MINISTER TO FRANCE.
In the spring of 1792, Morris received his credentials as minister to
France. There had been determined opposition in the Senate to the
confirmation of his appointment, which was finally carried only by a
vote of sixteen to eleven, mainly through the exertions of Rufus King.
His opponents urged the failure of the British negotiations, the
evidences repeatedly given of his proud, impatient spirit, and above all
his hostility to the French Revolution, as reasons why he should not be
made minister. Washington, however, as well as Hamilton, King, and the
other federalists, shared most of Morris's views with regard to the
Revolution, and insisted upon his appointment.
But the president, as good and wise a friend as Morris had, thought it
best to send him a word of warning, coupling with the statement of his
own unfaltering trust and regard, the reasons why the new diplomat
should observe more circumspection than his enemies thought him capable
of showing. For his opponents asserted that his brilliant, lively
imagination always inclined him to act so promptly as to leave no time
for cool judgment, and was, wrote Washington, "the primary cause of
those sallies which too often offend, and of that ridicule of character
which begets enmity not easy to be forgotten, but which might easily be
avoided if it were under the control of caution and prudence.... By
reciting [their objections] I give you a proof of my friendship, if I
give none of my policy."
Morris took his friend's advice in good part, and profited by it as far
as lay in his nature. He knew that he had a task of stupendous
difficulty before him; as it would be almost impossible for a minister
to steer clear of the quarrels springing from the ferocious hatred born
to each other by the royalists and the various republican factions. To
stand well with all parties he knew was impossible: but he thought it
possible, and merely so, to stand _well_ with the best people in each,
without greatly offending the others; and in order to do this, he had to
make up his mind to mingle with the worst as well as the best, to listen
unmoved to falsehoods so foul and calumnies so senseless as to seem the
ravings of insanity; and meanwhile to wear a front so firm and yet so
courteous as to ward off insult from his country and injury from
himself during the days when the whole people went crazy with the
blood-lust, when his friends were butchered by scores around him, and
when the rulers had fulfiled Mirabeau's terrible prophecy, and had
"paved the streets with their bodies."
But when he began his duties, he was already entangled in a most
dangerous intrigue, one of whose very existence he should not, as a
foreign minister, have known, still less have entered into. He got
enmeshed in it while still a private citizen, and could not honorably
withdraw, for it dealt with nothing less than the escape of the king and
queen from Paris. His chivalrous sympathy for the two hemmed-in, hunted
creatures, threatened by madmen and counseled by fools, joined with his
characteristic impulsiveness and fearlessness, to incline him to make an
effort to save them from their impending doom. A number of plans had
been made to get the king out of Paris; and as the managers of each were
of necessity ignorant of all the rest, they clashed with and thwarted
one another. Morris's scheme was made in concert with a M. de Monciel,
one of the royal ministers, and some other French gentlemen; and their
measures were so well taken that they would doubtless have succeeded had
not the king's nerve invariably failed him at the critical moment, and
brought delay after delay. The Swiss guards, faithful to their salt,
were always ready to cover his flight, and Lafayette would have helped
them.
Louis preferred Morris's plan to any of the others offered, and gave a
most striking proof of his preference by sending to the latter, towards
the end of July, to say how much he regretted that his advice had not
been followed, and to ask him if he would not take charge of the royal
papers and money. Morris was unwilling to take the papers, but finally
consented to receive the money, amounting in all to nearly seven hundred
and fifty thousand livres, which was to be paid out in hiring and
bribing the men who stood in the way of the escape; for most of the
revolutionists were as venal as they were bloodthirsty. Still the king
lingered; then came the 10th of August; the Swiss guards were
slaughtered, and the whole scheme was at an end. Some of the men engaged
in the plot were suspected; one, D'Angremont, was seized and condemned,
but he went to his death without betraying his fellows. The others, by
the liberal use of the money in Morris's possession, were saved, the
authorities being bribed to wink at their escape or concealment. Out of
the money that was left advances were made to Monciel and others;
finally, in 1796, Morris gave an accurate account of the expenditures
to the dead king's daughter, the Duchesse d'Angouleme, then at the
Austrian court, and turned over to her the remainder, consisting of a
hundred and forty-seven pounds.
Of course all this was work in which no minister had the least right to
share; but the whole crisis was one so completely without precedent that
it is impossible to blame Morris for what he did. The extraordinary
trust reposed in him, and the feeling that his own exertions were all
that lay between the two unfortunate sovereigns and their fate, roused
his gallantry and blinded him to the risk he himself ran, as well as to
the hazard to which he put his country's interests. He was under no
illusion as to the character of the people whom he was trying to serve.
He utterly disapproved the queen's conduct, and he despised the king,
noting the latter's feebleness and embarrassment, even on the occasion
of his presentation at court; he saw in them "a lack of mettle which
would ever prevent them from being truly royal"; but when in their
mortal agony they held out their hands to him for aid, his generous
nature forbade him to refuse it, nor could he look on unmoved as they
went helplessly down to destruction.
The rest of his two years' history as minister forms one of the most
brilliant chapters in our diplomatic annals. His boldness, and the
frankness with which he expressed his opinions, though they at times
irritated beyond measure the factions of the revolutionists who
successively grasped a brief but tremendous power, yet awed them, in
spite of themselves. He soon learned to combine courage and caution, and
his readiness, wit, and dash always gave him a certain hold over the
fiery nation to which he was accredited. He was firm and dignified in
insisting on proper respect being shown our flag, while he did all he
could to hasten the payment of our obligations to France. A very large
share of his time, also, was taken up with protesting against the French
decrees aimed at neutral--which meant American--commerce, and with
interfering to save American ship-masters, who had got into trouble by
unwittingly violating them. Like his successor, Mr. Washburne, in the
time of the commune, Morris was the only foreign minister who remained
in Paris during the terror. He stayed at the risk of his life; and yet,
while fully aware of his danger, he carried himself as coolly as if in a
time of profound peace, and never flinched for a moment when he was
obliged for his country's sake to call to account the rulers of France
for the time being--men whose power was as absolute as it was ephemeral
and bloody, who had indulged their desire for slaughter with the
unchecked ferocity of madmen, and who could by a word have had him slain
as thousands had been slain before him. Few foreign ministers have faced
such difficulties, and not one has ever come near to facing such dangers
as Morris did during his two years' term of service. His feat stands by
itself in diplomatic history; and, as a minor incident, the letters and
despatches he sent home give a very striking view of the French
Revolution.
