despotism than to that kind
of monarchy whose only limits were found in those noble, legal and
clerical corps by which the people were alternately oppressed and
insulted." To the down-trodden masses of continental Europe the gift of
civil rights and the removal of the tyranny of the privileged classes,
even though accompanied by the rule of a directory, a consul, or an
emperor, represented an immense political advance; but to the free
people of England, and to the freer people of America, the change would
have been wholly for the worse.
Such being the case, Morris's attitude was natural and proper. There is
no reason to question the sincerity of his statement in another letter,
that "I do, from the bottom of my heart, wish well to this country
[France]." Had the French people shown the least moderation or wisdom,
he would have unhesitatingly sided with them against their oppressors.
It must be kept in mind that he was not influenced in the least in his
course by the views of the upper classes with whom he mingled. On the
contrary, when he first came to Europe, he distinctly lost popularity in
some of the social circles in which he moved, because he was so much
more conservative than his aristocratic friends, among whom the closet
republicanism of the philosophers was for the moment all the rage. He
had no love for the French nobility, whose folly and ferocity caused the
Revolution, and whose craven cowardice could not check it even before it
had gathered headway. Long afterwards he wrote of some of the _emigres_:
"The conversation of these gentlemen, who have the virtue and good
fortune of their grandfathers to recommend them, leads me almost to
forget the crimes of the French Revolution; and often the unforgiving
temper and sanguinary wishes which they exhibit make me almost believe
that the assertion of their enemies is true, namely, that it is success
alone which has determined on whose side should be the crimes, and on
whose the miseries." The truth of the last sentence was strikingly
verified by the White Terror, even meaner, if less bloody, than the Red.
Bourbon princes and Bourbon nobles were alike, and Morris only erred in
not seeing that their destruction was the condition precedent upon all
progress.
There was never another great struggle, in the end productive of good to
mankind, where the tools and methods by which that end was won were so
wholly vile as in the French Revolution. Alone among movements of the
kind, it brought forth no leaders entitled to our respect; none who were
both great and good; none even who were very great, save, at its
beginning, strange, strong, crooked Mirabeau, and at its close the
towering world-genius who sprang to power by its means, wielded it for
his own selfish purposes, and dazzled all nations over the wide earth by
the glory of his strength and splendor.
We can hardly blame Morris for not appreciating a revolution whose
immediate outcome was to be Napoleon's despotism, even though he failed
to see all the good that would remotely spring therefrom. He considered,
as he once wrote a friend, that "the true object of a great statesman is
to give to any particular nation the kind of laws which is suitable to
them, and the best constitution which they are capable of." There can
be no sounder rule of statesmanship; and none was more flagrantly broken
by the amiable but incompetent political doctrinaires of 1789. Thus the
American, as a far-sighted statesman, despised the theorists who began
the Revolution, and, as a humane and honorable man, abhorred the
black-hearted wretches who carried it on. His view of the people among
whom he found himself, as well as his statement of his own position, he
himself has recorded: "To fit people for a republic, as for any other
form of government, a previous education is necessary.... In despotic
governments the people, habituated to beholding everything bending
beneath the weight of power, never possess that power for a moment
without abusing it. Slaves, driven to despair, take arms, execute vast
vengeance, and then sink back to their former condition of slaves. In
such societies the patriot, the melancholy patriot, sides with the
despot, because anything is better than a wild and bloody confusion."
So much for an outline of his views. His writings preserve them for us
in detail on almost every important question that came up during his
stay in Europe; couched, moreover, in telling, piquant sentences that
leave room for hardly a dull line in either letters or diary.
No sooner had he arrived in Paris than he sought out Jefferson, then the
American minister, and Lafayette. They engaged him to dine on the two
following nights. He presented his various letters of introduction, and
in a very few weeks, by his wit, tact, and ability, had made himself
completely at home in what was by far the most brilliant and
attractive--although also the most hopelessly unsound--fashionable
society of any European capital. He got on equally well with fine
ladies, philosophers, and statesmen; was as much at his ease in the
salons of the one as at the dinner-tables of the other; and all the time
observed and noted down, with the same humorous zest, the social
peculiarities of his new friends as well as the tremendous march of
political events. Indeed, it is difficult to know whether to set the
higher value on his penetrating observations concerning public affairs,
or on his witty, light, half-satirical sketches of the men and women of
the world with whom he was thrown in contact, told in his usual charming
and effective style. No other American of note has left us writings half
so humorous and amusing, filled, too, with information of the greatest
value.
