over it,--which was at once to cover the guilty from punishment, and to
extinguish all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for it; in
fact, he justifies it. He who (as the reader has just seen in what is
quoted from this letter) feels so much indignation at "vague
denunciations," when made against himself, and from which he then feared
nothing more than the subversion of his power, is not ashamed to
consider the charge of a conspiracy to massacre the Parisians, brought
against his master upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather
upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of the monstrous
proceedings against him. He is not ashamed to call the murder of the
unhappy priests in the Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation
whatsoever, a "_vengeance_ mingled with a _sort of justice_"; he
observes that they "had been a long time spared by the sword of the
law," and calls by anticipation all those who should represent this
"_effervescence_" in other colors _villains and traitors_: he did not
than foresee how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the
necessity of assuming the pretended character of this new sort of
"_villany and treason_", in the hope of obliterating the memory of their
former real _villanies and treasons_; he did not foresee that in the
course of six months a formal manifesto on the part of himself and his
faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this
"_effervescence_" as another "_St. Bartholomew_" and speak of it as
"_having made humanity shudder, and sullied the Revolution forever_."[4]
It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself to know the motives of
the assassins, their policy, and even what they "believed." How could
this be, if he had no connection with them? He praises the murderers for
not having taken as yet _all_ the lives of those who had, as he calls
it, "_presented themselves_ as victims to their fury." He paints the
miserable prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one another in
the Church of the Carmelites by his faction, as _presenting themselves_
as victims to their fury,--as if death was their choice, or (allowing
the idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if they were by
some accident _presented_ to the fury of their assassins: whereas he
knew that the leaders of the murderers sought these pure and innocent
victims in the places where they had deposited them and were sure to
find them. The very selection, which he praises as a _sort of justice_
tempering their fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation,
and method with which this massacre was made. He knew that circumstance
on the very day of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all
probability, he had begun this letter,--for he presented it to the
Assembly on the very next.
Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will
appear in another light to the world. He therefore acquits the executive
power, that is, he acquits himself, (but only by his own assertion,) of
those acts of "_vengeance mixed with a sort of justice_," as an
"_excess_ which he could neither foresee nor prevent." He could not, he
says, foresee these acts, when he tells us the people of Paris had
sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court on the 10th of
August,--to foresee them so well as to mark the precise epoch on which
they were to be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on the very
day: he could not foresee these events, though he declares in this very
letter that victory _must_ bring with it some _excess_,--that "the sea
roars _long_ after the tempest." So far as to his foresight. As to his
disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen, the massacres of that
day,--this will be judged by his care in putting a stop to the massacre
then going on. This was no matter of foresight: he was in the very midst
of it. He does not so much as pretend that he had used any force to put
a stop to it. But if he had used any, the sanction given under his hand
to a sort of justice in the murderers was enough to disarm the
protecting force.
That approbation of what they had already done had its natural effect on
the executive assassins, then in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as
on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their
deliberate, cold-blooded system of murder. He did not at all differ from
either of them in the principle of those executions, but only in the
time of their duration,--and that only as it affected himself. This,
though to him a great consideration, was none to his confederates, who
were at the same time his rivals. They were encouraged to accomplish the
work they had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst this grave
moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their
work of "vengeance mingled with a sort of justice," was before a grave
assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded without interruption in
their business for four days together,--that is, until the seventh of
that month, and until all the victims of the first proscription in Paris
and at Versailles and several other places were immolated at the shrine
of the grim Moloch of liberty and equality. All the priests, all the
loyalists, all the first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789,
that could be found, were promiscuously put to death.
Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it is curious to remark
how the nerve and vigor of his style, which had spoken so potently to
his sovereign, is relaxed when he addresses himself to the
_sans-culottes,_--how that strength and dexterity of arm, with which he
parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes
to fence with the poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no
longer be direct. The whole compass of the language is tried to find
synonymes and circumlocutions for massacre and murder. Things are never
called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes _agitation_,
sometimes _effervescence_, sometimes _excess_, sometimes too continued
an exercise of a _revolutionary power_.
However, after what had passed had been praised, or excused, or
pardoned, he declares loudly against such proceedings _in future_.
Crimes had pioneered and made smooth the way for the march of the
virtues, and from that time order and justice and a sacred regard for
personal property were to become the rules for the new democracy. Here
Roland and the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by
endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will render many of the
parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in which Roland's views and intentions are
so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and the more
useful in their application by the English reader.
Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party
hoped to gain the bankers, merchants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of
assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and
gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to
the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the
acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the
misfortunes of their country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens.