As soon as he was appointed he went to see the French minister of
foreign affairs; and in answer to an observation of the latter stated
with his customary straightforwardness that it was true that, while a
mere private individual, sincerely friendly to France, and desirous of
helping her, and whose own nation could not be compromised by his acts,
he had freely taken part in passing events, had criticised the
constitution, and advised the king and his ministers; but he added that,
now that he was a public man, he would no longer meddle with their
affairs. To this resolution he kept, save that, as already described,
sheer humanity induced him to make an effort to save the king's life. He
had predicted what would ensue as the result of the exaggerated
decentralization into which the opponents of absolutism had rushed;
when they had split the state up into more than forty thousand
sovereignties, each district the sole executor of the law, and the only
judge of its propriety, and therefore obedient to it only so long as it
listed, and until rendered hostile by the ignorant whim or ferocious
impulse of the moment; and now he was to see his predictions come true.
In that brilliant and able state paper, the address he had drawn up for
Louis to deliver when, in 1791, the latter accepted the constitution,
the key-note of the situation was struck in the opening words: "It is no
longer a king who addresses you, Louis XVI. is a private individual";
and he had then scored off, point by point, the faults in a document
that created an unwieldy assembly of men unaccustomed to govern, that
destroyed the principle of authority, though no other could appeal to a
people helpless in their new-born liberty, and that created out of one
whole a jarring multitude of fractional sovereignties. Now he was to see
one of these same sovereignties rise up in successful rebellion against
the government that represented the whole, destroy it and usurp its
power, and establish over all France the rule of an anarchic despotism
which, by what seems to a free American a gross misnomer, they called a
democracy.
All through June, at the beginning of which month Morris had been
formally presented at court, the excitement and tumult kept increasing.
When, on the 20th, the mob forced the gates of the chateau, and made the
king put on the red cap, Morris wrote in his Diary that the constitution
had given its last groan. A few days afterwards he told Lafayette that
in six weeks everything would be over, and tried to persuade him that
his only chance was to make up his mind instantly to fight either for a
good constitution or for the wretched piece of paper which bore the
name. Just six weeks to a day from the date of this prediction came the
10th of August to verify it.
Throughout July the fevered pulses of the people beat with always
greater heat. Looking at the maddened mob the American minister thanked
God from his heart that in his own country there was no such populace,
and prayed with unwonted earnestness that our education and morality
should forever stave off such an evil. At court even the most purblind
dimly saw their doom. Calling there one morning he chronicles with a
matter of fact brevity, impressive from its very baldness, that nothing
of note had occurred except that they had stayed up all night expecting
to be murdered. He wrote home that he could not tell "whether the king
would live through the storm; for it blew hard."
His horror of the base mob, composed of people whose kind was absolutely
unknown in America, increased continually, as he saw them going on from
crimes that were great to crimes that were greater, incited by the
demagogues who flattered them and roused their passions and appetites;
and blindly raging because they were of necessity disappointed in the
golden prospects held out to them. He scorned the folly of the
enthusiasts and doctrinaires who had made a constitution all sail and no
ballast, that overset at the first gust; who had freed from all
restraint a mass of men as savage and licentious as they were wayward;
who had put the executive in the power of the legislature, and this
latter at the mercy of the leaders who could most strongly influence and
inflame the mob. But his contempt for the victims almost exceeded his
anger at their assailants. The king, who could suffer with firmness, and
who could act either not at all, or else with the worst possible effect,
had the head and heart that might have suited the monkish idea of a
female saint, but which were hopelessly out of place in any rational
being supposed to be fitted for doing good in the world. Morris wrote
home that he knew his friend Hamilton had no particular aversion to
kings, and would not believe them to be tigers; but that if Hamilton
came to Europe to see for himself, he would surely believe them to be
monkeys; the Empress of Russia was the only reigning sovereign whose
talents were not "considerably below par." At the moment of the final
shock the court was involved in a set of paltry intrigues "unworthy of
anything above the rank of a footman or a chambermaid. Every one had his
or her little project, and every little project had some abettors.
Strong, manly counsels frightened the weak, alarmed the envious, and
wounded the enervated minds of the lazy and luxurious." The few such
counsels that appeared were always approved, rarely adopted, and never
followed out.
Then in the sweltering heat of August, the end came. A raving, furious
horde stormed the chateau, and murdered, one by one, the brave
mountaineers who gave their lives for a sovereign too weak to be worthy
of such gallant bloodshed. King and queen fled to the National Assembly,
and the monarchy was over. Immediately after the awful catastrophe
Morris wrote to a friend: "The voracity of the court, the haughtiness of
the nobles, the sensuality of the church, have met their punishment in
the road of their transgressions. The oppressor has been squeezed by
the hands of the oppressed; but there remains yet to be acted an awful
scene in this great tragedy, played on the theatre of the universe for
the instruction of mankind."
