question hangs in the centre, and high above the rest; and this is,
whether the Mother of liberty and civilization shall exist, or whether
she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her family. As we often
apply to Eloquence and her parts the terms we apply to Architecture
and hers, let me do it also, and remark that nothing can be more
simple, solid, and symmetrical, nothing more frugal in decoration or
more appropriate in distribution, than the apartments of Demosthenes.
Yours excel them in space and altitude; your ornaments are equally
chaste and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness
and light. But why, among the Loves and Graces, does Apollo flay
Marsyas?--and why may not the tiara still cover the ears of Midas?
Cannot you, who detest kings and courtiers, keep away from them? If I
must be with them, let me be in good humour and good spirits. If I
will tread upon a Persian carpet, let it at least be in clean shoes.
As the raciest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, so the richest fancies
turn the most readily to acrimony. Keep yours, my dear M. Rousseau,
from the exposure and heats that generate it. Be contented; enjoy your
fine imagination; and do not throw your salad out of window, nor shove
your cat off your knee, on hearing it said that Shakespeare has a
finer, or that a minister is of opinion that you know more of music
than of state. My friend! the quarrels of ingenious men are generally
far less reasonable and just, less placable and moderate, than those
of the stupid and ignorant. We ought to blush at this: and we should
blush yet more deeply if we bring them in as parties to our
differences. Let us conquer by kindness; which we cannot do easily or
well without communication.
_Rousseau._ The minister would expel me from his antechamber, and
order his valets to buffet me, if I offered him any proposal for the
advantage of mankind.
_Malesherbes._ Call to him, then, from this room, where the valets are
civiler. Nature has given you a speaking-trumpet, which neither storm
can drown nor enemy can silence. If you esteem him, instruct him; if
you despise him, do the same. Surely, you who have much benevolence
would not despise any one willingly or unnecessarily. Contempt is for
the incorrigible: now, where upon earth is he whom your genius, if
rightly and temperately exerted, would not influence and correct?
I never was more flattered or honoured than by your patience in
listening to me. Consider me as an old woman who sits by the bedside
in your infirmity, who brings you no savoury viand, no exotic fruit,
but a basin of whey or a basket of strawberries from your native
hills; assures you that what oppressed you was a dream, occasioned by
the wrong position in which you lay; opens the window, gives you fresh
air, and entreats you to recollect the features of Nature, and to
observe (which no man ever did so accurately) their beauty. In your
politics you cut down a forest to make a toothpick, and cannot make
even that out of it! Do not let us in jurisprudence be like critics in
the classics, and change whatever can be changed, right or wrong. No
statesman will take your advice. Supposing that any one is liberal in
his sentiments and clear-sighted in his views, nevertheless love of
power is jealous, and he would rejoice to see you fleeing from
persecution or turning to meet it. The very men whom you would benefit
will treat you worse. As the ministers of kings wish their masters to
possess absolute power that the exercise of it may be delegated to
them, which it naturally is from the violence and sloth alternate with
despots as with wild beasts, and that they may apprehend no check or
control from those who discover their misdemeanours, in like manner
the people places more trust in favour than in fortune, and hopes to
obtain by subserviency what it never might by election or by chance.
Else in free governments, so some are called (for names once given are
the last things lost), all minor offices and employments would be
assigned by ballot. Each province or canton would present a list
annually of such persons in it as are worthy to occupy the local
administrations.
To avoid any allusion to the country in which we live, let us take
England for example. Is it not absurd, iniquitous, and revolting, that
the minister of a church in Yorkshire should be appointed by a lawyer
in London, who never knew him, never saw him, never heard from a
single one of the parishioners a recommendation of any kind? Is it not
more reasonable that a justice of the peace should be chosen by those
who have always been witnesses of his integrity?
_Rousseau._ The king should appoint his ministers, and should invest
them with power and splendour; but those ministers should not appoint
to any civil or religious place of trust or profit which the community
could manifestly fill better. The greater part of offices and
dignities should be conferred for a short and stated time, that all
might hope to attain and strive to deserve them. Embassies in
particular should never exceed one year in Europe, nor consulates two.
To the latter office I assign this duration as the more difficult to
fulfil properly, from requiring a knowledge of trade, although a
slight one, and because those who possess any such knowledge are
inclined for the greater part to turn it to their own account, which a
consul ought by no means to do. Frequent election of representatives
and of civil officers in the subordinate employments would remove most
causes of discontent in the people, and of instability in kingly
power. Here is a lottery in which every one is sure of a prize, if not
for himself, at least for somebody in his family or among his friends;
and the ticket would be fairly paid for out of the taxes.
