Produced by Norman M. Wolcott
THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE, VOLUME II.
By Thomas Paine
Collected And Edited By
Moncure Daniel Conway
1779 - 1792
[Redactor's Note: Reprinted from the "The Writings of Thomas Paine
Volume I" (1894 - 1896). The author's notes are preceded by a "*". A
Table of Contents has been added for each part for the convenience of
the reader which is not included in the printed edition. Notes are at
the end of Part II. ]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
XIII The Rights of Man
PART THE FIRST
BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
* Editor's Introduction
* Dedication to George Washington
* Preface to the English Edition
* Preface to the French Edition
* Rights of Man
* Miscellaneous Chapter
* Conclusion
XIV The Rights of Man
PART THE SECOND
COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE
* French Translator's Preface
* Dedication to M. de la Fayette
* Preface
* Introduction
* Chapter I Of Society and Civilisation
* Chapter II Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments
* Chapter III Of the Old and New Systems of Government
* Chapter IV Of Constitutions
* Chapter V Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe,
Interspersed with Miscellaneous Observations
* Appendix
* Notes
XIII. RIGHTS OF MAN.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
WHEN Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he was
perhaps as happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate friend,
Jefferson, was Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette was the idol
of France. His fame had preceded him, and he at once became, in Paris,
the centre of the same circle of savants and philosophers that had
surrounded Franklin. His main reason for proceeding at once to Paris was
that he might submit to the Academy of Sciences his invention of an iron
bridge, and with its favorable verdict he came to England, in September.
He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher
(Ridgway), his "Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to
patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it
exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by
leading statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund
Burke, who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove
him about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards
Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered
America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His four
months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was approaching a
reform of that country after the American model, except that the Crown
would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided the throne should
not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more swiftly than he had
anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette, Condorcet, and others,
as an adviser in the formation of a new constitution.
Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and literary
duel between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out a tremendous
war between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine was, both in
France and in England, the inspirer of moderate counsels. Samuel Rogers
relates that in early life he dined at a friend's house in London
with Thomas Paine, when one of the toasts given was the "memory of
Joshua,"--in allusion to the Hebrew leader's conquest of the kings of
Canaan, and execution of them. Paine observed that he would not treat
kings like Joshua. "I 'm of the Scotch parson's opinion," he said,
"when he prayed against Louis XIV.--`Lord, shake him over the mouth of
hell, but don't let him drop!'" Paine then gave as his toast, "The
Republic of the World,"--which Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted
as a sublime idea. This was Paine's faith and hope, and with it he
confronted the revolutionary storms which presently burst over France
and England.
Until Burke's arraignment of France in his parliamentary speech
(February 9, 1790), Paine had no doubt whatever that he would sympathize
with the movement in France, and wrote to him from that country as
if conveying glad tidings. Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in
France" appeared November 1, 1790, and Paine at once set himself to
answer it. He was then staying at the Angel Inn, Islington. The inn
has been twice rebuilt since that time, and from its contents there is
preserved only a small image, which perhaps was meant to represent
"Liberty,"--possibly brought from Paris by Paine as an ornament for his
study. From the Angel he removed to a house in Harding Street, Fetter
Lane. Rickman says Part First of "Rights of Man" was finished at
Versailles, but probably this has reference to the preface only, as I
cannot find Paine in France that year until April 8. The book had been
printed by Johnson, in time for the opening of Parliament, in February;
but this publisher became frightened after a few copies were out (there
is one in the British Museum), and the work was transferred to J. S.
Jordan, 166 Fleet Street, with a preface sent from Paris (not contained
in Johnson's edition, nor in the American editions). The pamphlet,
though sold at the same price as Burke's, three shillings, had a vast
circulation, and Paine gave the proceeds to the Constitutional Societies
which sprang up under his teachings in various parts of the country.
Soon after appeared Burke's "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs." In
this Burke quoted a good deal from "Rights of Man," but replied to it
only with exclamation points, saying that the only answer such ideas
merited was "criminal justice." Paine's Part Second followed, published
February 17, 1792. In Part First Paine had mentioned a rumor that Burke
was a masked pensioner (a charge that will be noticed in connection with
its detailed statement in a further publication); and as Burke had
been formerly arraigned in Parliament, while Paymaster, for a very
questionable proceeding, this charge no doubt hurt a good deal. Although
the government did not follow Burke's suggestion of a prosecution
at that time, there is little doubt that it was he who induced the
prosecution of Part Second. Before the trial came on, December 18, 1792,
Paine was occupying his seat in the French Convention, and could only be
outlawed.
Burke humorously remarked to a friend of Paine and himself, "We hunt
in pairs." The severally representative character and influence of these
two men in the revolutionary era, in France and England, deserve more
adequate study than they have received. While Paine maintained freedom
of discussion, Burke first proposed criminal prosecution for sentiments
by no means libellous (such as Paine's Part First). While Paine was
endeavoring to make the movement in France peaceful, Burke fomented the
league of monarchs against France which maddened its people, and brought
on the Reign of Terror. While Paine was endeavoring to preserve the
French throne ("phantom" though he believed it), to prevent bloodshed,
Burke was secretly writing to the Queen of France, entreating her not
to compromise, and to "trust to the support of foreign armies"
("Histoire de France depuis 1789." Henri Martin, i., 151). While Burke
thus helped to bring the King and Queen to the guillotine, Paine pleaded
for their lives to the last moment. While Paine maintained the right of
mankind to improve their condition, Burke held that "the awful Author
of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence;
and that, having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactick, not
according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that
disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to
the place assigned us." Paine was a religious believer in eternal
principles; Burke held that "political problems do not primarily
concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the
result is likely to produce evil is politically false, that which is
productive of good politically is true." Assuming thus the visionary's
right to decide before the result what was "likely to produce evil,"
Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the French Republic which
might have developed itself peacefully, while Paine was striving for
an international Congress in Europe in the interest of peace. Paine
had faith in the people, and believed that, if allowed to choose
representatives, they would select their best and wisest men; and that
while reforming government the people would remain orderly, as they had
generally remained in America during the transition from British rule
to selfgovernment. Burke maintained that if the existing political order
were broken up there would be no longer a people, but "a number of
vague, loose individuals, and nothing more." "Alas!" he exclaims,
"they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can
form themselves into a mass, which has a true personality." For the sake
of peace Paine wished the revolution to be peaceful as the advance of
summer; he used every endeavor to reconcile English radicals to some
modus vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to retain Louis
XVI. as head of the executive in France: Burke resisted every tendency
of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate with the
French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King's death and the
war that followed between England and France in February, 1793. Burke
became a royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by a prosecution originally
proposed by Burke. While Paine was demanding religious liberty, Burke
was opposing the removal of penal statutes from Unitarians, on the
ground that but for those statutes Paine might some day set up a church
in England. When Burke was retiring on a large royal pension, Paine
was in prison, through the devices of Burke's confederate, the American
Minister in Paris. So the two men, as Burke said, "hunted in pairs."
So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted in
Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own ideas, the
reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the earliest complete
statement of republican principles. They were pronounced to be the
fundamental principles of the American Republic by Jefferson, Madison,
and Jackson,-the three Presidents who above all others represented the
republican idea which Paine first allied with American Independence.
Those who suppose that Paine did but reproduce the principles of
Rousseau and Locke will find by careful study of his well-weighed
language that such is not the case. Paine's political principles were
evolved out of his early Quakerism. He was potential in George Fox. The
belief that every human soul was the child of God, and capable of
direct inspiration from the Father of all, without mediator or priestly
intervention, or sacramental instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege
and rank. The universal Fatherhood implied universal Brotherhood, or
human equality. But the fate of the Quakers proved the necessity of
protecting the individual spirit from oppression by the majority as well
as by privileged classes. For this purpose Paine insisted on surrounding
the individual right with the security of the Declaration of Rights,
not to be invaded by any government; and would reduce government to an
association limited in its operations to the defence of those rights
which the individual is unable, alone, to maintain.
From the preceding chapter it will be seen that Part Second of "Rights
of Man" was begun by Paine in the spring of 1791. At the close of that
year, or early in 1792, he took up his abode with his friend Thomas
"Clio" Rickman, at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street. Rickman was a radical
publisher; the house remains still a book-binding establishment, and
seems little changed since Paine therein revised the proofs of Part
Second on a table which Rickman marked with a plate, and which is now in
possession of Mr. Edward Truelove. As the plate states, Paine wrote on
the same table other works which appeared in England in 1792.
In 1795 D. I. Eaton published an edition of "Rights of Man," with a
preface purporting to have been written by Paine while in Luxembourg
prison. It is manifestly spurious. The genuine English and French
prefaces are given.
RIGHTS OF MAN
Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revoloution
By Thomas Paine
Secretary For Foreign Affairs To Congress In The American War, And
Author Of The Works Entitled "Common Sense" And "A Letter To Abbé
Raynal"
DEDICATION
George Washington
President Of The United States Of America
Sir,
I present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of
freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to
establish. That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your
benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing
the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of
Sir,
Your much obliged, and
Obedient humble Servant,
Thomas Paine
PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural
that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance
commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to
have had cause to continue in that opinion than to change it.
At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English
Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I
was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time before to inform
him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his
advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack
was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood in
France, and as everything suffers by translation, I promised some of
the friends of the Revolution in that country that whenever Mr. Burke's
Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more
necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which
Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous
abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an
imposition on the rest of the world.
I am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr. Burke,
as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed other
expectations.
I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more
have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found
out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise in the
neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were
disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were enlightened
enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of America had
been bred up in the same prejudices against France, which at that time
characterised the people of England; but experience and an acquaintance
with the French Nation have most effectually shown to the Americans the
falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not believe that a more cordial
and confidential intercourse exists between any two countries than
between America and France.
When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of
Thoulouse was then Minister, and at that time highly esteemed. I became
much acquainted with the private Secretary of that Minister, a man of
an enlarged benevolent heart; and found that his sentiments and my own
perfectly agreed with respect to the madness of war, and the wretched
impolicy of two nations, like England and France, continually worrying
each other, to no other end than that of a mutual increase of burdens
and taxes. That I might be assured I had not misunderstood him, nor he
me, I put the substance of our opinions into writing and sent it to him;
subjoining a request, that if I should see among the people of England,
any disposition to cultivate a better understanding between the two
nations than had hitherto prevailed, how far I might be authorised
to say that the same disposition prevailed on the part of France? He
answered me by letter in the most unreserved manner, and that not for
himself only, but for the Minister, with whose knowledge the letter was
declared to be written.
I put this letter into the hands of Mr. Burke almost three years ago,
and left it with him, where it still remains; hoping, and at the same
time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of him, that
he would find some opportunity of making good use of it, for the purpose
of removing those errors and prejudices which two neighbouring nations,
from the want of knowing each other, had entertained, to the injury of
both.
When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr. Burke
an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it; instead
of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than he
immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were
afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are
men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the
quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who
are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow
discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more
unpardonable.
With respect to a paragraph in this work alluding to Mr. Burke's having
a pension, the report has been some time in circulation, at least two
months; and as a person is often the last to hear what concerns him
the most to know, I have mentioned it, that Mr. Burke may have an
opportunity of contradicting the rumour, if he thinks proper.