Not the less did he dare everything, and jeopardize his own life in
trying to save some at least among the innocent who had been overthrown
in the crash of the common ruin. When on the 10th of August the whole
city lay abject at the mercy of the mob, hunted men and women, bereft of
all they had, and fleeing from a terrible death, with no hiding-place,
no friend who could shield them, turned in their terror-struck despair
to the one man in whose fearlessness and generous gallantry they could
trust. The shelter of Morris's house and flag was sought from early
morning till past midnight by people who had nowhere else to go and who
felt that within his walls they were sure of at least a brief safety
from the maddened savages in the streets. As far as possible they were
sent off to places of greater security; but some had to stay with him
till the storm lulled for a moment. An American gentleman who was in
Paris on that memorable day, after viewing the sack of the Tuileries,
thought it right to go to the house of the American minister. He found
him surrounded by a score of people, of both sexes, among them the old
Count d'Estaing, and other men of note, who had fought side by side with
us in our war for independence, and whom now our flag protected in their
hour of direst need. Silence reigned, only broken occasionally by the
weeping of the women and children. As his visitor was leaving, Morris
took him to one side, and told him that he had no doubt there were
persons on the watch who would find fault with his conduct as a minister
in receiving and protecting these people; that they had come of their
own accord, uninvited. "Whether my house will be a protection to them or
to me, God only knows; but I will not turn them out of it, let what will
happen to me; you see, sir, they are all persons to whom our country is
more or less indebted, and had they no such claim upon me, it would be
inhuman to force them into the hands of the assassins." No one of
Morris's countrymen can read his words even now without feeling a throb
of pride in the dead statesman, who, a century ago, held up so high the
honor of his nation's name in the times when the souls of all but the
very bravest were tried and found wanting.
Soon after this he ceased writing in his Diary, for fear it might fall
into the hands of men who would use it to incriminate his friends; and
for the same reason he had also to be rather wary in what he wrote
home, as his letters frequently bore marks of being opened, thanks to
what he laughingly called "patriotic curiosity." He was, however,
perfectly fearless as regards any ill that might befall himself; his
circumspection was only exercised on behalf of others, and his own
opinions were given as frankly as ever.
He pictured the French as huddled together, in an unreasoning panic,
like cattle before a thunderstorm. Their every act increased his
distrust of their capacity for self-government. They were for the time
agog with their republic, and ready to adopt any form of government with
a huzza; but that they would adopt a good form, or, having adopted it,
keep it, he did not believe; and he saw that the great mass of the
population were already veering round, under the pressure of
accumulating horrors, until they would soon be ready to welcome as a
blessing even a despotism, if so they could gain security to life and
property. They had made the common mistake of believing that to enjoy
liberty they had only to abolish authority; and the equally common
consequence was, that they were now, through anarchy, on the high road
to absolutism. Said Morris: "Since I have been in this country I have
seen the worship of many idols, and but little of the true God. I have
seen many of these idols broken, and some of them beaten to the dust. I
have seen the late constitution in one short year admired as a
stupendous monument of human wisdom, and ridiculed as an egregious
production of folly and vice. I wish much, very much, the happiness of
this inconstant people. I love them, I feel grateful for their efforts
in our cause, and I consider the establishment of a good constitution
here as the principal means, under Divine Providence, of extending the
blessings of freedom to the many millions of my fellow-men who groan in
bondage on the continent of Europe. But I do not greatly indulge the
flattering illusions of hope, because I do not yet perceive that
reformation of morals without which liberty is but an empty sound."
These words are such as could only come from a genuine friend of France,
and champion of freedom; from a strong, earnest man, saddened by the
follies of dreamers, and roused to stern anger by the licentious
wickedness of scoundrels who used the name of liberty to cloak the worst
abuses of its substance.
His stay in Paris was now melancholy indeed. The city was shrouded in a
gloom only relieved by the frenzied tumults that grew steadily more
numerous. The ferocious craving once roused could not be sated; the
thirst grew ever stronger as the draughts were deeper. The danger to
Morris's own person merely quickened his pulses, and roused his strong,
brave nature; he liked excitement, and the strain that would have been
too tense for weaker nerves keyed his own up to a fierce, half-exultant
thrilling. But the woes that befell those who had befriended him caused
him the keenest grief. It was almost unbearable to be seated quietly at
dinner, and hear by accident "that a friend was on his way to the place
of execution," and to have to sit still and wonder which of the guests
dining with him would be the next to go to the scaffold. The vilest
criminals swarmed in the streets, and amused themselves by tearing the
earrings from women's ears, and snatching away their watches. When the
priests shut up in the _carnes_, and the prisoners in the _abbaie_ were
murdered, the slaughter went on all day, and eight hundred men were
engaged in it.
He wrote home that, to give a true picture of France, he would have to
paint it like an Indian warrior, black and red. The scenes that passed
were literally beyond the imagination of the American mind. The most
hideous and nameless atrocities were so common as to be only alluded to
incidentally, and to be recited in the most matter-of-fact way in
connection with other events. For instance, a man applied to the
Convention for a recompense for damage done to his quarry, a pit dug
deep through the surface of the earth into the stone bed beneath: the
damage consisted in such a number of dead bodies having been thrown into
the pit as to choke it up so that he could no longer get men to work it.
Hundreds, who had been the first in the land, were thus destroyed
without form or trial, and their bodies thrown like dead dogs into the
first hole that offered. Two hundred priests were killed for no other
crime than having been conscientiously scrupulous about taking the
prescribed oath. The guillotine went smartly on, watched with a devilish
merriment by the fiends who were themselves to perish by the instrument
their own hands had wrought. "Heaven only knew who was next to drink of
the dreadful cup; as far as man could tell, there was to be no lack of
liquor for some time to come."
Among the new men who, one after another, sprang into the light, to
maintain their unsteady footing as leaders for but a brief time before
toppling into the dark abyss of death or oblivion that waited for each
and all, Dumouriez was for the moment the most prominent. He stood
towards the Gironde much as Lafayette had stood towards the
Constitutionalists of 1789: he led the army, as Lafayette once had led
it; and as the constitutional monarchists had fallen before his
fellow-republicans, so both he and they were to go down before the even
wilder extremists of the "Mountain." For the factions in Paris, face to
face with the banded might of the European monarchies, and grappling in
a grim death-struggle with the counter-revolutionists of the provinces,
yet fought one another with the same ferocity they showed towards the
common foe. Nevertheless, success was theirs; for against opponents only
less wicked than themselves they moved with an infinitely superior fire
and enthusiasm. Reeking with the blood of the guiltless, steeped in it
to the lips, branded with fresh memories of crimes and infamies without
number, and yet feeling in their very marrow that they were avenging
centuries of grinding and intolerable thralldom, and that the cause for
which they fought was just and righteous; with shameless cruelty and
corruption eating into their hearts' core, yet with their foreheads
kindled by the light of a glorious morning,--they moved with a ruthless
energy that paralyzed their opponents, the worn-out, tottering, crazy
despotisms, rotten with vice, despicable in their ludicrous pride of
caste, moribund in their military pedantry, and fore-doomed to perish
in the conflict they had courted. The days of Danton and Robespierre are
not days to which a French patriot cares to look back; but at any rate
he can regard them without the shame he must feel when he thinks of the
times of Louis Quinze. Danton and his like, at least, were men, and
stood far, far above the palsied coward--a eunuch in his lack of all
virile virtues--who misruled France for half a century; who, with his
followers, indulged in every crime and selfish vice known, save only
such as needed a particle of strength, or the least courage, in the
committing.