Although his relations with Jefferson were at this time very friendly,
yet his ideas on most subjects were completely at variance with those
of the latter. He visited him very often; and, after one of these
occasions, jots down his opinion of his friend in his usual amusing
vein: "Call on Mr. Jefferson, and sit a good while. General conversation
on character and politics. I think he does not form very just estimates
of character, but rather assigns too many to the humble rank of fools;
whereas in life the gradations are infinite, and each individual has his
peculiarities of fort and feeble:" Not a bad protest against the dangers
of sweeping generalization. Another time he records his judgment of
Jefferson's ideas on public matters as follows: "He and I differ in our
systems of politics. He, with all the leaders of liberty here, is
desirous of annihilating distinctions of order. How far such views may
be right respecting mankind in general is, I think, extremely
problematical. But with respect to this nation I am sure they are wrong,
and cannot eventuate well."
As soon as he began to go out in Parisian society, he was struck by the
closet republicanism which it had become the fashion to affect. After
his first visit to Lafayette, who received him with that warmth and
frank, open-handed hospitality which he always extended to Americans,
Morris writes: "Lafayette is full of politics; he appears to be too
republican for the genius of his country." And again, when Lafayette
showed him the draft of the celebrated Declaration of Rights, he notes:
"I gave him my opinions, and suggested several amendments tending to
soften the high-colored expressions of freedom. It is not by sounding
words that revolutions are produced." Elsewhere he writes that "the
young nobility have brought themselves to an active faith in the natural
equality of mankind, and spurn at everything which looks like
restraint." Some of their number, however, he considered to be actuated
by considerations more tangible than mere sentiment. He chronicles a
dinner with some members of the National Assembly, where "one, a noble
representing the _Tiers_, is so vociferous against his own order, that I
am convinced he means to rise by his eloquence, and finally will, I
expect, vote with the opinion of the court, let that be what it may."
The sentimental humanitarians--who always form a most pernicious body,
with an influence for bad hardly surpassed by that of the professionally
criminal class--of course throve vigorously in an atmosphere where
theories of mawkish benevolence went hand in hand with the habitual
practice of vices too gross to name. Morris, in one of his letters,
narrates an instance in point; at the same time showing how this excess
of watery philanthropy was, like all the other movements of the French
Revolution, but a violent and misguided reaction against former abuses
of the opposite sort. The incident took place in Madame de Stael's
salon. "The Count de Clermont Tonnerre, one of their best orators, read
to us a very pathetic oration; and the object was to show that no
penalties are the legal compensations for crimes or injuries: the man
who is hanged, having by that event paid his debt to society, ought not
to be held in dishonor; and in like manner he who has been condemned for
seven years to be flogged in the galleys, should, when he has served out
his apprenticeship, be received again into good company, as if nothing
had happened. You smile; but observe the extreme to which the matter was
carried the other way. Dishonoring thousands for the guilt of one has so
shocked the public sentiment as to render this extreme fashionable. The
oration was very fine, very sentimental, very pathetic, and the style
harmonious. Shouts of applause and full approbation. When this was
pretty well over, I told him that his speech was extremely eloquent, but
that his principles were not very solid. Universal surprise!"
At times he became rather weary of the constant discussion of politics,
which had become the chief drawing-room topic. Among the capacities of
his lively and erratic nature was the power of being intensely bored by
anything dull or monotonous. He remarked testily that "republicanism was
absolutely a moral influenza, from which neither titles, places, nor
even the diadem can guard the possessor." In a letter to a friend on a
different subject he writes: "Apropos,--a term which my Lord
Chesterfield well observes we generally use to bring in what is not at
all to the purpose,--apropos, then, I have here the strangest employment
imaginable. A republican, and just as it were emerged from that assembly
which has formed one of the most republican of all republican
constitutions, I preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to
the rights of the nobles, and above all moderation, not only in the
object, but also in the pursuit of it. All this you will say is none of
my business; but I consider France as the natural ally of my country,
and, of course, that we are interested in her prosperity; besides, to
say the truth, I love France."
