The Book of the Law.
If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of
the Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place,
gain comparatively small attention from us, how much less can
this poor Legislative! It has its Right Side and its Left; the
less Patriotic and the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or
now: it spouts and speaks: listens to Reports, reads Bills and
Laws; works in its vocation, for a season: but the history of
France, one finds, is seldom or never there. Unhappy Legislative,
what can History do with it; if not drop a tear over it, almost
in silence? First of the two-year Parliaments of France, which,
if Paper Constitution and oft-repeated National Oath could avail
aught, were to follow in softly-strong indissoluble sequence
while Time ran,—it had to vanish dolefully within one year; and
there came no second like it. Alas! your biennial Parliaments in
endless indissoluble sequence; they, and all that Constitutional
Fabric, built with such explosive Federation Oaths, and its
top-stone brought out with dancing and variegated radiance, went
to pieces, like frail crockery, in the crash of things; and
already, in eleven short months, were in that Limbo near the
Moon, with the ghosts of other Chimeras. There, except for rare
specific purposes, let them rest, in melancholy peace.
On the whole, how unknown is a man to himself; or a public Body
of men to itself! Æsop’s fly sat on the chariot-wheel,
exclaiming, What a dust I do raise! Great Governors, clad in
purple with fasces and insignia, are governed by their valets, by
the pouting of their women and children; or, in Constitutional
countries, by the paragraphs of their Able Editors. Say not, I am
this or that; I am doing this or that! For thou knowest _it_ not,
thou knowest only the name it as yet goes by. A purple
Nebuchadnezzar rejoices to feel himself now verily Emperor of
this great Babylon which he has builded; and _is_ a nondescript
biped-quadruped, on the eve of a seven-years course of grazing!
These Seven Hundred and Forty-five elected individuals doubt not
but they are the First biennial Parliament, come to govern France
by parliamentary eloquence: and they _are_ what? And they have
come to do what? Things foolish and not wise!
It is much lamented by many that this First Biennial had no
members of the old Constituent in it, with their experience of
parties and parliamentary tactics; that such was their foolish
Self-denying Law. Most surely, old members of the Constituent had
been welcome to us here. But, on the other hand, what old or what
new members of any Constituent under the Sun could have
effectually profited? There are First biennial Parliaments so
postured as to be, in a sense, _beyond_ wisdom; where wisdom and
folly differ only in degree, and wreckage and dissolution are the
appointed issue for both.
Old-Constituents, your Barnaves, Lameths and the like, for whom a
special Gallery has been set apart, where they may sit in honour
and listen, are in the habit of sneering at these new
Legislators;[408] but let not us! The poor Seven Hundred and
Forty-five, sent together by the active citizens of France, are
what they could be; do what is fated them. That they are of
Patriot temper we can well understand. Aristocrat Noblesse had
fled over the marches, or sat brooding silent in their unburnt
Châteaus; small prospect had they in Primary Electoral
Assemblies. What with Flights to Varennes, what with Days of
Poniards, with plot after plot, the People are left to
themselves; the People must needs choose Defenders of the People,
such as can be had. Choosing, as _they_ also will ever do, “if
not the ablest man, yet the man ablest to be chosen!” Fervour of
character, decided Patriot-Constitutional feeling; these are
qualities: but free utterance, mastership in tongue-fence; this
is the quality of qualities. Accordingly one finds, with little
astonishment, in this First Biennial, that as many as Four
hundred Members are of the Advocate or Attorney species. Men who
can speak, if there be aught to speak: nay here are men also who
can think, and even act. Candour will say of this ill-fated First
French Parliament that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its
modicum of honesty; that it, neither in the one respect nor in
the other, sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above
the average. Let average Parliaments, whom the world does _not_
guillotine, and cast forth to long infamy, be thankful not to
themselves but to their stars!
France, as we say, has once more done what it could: fervid men
have come together from wide separation; for strange issues.
Fiery Max Isnard is come, from the utmost South-East; fiery
Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from the
utmost North-West. No Mirabeau now sits here, who had swallowed
formulas: our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working as yet out of
doors; whom some call “Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.”
Nevertheless we have our gifts,—especially of speech and logic.
An eloquent Vergniaud we have; most mellifluous yet most
impetuous of public speakers; from the region named Gironde, of
the Garonne: a man unfortunately of indolent habits; who will sit
playing with your children, when he ought to be scheming and
perorating. Sharp bustling Guadet; considerate grave Censonne;
kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos; Valazé doomed to a sad end:
all these likewise are of that Gironde, or Bourdeaux region: men
of fervid Constitutional principles; of quick talent,
irrefragable logic, clear respectability; who will have the Reign
of Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods.