Morris first met Dumouriez when the latter was minister of foreign
affairs, shortly before the poor king was driven from the Tuileries. He
dined with him, and afterwards noted down that the society was noisy and
in bad style; for the grace and charm of French social life were gone,
and the raw republicans were ill at ease in the drawing-room. At this
time Morris commented often on the change in the look of Paris: all his
gay friends gone; the city sombre and uneasy. When he walked through the
streets, in the stifling air of a summer hot beyond precedent, as if the
elements sympathized with the passions of men, he met, instead of the
brilliant company of former days, only the few peaceable citizens left,
hurrying on their ways with frightened watchfulness; or else groups of
lolling ruffians, with sinister eyes and brutalized faces; or he saw in
the Champs de Mars squalid ragamuffins signing the petition for the
_decheance_.
Morris wrote Washington that Dumouriez was a bold, determined man,
bitterly hostile to the Jacobins and all the extreme revolutionary
clubs, and, once he was in power, willing to risk his own life in the
effort to put them down. However, the hour of the Jacobins had not yet
struck, and the Revolution had now been permitted to gather such headway
that it could be stopped only by a master genius; and Dumouriez was none
such.
Still he was an able man, and, as Morris wrote home, in his military
operations he combined the bravery of a skilled soldier and the arts of
an astute politician. To be sure, his victories were not in themselves
very noteworthy; the artillery skirmish at Valmy was decided by the
reluctance of the Germans to come on, not by the ability of the French
to withstand them; and at Jemappes the imperialists were hopelessly
outnumbered. Still the results were most important, and Dumouriez
overran Flanders in the face of hostile Europe. He at once proceeded to
revolutionize the government of his conquest in the most approved
French fashion, which was that all the neighbors of France should
receive liberty whether or no, and should moreover pay the expense of
having it thrust upon them: accordingly he issued a proclamation to his
new fellow-citizens, "which might be summed up in a few words as being
an order to them to be free forthwith, according to his ideas of
freedom, on pain of military execution."
He had things all his own way for the moment, but after a while he was
defeated by the Germans; then while the Gironde tottered to its fall, he
fled to the very foes he had been fighting, as the only way of escaping
death from the men whose favorite he had been. Morris laughed bitterly
at the fickle people. One anecdote he gives is worth preserving: "It is
a year ago that a person who mixed in tumults to see what was doing,
told me of a _sans culottes_ who, bellowing against poor Lafayette, when
Petion appeared, changed at once his note to '_Vive Petion!_' and then,
turning round to one of his companions, 'Vois tu! C'est notre ami, n'est
ce pas? Eh bien, il passera comme les autres.' And, lo! the prophecy is
fulfilled; and I this instant learn that Petion, confined to his room as
a traitor or conspirator, has fled, on the 24th of June, 1793, from
those whom he sent, on the 20th of June, 1792, to assault the king in
the Tuileries. In short you will find, in the list of those who were
ordered by their brethren to be arrested, the names of those who have
proclaimed themselves to be the prime movers of the revolution of the
10th of August, and the fathers of the republic."
About the time the _sans culottes_ had thus bellowed against Lafayette,
the latter met Morris, for the first time since he was presented at
court as minister, and at once spoke to him in his tone of ancient
familiarity. The Frenchman had been brought at last to realize the truth
of his American friend's theories and predictions. It was much too late
to save himself, however. After the 10th of August he was proclaimed by
the Assembly, found his troops falling away from him, and fled over the
frontier; only to be thrown into prison by the allied monarchs, who
acted with their usual folly and baseness. Morris, contemptuously
impatient of the part he had played, wrote of him: "Thus his circle is
completed. He has spent his fortune on a revolution, and is now crushed
by the wheel which he put in motion. He lasted longer than I expected."
But this momentary indignation soon gave way to a generous sympathy for
the man who had served America so well, and who, if without the great
abilities necessary to grapple with the tumult of French affairs, had
yet always acted with such unselfish purity of motive. Lafayette, as
soon as he was imprisoned, wrote to the American minister in Holland,
alleging that he had surrendered his position as a French subject, and
was now an American citizen, and requesting the American representatives
in Europe to procure his release. His claim was of course untenable;
and, though the American government did all it could on his behalf
through its foreign ministers, and though Washington himself wrote a
strong letter of appeal to the Austrian emperor, he remained in prison
until the peace, several years later.
All Lafayette's fortune was gone, and while in prison he was reduced to
want. As soon as Morris heard this, he had the sum of ten thousand
florins forwarded to the prisoner by the United States bankers at
Amsterdam; pledging his own security for the amount, which was, however,
finally allowed by the government under the name of compensation for
Lafayette's military services in America. Morris was even more active in
befriending Madame de Lafayette and her children. To the former he lent
from his own private funds a hundred thousand livres, enabling her to
pay her debts to the many poor people who had rendered services to her
family. To the proud, sensitive lady the relief was great, much though
it hurt her to be under any obligation: she wrote to her friend that he
had broken the chains that loaded her down, and had done it in a way
that made her feel the consolation, rather than the weight, of the
obligation. But he was to do still more for her; for, when she was cast
into prison by the savage Parisian mob, his active influence on her
behalf saved her from death. In a letter to him, written some time
later, she says, after speaking of the money she had borrowed: "This is
a slight obligation, it is true, compared with that of my life, but
allow me to remember both while life lasts, with a sentiment of
gratitude which it is precious to feel."