His hostility to the fashionable cult offended some of his best friends.
The Lafayettes openly disapproved his sentiments. The Marquis told him
that he was injuring the cause, because his sentiments were being
continually quoted against "the good party." Morris answered that he was
opposed to democracy from a regard to liberty; that the popular party
were going straight to destruction, and he would fain stop them if he
could; for their views respecting the nation were totally inconsistent
with the materials of which it was composed, and the worst thing that
could happen to them would be to have their wishes granted. Lafayette
half admitted that this was true: "He tells me that he is sensible his
party are mad, and tells them so, but is not the less determined to die
with them. I tell him that I think it would be quite as well to bring
them to their senses and live with them,"--the last sentence showing the
impatience with which the shrewd, fearless, practical American at times
regarded the dreamy inefficiency of his French associates. Madame de
Lafayette was even more hostile than her husband to Morris's ideas. In
commenting on her beliefs he says: "She is a very sensible woman, but
has formed her ideas of government in a manner not suited, I think,
either to the situation, the circumstances, or the disposition of
France."
He was considered too much of an aristocrat in the salon of the Comtesse
de Tesse, the resort of "republicans of the first feather;" and at
first was sometimes rather coldly received there. He felt, however, a
most sincere friendship and regard for the comtesse, and thoroughly
respected the earnestness with which she had for twenty years done what
lay in her power to give her country greater liberty. She was a genuine
enthusiast, and, when the National Assembly met, was filled with
exultant hope for the future. The ferocious outbreaks of the mob, and
the crazy lust for blood shown by the people at large, startled her out
of her faith, and shocked her into the sad belief that her life-long and
painful labors had been wasted in the aid of a bad cause. Later in the
year Morris writes: "I find Madame de Tesse is become a convert to my
principles. We have a gay conversation of some minutes on their affairs,
in which I mingle sound maxims of government with that piquant
_legerete_ which this nation delights in. She insists that I dine with
her at Versailles the next time I am there. We are vastly gracious, and
all at once, in a serious tone, 'Mais attendez, madame, est-ce que je
suis trop aristocrat?' To which she answers, with a smile of gentle
humility, 'Oh, mon Dieu, non!'"
It is curious to notice how rapidly Morris's brilliant talents gave him
a commanding position, stranger and guest though he was, among the most
noted statesmen of France; how often he was consulted, and how widely
his opinions were quoted. Moreover, his incisive truthfulness makes his
writings more valuable to the historian of his time than are those of
any of his contemporaries, French, English, or American. Taine, in his
great work on the Revolution, ranks him high among the small number of
observers who have recorded clear and sound judgments of those years of
confused, formless tumult and horror.
All his views on French politics are very striking. As soon as he
reached Paris, he was impressed by the unrest and desire for change
prevailing everywhere, and wrote home: "I find on this side of the
Atlantic a resemblance to what I left on the other,--a nation which
exists in hopes, prospects, and expectations; the reverence for ancient
establishments gone; existing forms shaken to the very foundation; and a
new order of things about to take place, in which, perhaps, even the
very names of all former institutions will be disregarded." And again:
"This country presents an astonishing spectacle to one who has collected
his ideas from books and information half a dozen years old. Everything
is _a l'Anglaise_, and a desire to imitate the English prevails alike
in the cut of a coat and the form of a constitution. Like the English,
too, all are engaged in parliamenteering; and when we consider how novel
this last business must be, I assure you the progress is far from
contemptible,"--a reference to Lafayette's electioneering trip to
Auvergne. The rapidity with which, in America, order had come out of
chaos, while in France the reverse process had been going on, impressed
him deeply; as he says: "If any new lesson were wanting to impress on
our hearts a deep sense of the mutability of human affairs, the double
contrast between France and America two years ago and at the present
would surely furnish it."
