Petition in Hieroglyphs.
With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For
there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however,
we lump together into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous
but dim, far off, as the _canaille;_ or, more humanely, as “the
masses.” Masses, indeed: and yet, singular to say, if, with an
effort of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into
their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the masses
consist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own heart and
sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick
him he will bleed. O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence;
thou, for example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush
covering of honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with
dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world watch-tower
solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,—what a thought: that
every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself
art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for _his_
infinite Kingdom (this life which he has got, once only, in the
middle of Eternities); with a spark of the Divinity, what thou
callest an immortal soul, in him!
Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness;
their hearth cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in this world,
rises no Era of Hope; hardly now in the other,—if it be not hope
in the gloomy rest of Death, for their faith too is failing.
Untaught, uncomforted, unfed! A dumb generation; their voice only
an inarticulate cry: spokesman, in the King’s Council, in the
world’s forum, they have none that finds credence. At rare
intervals (as now, in 1775), they will fling down their hoes and
hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind,[29] flock
hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length even of
Versailles. Turgot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the
absurdest Corn-laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even
“factitious;” an indubitable scarcity of bread. And so, on the
second day of May 1775, these waste multitudes do here, at
Versailles Château, in wide-spread wretchedness, in sallow faces,
squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic
writing, their Petition of Grievances. The Château gates have to
be shut; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to
them. They have seen the King’s face; their Petition of
Grievances has been, if not read, looked at. For answer, two of
them are hanged, on a “new gallows forty feet high;” and the rest
driven back to their dens,—for a time.
Clearly a difficult “point” for Government, that of dealing with
these masses;—if indeed it be not rather the sole point and
problem of Government, and all other points mere accidental
crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let
Charter-Chests, Use and Wont, Law common and special say what
they will, the masses count to so many millions of units; made,
to all appearance, by God,—whose Earth this is declared to be.
Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews
and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau,
the crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years,
from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d’Or: “The savages
descending in torrents from the mountains; our people ordered not
to go out. The Curate in surplice and stole; Justice in its
peruke; Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, till the
bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an
hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm
persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble
does when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather frightful wild
animals, clad in jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of
leather studded with copper nails; of gigantic stature,
heightened by high wooden-clogs (_sabots_); rising on tiptoe to
see the fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their sides with
their elbows: their faces haggard (_figures hâves_), and covered
with their long greasy hair; the upper part of the visage waxing
pale, the lower distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel
laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience. And these people pay
the _taille!_ And you want further to take their salt from them!
And you know not what it is you are stripping barer, or as you
call it, governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its cold
dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with
impunity; always till the catastrophe come!—Ah Madame, such
Government by Blindman’s-buff, stumbling along too far, will end
in the General Overturn (_culbute générale_).”[30]
Undoubtedly a dark feature this in an Age of Gold,—Age, at least,
of Paper and Hope! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies,
O croaking Friend of Men: ’tis long that we have heard such; and
still the old world keeps wagging, in its old way.