There were others whose fortunes turned with the wheel of fate, for whom
Morris felt no such sympathy as for the Lafayettes. Among the number was
the Duke of Orleans, now transformed into _citoyen Egalite_. Morris
credited this graceless debauchee with criminal ambitions which he
probably did not possess, saying that he doubted the public virtue of a
profligate, and could not help distrusting such a man's pretensions; nor
is it likely that he regretted much the fate of the man who died under
the same guillotine which, with his assent, had fallen on the neck of
the king, his cousin.
It needed no small amount of hardihood for a man of Morris's prominence
and avowed sentiments to stay in Paris when Death was mowing round him
with a swath at once so broad and so irregular. The power was passing
rapidly from hand to hand, through a succession of men fairly crazy in
their indifference to bloodshed. Not a single other minister of a
neutral nation dared stay. In fact, the foreign representatives were
preparing to go away even before the final stroke was given to the
monarchy, and soon after the 10th of August the entire _corps
diplomatique_ left Paris as rapidly as the various members could get
their passports. These the new republican government was at first very
reluctant to grant; indeed, when the Venetian ambassador started off he
was very ignominiously treated and brought back. Morris went to the
British ambassador's to take leave, having received much kindness from
him, and having been very intimate in his house. He found Lord Gower in
a tearing passion because he could not get passports; he had burned his
papers, and strongly advised his guest to do likewise. On this advice
the latter refused to act, nor would he take the broad hints given him
to the effect that honor required him to quit the country. Morris could
not help showing his amusement at the fear and anger exhibited at the
ambassador's, "which exhibition of spirits his lordship could hardly
bear." Talleyrand, who was getting his own passport, also did all in his
power to persuade the American minister to leave, but without avail.
Morris was not a man to be easily shaken in any determination he had
taken after careful thought. He wrote back to Jefferson that his opinion
was directly opposed to the views of such people as had tried to
persuade him that his own honor, and that of America, required him to
leave France; and that he was inclined to attribute such counsel mainly
to fear. It was true that the position was not without danger; but he
presumed that, when the president named him to the embassy, it was not
for his own personal pleasure or safety, but for the interests of the
country; and these he could certainly serve best by staying.
He was able to hold his own only by a mixture of tact and firmness. Any
signs of flinching would have ruined him outright. He would submit to no
insolence. The minister of foreign affairs was, with his colleagues,
engaged in certain schemes in reference to the American debt, which were
designed to further their own private interests; he tried to bully
Morris into acquiescence, and, on the latter's point-blank refusal, sent
him a most insulting letter. Morris promptly retorted by demanding his
passports. France, however, was very desirous not to break with the
United States, the only friend she had left in the world; and the
offending minister sent a sullen letter of apology, asking him to
reconsider his intention to leave, and offering entire satisfaction for
every point of which he complained. Accordingly Morris stayed.
He was, however, continually exposed to insults and worries, which were
always apologized for by the government for the time being, on the
ground, no doubt true, that in such a period of convulsions it was
impossible to control their subordinate agents. Indeed, the changes from
one form of anarchy to another went on so rapidly that the laws of
nations had small chance of observance.
One evening a number of people, headed by a commissary of the section,
entered his house, and demanded to search it for arms said to be hidden
therein. Morris took a high tone, and was very peremptory with them;
told them that they should not examine his house, that it held no arms,
and moreover that, if he had possessed any, they should not touch one of
them; he also demanded the name of "the blockhead or rascal" who had
informed against him, announcing his intention to bring him to
punishment. Finally he got them out of the house, and the next morning
the commissary called with many apologies, which were accepted.
Another time he was arrested in the street for not having a _carte de
citoyen_, but he was released as soon as it was found out who he was.
Again he was arrested while traveling in the country, on the pretence
that his passport was out of date; an insult for which the government at
once made what amends they could. His house was also visited another
time by armed men, whom, as before, he persuaded to go away. Once or
twice, in the popular tumults, even his life was in danger; on one
occasion it is said that it was only saved by the fact of his having a
wooden leg, which made him known to the mob as "a cripple of the
American war for freedom." Rumors even got abroad in England and America
that he had been assassinated.
Morris's duties were manifold, and as harassing to himself as they were
beneficial to his country. Sometimes he would interfere on behalf of
America as a whole, and endeavor to get obnoxious decrees of the
Assembly repealed; and again he would try to save some private citizen
of the United States who had got himself into difficulties. Reports of
the French minister of foreign affairs, as well as reports of the
_comite de salut public_, alike bear testimony to the success of his
endeavors, whenever success was possible, and unconsciously show the
value of the services he rendered to his country. Of course it was often
impossible to obtain complete redress, because, as Morris wrote home,
the government, while all-powerful in certain cases, was in others not
merely feeble, but enslaved, and was often obliged to commit acts the
consequences of which the nominal leaders both saw and lamented. Morris
also, while doing all he could for his fellow-citizens, was often
obliged to choose between their interests and those of the nation at
large; and he of course decided in favor of the latter, though well
aware of the clamor that was certain to be raised against him in
consequence by those who, as he caustically remarked, found it the
easiest thing in the world to get anything they wanted from the French
government _until they had tried_.
One of his most important transactions was in reference to paying off
the debt due by America for amounts loaned her during the war for
independence. The interest and a part of the principal had already been
paid. At the time when Morris was made minister, the United States had a
large sum of money, destined for the payment of the public debt, lying
idle in the hands of the bankers at Amsterdam; and this sum both Morris
and the American minister to Holland, Mr. Short, thought could be well
applied to the payment of part of our remaining obligation to France.
The French government was consulted, and agreed to receive the sum; but
hardly was the agreement entered into before the monarchy was
overturned. The question at once arose as to whether the money could be
rightfully paid over to the men who had put themselves at the head of
affairs, and who, a month hence, might themselves be ousted by others
who would not acknowledge the validity of a payment made to them. Short
thought the payment should be stopped, and, as it afterwards turned out,
the home authorities agreed with him. But Morris thought otherwise, and
paid over the amount. Events fully justified his course, for France
never made any difficulty in the matter, and even had she done so, as
Morris remarked, America had the staff in her own hands, and could walk
which way she pleased, for she owed more money, and in the final
adjustment could insist on the amount paid being allowed on account of
the debt.