Thomas Paine
PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION
The astonishment which the French Revolution has caused throughout
Europe should be considered from two different points of view: first as
it affects foreign peoples, secondly as it affects their governments.
The cause of the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of the
whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by no means
favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose sight of this
distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments;
especially not the English people with its government.
The government of England is no friend of the revolution of France.
Of this we have sufficient proofs in the thanks given by that weak and
witless person, the Elector of Hanover, sometimes called the King of
England, to Mr. Burke for the insults heaped on it in his book, and in
the malevolent comments of the English Minister, Pitt, in his speeches
in Parliament.
In spite of the professions of sincerest friendship found in the
official correspondence of the English government with that of France,
its conduct gives the lie to all its declarations, and shows us clearly
that it is not a court to be trusted, but an insane court, plunging in
all the quarrels and intrigues of Europe, in quest of a war to satisfy
its folly and countenance its extravagance.
The English nation, on the contrary, is very favorably disposed towards
the French Revolution, and to the progress of liberty in the whole
world; and this feeling will become more general in England as the
intrigues and artifices of its government are better known, and the
principles of the revolution better understood. The French should know
that most English newspapers are directly in the pay of government, or,
if indirectly connected with it, always under its orders; and that those
papers constantly distort and attack the revolution in France in order
to deceive the nation. But, as it is impossible long to prevent the
prevalence of truth, the daily falsehoods of those papers no longer have
the desired effect.
To be convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England, the
world needs only to be told that the government regards and prosecutes
as a libel that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage on morality is
called law, and judges are found wicked enough to inflict penalties on
truth.
The English government presents, just now, a curious phenomenon. Seeing
that the French and English nations are getting rid of the prejudices
and false notions formerly entertained against each other, and which
have cost them so much money, that government seems to be placarding its
need of a foe; for unless it finds one somewhere, no pretext exists for
the enormous revenue and taxation now deemed necessary.
Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and
appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will be
so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies,
and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war enabled me to
double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the Nootka humbug gave
me a pretext for raising three millions sterling more; but unless I can
make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars will end. I was the first
to incite Turk against Russian, and now I hope to reap a fresh crop of
taxes."
If the miseries of war, and the flood of evils it spreads over a
country, did not check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter
into grief, the frantic conduct of the government of England would only
excite ridicule. But it is impossible to banish from one's mind the
images of suffering which the contemplation of such vicious policy
presents. To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages,
is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that
reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist any doubt that the
peoples of France, England, and America, enlightened and enlightening
each other, shall henceforth be able, not merely to give the world an
example of good government, but by their united influence enforce its
practice.
(Translated from the French)
RIGHTS OF MAN. PART THE FIRST BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and
irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is an
extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the National
Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or
the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked
attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a conduct that
cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified on that of
policy.
There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English
language, with which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French Nation and the
National Assembly. Everything which rancour, prejudice, ignorance or
knowledge could suggest, is poured forth in the copious fury of near
four hundred pages. In the strain and on the plan Mr. Burke was writing,
he might have written on to as many thousands. When the tongue or the
pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the
subject, that becomes exhausted.
Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions
he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of his
hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him with new
pretences to go on. There was a time when it was impossible to make Mr.
Burke believe there would be any Revolution in France. His opinion then
was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake it nor fortitude to
support it; and now that there is one, he seeks an escape by condemning
it.
Not sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great
part of his work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the
best-hearted men that lives) and the two societies in England known by
the name of the Revolution Society and the Society for Constitutional
Information.
Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being
the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which took
place 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says: "The political
Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of
the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental
rights:
1. To choose our own governors.
2. To cashier them for misconduct.
3. To frame a government for ourselves."
Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in this
or in that person, or in this or in that description of persons, but
that it exists in the whole; that it is a right resident in the nation.
Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a right exists in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists anywhere; and,
what is still more strange and marvellous, he says: "that the people
of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist
the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes." That men
should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain
their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new
species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.
The method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England
have no such rights, and that such rights do not now exist in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or anywhere at all, is of the same
marvellous and monstrous kind with what he has already said; for his
arguments are that the persons, or the generation of persons, in whom
they did exist, are dead, and with them the right is dead also. To prove
this, he quotes a declaration made by Parliament about a hundred years
ago, to William and Mary, in these words: "The Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of the people aforesaid" (meaning
the people of England then living) "most humbly and faithfully submit
themselves, their heirs and posterities, for Ever." He quotes a clause
of another Act of Parliament made in the same reign, the terms of which
he says, "bind us" (meaning the people of their day), "our heirs and our
posterity, to them, their heirs and posterity, to the end of time."
Mr. Burke conceives his point sufficiently established by producing
those clauses, which he enforces by saying that they exclude the
right of the nation for ever. And not yet content with making such
declarations, repeated over and over again, he farther says, "that if
the people of England possessed such a right before the Revolution"
(which he acknowledges to have been the case, not only in England, but
throughout Europe, at an early period), "yet that the English Nation
did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce and abdicate
it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever."
As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid
principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French Revolution
and the National Assembly, and charges that august, illuminated and
illuminating body of men with the epithet of usurpers, I shall, sans
ceremonie, place another system of principles in opposition to his.
The English Parliament of 1688 did a certain thing, which, for
themselves and their constituents, they had a right to do, and which
it appeared right should be done. But, in addition to this right, which
they possessed by delegation, they set up another right by assumption,
that of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time. The case,
therefore, divides itself into two parts; the right which they possessed
by delegation, and the right which they set up by assumption. The first
is admitted; but with respect to the second, I reply: There never
did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any
description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed
of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to
the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be
governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts
or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have
neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in
themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to
act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded
it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most
ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to
follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period,
had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to
bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or
the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those
who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation
is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions
require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be
accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with
him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this
world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be
its governors, or how its government shall be organised, or how
administered.
I am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor for nor
against any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole nation chooses
to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the
right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against
their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the
manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is contending
for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living.
There was a time when kings disposed of their crowns by will upon their
death-beds, and consigned the people, like beasts of the field, to
whatever successor they appointed. This is now so exploded as scarcely
to be remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to be believed. But the
Parliamentary clauses upon which Mr. Burke builds his political church
are of the same nature.
The laws of every country must be analogous to some common principle.
In England no parent or master, nor all the authority of Parliament,
omnipotent as it has called itself, can bind or control the personal
freedom even of an individual beyond the age of twenty-one years. On
what ground of right, then, could the Parliament of 1688, or any other
Parliament, bind all posterity for ever?
Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived
at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal
imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist
between them--what rule or principle can be laid down that of two
nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who
never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the
end of time?
In England it is said that money cannot be taken out of the pockets
of the people without their consent. But who authorised, or who could
authorise, the Parliament of 1688 to control and take away the freedom
of posterity (who were not in existence to give or to withhold their
consent) and limit and confine their right of acting in certain cases
for ever?
A greater absurdity cannot present itself to the understanding of man
than what Mr. Burke offers to his readers. He tells them, and he tells
the world to come, that a certain body of men who existed a hundred
years ago made a law, and that there does not exist in the nation, nor
ever will, nor ever can, a power to alter it. Under how many subtilties
or absurdities has the divine right to govern been imposed on the
credulity of mankind? Mr. Burke has discovered a new one, and he
has shortened his journey to Rome by appealing to the power of this
infallible Parliament of former days, and he produces what it has done
as of divine authority, for that power must certainly be more than human
which no human power to the end of time can alter.
But Mr. Burke has done some service--not to his cause, but to his
country--by bringing those clauses into public view. They serve to
demonstrate how necessary it is at all times to watch against the
attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
It is somewhat extraordinary that the offence for which James II. was
expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be re-acted,
under another shape and form, by the Parliament that expelled him. It
shows that the Rights of Man were but imperfectly understood at the
Revolution, for certain it is that the right which that Parliament set
up by assumption (for by the delegation it had not, and could not
have it, because none could give it) over the persons and freedom of
posterity for ever was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James
attempted to set up over the Parliament and the nation, and for which he
was expelled. The only difference is (for in principle they differ not)
that the one was an usurper over living, and the other over the unborn;
and as the one has no better authority to stand upon than the other,
both of them must be equally null and void, and of no effect.
From what, or from whence, does Mr. Burke prove the right of any human
power to bind posterity for ever? He has produced his clauses, but he
must produce also his proofs that such a right existed, and show how it
existed. If it ever existed it must now exist, for whatever appertains
to the nature of man cannot be annihilated by man. It is the nature of
man to die, and he will continue to die as long as he continues to be
born. But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of political Adam, in whom all
posterity are bound for ever. He must, therefore, prove that his Adam
possessed such a power, or such a right.
The weaker any cord is, the less will it bear to be stretched, and the
worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to break it.
Had anyone proposed the overthrow of Mr. Burke's positions, he would
have proceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He would have magnified the
authorities, on purpose to have called the right of them into question;
and the instant the question of right was started, the authorities must
have been given up.
It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive that although
laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding
generations, yet they continue to derive their force from the consent of
the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot
be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing
passes for consent.
But Mr. Burke's clauses have not even this qualification in their
favour. They become null, by attempting to become immortal. The nature
of them precludes consent. They destroy the right which they might have,
by grounding it on a right which they cannot have. Immortal power is
not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of Parliament. The
Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed an act to have authorised
themselves to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever.
All, therefore, that can be said of those clauses is that they are a
formality of words, of as much import as if those who used them had
addressed a congratulation to themselves, and in the oriental style of
antiquity had said: O Parliament, live for ever!
The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the
opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and
not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.
That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be
thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is
to decide, the living or the dead?
As almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book are employed upon these
clauses, it will consequently follow that if the clauses themselves, so
far as they set up an assumed usurped dominion over posterity for ever,
are unauthoritative, and in their nature null and void; that all his
voluminous inferences, and declamation drawn therefrom, or founded
thereon, are null and void also; and on this ground I rest the matter.
We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke's book
has the appearance of being written as instruction to the French nation;
but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited
to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness attempting to illuminate
light.
While I am writing this there are accidentally before me some proposals
for a declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette (I ask his
pardon for using his former address, and do it only for distinction's
sake) to the National Assembly, on the 11th of July, 1789, three
days before the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but remark with
astonishment how opposite the sources are from which that gentleman and
Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of referring to musty records
and mouldy parchments to prove that the rights of the living are lost,
"renounced and abdicated for ever," by those who are now no more, as
Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette applies to the living world,
and emphatically says: "Call to mind the sentiments which nature has
engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when
they are solemnly recognised by all:--For a nation to love liberty, it
is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that
she wills it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr.
Burke labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his
declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise, and
soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on to a
vast field of generous and manly thinking, and do not finish, like Mr.
Burke's periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the heart.