He saw at once that the revolutionists had it in their power to do about
as they chose. "If there be any real vigor in the nation the prevailing
party in the States-General may, if they please, overturn the monarchy
itself, should the king commit his authority to a contest with them. The
court is extremely feeble, and the manners are so extremely corrupt that
they cannot succeed if there be any consistent opposition, unless the
whole nation be equally depraved."
He did not believe that the people would be able to profit by the
revolution, or to use their opportunities aright. For the numerous
class of patriots who felt a vague, though fervent, enthusiasm for
liberty in the abstract, and who, without the slightest practical
knowledge, were yet intent on having all their own pet theories put into
practice, he felt profound scorn and contempt; while he distrusted and
despised the mass of Frenchmen, because of their frivolity and
viciousness. He knew well that a pure theorist may often do as much
damage to a country as the most corrupt traitor; and very properly
considered that in politics the fool is quite as obnoxious as the knave.
He also realized that levity and the inability to look life seriously in
the face, or to attend to the things worth doing, may render a man just
as incompetent to fulfil the duties of citizenship as would actual
viciousness.
To the crazy theories of the constitution-makers and closet-republicans
generally, he often alludes in his diary, and in his letters home. In
one place he notes: "The literary people here, observing the abuses of
the monarchical form, imagine that everything must go the better in
proportion as it recedes from the present establishment, and in their
closets they make men exactly suited to their systems; but unluckily
they are such men as exist nowhere else, and least of all in France."
And he writes almost the same thing to Washington: "The middle party,
who mean well, have unfortunately acquired their ideas of government
from books, and are admirable fellows upon paper: but as it happens,
somewhat unfortunately, that the men who live in the world are very
different from those who dwell in the heads of philosophers, it is not
to be wondered at if the systems taken out of books are fit for nothing
but to be put back into books again." And once more: "They have all that
romantic spirit, and all those romantic ideas of government, which,
happily for America, we were cured of before it was too late." He shows
how they had never had the chance to gain wisdom through experience. "As
they have hitherto felt severely the authority exercised in the name of
their princes, every limitation of that power seems to them desirable.
Never having felt the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to
be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression." Elsewhere he
comments on their folly in trying to apply to their own necessities
systems of government suited to totally different conditions; and
mentions his own attitude in the matter: "I have steadily combated the
violence and excess of those persons who, either inspired with an
enthusiastic love of freedom, or prompted by sinister designs, are
disposed to drive everything to extremity. Our American example has
done them good; but, like all novelties, liberty runs away with their
discretion, if they have any. They want an American constitution with
the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that
they have not American citizens to support that constitution.... Whoever
desires to apply in the practical science of government those rules and
forms which prevail and succeed in a foreign country, must fall into the
same pedantry with our young scholars, just fresh from the university,
who would fain bring everything to the Roman standard.... The scientific
tailor who should cut after Grecian or Chinese models would not have
many customers, either in London or Paris; and those who look to America
for their political forms are not unlike the tailors in Laputa, who, as
Gulliver tells us, always take measures with a quadrant."
He shows again and again his abiding distrust and fear of the French
character, as it was at that time, volatile, debauched, ferocious, and
incapable of self-restraint. To Lafayette he insisted that the "extreme
licentiousness" of the people rendered it indispensable that they should
be kept under authority; and on another occasion told him "that the
nation was used to being governed, and would have to be governed; and
that if he expected to lead them by their affections, he would himself
be the dupe." In writing to Washington he painted the outlook in colors
that, though black indeed, were not a shade too dark. "The materials for
a revolution in this country are very indifferent. Everybody agrees that
there is an utter prostration of morals; but this general proposition
can never convey to an American mind the degree of depravity. It is not
by any figure of rhetoric or force of language that the idea can be
communicated. A hundred anecdotes and a hundred thousand examples are
required to show the extreme rottenness of every member. There are men
and women who are greatly and eminently virtuous. I have the pleasure to
number many in my own acquaintance; but they stand forward from a
background deeply and darkly shaded. It is however from such crumbling
matter that the great edifice of freedom is to be erected here. Perhaps
like the stratum of rock which is spread under the whole surface of
their country, it may harden when exposed to the air; but it seems quite
as likely that it will fall and crush the builders. I own to you that I
am not without such apprehensions, for there is one fatal principle
which pervades all ranks. It is a perfect indifference to the violation
of engagements. Inconstancy is so mingled in the blood, marrow, and very
essence of this people, that when a man of high rank and importance
laughs to-day at what he seriously asserted yesterday, it is considered
as in the natural order of things. Consistency is a phenomenon. Judge,
then, what would be the value of an association should such a thing be
proposed and even adopted. The great mass of the common people have no
religion but their priests, no law but their superiors, no morals but
their interest. These are the creatures who, led by drunken curates, are
now on the high road _a la liberte_."
