The Deliberative.
France therefore has done two things very completely: she has
hurled back her Cimmerian Invaders far over the marches; and
likewise she has shattered her own internal Social Constitution,
even to the minutest fibre of it, into wreck and dissolution.
Utterly it is all altered: from King down to Parish Constable,
all Authorities, Magistrates, Judges, persons that bore rule,
have had, on the sudden, to alter themselves, so far as needful;
or else, on the sudden, and not without violence, to be altered:
a Patriot “Executive Council of Ministers,” with a Patriot Danton
in it, and then a whole Nation and National Convention, have
taken care of that. Not a Parish Constable, in the furthest
hamlet, who has said _De Par le Roi_, and shewn loyalty, but must
retire, making way for a new improved Parish Constable who can
say _De par la République._
It is a change such as History must beg her readers to imagine,
_un_described. An instantaneous change of the whole body-politic,
the soul-politic being all changed; such a change as few bodies,
politic or other, can experience in this world. Say perhaps, such
as poor Nymph Semele’s body did experience, when she would needs,
with woman’s humour, see her Olympian Jove as very Jove;—and so
stood, poor Nymph, this moment Semele, next moment not Semele,
but Flame and a Statue of red-hot Ashes! France has looked upon
Democracy; seen it face to face.—The Cimmerian Invaders will
rally, in humbler temper, with better or worse luck: the wreck
and dissolution must reshape itself into a social Arrangement as
it can and may. But as for this National Convention, which is to
settle every thing, if it do, as Deputy Paine and France
generally expects, get all finished “in a few months,” we shall
call it a most deft Convention.
In truth, it is very singular to see how this mercurial French
People plunges suddenly from _Vive le Roi_ to _Vive la
République;_ and goes simmering and dancing; shaking off daily
(so to speak), and trampling into the dust, its old social
garnitures, ways of thinking, rules of existing; and cheerfully
dances towards the Ruleless, Unknown, with such hope in its
heart, and nothing but _Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood_ in its
mouth. Is it two centuries, or is it only two years, since all
France roared simultaneously to the welkin, bursting forth into
sound and smoke at its _Feast of Pikes_, ‘Live the Restorer of
French Liberty?’ Three short years ago there was still Versailles
and an Œil-de-Bœuf: now there is that watched Circuit of the
Temple, girt with dragon-eyed Municipals, where, as in its final
limbo, Royalty lies extinct. In the year 1789, Constituent Deputy
Barrère “wept,” in his _Break-of-Day_ Newspaper, at sight of a
reconciled King Louis; and now in 1792, Convention Deputy
Barrère, perfectly tearless, may be considering, whether the
reconciled King Louis shall be guillotined or not.
Old garnitures and social vestures drop off (we say) so fast,
being indeed quite decayed, and are trodden under the National
dance. And the new vestures, where are they; the new modes and
rules? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: not vestures but the wish
for vestures! The Nation is for the present, figuratively
speaking, _naked!_ It has no rule or vesture; but is naked,—a
Sansculottic Nation.
So far, therefore, in such manner have our Patriot Brissots,
Guadets triumphed. Vergniaud’s Ezekiel-visions of the fall of
thrones and crowns, which he spake hypothetically and
prophetically in the Spring of the year, have suddenly come to
fulfilment in the Autumn. Our eloquent Patriots of the
Legislative, like strong Conjurors, by the word of their mouth,
have swept Royalism with its old modes and formulas to the winds;
and shall now govern a France free of formulas. Free of formulas!
And yet man lives not except with formulas; with customs, _ways_
of doing and living: no text truer than this; which will hold
true from the Tea-table and Tailor’s shopboard up to the High
Senate-houses, Solemn Temples; nay through all provinces of Mind
and Imagination, onwards to the outmost confines of articulate
Being,—_Ubi homines sunt modi sunt._ There are modes wherever
there are men. It is the deepest law of man’s nature; whereby man
is a craftsman and “tool-using animal;” not the slave of Impulse,
Chance, and Brute Nature, but in some measure their lord.
Twenty-five millions of men, suddenly stript bare of their
_modi_, and dancing them down in that manner, are a terrible
thing to govern!
Eloquent Patriots of the Legislative, meanwhile, have precisely
this problem to solve. Under the name and nickname of “statesmen,
_hommes d’état_,” of “moderate-men, _modérantins_,” of
Brissotins, Rolandins, finally of _Girondins_, they shall become
world-famous in solving it. For the Twenty-five millions are
Gallic effervescent too;—filled both with hope of the
unutterable, of universal Fraternity and Golden Age; and with
terror of the unutterable, Cimmerian Europe all rallying on us.