As I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I will take the liberty of adding
an anecdote respecting his farewell address to the Congress of America
in 1783, and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw Mr. Burke's
thundering attack on the French Revolution. M. de la Fayette went to
America at the early period of the war, and continued a volunteer in her
service to the end. His conduct through the whole of that enterprise is
one of the most extraordinary that is to be found in the history of a
young man, scarcely twenty years of age. Situated in a country that was
like the lap of sensual pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how
few are there to be found who would exchange such a scene for the woods
and wildernesses of America, and pass the flowery years of youth in
unprofitable danger and hardship! but such is the fact. When the
war ended, and he was on the point of taking his final departure, he
presented himself to Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate
farewell the Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words:
"May this great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to
the hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count
Vergennes to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but never
could obtain his consent. The fact was that Count Vergennes was an
aristocratical despot at home, and dreaded the example of the American
Revolution in France, as certain other persons now dread the example of
the French Revolution in England, and Mr. Burke's tribute of fear (for
in this light his book must be considered) runs parallel with Count
Vergennes' refusal. But to return more particularly to his work.
"We have seen," says Mr. Burke, "the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people
has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant." This is one among a thousand other instances, in
which Mr. Burke shows that he is ignorant of the springs and principles
of the French Revolution.
It was not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of
the Government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their
origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back:
and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean
stables of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed
by anything short of a complete and universal Revolution. When it
becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul should go
into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and
there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to
act at all. The king was known to be the friend of the nation, and this
circumstance was favorable to the enterprise. Perhaps no man bred up in
the style of an absolute king, ever possessed a heart so little disposed
to the exercise of that species of power as the present King of France.
But the principles of the Government itself still remained the same. The
Monarch and the Monarchy were distinct and separate things; and it was
against the established despotism of the latter, and not against the
person or principles of the former, that the revolt commenced, and the
Revolution has been carried.
Mr. Burke does not attend to the distinction between men and principles,
and, therefore, he does not see that a revolt may take place against the
despotism of the latter, while there lies no charge of despotism against
the former.
The natural moderation of Louis XVI. contributed nothing to alter
the hereditary despotism of the monarchy. All the tyrannies of former
reigns, acted under that hereditary despotism, were still liable to be
revived in the hands of a successor. It was not the respite of a reign
that would satisfy France, enlightened as she was then become. A casual
discontinuance of the practice of despotism, is not a discontinuance of
its principles: the former depends on the virtue of the individual who
is in immediate possession of the power; the latter, on the virtue and
fortitude of the nation. In the case of Charles I. and James II. of
England, the revolt was against the personal despotism of the men;
whereas in France, it was against the hereditary despotism of the
established Government. But men who can consign over the rights of
posterity for ever on the authority of a mouldy parchment, like Mr.
Burke, are not qualified to judge of this Revolution. It takes in
a field too vast for their views to explore, and proceeds with a
mightiness of reason they cannot keep pace with.
But there are many points of view in which this Revolution may be
considered. When despotism has established itself for ages in a country,
as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides.
It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but
it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere.
Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and
usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot.
The original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the king,
divides and sub-divides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till
at last the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case in
France; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through
an endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely
perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by
assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannizes under the pretence of
obeying.
When a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the nature
of her government, he will see other causes for revolt than those which
immediately connect themselves with the person or character of Louis
XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a thousand despotisms to be
reformed in France, which had grown up under the hereditary despotism
of the monarchy, and became so rooted as to be in a great measure
independent of it. Between the Monarchy, the Parliament, and the
Church there was a rivalship of despotism; besides the feudal despotism
operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere.
But Mr. Burke, by considering the king as the only possible object of
a revolt, speaks as if France was a village, in which everything that
passed must be known to its commanding officer, and no oppression could
be acted but what he could immediately control. Mr. Burke might have
been in the Bastille his whole life, as well under Louis XVI. as Louis
XIV., and neither the one nor the other have known that such a man as
Burke existed. The despotic principles of the government were the same
in both reigns, though the dispositions of the men were as remote as
tyranny and benevolence.
What Mr. Burke considers as a reproach to the French Revolution (that of
bringing it forward under a reign more mild than the preceding ones)
is one of its highest honors. The Revolutions that have taken place in
other European countries, have been excited by personal hatred. The rage
was against the man, and he became the victim. But, in the instance of
France we see a Revolution generated in the rational contemplation of
the Rights of Man, and distinguishing from the beginning between persons
and principles.
But Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles when he is
contemplating Governments. "Ten years ago," says he, "I could have
felicitated France on her having a Government, without inquiring what
the nature of that Government was, or how it was administered." Is this
the language of a rational man? Is it the language of a heart feeling as
it ought to feel for the rights and happiness of the human race? On
this ground, Mr. Burke must compliment all the Governments in the world,
while the victims who suffer under them, whether sold into slavery, or
tortured out of existence, are wholly forgotten. It is power, and
not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates; and under this abominable
depravity he is disqualified to judge between them. Thus much for his
opinion as to the occasions of the French Revolution. I now proceed to
other considerations.
I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you proceed
along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke's language, it continually
recedes and presents itself at a distance before you; but when you have
got as far as you can go, there is no point at all. Just thus it is with
Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six pages. It is therefore difficult
to reply to him. But as the points he wishes to establish may be
inferred from what he abuses, it is in his paradoxes that we must look
for his arguments.
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are
very well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce, through
the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke should
recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that his
readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned
exclamation.
When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended to be
believed that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of Europe is
extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if anyone knows
what it is), the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment
and heroic enterprise is gone!" and all this because the Quixot age of
chivalry nonsense is gone, what opinion can we form of his judgment, or
what regard can we pay to his facts? In the rhapsody of his imagination
he has discovered a world of wind mills, and his sorrows are that there
are no Quixots to attack them. But if the age of aristocracy, like that
of chivalry, should fall (and they had originally some connection) Mr.
Burke, the trumpeter of the Order, may continue his parody to the end,
and finish with exclaiming: "Othello's occupation's gone!"
Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid paintings, when the French Revolution
is compared with the Revolutions of other countries, the astonishment
will be that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but this astonishment
will cease when we reflect that principles, and not persons, were the
meditated objects of destruction. The mind of the nation was acted
upon by a higher stimulus than what the consideration of persons could
inspire, and sought a higher conquest than could be produced by the
downfall of an enemy. Among the few who fell there do not appear to be
any that were intentionally singled out. They all of them had their fate
in the circumstances of the moment, and were not pursued with that long,
cold-blooded unabated revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in
the affair of 1745.
Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the Bastille
is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of implication as if
he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were built up again. "We
have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and tenanted the mansion; and we have
prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the
queens of France."*[2] As to what a madman like the person called Lord
George Gordon might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a
prison, it is unworthy a rational consideration. It was a madman that
libelled, and that is sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity
for confining him, which was the thing that was wished for. But certain
it is that Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other
people may do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in
the grossest style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some
points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that Mr.
Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power of the
Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.
Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection that I
can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who lingered out
the most wretched of lives, a life without hope in the most miserable of
prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt
himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is
not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the
showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage,
but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand
that hath purloined him from himself, he degenerates into a composition
of art, and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his
heroine must be a tragedy-victim expiring in show, and not the real
prisoner of misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon.
As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction of the Bastille (and
his silence is nothing in his favour), and has entertained his readers
with refections on supposed facts distorted into real falsehoods, I will
give, since he has not, some account of the circumstances which preceded
that transaction. They will serve to show that less mischief could
scarcely have accompanied such an event when considered with the
treacherous and hostile aggravations of the enemies of the Revolution.
The mind can hardly picture to itself a more tremendous scene than what
the city of Paris exhibited at the time of taking the Bastille, and for
two days before and after, nor perceive the possibility of its quieting
so soon. At a distance this transaction has appeared only as an act of
heroism standing on itself, and the close political connection it had
with the Revolution is lost in the brilliancy of the achievement. But
we are to consider it as the strength of the parties brought man to man,
and contending for the issue. The Bastille was to be either the prize
or the prison of the assailants. The downfall of it included the idea
of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as
figuratively united as Bunyan's Doubting Castle and Giant Despair.
The National Assembly, before and at the time of taking the Bastille,
was sitting at Versailles, twelve miles distant from Paris. About a week
before the rising of the Partisans, and their taking the Bastille, it
was discovered that a plot was forming, at the head of which was
the Count D'Artois, the king's youngest brother, for demolishing the
National Assembly, seizing its members, and thereby crushing, by a coup
de main, all hopes and prospects of forming a free government. For
the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well this plan did not
succeed. Examples are not wanting to show how dreadfully vindictive and
cruel are all old governments, when they are successful against what
they call a revolt.
This plan must have been some time in contemplation; because, in order
to carry it into execution, it was necessary to collect a large military
force round Paris, and cut off the communication between that city
and the National Assembly at Versailles. The troops destined for this
service were chiefly the foreign troops in the pay of France, and who,
for this particular purpose, were drawn from the distant provinces where
they were then stationed. When they were collected to the amount of
between twenty-five and thirty thousand, it was judged time to put the
plan into execution. The ministry who were then in office, and who were
friendly to the Revolution, were instantly dismissed and a new ministry
formed of those who had concerted the project, among whom was Count de
Broglio, and to his share was given the command of those troops.
The character of this man as described to me in a letter which I
communicated to Mr. Burke before he began to write his book, and from
an authority which Mr. Burke well knows was good, was that of "a
high-flying aristocrat, cool, and capable of every mischief."
While these matters were agitating, the National Assembly stood in the
most perilous and critical situation that a body of men can be supposed
to act in. They were the devoted victims, and they knew it. They had the
hearts and wishes of their country on their side, but military authority
they had none. The guards of Broglio surrounded the hall where the
Assembly sat, ready, at the word of command, to seize their persons,
as had been done the year before to the Parliament of Paris. Had the
National Assembly deserted their trust, or had they exhibited signs of
weakness or fear, their enemies had been encouraged and their country
depressed. When the situation they stood in, the cause they were engaged
in, and the crisis then ready to burst, which should determine their
personal and political fate and that of their country, and probably of
Europe, are taken into one view, none but a heart callous with prejudice
or corrupted by dependence can avoid interesting itself in their
success.
The Archbishop of Vienne was at this time President of the National
Assembly--a person too old to undergo the scene that a few days or a few
hours might bring forth. A man of more activity and bolder fortitude
was necessary, and the National Assembly chose (under the form of a
Vice-President, for the Presidency still resided in the Archbishop) M.
de la Fayette; and this is the only instance of a Vice-President being
chosen. It was at the moment that this storm was pending (July 11th)
that a declaration of rights was brought forward by M. de la Fayette,
and is the same which is alluded to earlier. It was hastily drawn up,
and makes only a part of the more extensive declaration of rights agreed
upon and adopted afterwards by the National Assembly. The particular
reason for bringing it forward at this moment (M. de la Fayette has
since informed me) was that, if the National Assembly should fall in
the threatened destruction that then surrounded it, some trace of its
principles might have the chance of surviving the wreck.
Everything now was drawing to a crisis. The event was freedom or
slavery. On one side, an army of nearly thirty thousand men; on the
other, an unarmed body of citizens--for the citizens of Paris, on whom
the National Assembly must then immediately depend, were as unarmed and
as undisciplined as the citizens of London are now. The French guards
had given strong symptoms of their being attached to the national cause;
but their numbers were small, not a tenth part of the force that Broglio
commanded, and their officers were in the interest of Broglio.
Matters being now ripe for execution, the new ministry made their
appearance in office. The reader will carry in his mind that the
Bastille was taken the 14th July; the point of time I am now speaking of
is the 12th. Immediately on the news of the change of ministry reaching
Paris, in the afternoon, all the playhouses and places of entertainment,
shops and houses, were shut up. The change of ministry was considered as
the prelude of hostilities, and the opinion was rightly founded.