_Malesherbes._ So it appears to me. What other system can present so
obviously to the great mass of the people the two principal piers and
buttresses of government, tangible interest and reasonable hope? No
danger of any kind can arise from it, no antipathies, no divisions, no
imposture of demagogues, no caprice of despots. On the contrary, many
and great advantages in places which at the first survey do not appear
to border on it. At present, the best of the English juridical
institutions, that of justices of the peace, is viewed with diffidence
and distrust. Elected as they would be, and increased in number, the
whole judicature, civil and criminal, might be confided to them, and
their labours be not only not aggravated but diminished. Suppose them
in four divisions to meet at four places in every county once in
twenty days, and to possess the power of imposing a fine not exceeding
two hundred francs on every cause implying oppression, and one not
exceeding fifty on such as they should unanimously declare frivolous.
_Rousseau._ Few would become attorneys, and those from among the
indigent.
_Malesherbes._ Almost the greatest evil that exists in the world,
moral or physical, would be removed. A second appeal might be made in
the following session; a third could only come before Parliament, and
this alone by means of attorneys, the number of whom altogether would
not exceed the number of coroners; for in England there are as many
who cut their own throats as who would cut their own purses.
_Rousseau._ The famous _trial by jury_ would cease: this would disgust
the English.
_Malesherbes._ The number of justices would be much augmented: nearly
all those who now are jurymen would enjoy this rank and dignity, and
would be flattered by sitting on the same bench with the first
gentlemen of the land.
_Rousseau._ What number would sit?
_Malesherbes._ Three or five in the first instance; five or seven in
the second--as the number of causes should permit.
_Rousseau._ The laws of England are extremely intricate and perplexed:
such men would be puzzled.
_Malesherbes._ Such men having no interest in the perplexity, but on
the contrary an interest in unravelling it, would see such laws
corrected. Intricate as they are, questions on those which are the
most so are usually referred by the judges themselves to private
arbitration; of which my plan, I conceive, has all the advantages,
united to those of open and free discussion among men of unperverted
sense, and unbiased by professional hopes and interests. The different
courts of law in England cost about seventy millions of francs
annually. On my system, the justices or judges would receive
five-and-twenty francs daily; as the _special jurymen_ do now, without
any sense of shame or impropriety, however rich they may be: such
being the established practice.
_Rousseau._ Seventy millions! seventy millions!
_Malesherbes._ There are attorneys and conveyancers in London who gain
one hundred thousand francs a year, and advocates more. The
chancellor----
_Rousseau._ The Celeno of these harpies----
_Malesherbes._ Nets above one million, and is greatly more than an
archbishop in the Church, scattering preferment in Cumberland and
Cornwall from his bench at Westminster.
_Rousseau._ Absurdities and enormities are great in proportion to
custom or insuetude. If we had lived from childhood with a boa
constrictor, we should think it no more a monster than a canary-bird.
The sum you mentioned, of seventy millions, is incredible.
_Malesherbes._ In this estimate the expense of letters by the post,
and of journeys made by the parties, is not and cannot be included.
_Rousseau._ The whole machine of government, civil and religious,
ought never to bear upon the people with a weight so oppressive. I do
not add the national defence, which being principally naval is more
costly, nor institutions for the promotion of the arts, which in a
country like England ought to be liberal. But such an expenditure
should nearly suffice for these also, in time of peace. Religion and
law indeed should cost nothing: at present the one hangs property, the
other quarters it. I am confounded at the profusion. I doubt whether
the Romans expended so much in that year's war which dissolved the
Carthaginian empire, and left them masters of the universe. What is
certain, and what is better, it did not cost a tenth of it to colonize
Pennsylvania, in whose forests the cradle of freedom is suspended, and
where the eye of philanthropy, tired with tears and vigils, may wander
and may rest. Your system, or rather your arrangement of one already
established, pleases me. Ministers would only lose thereby that
portion of their possessions which they give away to needy relatives,
unworthy dependants, or the requisite supporters of their authority
and power.
_Malesherbes._ On this plan, no such supporters would be necessary, no
such dependants could exist, and no such relatives could be
disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents must be
periodical, weak, and irregular.
_Rousseau._ The craving for the rich carrion would be less keen; the
zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the stomach,
whereon hope and overlooking have always a strong influence.
_Malesherbes._ My excellent friend, do not be offended with me for an
ingenuous and frank confession: promise me your pardon.
_Rousseau._ You need none.
_Malesherbes._ Promise it, nevertheless.
_Rousseau._ You have said nothing, done nothing, which could in any
way displease me.
_Malesherbes._ You grant me, then, a bill of indemnity for what I may
have undertaken with a good intention since we have been together?
_Rousseau._ Willingly.
_Malesherbes._ I fell into your views, I walked along with you side by
side, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived was agitated.