The French executive council owed Morris gratitude for his course in
this matter; but they became intensely irritated with him shortly
afterwards because he refused to fall in with certain proposals they
made to him as to the manner of applying part of the debt to the
purchase of provisions and munitions for San Domingo. Morris had good
reason to believe that there was a private speculation at the bottom of
this proposal, and declined to accede to it. The urgency with which it
was made, and the wrath which his course excited, confirmed his
suspicions, and he persisted in his refusal although it almost brought
about a break with the men then carrying on the government. Afterwards,
when these men fell with the Gironde, he wrote home: "I mentioned to you
the plan of a speculation on drafts to have been made on the United
States, could my concurrence have been procured. Events have shown that
this speculation would have been a good one to the parties, who would
have gained (and the French nation of course have lost) about fifty
thousand pounds sterling in eighty thousand. I was informed at that time
that the disappointed parties would attempt to have me recalled, and
some more tractable character sent, who would have the good sense to
look after his own interest. Well, sir, nine months have elapsed, and
now, if I were capable of such things, I think it would be no difficult
matter to have some of them hanged; indeed it is highly probable that
they will experience a fate of that sort."
Much of his time was also taken up in remonstrating against the attacks
of French privateers on American shipping. These, however, went steadily
on until, half a dozen years afterwards, we took the matter into our own
hands, and in the West Indies inflicted a smart drubbing, not only on
the privateers of France, but on her regular men-of-war as well. He also
did what he could for the French officers who had served in America
during the War of Independence, most of whom were forced to flee from
France after the outbreak of the Revolution.
His letters home, even after his regular duties had begun to be
engrossing, contained a running commentary on the events that were
passing around him. His forecasts of events within France were
remarkably shrewd, and he displayed a wonderful insight into the motives
and characters of the various leaders; but at first he was all at sea in
his estimate of the military situation, being much more at home among
statesmen than soldiers. He had expected the allied sovereigns to make
short work of the raw republican armies, and was amazed at the success
of the latter. But he very soon realized how the situation stood; that
whereas the Austrian and Prussian troops simply came on in well-drilled,
reluctant obedience to their commanding officers, the soldiers of
France, on the contrary, were actuated by a fiery spirit the like of
which had hardly been seen since the crusades. The bitterness of the
contest was appalling, and so was the way in which the ranks of the
contestants were thinned out. The extreme republicans believed in their
creed with a furious faith; and they were joined by their
fellow-citizens with an almost equal zeal, when once it had become
evident that the invaders were hostile not only to the Republic but to
France itself, and very possibly meditated its dismemberment.
When the royal and imperial forces invaded France in 1792, they
threatened such ferocious vengeance as to excite the most desperate
resistance, and yet they backed up their high sounding words by deeds so
faulty, weak, and slow as to make themselves objects of contempt rather
than dread. The Duke of Brunswick in particular, as a prelude to some
very harmless military manoeuvres, issued a singularly lurid and foolish
manifesto, announcing that he would deliver up Paris to utter
destruction and would give over all the soldiers he captured to military
execution. Morris said that his address was in substance, "Be all
against me, for I am opposed to you all, and make a good resistance, for
there is no longer any hope;" and added that it would have been wiser
to have begun with some great success and then to have carried the
danger near those whom it was desired to intimidate. As it was, the
Duke's campaign failed ignominiously, and all the invaders were driven
back, for France rose as one man, her warriors overflowed on every side,
and bore down all her foes by sheer weight of numbers and impetuous
enthusiasm. Her government was a despotism as well as an anarchy; it was
as totally free from the drawbacks as from the advantages of the
democratic system that it professed to embody. Nothing could exceed the
merciless energy of the measures adopted. Half-way wickedness might have
failed; but a wholesale murder of the disaffected, together with a
confiscation of all the goods of the rich, and a vigorous conscription
of the poor for soldiers, secured success, at least for the time being.
The French made it a war of men; so that the price of labor rose
enormously at once, and the condition of the working classes forthwith
changed greatly for the better--one good result of the Revolution, at
any rate.
Morris wrote home very soon after the 10th of August that the then
triumphant revolutionists, the Girondists or party of Brissot, who had
supplanted the moderate party of Lafayette exactly as the latter had
succeeded the aristocracy, would soon in their turn be overthrown by men
even more extreme and even more bloodthirsty; and that thus it would go
on, wave after wave, until at last the wizard arose who could still
them. By the end of the year the storm had brewed long enough to be near
the bursting point. One of the promoters of the last outbreak, now
himself marked as a victim, told Morris that he personally would die
hard, but that most of his colleagues, though like him doomed to
destruction, and though so fierce in dealing with the moderate men, now
showed neither the nerve nor hardihood that alone could stave off the
catastrophe.
Meanwhile the king, as Morris wrote home, showed in his death a better
spirit than his life had promised; for he died in a manner becoming his
dignity, with calm courage, praying that his foes might be forgiven and
his deluded people be benefited by his death,--his words from the
scaffold being drowned by the drums of Santerre. As a whole, the Gironde
had opposed putting the king to death, and thus capping the structure
whose foundations they had laid; they held back all too late. The fabric
of their system was erected on a quagmire, and it now settled down and
crushed the men who had built it. "All people of morality and
intelligence had long agreed that as yet republican virtues were not of
Gallic growth;" and so the power slipped naturally into the grasp of the
lowest and most violent, of those who were loudest to claim the
possession of republican principles, while in practice showing that they
had not even the dimmest idea of what such principles meant.
The leaders were quite at the mercy of the gusts of fierce passion that
swayed the breasts of their brutal followers. Morris wrote home that the
nominal rulers, or rather the few by whom these rulers were directed,
had finally gained very just ideas of the value of popular opinion; but
that they were not in a condition to act according to their knowledge;
and that if they were able to reach harbor there would be quite as much
of good luck as of good management about it, and, at any rate, a part of
the crew would have to be thrown overboard.