Morris and Washington wrote very freely to each other. In one of his
letters, the latter gave an account of how well affairs were going in
America (save in Rhode Island, the majority of whose people "had long
since bid adieu to every principle of honor, common sense, and
honesty"), and then went on to discuss things in France. He expressed
the opinion that, if the revolution went no further than it had already
gone, France would become the most powerful and happy state in Europe;
but he trembled lest, having triumphed in the first paroxysms, it might
succumb to others still more violent that would be sure to follow. He
feared equally the "licentiousness of the people" and the folly of the
leaders, and doubted if they possessed the requisite temperance,
firmness, and foresight; and if they did not, then he believed they
would run from one extreme to another, and end with "a higher toned
despotism than the one which existed before."
Morris answered him with his usual half-satiric humor: "Your sentiments
on the revolution here I believe to be perfectly just, because they
perfectly accord with my own, and that is, you know, the only standard
which Heaven has given us by which to judge," and went on to describe
how the parties in France stood. "The king is in effect a prisoner in
Paris and obeys entirely the National Assembly. This assembly may be
divided into three parts: one, called the _aristocrats_, consists of the
high clergy, the members of the law (note, these are not the lawyers)
and such of the nobility as think they ought to form a separate order.
Another, which has no name, but which consists of all sorts of people,
really friends to a good free government. The third is composed of what
is here called the _enragees_, that is, the madmen. These are the most
numerous, and are of that class which in America is known by the name of
pettifogging lawyers; together with ... those persons who in all
revolutions throng to the standard of change because they are not well.
This last party is in close alliance with the populace here, and they
have already unhinged everything, and, according to custom on such
occasions, the torrent rushes on irresistibly until it shall have wasted
itself." The _literati_ he pronounced to have no understanding whatever
of the matters at issue, and as was natural to a shrewd observer
educated in the intensely practical school of American political life,
he felt utter contempt for the wordy futility and wild theories of the
French legislators. "For the rest, they _discuss_ nothing in their
assembly. One large half of the time is spent in hallooing and bawling."
Washington and Morris were both so alarmed and indignant at the excesses
committed by the revolutionists, and so frankly expressed their
feelings, as to create an impression in some quarters that they were
hostile to the revolution itself. The exact reverse was originally the
case. They sympathized most warmly with the desire for freedom, and with
the efforts made to attain it. Morris wrote to the President: "We have,
I think, every reason to wish that the patriots may be successful. The
generous wish that a free people must have to disseminate freedom, the
grateful emotion which rejoices in the happiness of a benefactor, the
interest we must feel as well in the liberty as in the power of this
country, all conspire to make us far from indifferent spectators. I say
that we have an _interest_ in the liberty of France. The leaders here
are our friends. Many of them have imbibed their principles in America,
and all have been fired by our example. Their opponents are by no means
rejoiced at the success of our revolution, and many of them are disposed
to form connections of the strictest kind with Great Britain." Both
Washington and Morris would have been delighted to see liberty
established in France; but they had no patience with the pursuit of the
bloody chimera which the revolutionists dignified with that title. The
one hoped for, and the other counseled, moderation among the friends of
republican freedom, not because they were opposed to it, but because
they saw that it could only be gained and kept by self-restraint. They
were, to say the least, perfectly excusable for believing that at that
time some form of monarchy, whether under king, dictator, or emperor,
was necessary to France. Every one agrees that there are certain men
wiser than their fellows; the only question is as to how these men can
be best chosen out, and to this there can be no absolute answer. No mode
will invariably give the best results; and the one that will come
nearest to doing so under given conditions will not work at all under
others. Where the people are enlightened and moral they are themselves
the ones to choose their rulers; and such a form of government is
unquestionably the highest of any, and the only one that a high-spirited
and really free nation will tolerate; but if they are corrupt and
degraded, they are unfit for republicanism, and need to be under an
entirely different system. The most genuine republican, if he has any
common sense, does not believe in a democratic government for every race
and in every age.