In compliance with your humour, to engage your fancy, to divert it
awhile from Switzerland, by which you appear and partly on my account
to be offended, I began with reflections upon England: I raised up
another cloud in the region of them, light enough to be fantastic and
diaphanous, and to catch some little irradiation from its western
sun. Do not run after it farther; it has vanished already. Consider:
the three great nations----
_Rousseau._ Pray, which are those?
_Malesherbes._ I cannot in conscience give the palm to the Hottentots,
the Greenlanders, or the Hurons: I meant to designate those who united
to empire the most social virtue and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and
England have received on the subject of government elaborate treatises
from their greatest men. You have reasoned more dispassionately and
profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than Cicero, led
away as he often is by the authority of those who are inferior to
himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and patient
investigation? Or, think you, are your reading and range of thought
more extensive than Harrington's and Milton's? Yet what effect have
the political works of these marvellous men produced upon the
world?--what effect upon any one state, any one city, any one hamlet?
A clerk in office, an accountant, a gauger of small beer, a songwriter
for a tavern dinner, produces more. He thrusts his rags into the hole
whence the wind comes, and sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking
about elevations and proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves
and friezes, the buildings we should repair are falling to the earth,
and the materials for their restoration are in the quarry.
_Rousseau._ I could answer you: but my mind has certain moments of
repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not for the world
disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and prolong them.
_Malesherbes._ Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them if
possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitration on
what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you shall botanize;
and you have as much at your option the choice of your thoughts, as of
the keys in your harpsichord.
_Rousseau._ If this were true, who could be unhappy?
_Malesherbes._ Those of whom it is not true. Those who from want of
practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few to select from,
and who, because of their sloth or of their weakness, do not roll away
the heaviest from before them.
LUCULLUS AND CAESAR
_Caesar._ Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended for
reasons which you will know; confiding, I dare not say in your
friendship, since no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but
in your generous and disinterested love of peace. Hear me on. Cneius
Pompeius, according to the report of my connexions in the city, had,
on the instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his
dependants to strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor
affinity can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife; he
would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn; he
would poison his own nascent love--at the suggestion of Ambition.
Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I must submit to a
reverse of fortune; since no concession can assuage his malice, divert
his envy, or gratify his cupidity. No sooner could I raise myself up,
from the consternation and stupefaction into which the certainty of
these reports had thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner
my own private afflictions might become the least noxious to the
republic. Into whose arms, then, could I throw myself more naturally
and more securely, to whose bosom could I commit and consign more
sacredly the hopes and destinies of our beloved country, than his who
laid down power in the midst of its enjoyments, in the vigour of
youth, in the pride of triumph, when Dignity solicited, when
Friendship urged, entreated, supplicated, and when Liberty herself
invited and beckoned to him from the senatorial order and from the
curule chair? Betrayed and abandoned by those we had confided in, our
next friendship, if ever our hearts receive any, or if any will
venture in those places of desolation, flies forward instinctively to
what is most contrary and dissimilar. Caesar is hence the visitant of
Lucullus.
_Lucullus._ I had always thought Pompeius more moderate and more
reserved than you represent him, Caius Julius; and yet I am considered
in general, and surely you also will consider me, but little liable to
be prepossessed by him.
_Caesar._ Unless he may have ingratiated himself with you recently,
by the administration of that worthy whom last winter his partisans
dragged before the Senate, and forced to assert publicly that you and
Cato had instigated a party to circumvent and murder him; and whose
carcass, a few days afterward, when it had been announced that he had
died by a natural death, was found covered with bruises, stabs, and
dislocations.
_Lucullus._ You bring much to my memory which had quite slipped out of
it, and I wonder that it could make such an impression on yours. A
proof to me that the interest you take in my behalf began earlier than
your delicacy will permit you to acknowledge. You are fatigued, which
I ought to have perceived before.
_Caesar._ Not at all; the fresh air has given me life and alertness: I
feel it upon my cheek even in the room.
_Lucullus._ After our dinner and sleep, we will spend the remainder of
the day on the subject of your visit.
_Caesar._ Those Ethiopian slaves of yours shiver with cold upon the
mountain here; and truly I myself was not insensible to the change of
climate, in the way from Mutina.
What white bread! I never found such even at Naples or Capua. This
Formian wine (which I prefer to the Chian), how exquisite!
_Lucullus._ Such is the urbanity of Caesar, even while he bites his
lip with displeasure. How! surely it bleeds! Permit me to examine the
cup.
_Caesar._ I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim in the carriage:
the gold is rough there.
_Lucullus._ Marcipor, let me never see that cup again! No answer, I
desire. My guest pardons heavier faults. Mind that dinner be prepared
for us shortly.
_Caesar._ In the meantime, Lucullus, if your health permits it, shall
we walk a few paces round the villa? for I have not seen anything of
the kind before.