Then the Mountain rose under Danton and Marat, and the party of the
Gironde was entirely put down. The leaders were cast into prison, with
the certainty before their eyes that the first great misfortune to
France would call them from their dungeons to act as expiatory victims.
The Jacobins ruled supreme, and under them the government became a
despotism in principle as well as in practice. Part of the Convention
arrested the rest; and the revolutionary tribunals ruled red-handed,
with a whimsical and ferocious tyranny. Said Morris: "It is an
emphatical phrase among the patriots that _terror is the order of the
day_; some years have elapsed since Montesquieu wrote that the principle
of arbitrary governments is _fear_." The prisons were choked with
_suspects_, and blood flowed more freely than ever. Terror had reached
its highest point. Danton was soon to fall before Robespierre. Among a
host of other victims the queen died, with a brave dignity that made
people half forget her manifold faults; and Philippe Egalite, the
dissolute and unprincipled scoundrel, after a life than which none could
be meaner and more unworthy, now at the end went to his death with calm
and unflinching courage.
One man had a very narrow escape. This was Thomas Paine, the Englishman,
who had at one period rendered such a striking service to the cause of
American independence, while the rest of his life had been as ignoble as
it was varied. He had been elected to the Convention, and, having sided
with the Gironde, was thrown into prison by the Jacobins. He at once
asked Morris to demand him as an American citizen; a title to which he
of course had no claim. Morris refused to interfere too actively,
judging rightly that Paine would be saved by his own insignificance and
would serve his own interests best by keeping still. So the filthy
little atheist had to stay in prison, "where he amused himself with
publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ." There are infidels and
infidels; Paine belonged to the variety--whereof America possesses at
present one or two shining examples--that apparently esteems a bladder
of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.
It is not a type that appeals to the sympathy of an onlooker, be said
onlooker religious or otherwise.
Morris never paid so much heed to the military events as to the progress
of opinion in France, believing "that such a great country must depend
more upon interior sentiment than exterior operations." He took a half
melancholy, half sardonic interest in the overthrow of the Catholic
religion by the revolutionists; who had assailed it with the true French
weapon, ridicule, but ridicule of a very grim and unpleasant kind. The
people who five years before had fallen down in the dirt as the
consecrated matter passed by, now danced the carmagnole in holy
vestments, and took part in some other mummeries a great deal more
blasphemous. At the famous Feast of Reason, which Morris described as a
kind of opera performed in Notre Dame, the president of the Convention,
and other public characters, adored on bended knees a girl who stood in
the place _ci-devant_ most holy to personate Reason herself. This girl,
Saunier by name, followed the trades of an opera dancer and harlot; she
was "very beautiful and next door to an idiot as to her intellectual
gifts." Among her feats was having appeared in a ballet in a dress
especially designed, by the painter David, at her bidding, to be more
indecent than nakedness. Altogether she was admirably fitted, both
morally and mentally, to personify the kind of reason shown and admired
by the French revolutionists.
Writing to a friend who was especially hostile to Romanism, Morris once
remarked, with the humor that tinged even his most serious thoughts,
"Every day of my life gives me reason to question my own infallibility;
and of course leads me further from confiding in that of the pope. But I
have lived to see a new religion arise. It consists in a denial of all
religion, and its votaries have the superstition of not being
superstitious. They have this with as much zeal as any other sect, and
are as ready to lay waste the world in order to make proselytes."
Another time, speaking of his country place at Sainport, to which he
had retired from Paris, he wrote: "We are so scorched by a long drought
that in spite of all philosophic notions we are beginning our procession
to obtain the favor of the _bon dieu_. Were it proper for _un homme
public et protestant_ to interfere, I should be tempted to tell them
that mercy is before sacrifice." Those individuals of arrested mental
development who now make pilgrimages to our Lady of Lourdes had plenty
of prototypes, even in the atheistical France of the Revolution.
In his letters home Morris occasionally made clear-headed comments on
American affairs. He considered that "we should be unwise in the extreme
to involve ourselves in the contests of European nations, where our
weight could be but small, though the loss to ourselves would be
certain. We ought to be extremely watchful of foreign affairs, but there
is a broad line between vigilance and activity." Both France and England
had violated their treaties with us; but the latter "had behaved worst,
and with deliberate intention." He especially laid stress upon the need
of our having a navy; "with twenty ships of the line at sea no nation on
earth will dare to insult us;" even aside from individual losses, five
years of war would involve more national expense than the support of a
navy for twenty years, and until we rendered ourselves respectable, we
should continue to be insulted. He never showed greater wisdom than in
his views about our navy; and his party, the federalists, started to
give us one; but it had hardly been begun before the Jeffersonians came
into power, and, with singular foolishness, stopped the work.
Washington heartily sympathized with Morris's views as to the French
Revolution; he wrote him that events had more than made good his
gloomiest predictions. Jefferson, however, was utterly opposed to his
theories, and was much annoyed at the forcible way in which he painted
things as they were; characteristically enough, he only showed his
annoyance by indirect methods,--leaving Morris's letters unanswered,
keeping him in the dark as to events at home, etc. Morris understood all
this perfectly, and was extremely relieved when Randolph became
secretary of state in Jefferson's stead. Almost immediately afterwards,
however, he was himself recalled. The United States, having requested
the French government to withdraw Genet, a harlequin rather than a
diplomat, it was done at once, and in return a request was forwarded
that the United States would reciprocate by relieving Morris, which of
course had to be done also. The revolutionary authorities both feared
and disliked Morris; he could neither be flattered nor bullied, and he
was known to disapprove of their excesses. They also took umbrage at his
haughtiness; an unfortunate expression he used in one of his official
letters to them, "ma cour," gave great offense, as being
unrepublican--precisely as they had previously objected to Washington's
using the phrase "your people" in writing to the king.
Washington wrote him a letter warmly approving of his past conduct.