It is a problem like few. Truly, if man, as the Philosophers
brag, did to any extent look before and after, what, one may ask,
in many cases would become of him? What, in this case, would
become of these Seven Hundred and Forty-nine men? The Convention,
seeing clearly before and after, were a paralysed Convention.
Seeing clearly to the length of its own nose, it is not
paralysed.
To the Convention itself neither the work nor the method of doing
it is doubtful: To make the Constitution; to defend the Republic
till that be made. Speedily enough, accordingly, there has been a
“Committee of the Constitution” got together. Sieyes,
Old-Constituent, Constitution-builder by trade; Condorcet, fit
for better things; Deputy Paine, foreign Benefactor of the
Species, with that “red carbuncled face, and the black beaming
eyes;” Hérault de Séchelles, Ex-Parlementeer, one of the
handsomest men in France: these, with inferior guild-brethren,
are girt cheerfully to the work; will once more “make the
Constitution;” let us hope, more effectually than last time. For
that the Constitution can be made, who doubts,—unless the Gospel
of Jean Jacques came into the world in vain? True, our last
Constitution did tumble within the year, so lamentably. But what
then, except sort the rubbish and boulders, and build them up
again better? “Widen your basis,” for one thing,—to Universal
Suffrage, if need be; exclude rotten materials, Royalism and such
like, for another thing. And in brief, _build_, O unspeakable
Sieyes and Company, unwearied! Frequent perilous downrushing of
scaffolding and rubble-work, be that an irritation, no
discouragement. Start ye always again, clearing aside the wreck;
if with broken limbs, yet with whole hearts; and build, we say,
in the name of Heaven,—till either the work do stand; or else
mankind abandon it, and the Constitution-builders be paid off,
with laughter and tears! One good time, in the course of
Eternity, it was appointed that this of Social Contract too
should try itself out. And so the Committee of Constitution shall
toil: with hope and faith;—with no disturbance from any reader of
these pages.
To make the Constitution, then, and return home joyfully in a few
months: this is the prophecy our National Convention gives of
itself; by this scientific program shall its operations and
events go on. But from the best scientific program, in such a
case, to the actual fulfilment, what a difference! Every reunion
of men, is it not, as we often say, a reunion of incalculable
Influences; every unit of it a microcosm of Influences;—of which
how shall Science calculate or prophesy! Science, which cannot,
with all its calculuses, differential, integral, and of
variations, calculate the Problem of Three gravitating Bodies,
ought to hold her peace here, and say only: In this National
Convention there are Seven Hundred and Forty-nine very singular
Bodies, that gravitate and do much else;—who, probably in an
amazing manner, will work the appointment of Heaven.
Of National Assemblages, Parliaments, Congresses, which have long
sat; which are of saturnine temperament; above all, which are not
“dreadfully in earnest,” something may be computed or
conjectured: yet even these are a kind of Mystery in
progress,—whereby we see the Journalist Reporter find livelihood:
even these jolt madly out of the ruts, from time to time. How
much more a poor National Convention, of French vehemence; urged
on at such velocity; without routine, without rut, track or
landmark; and dreadfully in earnest every man of them! It is a
Parliament literally such as there was never elsewhere in the
world. Themselves are new, unarranged; they are the Heart and
presiding centre of a France fallen wholly into maddest
disarrangement. From all cities, hamlets, from the utmost ends of
this France with its Twenty-five million vehement souls,
thick-streaming influences storm in on that same Heart, in the
Salle de Manége, and storm out again: such fiery venous-arterial
circulation is the function of that Heart. Seven Hundred and
Forty-nine human individuals, we say, never sat together on
Earth, under more original circumstances. Common individuals most
of them, or not far from common; yet in virtue of the position
they occupied, so notable. How, in this wild piping of the
whirlwind of human passions, with death, victory, terror, valour,
and all height and all depth pealing and piping, these men, left
to their own guidance, will speak and act?
Readers know well that this French National Convention (quite
contrary to its own Program) became the astonishment and horror
of mankind; a kind of Apocalyptic Convention, or black _Dream
become real;_ concerning which History seldom speaks except in
the way of interjection: how it covered France with woe,
delusion, and delirium; and from its bosom there went forth Death
on the pale Horse. To hate this poor National Convention is easy;
to praise and love it has not been found impossible. It is, as we
say, a Parliament in the most original circumstances. To us, in
these pages, be it as a fuliginous fiery mystery, where Upper has
met Nether, and in such alternate glare and blackness of darkness
poor bedazzled mortals know not which is Upper, which is Nether;
but rage and plunge distractedly, as mortals, in that case, will
do. A Convention which has to consume itself, suicidally; and
become dead ashes—with its World! Behoves us, not to enter
exploratively its dim embroiled deeps; yet to stand with
unwavering eyes, looking how it welters; what notable phases and
occurrences it will successively throw up.