Round whom others of like temper will gather; known by and by as
_Girondins_, to the sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort
note Condorcet, Marquis and Philosopher; who has worked at much,
at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, Newspaper
_Chronique de Paris_, Biography, Philosophy; and now sits here as
two-years Senator: a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face,
and fiery heart; “volcano hid under snow;” styled likewise, in
irreverent language, “_mouton enragé_,” peaceablest of creatures
bitten rabid! Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny,
long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have
done with him. A biennial Senator he too; nay, for the present,
the king of such. Restless, scheming, scribbling Brissot; who
took to himself the style _de Warville_, heralds know not in the
least why;—unless it were that the father of him did, in an
unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the
Village of _Ouar_ville? A man of the windmill species, that
grinds always, turning towards all winds; not in the steadiest
manner.
In all these men there is talent, faculty to work; and they will
do it: working and shaping, not _without_ effect, though alas not
in marble, only in quicksand!—But the highest faculty of them all
remains yet to be mentioned; or indeed has yet to unfold itself
for mention: Captain Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas
de Calais; with his cold mathematical head, and silent
stubbornness of will: iron Carnot, far-planning, imperturbable,
unconquerable; who, in the hour of need, shall not be found
wanting. His hair is yet black; and it shall grow grey, under
many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous; and with iron aspect
this man shall face them all.
Nor is _Côté Droit_, and band of King’s friends, wanting:
Vaublanc, Dumas, Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier; who love
Liberty, yet with Monarchy over it; and speak fearlessly
according to that faith;—whom the thick-coming hurricanes will
sweep away. With them, let a new military Theodore Lameth be
named;—were it only for his two Brothers’ sake, who look down on
him, approvingly there, from the Old-Constituents’ Gallery.
Frothy professing Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory
Lamourettes, and speechless nameless individuals sit plentiful,
as Moderates, in the middle. Still less is a _Côté Gauche_
wanting: extreme Left; sitting on the topmost benches, as if
aloft on its speculatory Height or _Mountain_, which will become
a practical fulminatory Height, and make the name of Mountain
famous-infamous to all times and lands.
Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud
dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of
thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that
will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the
Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys
both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer
Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has
loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little
dreaming _what_ he is;—whom a sad chance has paralysed in the
lower extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not
warm in his true love’s bower (who indeed was by law another’s),
but sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out;
quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass;[409] and goes
now on crutches to the end. Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers
undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing of Assignats;
Father of Paper-money; who, in the hour of menace, shall utter
this stern sentence, “War to the Manorhouse, peace to the Hut,
_Guerre aux Châteaux, paix aux Chaumières!_”[410] Lecointre, the
intrepid Draper of Versailles, is welcome here; known since the
Opera-Repast and Insurrection of Women. Thuriot too; Elector
Thuriot, who stood in the embrasures of the Bastille, and saw
Saint-Antoine rising in mass; who has many other things to see.
Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face
and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran breed; a man whom age
and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing the old men of
Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred _Ampulla_ (Heaven-sent,
wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere
worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement
there; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own
wild head, by pistol-shot, and so end it.
Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain; unknown
to the world and to itself! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto;
distinguished from the Plain chiefly by its superior
_barrenness_, its baldness of look: at the utmost it may, to the
most observant, perceptibly _smoke_. For as yet all lies so
solid, peaceable; and doubts not, as was said, that it will
endure while Time runs. Do not all love Liberty and the
Constitution? All heartily;—and yet with degrees. Some, as
Chevalier Jaucourt and his Right Side, may love Liberty less than
Royalty, were the trial made; others, as Brissot and his Left
Side, may love it more than Royalty. Nay again of these latter
some may love Liberty more than Law itself; others not more.
Parties _will_ unfold themselves; no mortal as yet knows how.
Forces work within these men and without: dissidence grows
opposition; ever widening; waxing into incompatibility and
internecine feud: till the strong is abolished by a stronger;
himself in his turn by a strongest! Who can help it? Jaucourt and
his Monarchists, Feuillans, or Moderates; Brissot and his
Brissotins, Jacobins, or Girondins; these, with the Cordelier
Trio, and all men, must work what is appointed them, and in the
way appointed them.