The foreign troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince de
Lambesc, who commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by the Place
of Louis Xv., which connects itself with some of the streets. In his
march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword. The French are
remarkable for their respect to old age; and the insolence with which it
appeared to be done, uniting with the general fermentation they were
in, produced a powerful effect, and a cry of "To arms! to arms!" spread
itself in a moment over the city.
Arms they had none, nor scarcely anyone who knew the use of them; but
desperate resolution, when every hope is at stake, supplies, for a
while, the want of arms. Near where the Prince de Lambesc was drawn up,
were large piles of stones collected for building the new bridge, and
with these the people attacked the cavalry. A party of French guards
upon hearing the firing, rushed from their quarters and joined the
people; and night coming on, the cavalry retreated.
The streets of Paris, being narrow, are favourable for defence, and the
loftiness of the houses, consisting of many stories, from which great
annoyance might be given, secured them against nocturnal enterprises;
and the night was spent in providing themselves with every sort of
weapon they could make or procure: guns, swords, blacksmiths' hammers,
carpenters' axes, iron crows, pikes, halberts, pitchforks, spits, clubs,
etc., etc. The incredible numbers in which they assembled the next
morning, and the still more incredible resolution they exhibited,
embarrassed and astonished their enemies. Little did the new ministry
expect such a salute. Accustomed to slavery themselves, they had no idea
that liberty was capable of such inspiration, or that a body of unarmed
citizens would dare to face the military force of thirty thousand men.
Every moment of this day was employed in collecting arms, concerting
plans, and arranging themselves into the best order which such an
instantaneous movement could afford. Broglio continued lying round the
city, but made no further advances this day, and the succeeding night
passed with as much tranquility as such a scene could possibly produce.
But defence only was not the object of the citizens. They had a cause
at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery. They every
moment expected an attack, or to hear of one made on the National
Assembly; and in such a situation, the most prompt measures are
sometimes the best. The object that now presented itself was the
Bastille; and the eclat of carrying such a fortress in the face of such
an army, could not fail to strike terror into the new ministry, who had
scarcely yet had time to meet. By some intercepted correspondence this
morning, it was discovered that the Mayor of Paris, M. Defflesselles,
who appeared to be in the interest of the citizens, was betraying them;
and from this discovery, there remained no doubt that Broglio would
reinforce the Bastille the ensuing evening. It was therefore necessary
to attack it that day; but before this could be done, it was first
necessary to procure a better supply of arms than they were then
possessed of.
There was, adjoining to the city a large magazine of arms deposited at
the Hospital of the Invalids, which the citizens summoned to surrender;
and as the place was neither defensible, nor attempted much defence,
they soon succeeded. Thus supplied, they marched to attack the Bastille;
a vast mixed multitude of all ages, and of all degrees, armed with all
sorts of weapons. Imagination would fail in describing to itself the
appearance of such a procession, and of the anxiety of the events which
a few hours or a few minutes might produce. What plans the ministry
were forming, were as unknown to the people within the city, as what
the citizens were doing was unknown to the ministry; and what movements
Broglio might make for the support or relief of the place, were to the
citizens equally as unknown. All was mystery and hazard.
That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such only
as the highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in the
space of a few hours, is an event which the world is fully possessed of.
I am not undertaking the detail of the attack, but bringing into view
the conspiracy against the nation which provoked it, and which fell
with the Bastille. The prison to which the new ministry were dooming the
National Assembly, in addition to its being the high altar and castle of
despotism, became the proper object to begin with. This enterprise
broke up the new ministry, who began now to fly from the ruin they had
prepared for others. The troops of Broglio dispersed, and himself fled
also.
Mr. Burke has spoken a great deal about plots, but he has never once
spoken of this plot against the National Assembly, and the liberties
of the nation; and that he might not, he has passed over all the
circumstances that might throw it in his way. The exiles who have fled
from France, whose case he so much interests himself in, and from whom
he has had his lesson, fled in consequence of the miscarriage of this
plot. No plot was formed against them; they were plotting against
others; and those who fell, met, not unjustly, the punishment they
were preparing to execute. But will Mr. Burke say that if this plot,
contrived with the subtilty of an ambuscade, had succeeded, the
successful party would have restrained their wrath so soon? Let the
history of all governments answer the question.
Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None. They
were themselves the devoted victims of this plot, and they have not
retaliated; why, then, are they charged with revenge they have not
acted? In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which all
degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering themselves,
by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction meditated against them,
is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When men are sore with
the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the prospects of new ones,
is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked
for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage; yet the greatest is that which
himself has committed. His book is a volume of outrage, not apologised
for by the impulse of a moment, but cherished through a space of ten
months; yet Mr. Burke had no provocation--no life, no interest, at
stake.
More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their opponents: but
four or five persons were seized by the populace, and instantly put to
death; the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris, who was
detected in the act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon, one of the
new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law, who had accepted the office
of intendant of Paris. Their heads were stuck upon spikes, and carried
about the city; and it is upon this mode of punishment that Mr. Burke
builds a great part of his tragic scene. Let us therefore examine how
men came by the idea of punishing in this manner.
They learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate the
punishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon
spikes, which remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in
the horror of the scene from those carried about upon spikes at Paris;
yet this was done by the English Government. It may perhaps be said that
it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but
it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or
hardens their hearts, and in either case it instructs them how to punish
when power falls into their hands.
Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is
their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. In England the
punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering;
the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the
populace. In France, under the former Government, the punishments were
not less barbarous. Who does not remember the execution of Damien, torn
to pieces by horses? The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited to
the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge; and by the
base and false idea of governing men by terror, instead of reason,
they become precedents. It is over the lowest class of mankind that
government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it
operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough to feel they are
the objects aimed at; and they inflict in their turn the examples of
terror they have been instructed to practise.
There is in all European countries a large class of people of that
description, which in England is called the "mob." Of this class were
those who committed the burnings and devastations in London in 1780, and
of this class were those who carried the heads on iron spikes in Paris.
Foulon and Berthier were taken up in the country, and sent to Paris,
to undergo their examination at the Hotel de Ville; for the National
Assembly, immediately on the new ministry coming into office, passed a
decree, which they communicated to the King and Cabinet, that they (the
National Assembly) would hold the ministry, of which Foulon was one,
responsible for the measures they were advising and pursuing; but the
mob, incensed at the appearance of Foulon and Berthier, tore them from
their conductors before they were carried to the Hotel de Ville, and
executed them on the spot. Why then does Mr. Burke charge outrages
of this kind on a whole people? As well may he charge the riots and
outrages of 1780 on all the people of London, or those in Ireland on all
his countrymen.
But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and derogatory
to the human character should lead to other reflections than those
of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some claim to our
consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of mankind as are
distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob,
are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we ask ourselves
this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as an unavoidable
consequence, out of the ill construction of all old governments in
Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly exalting
some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out
of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the
back-ground of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare,
the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a
revolution, those men are rather the followers of the camp than of the
standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.
I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I
then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here lay
down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of the French
Revolution, as much as any one thing he could have asserted. These
outrages were not the effect of the principles of the Revolution, but
of the degraded mind that existed before the Revolution, and which the
Revolution is calculated to reform. Place them then to their proper
cause, and take the reproach of them to your own side.
It is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris that,
during such a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the control
of all authority, they have been able, by the influence of example
and exhortation, to restrain so much. Never were more pains taken to
instruct and enlighten mankind, and to make them see that their interest
consisted in their virtue, and not in their revenge, than have been
displayed in the Revolution of France. I now proceed to make some
remarks on Mr. Burke's account of the expedition to Versailles, October
the 5th and 6th.
I can consider Mr. Burke's book in scarcely any other light than a
dramatic performance; and he must, I think, have considered it in the
same light himself, by the poetical liberties he has taken of omitting
some facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery bend to
produce a stage effect. Of this kind is his account of the expedition to
Versailles. He begins this account by omitting the only facts which as
causes are known to be true; everything beyond these is conjecture, even
in Paris; and he then works up a tale accommodated to his own passions
and prejudices.
It is to be observed throughout Mr. Burke's book that he never speaks
of plots against the Revolution; and it is from those plots that all the
mischiefs have arisen. It suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences
without their causes. It is one of the arts of the drama to do so. If
the crimes of men were exhibited with their sufferings, stage effect
would sometimes be lost, and the audience would be inclined to approve
where it was intended they should commiserate.
After all the investigations that have been made into this intricate
affair (the expedition to Versailles), it still remains enveloped in all
that kind of mystery which ever accompanies events produced more from a
concurrence of awkward circumstances than from fixed design. While the
characters of men are forming, as is always the case in revolutions,
there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to misinterpret each
other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes
concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different views,
and with the hopes of its producing very different consequences. A great
deal of this may be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the
issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.
The only things certainly known are that considerable uneasiness was at
this time excited at Paris by the delay of the King in not sanctioning
and forwarding the decrees of the National Assembly, particularly that
of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the decrees of the fourth
of August, which contained the foundation principles on which the
constitution was to be erected. The kindest, and perhaps the fairest
conjecture upon this matter is, that some of the ministers intended to
make remarks and observations upon certain parts of them before they
were finally sanctioned and sent to the provinces; but be this as it
may, the enemies of the Revolution derived hope from the delay, and the
friends of the Revolution uneasiness.
During this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps, which was composed as
such regiments generally are, of persons much connected with the
Court, gave an entertainment at Versailles (October 1) to some foreign
regiments then arrived; and when the entertainment was at the height, on
a signal given, the Garde du Corps tore the national cockade from their
hats, trampled it under foot, and replaced it with a counter-cockade
prepared for the purpose. An indignity of this kind amounted to
defiance. It was like declaring war; and if men will give challenges
they must expect consequences. But all this Mr. Burke has carefully kept
out of sight. He begins his account by saying: "History will record that
on the morning of the 6th October, 1789, the King and Queen of France,
after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down under
the pledged security of public faith to indulge nature in a few hours
of respite, and troubled melancholy repose." This is neither the sober
style of history, nor the intention of it. It leaves everything to
be guessed at and mistaken. One would at least think there had been a
battle; and a battle there probably would have been had it not been
for the moderating prudence of those whom Mr. Burke involves in his
censures. By his keeping the Garde du Corps out of sight Mr. Burke has
afforded himself the dramatic licence of putting the King and Queen in
their places, as if the object of the expedition was against them. But
to return to my account this conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might
well be expected, alarmed and enraged the Partisans. The colors of
the cause, and the cause itself, were become too united to mistake the
intention of the insult, and the Partisans were determined to call
the Garde du Corps to an account. There was certainly nothing of the
cowardice of assassination in marching in the face of the day to demand
satisfaction, if such a phrase may be used, of a body of armed men who
had voluntarily given defiance. But the circumstance which serves
to throw this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of the
Revolution appear to have encouraged it as well as its friends. The one
hoped to prevent a civil war by checking it in time, and the other to
make one. The hopes of those opposed to the Revolution rested in making
the King of their party, and getting him from Versailles to Metz,
where they expected to collect a force and set up a standard. We have,
therefore, two different objects presenting themselves at the same time,
and to be accomplished by the same means: the one to chastise the Garde
du Corps, which was the object of the Partisans; the other to render the
confusion of such a scene an inducement to the King to set off for Metz.