In this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded in a great
degree. They obtained a majority in the National Convention. Composed,
however, as that assembly is, their majority was far from steady. But
whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and many of the outlying
departments, they lost the city of Paris entirely and irrecoverably: it
was fallen into the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their
instruments were the _sans-culottes_, or rabble, who domineered in that
capital, and were wholly at the devotion of those incendiaries, and
received their daily pay. The people of property were of no consequence,
and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As that great man had not
obtained the helm of the state, it was not yet come to his turn to act
the part of Brissot and his friends in the assertion of subordination
and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival
chiefs, and is now the great patron of Jacobin order.
To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which threatened to leave
nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as
that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis the
Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders were Roland, Pétion,
Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet, &c., &c., &c., applied themselves to gain
the great commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and
Bordeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin description, to whom the
concealed royalists, still very numerous, joined themselves, obtained a
temporary superiority in all these places. In Bordeaux, on account of
the activity and eloquence of some of its representatives, this
superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the
Garonne, or Gironde; and being the centre of a department named from
that river, the appellation of Girondists was given to the whole party.
These, and some other towns, declared strongly against the principles of
anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were
sent to the Convention, promising to maintain its authority, which the
addressers were pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though
chosen, not to compose an executive government, but to form a plan for a
Constitution. In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed
force from the several departments to maintain the freedom of that body,
and to provide for the personal safety of the members: neither of which,
from the 14th of July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by
their assemblies sitting under any denomination.
This scheme, which was well conceived, had not the desired success.
Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some
threats of such a departure were from time to time thrown out, was too
powerful for the party of the Gironde. Some of the proposed guards, but
neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive: they were
debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the frontiers. The game
played by the revolutionists in 1789, with respect to the French guards
of the unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards,
called together for the protection of the revolutionists. Every part of
their own policy comes round, and strikes at their own power and their
own lives.
The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in taking the alarm. They
had just reason to apprehend, that, if they permitted the smallest
delay, they should see themselves besieged by an army collected from all
parts of France. Violent threats were thrown out against that city in
the Assembly. Its total destruction was menaced. A very remarkable
expression was used in these debates,--"that in future times it might be
inquired on what part of the Seine Paris had stood." The faction which
ruled in Paris, too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be
surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn, they accused the
Girondists of a treasonable design to break _the republic one and
indivisible_ (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the
supremacy of Paris) into a number of _confederate_ commonwealths. The
Girondin faction on this account received also the name of
_Federalists_.
Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities. Paris, the mother of
equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this
alternative: either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the
federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all
France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the
dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of
Paris.
In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the great mother club of
the Jacobins was entirely in the Parisian interest. The Girondins no
longer dared to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least
of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great
patriarchal Jacobinière of Paris, to which they were (to use their own
term) _affiliated_. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere: and they
chose to interfere in everything, and on every occasion. All hope of
gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any
law but their own will, was evidently vain and hopeless. Nothing but an
armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the
purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it
had been caused by it.
As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins and the commons of
Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining
property of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare a
manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character,
and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition
as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same
unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which
all those concerned in this Revolution were, at the several periods of
their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and
under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of
his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner
the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its
parts.
It is almost needless to mention to the reader the fate of the design to
which this pamphlet was to be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were
more prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to
what La Fayette calls the _most sacred of all duties, that of
insurrection_. Another era of holy insurrection commenced the 31st of
last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on
insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the
sacred, irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was
laughed to scorn. They had themselves shown in their proceedings against
the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied
upon, in their revolutionary Constitution. The members of the Girondin
party in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to save themselves
by flight. The unhappy author of this piece, with twenty of his
associates, suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial the
iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.
The English reader will draw from this work of Brissot, and from the
result of the last struggles of this party, some useful lessons. He will
be enabled to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to
guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves,
have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in
brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how to appreciate the
liberty of France, which has been so much magnified in England. They
will do justice to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and his
Parliament, who have put them into a state of defence, in the war
audaciously made upon us in favor of that kind of liberty. When we see
(as here we must see) in their true colors the character and policy of
our enemies, our gratitude will become an active principle. It will
produce a strong and zealous coöperation with the efforts of our
government in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy advantages
the full value of which the querulous weakness of human nature requires
sometimes the opportunity of a comparison to understand and to relish.
Our confidence in those who watch for the public will not be lessened.
We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our
affairs was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be
sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed,--and that it ought to have
been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature
and accomplish their plans for reducing us to the condition of France,
as that condition is faithfully and without exaggeration described in
the following work. We now have our arms in our hands; we have the means
of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources of England to the
deepest, the most craftily devised, the best combined, and the most
extensive design that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the
world, against all property, all order, all religion, all law, and all
real freedom.