Nevertheless Morris was not over-pleased at being recalled. He thought
that, as things then were in France, any minister who gave satisfaction
to its government would prove forgetful of the interests of America. He
was probably right; at any rate, what he feared was just what happened
under his successor, Monroe--a very amiable gentleman, but distinctly
one who comes in the category of those whose greatness is thrust upon
them. However, under the circumstances, it was probably impossible for
our government to avoid recalling Morris.
He could say truthfully: "I have the consolation to have made no
sacrifice either of personal or national dignity, and I believe I should
have obtained everything if the American government had refused to
recall me." His services had been invaluable to us; he had kept our
national reputation at a high point, by the scrupulous heed with which
he saw that all our obligations were fulfilled, as well as by the firm
courage with which he insisted on our rights being granted us. He
believed "that all our treaties, however onerous, must be strictly
fulfilled according to their true intent and meaning. The honest nation
is that which, like the honest man, 'hath to its plighted faith and vow
forever firmly stood, and though it promise to its loss, yet makes that
promise good;'" and in return he demanded that others should mete to us
the same justice we meted to them. He met each difficulty the instant it
arose, ever on the alert to protect his country and his countrymen; and
what an ordinary diplomat could barely have done in time of peace, he
succeeded in doing amid the wild, shifting tumult of the Revolution,
when almost every step he made was at his own personal hazard. He took
precisely the right stand; had he taken too hostile a position, he would
have been driven from the country, whereas had he been a sympathizer, he
would have more or less compromised America, as his successor afterwards
did. We have never had a foreign minister who deserved more honor than
Morris.
One of the noteworthy features in his letters home was the accuracy
with which he foretold the course of events in the political world.
Luzerne once said to him, "Vous dites toujours les choses
extraordinaires qui se realisent;" and many other men, after some given
event had taken place, were obliged to confess their wonder at the way
in which Morris's predictions concerning it had been verified. A notable
instance was his writing to Washington: "Whatever may be the lot of
France in remote futurity ... it seems evident that she must soon be
governed by a single despot. Whether she will pass to that point through
the medium of a triumvirate or other small body of men, seems as yet
undetermined. I think it most probable that she will." This was
certainly a remarkably accurate forecast as to the precise stages by
which the already existing despotism was to be concentrated in a single
individual. He always insisted that, though it was difficult to foretell
how a single man would act, yet it was easy with regard to a mass of
men, for their peculiarities neutralized each other, and it was
necessary only to pay heed to the instincts of the average animal. He
also gave wonderfully clear-cut sketches of the more prominent actors in
affairs; although one of his maxims was that "in examining historical
facts we are too apt to ascribe to individuals the events which are
produced by general causes." Danton, for instance, he described as
always believing, and, what was worse for himself, maintaining, that a
popular system of government was absurd in France; that the people were
too ignorant, too inconstant, too corrupt, and felt too much the need of
a master; in short, that they had reached the point where Cato was a
madman, and Caesar a necessary evil. He acted on these principles; but he
was too voluptuous for his ambition, too indolent to acquire supreme
power, and he cared for great wealth rather than great fame; so he "fell
at the feet of Robespierre." Similarly, said Morris, there passed away
all the men of the 10th of August, all the men of the 2d of September;
the same mob that hounded them on with wild applause when they grasped
the blood-stained reins of power, a few months later hooted at them with
ferocious derision as they went their way to the guillotine. Paris ruled
France, and the _sans culottes_ ruled Paris; factions continually arose,
waging inexplicable war, each in turn acquiring a momentary influence
which was founded on fear alone, and all alike unable to build up any
stable or lasting government.
Each new stroke of the guillotine weakened the force of liberal
sentiment, and diminished the chances of a free system. Morris wondered
only that, in a country ripe for a tyrant's rule, four years of
convulsions among twenty-four millions of people had brought forth
neither a soldier nor yet a statesman, whose head was fitted to wear the
cap that fortune had woven. Despising the mob as utterly as did Oliver
Cromwell himself, and realizing the supine indifference with which the
French people were willing to accept a master, he yet did full justice
to the pride with which they resented outside attack, and the enthusiasm
with which they faced their foes. He saw the immense resources possessed
by a nation to whom war abroad was a necessity for the preservation of
peace at home, and with whom bankruptcy was but a starting-point for
fresh efforts. The whole energy and power lay in the hands of the
revolutionists; the men of the old regime had fled, leaving only that
"waxen substance," the propertied class, "who in foreign wars count so
much, and in civil wars so little." He had no patience with those
despicable beings, the traders and merchants who have forgotten how to
fight, the rich who are too timid to guard their wealth, the men of
property, large or small, who need peace, and yet have not the sense and
courage to be always prepared to conquer it.
In his whole attitude towards the Revolution, Morris represents better
than any other man the clear-headed, practical statesman, who is
genuinely devoted to the cause of constitutional freedom. He was utterly
opposed to the old system of privilege on the one hand, and to the wild
excesses of the fanatics on the other. The few liberals of the
Revolution were the only men in it who deserve our true respect. The
republicans who champion the deeds of the Jacobins, are traitors to
their own principles; for the spirit of Jacobinism, instead of being
identical with, is diametrically opposed to the spirit of true liberty.
Jacobinism, socialism, communism, nihilism, and anarchism--these are the
real foes of a democratic republic, for each one, if it obtains control,
obtains it only as the sure forerunner of a despotic tyranny and of some
form of the one-man power.
Morris, an American, took a clearer and truer view of the French
Revolution than did any of the contemporary European observers. Yet
while with them it was the all-absorbing event of the age, with him, as
is evident by his writings, it was merely an important episode; for to
him it was dwarfed by the American Revolution of a decade or two back.
To the Europeans of the present day, as yet hardly awake to the fact
that already the change has begun that will make Europe but a fragment,
instead of the whole, of the civilized world, the French Revolution is
the great historical event of our times. But in reality it affected only
the people of western and central Europe; not the Russians, not the
English-speaking nations, not the Spaniards who dwelt across the
Atlantic. America and Australia had their destinies moulded by the
crisis of 1776, not by the crisis of 1789. What the French Revolution
was to the states within Europe, that the American Revolution was to the
continents without.