On the 5th of October a very numerous body of women, and men in the
disguise of women, collected around the Hotel de Ville or town-hall at
Paris, and set off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde
du Corps; but prudent men readily recollect that mischief is more easily
begun than ended; and this impressed itself with the more force from the
suspicions already stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade.
As soon, therefore, as a sufficient force could be collected, M. de la
Fayette, by orders from the civil authority of Paris, set off after
them at the head of twenty thousand of the Paris militia. The Revolution
could derive no benefit from confusion, and its opposers might. By an
amiable and spirited manner of address he had hitherto been fortunate in
calming disquietudes, and in this he was extraordinarily successful; to
frustrate, therefore, the hopes of those who might seek to improve
this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the King's quitting
Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and to prevent at the same time
the consequences that might ensue between the Garde du Corps and this
phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to the King, that he
was on his march to Versailles, by the orders of the civil authority of
Paris, for the purpose of peace and protection, expressing at the same
time the necessity of restraining the Garde du Corps from firing upon
the people.*[3]
He arrived at Versailles between ten and eleven at night. The Garde du
Corps was drawn up, and the people had arrived some time before, but
everything had remained suspended. Wisdom and policy now consisted in
changing a scene of danger into a happy event. M. de la Fayette became
the mediator between the enraged parties; and the King, to remove the
uneasiness which had arisen from the delay already stated, sent for the
President of the National Assembly, and signed the Declaration of the
Rights of Man, and such other parts of the constitution as were in
readiness.
It was now about one in the morning. Everything appeared to be composed,
and a general congratulation took place. By the beat of a drum a
proclamation was made that the citizens of Versailles would give the
hospitality of their houses to their fellow-citizens of Paris. Those
who could not be accommodated in this manner remained in the streets, or
took up their quarters in the churches; and at two o'clock the King and
Queen retired.
In this state matters passed till the break of day, when a fresh
disturbance arose from the censurable conduct of some of both parties,
for such characters there will be in all such scenes. One of the Garde
du Corps appeared at one of the windows of the palace, and the people
who had remained during the night in the streets accosted him with
reviling and provocative language. Instead of retiring, as in such a
case prudence would have dictated, he presented his musket, fired, and
killed one of the Paris militia. The peace being thus broken, the people
rushed into the palace in quest of the offender. They attacked the
quarters of the Garde du Corps within the palace, and pursued them
throughout the avenues of it, and to the apartments of the King. On this
tumult, not the Queen only, as Mr. Burke has represented it, but every
person in the palace, was awakened and alarmed; and M. de la Fayette had
a second time to interpose between the parties, the event of which was
that the Garde du Corps put on the national cockade, and the matter
ended as by oblivion, after the loss of two or three lives.
During the latter part of the time in which this confusion was acting,
the King and Queen were in public at the balcony, and neither of them
concealed for safety's sake, as Mr. Burke insinuates. Matters being thus
appeased, and tranquility restored, a general acclamation broke forth of
Le Roi a Paris--Le Roi a Paris--The King to Paris. It was the shout of
peace, and immediately accepted on the part of the King. By this measure
all future projects of trapanning the King to Metz, and setting up the
standard of opposition to the constitution, were prevented, and the
suspicions extinguished. The King and his family reached Paris in the
evening, and were congratulated on their arrival by M. Bailly, the Mayor
of Paris, in the name of the citizens. Mr. Burke, who throughout his
book confounds things, persons, and principles, as in his remarks on
M. Bailly's address, confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly for
calling it "un bon jour," a good day. Mr. Burke should have informed
himself that this scene took up the space of two days, the day on which
it began with every appearance of danger and mischief, and the day on
which it terminated without the mischiefs that threatened; and that
it is to this peaceful termination that M. Bailly alludes, and to the
arrival of the King at Paris. Not less than three hundred thousand
persons arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles to Paris,
and not an act of molestation was committed during the whole march.
Mr. Burke on the authority of M. Lally Tollendal, a deserter from the
National Assembly, says that on entering Paris, the people shouted "Tous
les eveques a la lanterne." All Bishops to be hanged at the lanthorn
or lamp-posts. It is surprising that nobody could hear this but Lally
Tollendal, and that nobody should believe it but Mr. Burke. It has not
the least connection with any part of the transaction, and is totally
foreign to every circumstance of it. The Bishops had never been
introduced before into any scene of Mr. Burke's drama: why then are
they, all at once, and altogether, tout a coup, et tous ensemble,
introduced now? Mr. Burke brings forward his Bishops and his
lanthorn-like figures in a magic lanthorn, and raises his scenes by
contrast instead of connection. But it serves to show, with the rest of
his book what little credit ought to be given where even probability is
set at defiance, for the purpose of defaming; and with this reflection,
instead of a soliloquy in praise of chivalry, as Mr. Burke has done, I
close the account of the expedition to Versailles.*[4]
I have now to follow Mr. Burke through a pathless wilderness of
rhapsodies, and a sort of descant upon governments, in which he asserts
whatever he pleases, on the presumption of its being believed, without
offering either evidence or reasons for so doing.
Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts,
principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or
denied. Mr. Burke with his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, published by the National Assembly of France, as
the basis on which the constitution of France is built. This he calls
"paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man." Does Mr.
Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must
mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and that he has
none himself; for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr. Burke
means to admit that man has rights, the question then will be: What are
those rights, and how man came by them originally?
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity,
respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the
intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce what
was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at
all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct
contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be
authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively
contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come
out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his
Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a
higher cannot be given him. But of titles I shall speak hereafter.
We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights.
As to the manner in which the world has been governed from that day to
this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make a proper use of
the errors or the improvements which the history of it presents. Those
who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we
are now. They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we
also shall be ancients in our turn. If the mere name of antiquity is to
govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or
a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make
a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The
fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish
nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come
to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our
enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a
dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred
years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must
have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must
now refer.
Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion,
yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced
to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation of man? I
will answer the question. Because there have been upstart governments,
thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working to un-make man.
If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the
mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the
first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no
succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set
any up. The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man
(for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to the
living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other.
Every generation is equal in rights to generations which preceded it,
by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his
contemporary.
Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether
from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their
opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one
point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree,
and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural
right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation
instead of generation, the latter being the only mode by which the
former is carried forward; and consequently every child born into the
world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world
is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his
natural right in it is of the same kind.
The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine authority or
merely historical, is full to this point, the unity or equality of man.
The expression admits of no controversy. "And God said, Let us make man
in our own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female
created he them." The distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other
distinction is even implied. If this be not divine authority, it is at
least historical authority, and shows that the equality of man, so far
from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record.
It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the world are
founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all
of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man
may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only
distinctions. Nay, even the laws of governments are obliged to slide
into this principle, by making degrees to consist in crimes and not in
persons.
It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest advantage to
cultivate. By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to
consider himself in this light, it places him in a close connection with
all his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he
is a part; and it is only when he forgets his origin, or, to use a more
fashionable phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute. It
is not among the least of the evils of the present existing governments
in all parts of Europe that man, considered as man, is thrown back to a
vast distance from his Maker, and the artificial chasm filled up with a
succession of barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, through which he has
to pass. I will quote Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has
set up between man and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a
herald, he says: "We fear God--we look with awe to kings--with affection
to Parliaments with duty to magistrates--with reverence to priests,
and with respect to nobility." Mr. Burke has forgotten to put in
"'chivalry." He has also forgotten to put in Peter.
The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he
is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and
consists but of two points. His duty to God, which every man must feel;
and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by. If those
to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected: if not,
they will be despised; and with regard to those to whom no power is
delegated, but who assume it, the rational world can know nothing of
them.
Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural
rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and
to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into
society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights
than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural
rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. But in order to
pursue this distinction with more precision, it will be necessary to
mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.
A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain
to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual
rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an
individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to
the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to
man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for
its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but
to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases,
sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to
security and protection.
From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class
of natural rights which man retains after entering into society and
those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.
The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to
execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among
this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or
rights of the mind; consequently religion is one of those rights. The
natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though
the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is
defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a
right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is
concerned, he never surrenders it. But what availeth it him to judge,
if he has not power to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the
common stock of society, and takes the ann of society, of which he is
a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him
nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital
as a matter of right.
From these premisses two or three certain conclusions will follow:
First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other
words, is a natural right exchanged.
Secondly, That civil power properly considered as such is made up of
the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes
defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his
purpose, but when collected to a focus becomes competent to the Purpose
of every one.
Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights,
imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the
natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the
power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
We have now, in a few words, traced man from a natural individual to a
member of society, and shown, or endeavoured to show, the quality of
the natural rights retained, and of those which are exchanged for civil
rights. Let us now apply these principles to governments.
In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish
the governments which have arisen out of society, or out of the social
compact, from those which have not; but to place this in a clearer light
than what a single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a review
of the several sources from which governments have arisen and on which
they have been founded.
They may be all comprehended under three heads.
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man.
The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and
the third of reason.
When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to
hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up
the back-stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the
government of superstition. The oracles were consulted, and whatever
they were made to say became the law; and this sort of government lasted
as long as this sort of superstition lasted.
After these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of
William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the
name of a sceptre. Governments thus established last as long as the
power to support them lasts; but that they might avail themselves of
every engine in their favor, they united fraud to force, and set up
an idol which they called Divine Right, and which, in imitation of the
Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and in contradiction to
the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted itself afterwards into an
idol of another shape, called Church and State. The key of St. Peter
and the key of the Treasury became quartered on one another, and the
wondering cheated multitude worshipped the invention.
When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature
has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and
happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern
mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and
can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.
We have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in
contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.
It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the
principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those
who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because
it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have
existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when
governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist
no governors to form such a compact with.
The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his
own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other
to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments
have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right
to exist.
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought
to be, we must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily
discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people
or over the people. Mr. Burke has made no distinction. He investigates
nothing to its source, and therefore he confounds everything; but he has
signified his intention of undertaking, at some future opportunity, a
comparison between the constitution of England and France. As he thus
renders it a subject of controversy by throwing the gauntlet, I take him
upon his own ground. It is in high challenges that high truths have the
right of appearing; and I accept it with the more readiness because it
affords me, at the same time, an opportunity of pursuing the subject
with respect to governments arising out of society.
But it will be first necessary to define what is meant by a
Constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt the word; we must fix
also a standard signification to it.
A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an
ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a
visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a
government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The
constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the
people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which
you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the
principles on which the government shall be established, the manner
in which it shall be organised, the powers it shall have, the mode
of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name
such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the
government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the
complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles on which
it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore,
is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government
are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the
laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws
made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
Can, then, Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot,
we may fairly conclude that though it has been so much talked about, no
such thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently
that the people have yet a constitution to form.
Mr. Burke will not, I presume, deny the position I have already
advanced--namely, that governments arise either out of the people or
over the people. The English Government is one of those which arose out
of a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it arose over
the people; and though it has been much modified from the opportunity of
circumstances since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has
never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.