The reader is requested to attend to the part of this pamphlet which
relates to the conduct of the Jacobins with regard to the Austrian
Netherlands, which they call Belgia or Belgium. It is from page
seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation. Here their views
and designs upon all their neighbors are fully displayed. Here the whole
mystery of their ferocious politics is laid open with the utmost
clearness. Here the manner in which they would treat every nation into
which they could introduce their doctrines and influence is distinctly
marked. We see that no nation was out of danger, and we see what the
danger was with which every nation was threatened. The writer of this
pamphlet throws the blame of several of the most violent of the
proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded
to, had a majority in the National Assembly. He admits that neither he
nor they _ever publicly_ opposed these measures; but he attributes their
silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain,
that, whether from fear or from approbation, they never discovered any
dislike of those proceedings till Dumouriez was driven from the
Netherlands. But whatever their motive was, it is plain that the most
violent is, and since the Revolution has always been, the predominant
party.
If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly
it could not,) I am sure there is not an Englishman who would not blush
to be left out of the general effort made in favor of the general
safety. But we are not secondary parties in this war; _we are principals
in the danger, and ought to be principals in the exertion_. If any
Englishman asks whether the designs of the French assassins are confined
to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot,
the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war
against England, will give him his answer. He will find in this book,
that the republicans are divided into factions full of the most furious
and destructive animosity against each other; but he will find also that
there is one point in which they perfectly agree: that they are all
enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend
with each other about the means of propagating their tenets and
extending their empire by conquest.
It is true that in this present work, which the author professedly
designed for an appeal to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed
up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to
make her appearance in public; but through every disguise her hideous
figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to
see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a
private letter of Brissot, written towards the end of the last year, and
quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet Du Pan. "We must" (says
our philosopher) "_set fire to the four corners of Europe_"; in that
alone is our safety. "_Dumouriez cannot suit us_. I always distrusted
him. Miranda is the general for us: he understands the _revolutionary
power_; he has _courage, lights_," &c.[5] Here everything is fairly
avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal
conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez is
a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference
which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without
assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that
foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction. On
the other hand, if there can be any man in this country so hardy as to
undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers
of France, and if it should be said in their favor, that it is not just
to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have
actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others,
we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of
this part of his book against them: it comes from among themselves.
Camille Desmoulins published the History of the Brissotins in answer to
this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last
holy revolution of the 31st of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his
writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by
the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he
grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory,"
as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention.
All is summed up in two points: "To create the French Republic; _to
disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption
of the volcanic principles of equality_."[6] The coincidence is exact;
the proof is complete and irresistible.
In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no
neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy,
against Jacobinism are its partisans. They who do not dread it love it.
It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a
powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of Jacobinism,
such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with
enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation,
resentment, and horror.
Another great lesson may be taught by this book, and by the fortune of
the author and his party: I mean a lesson drawn from the consequences of
engaging in daring innovations from an hope that we may be able to limit
their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure
ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the
world. This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of
history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at
this hour. The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious
death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, (a tribunal
composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction
of the ancient government,) were by no means ordinary men, or without
very considerable talents and resources. But with all their talents and
resources, and the apparent momentary extent of their power, we see the
fate of their projects, their power, and their persons. We see before
our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of
confusion, or with the materials and instruments of rebellion to build
up a solid and stable government.
Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may not have the worst
intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the
morals, and the whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the
formation and duration of any rational scheme of a republic as it is to
that of a monarchy, absolute or limited. It is, indeed, a system which
can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.
The translator has only to say for himself, that he has found some
difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps,
or through the perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous
enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his
language requires to be first translated into French,--at least into
such French as the Academy would in former times have tolerated. He
writes with great force and vivacity; but the language, like everything
else in his country, has undergone a revolution. The translator thought
it best to be as literal as possible, conceiving such a translation
would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author's peculiar mode of
thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style, but he
makes it up in fidelity. Indeed, the facts and observations are so much
more important than the style, that no apology is wanted for producing
them in any intelligible manner.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Presented to the king June 13; delivered to him the preceding
Monday.--TRANSLATOR.
[3] Letter to the National Assembly, signed, _The Minister of the
Interior_, ROLAND; dated Paris, Sept. 3rd, _4th year of Liberty_.
[4] See p. 12 and p. 13 of this translation.
[5] See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen, p.
53.