_Lucullus._ The walls are double; the space between them two feet: the
materials for the most part earth and straw. Two hundred slaves, and
about as many mules and oxen, brought the beams and rafters up the
mountain; my architects fixed them at once in their places: every part
was ready, even the wooden nails. The roof is thatched, you see.
_Caesar._ Is there no danger that so light a material should be
carried off by the winds, on such an eminence?
_Lucullus._ None resists them equally well.
_Caesar._ On this immensely high mountain, I should be apprehensive of
the lightning, which the poets, and I think the philosophers too, have
told us strikes the highest.
_Lucullus._ The poets are right; for whatever is received as truth is
truth in poetry; and a fable may illustrate like a fact. But the
philosophers are wrong, as they generally are, even in the commonest
things; because they seldom look beyond their own tenets, unless
through captiousness, and because they argue more than they meditate,
and display more than they examine. Archimedes and Euclid are, in my
opinion, after our Epicurus, the worthiest of the name, having kept
apart to the demonstrable, the practical, and the useful. Many of the
rest are good writers and good disputants; but unfaithful suitors of
simple science, boasters of their acquaintance with gods and
goddesses, plagiarists and impostors. I had forgotten my roof,
although it is composed of much the same materials as the
philosophers'. Let the lightning fall: one handful of silver, or less,
repairs the damage.
_Caesar._ Impossible! nor indeed one thousand, nor twenty, if those
tapestries and pictures are consumed.
_Lucullus._ True; but only the thatch would burn. For, before the
baths were tessellated, I filled the area with alum and water, and
soaked the timbers and laths for many months, and covered them
afterward with alum in powder, by means of liquid glue. Mithridates
taught me this. Having in vain attacked with combustibles a wooden
tower, I took it by stratagem, and found within it a mass of alum,
which, if a great hurry had not been observed by us among the enemy in
the attempt to conceal it, would have escaped our notice. I never
scrupled to extort the truth from my prisoners; but my instruments
were purple robes and plate, and the only wheel in my armoury destined
to such purposes was the wheel of Fortune.
_Caesar._ I wish, in my campaigns, I could have equalled your clemency
and humanity; but the Gauls are more uncertain, fierce, and perfidious
than the wildest tribes of Caucasus; and our policy cannot be carried
with us, it must be formed upon the spot. They love you, not for
abstaining from hurting them, but for ceasing; and they embrace you
only at two seasons--when stripes are fresh, or when stripes are
imminent. Elsewhere, I hope to become the rival of Lucullus in this
admirable part of virtue.
I shall never build villas, because--but what are your proportions?
Surely the edifice is extremely low.
_Lucullus._ There is only one floor; the height of the apartments is
twenty feet to the cornice, five above it; the breadth is twenty-five,
the length forty. The building, as you perceive, is quadrangular:
three sides contain four rooms each; the other has many partitions and
two stories, for domestics and offices. Here is my salt-bath.
_Caesar._ A bath, indeed, for all the Nereids named by Hesiod, with
room enough for the Tritons and their herds and horses.
_Lucullus._ Here stand my two cows. Their milk is brought to me with
its warmth and froth; for it loses its salubrity both by repose and by
motion. Pardon me, Caesar: I shall appear to you to have forgotten
that I am not conducting Marcus Varro.
_Caesar._ You would convert him into Cacus: he would drive them off.
What beautiful beasts! how sleek and white and cleanly! I never saw
any like them, excepting when we sacrifice to Jupiter the stately
leader from the pastures of the Clitumnus.
_Lucullus._ Often do I make a visit to these quiet creatures, and with
no less pleasure than in former days to my horses. Nor indeed can I
much wonder that whole nations have been consentaneous in treating
them as objects of devotion: the only thing wonderful is that
gratitude seems to have acted as powerfully and extensively as fear;
indeed, more extensively, for no object of worship whatever has
attracted so many worshippers. Where Jupiter has one, the cow has ten:
she was venerated before he was born, and will be when even the
carvers have forgotten him.
_Caesar._ Unwillingly should I see it; for the character of our gods
hath formed the character of our nation. Serapis and Isis have stolen
in among them within our memory, and others will follow, until at last
Saturn will not be the only one emasculated by his successor. What can
be more august than our rites? The first dignitaries of the republic
are emulous to administer them: nothing of low or venal has any place
in them; nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak
of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her
slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial
monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had
entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place
of the Lemures. But men cannot bear to be deprived long together of
anything they are used to, not even of their fears; and, by a reaction
of the mind appertaining to our nature, new stimulants were looked
for, not on the side of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected
or imagined, but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by
fanaticism, and fanaticism by irreligion, alternately and perpetually.