I readily perceive the reason why Mr. Burke declined going into the
comparison between the English and French constitutions, because he
could not but perceive, when he sat down to the task, that no such a
thing as a constitution existed on his side the question. His book
is certainly bulky enough to have contained all he could say on this
subject, and it would have been the best manner in which people could
have judged of their separate merits. Why then has he declined the only
thing that was worth while to write upon? It was the strongest ground he
could take, if the advantages were on his side, but the weakest if they
were not; and his declining to take it is either a sign that he could
not possess it or could not maintain it.
Mr. Burke said, in a speech last winter in Parliament, "that when the
National Assembly first met in three Orders (the Tiers Etat, the Clergy,
and the Noblesse), France had then a good constitution." This shows,
among numerous other instances, that Mr. Burke does not understand what
a constitution is. The persons so met were not a constitution, but a
convention, to make a constitution.
The present National Assembly of France is, strictly speaking, the
personal social compact. The members of it are the delegates of
the nation in its original character; future assemblies will be the
delegates of the nation in its organised character. The authority of
the present Assembly is different from what the authority of future
Assemblies will be. The authority of the present one is to form a
constitution; the authority of future assemblies will be to legislate
according to the principles and forms prescribed in that constitution;
and if experience should hereafter show that alterations, amendments,
or additions are necessary, the constitution will point out the mode by
which such things shall be done, and not leave it to the discretionary
power of the future government.
A government on the principles on which constitutional governments
arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of
altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself
what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there
is no constitution. The act by which the English Parliament empowered
itself to sit seven years, shows there is no constitution in England. It
might, by the same self-authority, have sat any great number of years,
or for life. The bill which the present Mr. Pitt brought into Parliament
some years ago, to reform Parliament, was on the same erroneous
principle. The right of reform is in the nation in its original
character, and the constitutional method would be by a general
convention elected for the purpose. There is, moreover, a paradox in the
idea of vitiated bodies reforming themselves.
From these preliminaries I proceed to draw some comparisons. I have
already spoken of the declaration of rights; and as I mean to be as
concise as possible, I shall proceed to other parts of the French
Constitution.
The constitution of France says that every man who pays a tax of sixty
sous per annum (2s. 6d. English) is an elector. What article will Mr.
Burke place against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same
time more capricious, than the qualification of electors is in England?
Limited--because not one man in an hundred (I speak much within compass)
is admitted to vote. Capricious--because the lowest character that can
be supposed to exist, and who has not so much as the visible means of an
honest livelihood, is an elector in some places: while in other places,
the man who pays very large taxes, and has a known fair character, and
the farmer who rents to the amount of three or four hundred pounds a
year, with a property on that farm to three or four times that amount,
is not admitted to be an elector. Everything is out of nature, as Mr.
Burke says on another occasion, in this strange chaos, and all sorts of
follies are blended with all sorts of crimes. William the Conqueror and
his descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and bribed
some parts of it by what they call charters to hold the other parts of
it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many
of those charters abound in Cornwall; the people were averse to the
Government established at the Conquest, and the towns were garrisoned
and bribed to enslave the country. All the old charters are the badges
of this conquest, and it is from this source that the capriciousness of
election arises.
The French Constitution says that the number of representatives for
any place shall be in a ratio to the number of taxable inhabitants or
electors. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? The county
of York, which contains nearly a million of souls, sends two county
members; and so does the county of Rutland, which contains not an
hundredth part of that number. The old town of Sarum, which contains
not three houses, sends two members; and the town of Manchester, which
contains upward of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any.
Is there any principle in these things? It is admitted that all this
is altered, but there is much to be done yet, before we have a fair
representation of the people. Is there anything by which you can trace
the marks of freedom, or discover those of wisdom? No wonder then Mr.
Burke has declined the comparison, and endeavored to lead his readers
from the point by a wild, unsystematical display of paradoxical
rhapsodies.
The French Constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected
every two years. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? Why,
that the nation has no right at all in the case; that the government is
perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point; and he can quote for his
authority the precedent of a former Parliament.
The French Constitution says there shall be no game laws, that the
farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce
of his lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can take; that
there shall be no monopolies of any kind--that all trades shall be free
and every man free to follow any occupation by which he can procure
an honest livelihood, and in any place, town, or city throughout the
nation. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England, game is made the
property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and with respect to
monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every chartered
town is an aristocratical monopoly in itself, and the qualification of
electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is
this what Mr. Burke means by a constitution?
In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the
country is hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An Englishman
is not free of his own country; every one of those places presents a
barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman--that he has no
rights. Within these monopolies are other monopolies. In a city, such
for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and thirty thousand
inhabitants, the right of electing representatives to Parliament is
monopolised by about thirty-one persons. And within these monopolies
are still others. A man even of the same town, whose parents were not
in circumstances to give him an occupation, is debarred, in many cases,
from the natural right of acquiring one, be his genius or industry what
it may.
Are these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating itself
from slavery, like France? Certainly they are not, and certain am I,
that when the people of England come to reflect upon them they will,
like France, annihilate those badges of ancient oppression, those traces
of a conquered nation. Had Mr. Burke possessed talents similar to the
author of "On the Wealth of Nations." he would have comprehended all
the parts which enter into, and, by assemblage, form a constitution.
He would have reasoned from minutiae to magnitude. It is not from his
prejudices only, but from the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is
unfitted for the subject he writes upon. Even his genius is without a
constitution. It is a genius at random, and not a genius constituted.
But he must say something. He has therefore mounted in the air like a
balloon, to draw the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand
upon.
Much is to be learned from the French Constitution. Conquest and tyranny
transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from Normandy into
England, and the country is yet disfigured with the marks. May, then,
the example of all France contribute to regenerate the freedom which a
province of it destroyed!
The French Constitution says that to preserve the national
representation from being corrupt, no member of the National Assembly
shall be an officer of the government, a placeman or a pensioner. What
will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper his answer: Loaves and
Fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and fishes has more mischief in
it than people have yet reflected on. The National Assembly has made the
discovery, and it holds out the example to the world. Had governments
agreed to quarrel on purpose to fleece their countries by taxes, they
could not have succeeded better than they have done.
Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of
what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament,
imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed
to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in the manner in
which an English Parliament is constructed it is like a man being both
mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of misapplication of trust it
is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the
supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and
are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted
them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of
Errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the Ministerial
party nor the Opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse
is the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country
people call "Ride and tie--you ride a little way, and then I."*[5] They
order these things better in France.
The French Constitution says that the right of war and peace is in the
nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the
expense?
In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower
for sixpence or a shilling a piece: so are the lions; and it would be
a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any inanimate
metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see the absurdity of
worshipping Aaron's molten calf, or Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but
why do men continue to practise themselves the absurdities they despise
in others?
It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation is
represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the
Crown or in the Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who
participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all
countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an
increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes,
a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the
English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded
by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not
raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
Mr. Burke, as a member of the House of Commons, is a part of the English
Government; and though he professes himself an enemy to war, he abuses
the French Constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds up the
English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France; but he
should first know the remarks which the French make upon it. They
contend in favor of their own, that the portion of liberty enjoyed in
England is just enough to enslave a country more productively than by
despotism, and that as the real object of all despotism is revenue,
a government so formed obtains more than it could do either by direct
despotism, or in a full state of freedom, and is, therefore on the
ground of interest, opposed to both. They account also for the readiness
which always appears in such governments for engaging in wars by
remarking on the different motives which produced them. In despotic
governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in
which they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more
permanent promptitude.
The French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these evils,
has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and ministers, and
placed the right where the expense must fall.
When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much interested
in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it
applies as much to one country as another. William the Conqueror, as
a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in himself, and his
descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a right.
Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any right
to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything but in
part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground he throws
the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running a line of
succession springing from William the Conqueror to the present day, he
makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the Conqueror was,
and where he came from, and into the origin, history and nature of what
are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning, and the
fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to discover it. Let,
then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of Normandy, for it is to this
origin that his argument goes. It also unfortunately happens, in running
this line of succession, that another line parallel thereto presents
itself, which is that if the succession runs in the line of the
conquest, the nation runs in the line of being conquered, and it ought
to rescue itself from this reproach.
But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war
descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the
right of Parliament to withhold the supplies. It will always happen when
a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right, and it
often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the other,
and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war as a
matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the supplies as a
matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse, than the disease.
The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other ties its hands;
but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a collusion
between the parties, and be made a screen to both.
On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the
right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly,
the mode of conducting it after it is declared. The French Constitution
places the right where the expense must fall, and this union can only
be in the nation. The mode of conducting it after it is declared,
it consigns to the executive department. Were this the case in all
countries, we should hear but little more of wars.
Before I proceed to consider other parts of the French Constitution,
and by way of relieving the fatigue of argument, I will introduce an
anecdote which I had from Dr. Franklin.
While the Doctor resided in France as Minister from America, during
the war, he had numerous proposals made to him by projectors of every
country and of every kind, who wished to go to the land that floweth
with milk and honey, America; and among the rest, there was one who
offered himself to be king. He introduced his proposal to the Doctor by
letter, which is now in the hands of M. Beaumarchais, of Paris--stating,
first, that as the Americans had dismissed or sent away*[6] their King,
that they would want another. Secondly, that himself was a Norman.
Thirdly, that he was of a more ancient family than the Dukes of
Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, his line having never been
bastardised. Fourthly, that there was already a precedent in England of
kings coming out of Normandy, and on these grounds he rested his offer,
enjoining that the Doctor would forward it to America. But as the Doctor
neither did this, nor yet sent him an answer, the projector wrote a
second letter, in which he did not, it is true, threaten to go over and
conquer America, but only with great dignity proposed that if his offer
was not accepted, an acknowledgment of about L30,000 might be made to
him for his generosity! Now, as all arguments respecting succession must
necessarily connect that succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke's
arguments on this subject go to show that there is no English origin of
kings, and that they are descendants of the Norman line in right of the
Conquest. It may, therefore, be of service to his doctrine to make this
story known, and to inform him, that in case of that natural extinction
to which all mortality is subject, Kings may again be had from Normandy,
on more reasonable terms than William the Conqueror; and consequently,
that the good people of England, at the revolution of 1688, might have
done much better, had such a generous Norman as this known their wants,
and they had known his. The chivalric character which Mr. Burke so much
admires, is certainly much easier to make a bargain with than a hard
dealing Dutchman. But to return to the matters of the constitution: The
French Constitution says, There shall be no titles; and, of consequence,
all that class of equivocal generation which in some countries is called
"aristocracy" and in others "nobility," is done away, and the peer is
exalted into the Man.
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is
perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the
human character, which degrades it. It reduces man into the diminutive
of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things
which are little. It talks about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, and
shows its new garter like a child. A certain writer, of some antiquity,
says: "When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
man, I put away childish things."
It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of
titles has fallen. It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count and Duke,
and breeched itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted.
It has put down the dwarf, to set up the man. The punyism of a senseless
word like Duke, Count or Earl has ceased to please. Even those who
possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the
rickets, have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of man, thirsting
for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him
from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to
contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the
Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.
Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not a
greater wonder that they should be kept up anywhere? What are they? What
is their worth, and "what is their amount?" When we think or speak of
a Judge or a General, we associate with it the ideas of office and
character; we think of gravity in one and bravery in the other; but when
we use the word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it. Through
all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Duke or a
Count; neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words. Whether
they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or
the rider or the horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid
to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination
has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all
the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a
chimerical nondescript.