Morris was a true republican, and an American to the core. He was alike
free from truckling subserviency to European opinion,--a degrading
remnant of colonialism that unfortunately still lingers in certain
limited social and literary circles,--and from the uneasy self-assertion
that springs partly from sensitive vanity, and partly from a smothered
doubt as to one's real position. Like most men of strong character, he
had no taste for the "cosmopolitanism" that so generally indicates a
weak moral and mental make-up. He enjoyed his stay in Europe to the
utmost, and was intimate with the most influential men and charming
women of the time; but he was heartily glad to get back to America,
refused to leave it again, and always insisted that it was the most
pleasant of all places in which to live. While abroad he was simply a
gentleman among gentlemen. He never intruded his political views or
national prejudices upon his European friends; but he was not inclined
to suffer any imputation on his country. Any question about America that
was put in good faith, no matter how much ignorance it displayed, he
always answered good-humoredly; and he gives in his Diary some amusing
examples of such conversations. Once he was cross-examined by an
inquisitive French nobleman, still in the stage of civilization which
believes that no man can be paid to render a service to another,
especially a small service, and yet retain his self-respect and continue
to regard himself as the full political equal of his employer. One of
this gentleman's sagacious inquiries was as to how a shoemaker could, in
the pride of his freedom, think himself equal to a king, and yet accept
an order to make shoes; to which Morris replied that he would accept it
as a matter of business, and be glad of the chance to make them, since
it lay in the line of his duty; and that he would all the time consider
himself at full liberty to criticise his visitor, or the king, or any
one else, who lapsed from _his_ own duty. After recording several
queries of the same nature, and some rather abrupt answers, the Diary
for that day closes rather caustically with the comment: "This manner of
thinking and speaking, however, is too masculine for the climate I am
now in."
In a letter to Washington Morris made one of his usual happy guesses--if
forecasting the future by the aid of marvelous insight into human
character can properly be called a guess--as to what would happen to
France: "It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle
when it flies so wild; but as far as it is possible to guess this (late)
kingdom will be cast into a congeries of little democracies, laid out,
not according to rivers, mountains, etc., but with the square and
compass according to latitude and longitude," and adds that he thinks so
much fermenting matter will soon give the nation "a kind of political
colic."
He rendered some services to Washington that did not come in the line of
his public duty. One of these was to get him a watch, Washington having
written to have one purchased in Paris, of gold, "not a small, trifling,
nor a finical ornamental one, but a watch well executed in point of
workmanship, large and flat, with a plain, handsome key." Morris sent it
to him by Jefferson, "with two copper keys and one golden one, and a box
containing a spare spring and glasses." His next service to the great
Virginian, or rather to his family, was of a different kind, and he
records it with a smile at his own expense. "Go to M. Hudon's; he has
been waiting for me a long time. I stand for his statue of General
Washington, being the humble employment of a manikin. This is literally
taking the advice of St. Paul, to be all things to all men."
He corresponded with many men of note; not the least among whom was the
daring corsair, Paul Jones. The latter was very anxious to continue in
the service of the people with whom he had cast in his lot, and in
command of whose vessels he had reached fame. Morris was obliged to tell
him that he did not believe an American navy would be created for some
years to come, and advised him meanwhile to go into the service of the
Russians, as he expected there would soon be warm work on the Baltic;
and even gave him a hint as to what would probably be the best plan of
campaign. Paul Jones wanted to come to Paris; but from this Morris
dissuaded him. "A journey to this city can, I think, produce nothing but
the expense attending it; for neither pleasure nor profit can be
expected here, by one of your profession in particular; and, except that
it is a more dangerous residence than many others, I know of nothing
which may serve to you as an inducement."