One general superficial circumstance we remark with praise: the
force of Politeness. To such depth has the sense of civilisation
penetrated man’s life; no Drouet, no Legendre, in the maddest tug
of war, can altogether shake it off. Debates of Senates
dreadfully in earnest are seldom given frankly to the world; else
perhaps they would surprise it. Did not the Grand Monarque
himself once chase his Louvois with a pair of brandished tongs?
But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a
foam with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent
of life and death, one is struck rather with the degree of
continence they manifest in speech; and how in such wild
ebullition, there is still a kind of polite rule struggling for
mastery, and the forms of social life never altogether disappear.
These men, though they menace with clenched right-hands, do not
clench one another by the collar; they draw no daggers, except
for oratorical purposes, and this not often: profane swearing is
almost unknown, though the Reports are frank enough; we find only
one or two oaths, oaths by Marat, reported in all.
For the rest, that there is “effervescence” who doubts?
Effervescence enough; Decrees passed by acclamation today,
repealed by vociferation tomorrow; temper fitful, most rotatory
changeful, always headlong! The “voice of the orator is covered
with rumours;” a hundred “honourable Members rush with menaces
towards the Left side of the Hall;” President has “broken three
bells in succession,”—claps on his hat, as signal that the
country is near ruined. A fiercely effervescent Old-Gallic
Assemblage!—Ah, how the loud sick sounds of Debate, and of Life,
which is a _debate_, sink silent one after another: so loud now,
and in a little while so low! Brennus, and those antique Gael
Captains, in their way to Rome, to Galatia, and such places,
whither they were in the habit of marching in the most fiery
manner, had Debates as effervescent, doubt it not; though no
_Moniteur_ has reported them. They scolded in Celtic Welsh, those
Brennuses; neither were they Sansculotte; nay rather breeches
(_braccæ_, say of felt or rough-leather) were the only thing they
had; being, as Livy testifies, naked down _to_ the haunches:—and,
see, it is the same sort of work and of men still, now when they
have got coats, and speak nasally a kind of broken Latin! But on
the whole does not TIME envelop this present National Convention;
as it did those Brennuses, and ancient August Senates in felt
breeches? Time surely; and also Eternity. Dim dusk of Time,—or
noon which will be dusk; and then there is night, and silence;
and Time with all its sick noises is swallowed in the still sea.
Pity thy brother, O Son of Adam! The angriest frothy jargon that
he utters, is it not properly the whimpering of an infant which
cannot _speak_ what ails it, but is in distress clearly, in the
inwards of it; and so must squall and whimper continually, till
its Mother take it, and it get—to sleep!
This Convention is not four days old, and the melodious Melibœan
stanzas that shook down Royalty are still fresh in our ear, when
there bursts out a new diapason,—unhappily, of Discord, this
time. For speech has been made of a thing difficult to speak of
well: the September Massacres. How deal with these September
Massacres; with the Paris Commune that presided over them? A
Paris Commune hateful-terrible; before which the poor effete
Legislative had to quail, and sit quiet. And now if a young
omnipotent Convention will not so quail and sit, what steps shall
it take? Have a Departmental Guard in its pay, answer the
Girondins, and Friends of Order! A Guard of National Volunteers,
missioned from all the Eighty-three or Eighty-five Departments,
for that express end; these will keep Septemberers, tumultuous
Communes in a due state of submissiveness, the Convention in a
due state of sovereignty. So have the Friends of Order answered,
sitting in Committee, and reporting; and even a Decree has been
passed of the required tenour. Nay certain Departments, as the
Var or Marseilles, in mere expectation and assurance of a Decree,
have their contingent of Volunteers already on march: brave
Marseillese, foremost on the Tenth of August, will not be
hindmost here; “fathers gave their sons a musket and twenty-five
louis,” says Barbaroux, “and bade them march.”