But this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to hold them in
contempt, all their value is gone, and none will own them. It is
common opinion only that makes them anything, or nothing, or worse
than nothing. There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take
themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them. This species of
imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of Europe, and
it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to rise. There
was a time when the lowest class of what are called nobility was more
thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armour riding
throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was more stared at than
a modern Duke. The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen
by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate. The
patriots of France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in
society must take a new ground. The old one has fallen through. It must
now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical
ground of titles; and they have brought their titles to the altar, and
made of them a burnt-offering to Reason.
If no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles they would not
have been worth a serious and formal destruction, such as the National
Assembly have decreed them; and this makes it necessary to enquire
farther into the nature and character of aristocracy.
That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility
in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest. It was
originally a military order for the purpose of supporting military
government (for such were all governments founded in conquest); and
to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose for which it
was established, all the younger branches of those families were
disinherited and the law of primogenitureship set up.
The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law.
It is the law against every other law of nature, and Nature herself
calls for its destruction. Establish family justice, and aristocracy
falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family
of six children five are exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one
child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are thrown to the
cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.
As everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or less,
the interest of society, so does this. All the children which the
aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general,
cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but
at a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places in governments and
courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.
With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother
contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children, and
by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and
orphans. They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one line,
and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore, therefore, parents to
their children, and children to their parents relations to each other,
and man to society--and to exterminate the monster aristocracy, root
and branch--the French Constitution has destroyed the law of
Primogenitureship. Here then lies the monster; and Mr. Burke, if he
pleases, may write its epitaph.
Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of view.
We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it before or
behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is
still a monster.
In France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than what
it has in some other countries. It did not compose a body of hereditary
legislators. It was not "a corporation of aristocracy," for such I have
heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers. Let us then
examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has resolved
against having such a House in France.
Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is
kept up by family tyranny and injustice.
Secondly. Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to
be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are
corrupted at the very source. They begin life by trampling on all their
younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are
taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honour can
that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person
the inheritance of a whole family of children or doles out to them some
pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?
Thirdly. Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent
as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an
hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous
as an hereditary poet laureate.
Fourthly. Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to
nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.
Fifthly. Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of
governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having
property in man, and governing him by personal right.
Sixthly. Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human
species. By the universal economy of nature it is known, and by the
instance of the Jews it is proved, that the human species has a tendency
to degenerate, in any small number of persons, when separated from the
general stock of society, and inter-marrying constantly with each other.
It defeats even its pretended end, and becomes in time the opposite of
what is noble in man. Mr. Burke talks of nobility; let him show what
it is. The greatest characters the world have known have arisen on the
democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate
pace with democracy. The artificial Noble shrinks into a dwarf before
the Noble of Nature; and in the few instances of those (for there are
some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in
aristocracy, Those Men Despise It.--But it is time to proceed to a new
subject.
The French Constitution has reformed the condition of the clergy. It has
raised the income of the lower and middle classes, and taken from the
higher. None are now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds
sterling), nor any higher than two or three thousand pounds. What will
Mr. Burke place against this? Hear what he says.
He says: "That the people of England can see without pain or grudging,
an archbishop precede a duke; they can see a Bishop of Durham, or a
Bishop of Winchester in possession of L10,000 a-year; and cannot see why
it is in worse hands than estates to a like amount, in the hands of this
earl or that squire." And Mr. Burke offers this as an example to France.
As to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes the duke, or the
duke the bishop, it is, I believe, to the people in general, somewhat
like Sternhold and Hopkins, or Hopkins and Sternhold; you may put which
you please first; and as I confess that I do not understand the merits
of this case, I will not contest it with Mr. Burke.
But with respect to the latter, I have something to say. Mr. Burke has
not put the case right. The comparison is out of order, by being put
between the bishop and the earl or the squire. It ought to be put
between the bishop and the curate, and then it will stand thus:--"The
people of England can see without pain or grudging, a Bishop of Durham,
or a Bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a-year,
and a curate on thirty or forty pounds a-year, or less." No, sir, they
certainly do not see those things without great pain or grudging. It is
a case that applies itself to every man's sense of justice, and is one
among many that calls aloud for a constitution.
In France the cry of "the church! the church!" was repeated as often
as in Mr. Burke's book, and as loudly as when the Dissenters' Bill was
before the English Parliament; but the generality of the French clergy
were not to be deceived by this cry any longer. They knew that whatever
the pretence might be, it was they who were one of the principal objects
of it. It was the cry of the high beneficed clergy, to prevent any
regulation of income taking place between those of ten thousand pounds
a-year and the parish priest. They therefore joined their case to
those of every other oppressed class of men, and by this union obtained
redress.
The French Constitution has abolished tythes, that source of perpetual
discontent between the tythe-holder and the parishioner. When land is
held on tythe, it is in the condition of an estate held between two
parties; the one receiving one-tenth, and the other nine-tenths of the
produce: and consequently, on principles of equity, if the estate can be
improved, and made to produce by that improvement double or treble what
it did before, or in any other ratio, the expense of such improvement
ought to be borne in like proportion between the parties who are to
share the produce. But this is not the case in tythes: the farmer
bears the whole expense, and the tythe-holder takes a tenth of the
improvement, in addition to the original tenth, and by this means gets
the value of two-tenths instead of one. This is another case that calls
for a constitution.
The French Constitution hath abolished or renounced Toleration and
Intolerance also, and hath established Universal Right Of Conscience.
Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit
of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of
withholding Liberty of Conscience, and the other of granting it. The
one is the Pope armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope
selling or granting indulgences. The former is church and state, and the
latter is church and traffic.
But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man worships not
himself, but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience which he claims is
not for the service of himself, but of his God. In this case, therefore,
we must necessarily have the associated idea of two things; the mortal
who renders the worship, and the Immortal Being who is worshipped.
Toleration, therefore, places itself, not between man and man, nor
between church and church, nor between one denomination of religion and
another, but between God and man; between the being who worships, and
the Being who is worshipped; and by the same act of assumed authority
which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it presumptuously and
blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.
Were a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, "An Act to tolerate
or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or
Turk," or "to prohibit the Almighty from receiving it," all men would
startle and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption
of toleration in religious matters would then present itself unmasked;
but the presumption is not the less because the name of "Man" only
appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the worshipper and the
worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes!
by whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church,
or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine
insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own
concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that
thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can
determine between you.
With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every
one is left to judge of its own religion, there is no such thing as
a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other's
religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and
therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong. But with
respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing
itself from the universal family of mankind to the Divine object of all
adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and
though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the
earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted.
A Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, or the archbishop who
heads the dukes, will not refuse a tythe-sheaf of wheat because it is
not a cock of hay, nor a cock of hay because it is not a sheaf of wheat;
nor a pig, because it is neither one nor the other; but these same
persons, under the figure of an established church, will not permit
their Maker to receive the varied tythes of man's devotion.
One of the continual choruses of Mr. Burke's book is "Church and State."
He does not mean some one particular church, or some one particular
state, but any church and state; and he uses the term as a general
figure to hold forth the political doctrine of always uniting the church
with the state in every country, and he censures the National Assembly
for not having done this in France. Let us bestow a few thoughts on this
subject.
All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with
principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by
professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral.
Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by
persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose
their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?
It proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke recommends. By
engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable
only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called the
Church established by Law. It is a stranger, even from its birth, to any
parent mother, on whom it is begotten, and whom in time it kicks out and
destroys.
The inquisition in Spain does not proceed from the religion originally
professed, but from this mule-animal, engendered between the church
and the state. The burnings in Smithfield proceeded from the same
heterogeneous production; and it was the regeneration of this strange
animal in England afterwards, that renewed rancour and irreligion among
the inhabitants, and that drove the people called Quakers and Dissenters
to America. Persecution is not an original feature in any religion;
but it is alway the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or
religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and
every religion re-assumes its original benignity. In America, a catholic
priest is a good citizen, a good character, and a good neighbour; an
episcopalian minister is of the same description: and this proceeds
independently of the men, from there being no law-establishment in
America.
If also we view this matter in a temporal sense, we shall see the ill
effects it has had on the prosperity of nations. The union of church and
state has impoverished Spain. The revoking the edict of Nantes drove the
silk manufacture from that country into England; and church and state
are now driving the cotton manufacture from England to America and
France. Let then Mr. Burke continue to preach his antipolitical doctrine
of Church and State. It will do some good. The National Assembly
will not follow his advice, but will benefit by his folly. It was by
observing the ill effects of it in England, that America has been warned
against it; and it is by experiencing them in France, that the National
Assembly have abolished it, and, like America, have established
Universal Right Of Conscience, And Universal Right Of Citizenship.*[7]
I will here cease the comparison with respect to the principles of the
French Constitution, and conclude this part of the subject with a few
observations on the organisation of the formal parts of the French and
English governments.
The executive power in each country is in the hands of a person styled
the King; but the French Constitution distinguishes between the King and
the Sovereign: It considers the station of King as official, and places
Sovereignty in the nation.
The representatives of the nation, who compose the National Assembly,
and who are the legislative power, originate in and from the people
by election, as an inherent right in the people.--In England it is
otherwise; and this arises from the original establishment of what
is called its monarchy; for, as by the conquest all the rights of the
people or the nation were absorbed into the hands of the Conqueror, and
who added the title of King to that of Conqueror, those same matters
which in France are now held as rights in the people, or in the nation,
are held in England as grants from what is called the crown. The
Parliament in England, in both its branches, was erected by patents from
the descendants of the Conqueror. The House of Commons did not originate
as a matter of right in the people to delegate or elect, but as a grant
or boon.
By the French Constitution the nation is always named before the king.
The third article of the declaration of rights says: "The nation is
essentially the source (or fountain) of all sovereignty." Mr. Burke
argues that in England a king is the fountain--that he is the fountain
of all honour. But as this idea is evidently descended from the conquest
I shall make no other remark upon it, than that it is the nature of
conquest to turn everything upside down; and as Mr. Burke will not be
refused the privilege of speaking twice, and as there are but two parts
in the figure, the fountain and the spout, he will be right the second
time.
The French Constitution puts the legislative before the executive, the
law before the king; la loi, le roi. This also is in the natural
order of things, because laws must have existence before they can have
execution.
A king in France does not, in addressing himself to the National
Assembly, say, "My Assembly," similar to the phrase used in England
of my "Parliament"; neither can he use it consistently with the
constitution, nor could it be admitted. There may be propriety in the
use of it in England, because as is before mentioned, both Houses
of Parliament originated from what is called the crown by patent or
boon--and not from the inherent rights of the people, as the National
Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its origin.
The President of the National Assembly does not ask the King to grant to
the Assembly liberty of speech, as is the case with the English House
of Commons. The constitutional dignity of the National Assembly cannot
debase itself. Speech is, in the first place, one of the natural rights
of man always retained; and with respect to the National Assembly the
use of it is their duty, and the nation is their authority. They were
elected by the greatest body of men exercising the right of election
the European world ever saw. They sprung not from the filth of rotten
boroughs, nor are they the vassal representatives of aristocratical
ones. Feeling the proper dignity of their character they support it.