And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five
are assembled, most unwittingly, to meet! Let no heart be so hard
as not to pity them. Their soul’s wish was to live and work as
the First of the French Parliaments: and make the Constitution
march. Did they not, at their very instalment, go through the
most affecting Constitutional ceremony, almost with tears? The
Twelve Eldest are sent solemnly to fetch the Constitution itself,
the printed book of the Law. Archivist Camus, an Old-Constituent
appointed Archivist, he and the Ancient Twelve, amid blare of
military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the divine Book: and
President and all Legislative Senators, laying their hand on the
same, successively take the Oath, with cheers and heart-effusion,
universal three-times-three.[411] In this manner they begin their
Session. Unhappy mortals! For, that same day, his Majesty having
received their Deputation of welcome, as seemed, rather drily,
the Deputation cannot but feel slighted, cannot but lament such
slight: and thereupon our cheering swearing First Parliament sees
itself, on the morrow, obliged to explode into fierce retaliatory
sputter, of anti-royal Enactment as to how they, for their part,
will receive Majesty; and how Majesty shall not be called Sire
any more, except they please: and then, on the following day, to
recall this Enactment of theirs, as too hasty, and a mere sputter
though not unprovoked.
An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators; too
combustible, where continual sparks are flying! Their History is
a series of sputters and quarrels; true desire to do their
function, fatal impossibility to do it. Denunciations,
reprimandings of King’s Ministers, of traitors supposed and real;
hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants; terror of
Austrian Kaiser, of “Austrian Committee” in the Tuileries itself:
rage and haunting terror, haste and dim desperate
bewilderment!—Haste, we say; and yet the Constitution had
provided against haste. No Bill can be passed till it have been
printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight
days;—“unless the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is
urgency.” Which, accordingly, the Assembly, scrupulous of the
Constitution, never omits to do: Considering this, and also
considering that, and then that other, the Assembly decrees
always “_qu’il y a urgence;_” and thereupon “the Assembly, having
decreed that there is urgence,” is free to decree—what
indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two thousand and
odd decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months![412] The haste
of the Constituent seemed great; but this is treble-quick. For
the time itself is rushing treble-quick; and they have to keep
pace with that. Unhappy Seven Hundred and Forty-five:
true-patriotic, but so combustible; being fired, they must needs
fling fire: Senate of touchwood and rockets, in a world of
smoke-storm, with sparks wind-driven continually flying!
Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that
scene they call _Baiser de Lamourette!_ The dangers of the
country are now grown imminent, immeasurable; National Assembly,
hope of France, is divided against itself. In such extreme
circumstances, honey-mouthed Abbé Lamourette, new Bishop of
Lyons, rises, whose name, _l’amourette_, signifies the
_sweetheart_, or Delilah doxy,—he rises, and, with pathetic
honied eloquence, calls on all august Senators to forget mutual
griefs and grudges, to swear a new oath, and unite as brothers.
Whereupon they all, with vivats, embrace and swear; Left Side
confounding itself with Right; barren Mountain rushing down to
fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the arms of Condorcet, injured to
the breast of injurer, with tears; and all swearing that
whosoever wishes either Feuillant Two-Chamber Monarchy or
Extreme-Jacobin Republic, or any thing but the Constitution and
that only, shall be anathema maranatha.[413] Touching to behold!
For, literally on the morrow morning, they must again quarrel,
driven by Fate; and their sublime reconcilement is called
derisively _Baiser de L’amourette_, or Delilah Kiss.
Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in
vain; weeping that they must not love, that they must hate only,
and die by each other’s hands! Or say, like doomed Familiar
Spirits; ordered, by Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder
than twist ropes of sand: “to make the Constitution march.” If
the Constitution would but march! Alas, the Constitution will not
stir. It falls on its face; they tremblingly lift it on end
again: march, thou gold Constitution! The Constitution will not
march.—‘He shall march, by—!’ said kind Uncle Toby, and even
swore. The Corporal answered mournfully: ‘He will never march in
this world.’
A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if
not the old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted; then
accurately their Rights, or better indeed, their Mights;—for
these two, well-understood, are they not one and the same? The
old Habits of France are gone: her new Rights and Mights are not
yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem; nor can be, in any
sort, till she have _tried_. Till she have measured herself, in
fell death-grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of
madness, with Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the
under, internal and external; with the Earth and Tophet and the
very Heaven! Then will she know.—Three things bode ill for the
marching of this French Constitution: the French People; the
French King; thirdly the French Noblesse and an assembled
European World.