Can any thing be properer? A Republic that will found itself on
justice must needs investigate September Massacres; a Convention
calling itself National, ought it not to be guarded by a National
force?—Alas, Reader, it seems so to the eye: and yet there is
much to be said and argued. Thou beholdest here the small
beginning of a Controversy, which mere logic will not settle. Two
small well-springs, September, Departmental Guard, or rather at
bottom they are but one and the same small well-spring; which
will swell and widen into waters of bitterness; all manner of
subsidiary streams and brooks of bitterness flowing in, from this
side and that; till it become a wide river of bitterness, of rage
and separation,—which can subside only into the Catacombs. This
Departmental Guard, decreed by overwhelming majorities, and then
repealed for peace’s sake, and not to insult Paris, is again
decreed more than once; nay it is partially executed, and the
very men that are to be of it are seen visibly parading the Paris
streets,—shouting once, being overtaken with liquor: ‘_À bas
Marat_, Down with Marat!’[573] Nevertheless, decreed never so
often, it is repealed just as often; and continues, for some
seven months, an angry noisy Hypothesis only: a fair Possibility
struggling to become a Reality, but which shall never be one;
which, after endless struggling, shall, in February next, sink
into sad rest,—dragging much along with it. So singular are the
ways of men and honourable Members.
But on this fourth day of the Convention’s existence, as we said,
which is the 25th of September 1792, there comes Committee Report
on that Decree of the Departmental Guard, and speech of repealing
it; there come denunciations of anarchy, of a Dictatorship,—which
let the incorruptible Robespierre consider: there come
denunciations of a certain _Journal de la République_, once
called _Ami du Peuple;_ and so thereupon there comes, visibly
stepping up, visibly standing aloft on the Tribune, ready to
speak, the Bodily Spectrum of People’s-Friend Marat! Shriek, ye
Seven Hundred and Forty-nine; it is verily Marat, he and not
another. Marat is no phantasm of the brain, or mere lying impress
of Printer’s Types; but a thing material, of joint and sinew, and
a certain small stature: ye behold him there, in his blackness in
his dingy squalor, a living fraction of Chaos and Old Night;
visibly incarnate, desirous to speak. ‘It appears,’ says Marat to
the shrieking Assembly, ‘that a great many persons here are
enemies of mine.’ ‘All! All!’ shriek hundreds of voices: enough
to drown any People’s-Friend. But Marat will not drown: he speaks
and croaks explanation; croaks with such reasonableness, air of
sincerity, that repentant pity smothers anger, and the shrieks
subside or even become applauses. For this Convention is
unfortunately the crankest of machines: it shall be pointing
eastward, with stiff violence, this moment; and then do but touch
some spring dexterously, the whole machine, clattering and
jerking seven-hundred-fold, will whirl with huge crash, and, next
moment, is pointing westward! Thus Marat, absolved and applauded,
victorious in this turn of fence, is, as the Debate goes on,
prickt at again by some dexterous Girondin; and then the shrieks
rise anew, and Decree of Accusation is on the point of passing;
till the dingy People’s-Friend bobs aloft once more; croaks once
more persuasive stillness, and the Decree of Accusation sinks,
Whereupon he draws forth—a Pistol; and setting it to his Head,
the seat of such thought and prophecy, says: ‘If they had passed
their Accusation Decree, he, the People’s-Friend, would have
blown his brains out.’ A People’s Friend has that faculty in him.
For the rest, as to this of the two hundred and sixty thousand
Aristocrat Heads, Marat candidly says, ‘_C’est là mon avis_, such
is my opinion.’ Also it is not indisputable: ‘No power on Earth
can prevent me from seeing into traitors, and unmasking them,’—by
my superior originality of mind?[574] An honourable member like
this Friend of the People few terrestrial Parliaments have had.
We observe, however, that this first onslaught by the Friends of
Order, as sharp and prompt as it was, has failed. For neither can
Robespierre, summoned out by talk of Dictatorship, and greeted
with the like rumour on shewing himself, be thrown into Prison,
into Accusation;—not though Barbaroux openly bear testimony
against him, and sign it on paper. With such sanctified meekness
does the Incorruptible lift his seagreen cheek to the smiter;
lift his thin voice, and with jesuitic dexterity plead, and
prosper: asking at last, in a prosperous manner: ‘But what
witnesses has the Citoyen Barbaroux to support his testimony?’
‘_Moi!_’ cries hot Rebecqui, standing up, striking his breast
with both hands, and answering, ‘Me!’[575] Nevertheless the
Seagreen pleads again, and makes it good: the long hurlyburly,
“personal merely,” while so much public matter lies fallow, has
ended in the order of the day. O Friends of the Gironde, why will
you occupy our august sessions with mere paltry Personalities,
while the grand Nationality lies in such a state?—The Gironde has
touched, this day, on the foul black-spot of its fair Convention
Domain; has trodden on it, and yet _not_ trodden it down. Alas,
it is a _well-spring_, as we said, this black-spot; and will not
tread down!