Their Parliamentary language, whether for or against a question, is
free, bold and manly, and extends to all the parts and circumstances of
the case. If any matter or subject respecting the executive department
or the person who presides in it (the king) comes before them it is
debated on with the spirit of men, and in the language of gentlemen; and
their answer or their address is returned in the same style. They stand
not aloof with the gaping vacuity of vulgar ignorance, nor bend with the
cringe of sycophantic insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows
no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled
character of man.
Let us now look to the other side of the question. In the addresses
of the English Parliaments to their kings we see neither the intrepid
spirit of the old Parliaments of France, nor the serene dignity of the
present National Assembly; neither do we see in them anything of the
style of English manners, which border somewhat on bluntness. Since
then they are neither of foreign extraction, nor naturally of English
production, their origin must be sought for elsewhere, and that origin
is the Norman Conquest. They are evidently of the vassalage class of
manners, and emphatically mark the prostrate distance that exists in
no other condition of men than between the conqueror and the conquered.
That this vassalage idea and style of speaking was not got rid of even
at the Revolution of 1688, is evident from the declaration of Parliament
to William and Mary in these words: "We do most humbly and faithfully
submit ourselves, our heirs and posterities, for ever." Submission is
wholly a vassalage term, repugnant to the dignity of freedom, and an
echo of the language used at the Conquest.
As the estimation of all things is given by comparison, the Revolution
of 1688, however from circumstances it may have been exalted beyond its
value, will find its level. It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the
enlarging orb of reason, and the luminous revolutions of America and
France. In less than another century it will go, as well as Mr. Burke's
labours, "to the family vault of all the Capulets." Mankind will then
scarcely believe that a country calling itself free would send
to Holland for a man, and clothe him with power on purpose to put
themselves in fear of him, and give him almost a million sterling a year
for leave to submit themselves and their posterity, like bondmen and
bondwomen, for ever.
But there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the
opportunity of seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances,
there is not any description of men that despise monarchy so much as
courtiers. But they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is
seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition
of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that
show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be
made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the
show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and
a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy,
believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to
be nothing.
As I used sometimes to correspond with Mr. Burke believing him then to
be a man of sounder principles than his book shows him to be, I wrote
to him last winter from Paris, and gave him an account how prosperously
matters were going on. Among other subjects in that letter, I referred
to the happy situation the National Assembly were placed in; that they
had taken ground on which their moral duty and their political interest
were united. They have not to hold out a language which they do not
themselves believe, for the fraudulent purpose of making others believe
it. Their station requires no artifice to support it, and can only be
maintained by enlightening mankind. It is not their interest to cherish
ignorance, but to dispel it. They are not in the case of a ministerial
or an opposition party in England, who, though they are opposed, are
still united to keep up the common mystery. The National Assembly must
throw open a magazine of light. It must show man the proper character of
man; and the nearer it can bring him to that standard, the stronger the
National Assembly becomes.
In contemplating the French Constitution, we see in it a rational order
of things. The principles harmonise with the forms, and both with their
origin. It may perhaps be said as an excuse for bad forms, that they
are nothing more than forms; but this is a mistake. Forms grow out of
principles, and operate to continue the principles they grow from. It
is impossible to practise a bad form on anything but a bad principle.
It cannot be ingrafted on a good one; and wherever the forms in any
government are bad, it is a certain indication that the principles are
bad also.
I will here finally close this subject. I began it by remarking that Mr.
Burke had voluntarily declined going into a comparison of the English
and French Constitutions. He apologises (in page 241) for not doing it,
by saying that he had not time. Mr. Burke's book was upwards of eight
months in hand, and is extended to a volume of three hundred and
sixty-six pages. As his omission does injury to his cause, his apology
makes it worse; and men on the English side of the water will begin to
consider, whether there is not some radical defect in what is called the
English constitution, that made it necessary for Mr. Burke to suppress
the comparison, to avoid bringing it into view.
As Mr. Burke has not written on constitutions so neither has he written
on the French Revolution. He gives no account of its commencement or its
progress. He only expresses his wonder. "It looks," says he, "to me, as
if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but
of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken
together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has
hitherto happened in the world."
As wise men are astonished at foolish things, and other people at
wise ones, I know not on which ground to account for Mr. Burke's
astonishment; but certain it is, that he does not understand the French
Revolution. It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos,
but it is no more than the consequence of a mental revolution priorily
existing in France. The mind of the nation had changed beforehand,
and the new order of things has naturally followed the new order of
thoughts. I will here, as concisely as I can, trace out the growth of
the French Revolution, and mark the circumstances that have contributed
to produce it.
The despotism of Louis XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and
the gaudy ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same
time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have
lost all sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their
Grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only for
weakness and effeminacy, made no other alteration than that of spreading
a sort of lethargy over the nation, from which it showed no disposition
to rise.
The only signs which appeared to the spirit of Liberty during those
periods, are to be found in the writings of the French philosophers.
Montesquieu, President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, went as far as a
writer under a despotic government could well proceed; and being obliged
to divide himself between principle and prudence, his mind often appears
under a veil, and we ought to give him credit for more than he has
expressed.
Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took
another line. His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions
which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with
governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love
of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant),
but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his
irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They
were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he
merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.
On the contrary, we find in the writings of Rousseau, and the Abbe
Raynal, a loveliness of sentiment in favour of liberty, that excites
respect, and elevates the human faculties; but having raised this
animation, they do not direct its operation, and leave the mind in love
with an object, without describing the means of possessing it.
The writings of Quesnay, Turgot, and the friends of those authors, are
of the serious kind; but they laboured under the same disadvantage with
Montesquieu; their writings abound with moral maxims of government, but
are rather directed to economise and reform the administration of the
government, than the government itself.
But all those writings and many others had their weight; and by the
different manner in which they treated the subject of government,
Montesquieu by his judgment and knowledge of laws, Voltaire by his wit,
Rousseau and Raynal by their animation, and Quesnay and Turgot by their
moral maxims and systems of economy, readers of every class met with
something to their taste, and a spirit of political inquiry began
to diffuse itself through the nation at the time the dispute between
England and the then colonies of America broke out.
In the war which France afterwards engaged in, it is very well known
that the nation appeared to be before-hand with the French ministry.
Each of them had its view; but those views were directed to different
objects; the one sought liberty, and the other retaliation on England.
The French officers and soldiers who after this went to America, were
eventually placed in the school of Freedom, and learned the practice as
well as the principles of it by heart.
As it was impossible to separate the military events which took place in
America from the principles of the American Revolution, the publication
of those events in France necessarily connected themselves with the
principles which produced them. Many of the facts were in themselves
principles; such as the declaration of American Independence, and the
treaty of alliance between France and America, which recognised the
natural rights of man, and justified resistance to oppression.
The then Minister of France, Count Vergennes, was not the friend of
America; and it is both justice and gratitude to say, that it was the
Queen of France who gave the cause of America a fashion at the French
Court. Count Vergennes was the personal and social friend of Dr.
Franklin; and the Doctor had obtained, by his sensible gracefulness,
a sort of influence over him; but with respect to principles Count
Vergennes was a despot.
The situation of Dr. Franklin, as Minister from America to France,
should be taken into the chain of circumstances. The diplomatic
character is of itself the narrowest sphere of society that man can
act in. It forbids intercourse by the reciprocity of suspicion; and
a diplomatic is a sort of unconnected atom, continually repelling and
repelled. But this was not the case with Dr. Franklin. He was not the
diplomatic of a Court, but of Man. His character as a philosopher
had been long established, and his circle of society in France was
universal.
Count Vergennes resisted for a considerable time the publication in
France of American constitutions, translated into the French language:
but even in this he was obliged to give way to public opinion, and
a sort of propriety in admitting to appear what he had undertaken to
defend. The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is
to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct
them into syntax.
The peculiar situation of the then Marquis de la Fayette is another link
in the great chain. He served in America as an American officer under a
commission of Congress, and by the universality of his acquaintance was
in close friendship with the civil government of America, as well as
with the military line. He spoke the language of the country, entered
into the discussions on the principles of government, and was always a
welcome friend at any election.
When the war closed, a vast reinforcement to the cause of Liberty spread
itself over France, by the return of the French officers and soldiers.
A knowledge of the practice was then joined to the theory; and all
that was wanting to give it real existence was opportunity. Man cannot,
properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has
it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case
in France.
M. Neckar was displaced in May, 1781; and by the ill-management of
the finances afterwards, and particularly during the extravagant
administration of M. Calonne, the revenue of France, which was nearly
twenty-four millions sterling per year, was become unequal to the
expenditure, not because the revenue had decreased, but because the
expenses had increased; and this was a circumstance which the nation
laid hold of to bring forward a Revolution. The English Minister, Mr.
Pitt, has frequently alluded to the state of the French finances in his
budgets, without understanding the subject. Had the French Parliaments
been as ready to register edicts for new taxes as an English Parliament
is to grant them, there had been no derangement in the finances, nor yet
any Revolution; but this will better explain itself as I proceed.
It will be necessary here to show how taxes were formerly raised in
France. The King, or rather the Court or Ministry acting under the use
of that name, framed the edicts for taxes at their own discretion,
and sent them to the Parliaments to be registered; for until they were
registered by the Parliaments they were not operative. Disputes had long
existed between the Court and the Parliaments with respect to the extent
of the Parliament's authority on this head. The Court insisted that the
authority of Parliaments went no farther than to remonstrate or show
reasons against the tax, reserving to itself the right of determining
whether the reasons were well or ill-founded; and in consequence
thereof, either to withdraw the edict as a matter of choice, or to order
it to be unregistered as a matter of authority. The Parliaments on their
part insisted that they had not only a right to remonstrate, but to
reject; and on this ground they were always supported by the nation.
But to return to the order of my narrative. M. Calonne wanted money: and
as he knew the sturdy disposition of the Parliaments with respect to new
taxes, he ingeniously sought either to approach them by a more gentle
means than that of direct authority, or to get over their heads by a
manoeuvre; and for this purpose he revived the project of assembling a
body of men from the several provinces, under the style of an "Assembly
of the Notables," or men of note, who met in 1787, and who were either
to recommend taxes to the Parliaments, or to act as a Parliament
themselves. An Assembly under this name had been called in 1617.
As we are to view this as the first practical step towards the
Revolution, it will be proper to enter into some particulars respecting
it. The Assembly of the Notables has in some places been mistaken for
the States-General, but was wholly a different body, the States-General
being always by election. The persons who composed the Assembly of the
Notables were all nominated by the king, and consisted of one hundred
and forty members. But as M. Calonne could not depend upon a majority of
this Assembly in his favour, he very ingeniously arranged them in such
a manner as to make forty-four a majority of one hundred and forty;
to effect this he disposed of them into seven separate committees, of
twenty members each. Every general question was to be decided, not by a
majority of persons, but by a majority of committee, and as eleven votes
would make a majority in a committee, and four committees a majority of
seven, M. Calonne had good reason to conclude that as forty-four would
determine any general question he could not be outvoted. But all his
plans deceived him, and in the event became his overthrow.
The then Marquis de la Fayette was placed in the second committee, of
which the Count D'Artois was president, and as money matters were the
object, it naturally brought into view every circumstance connected with
it. M. de la Fayette made a verbal charge against Calonne for selling
crown lands to the amount of two millions of livres, in a manner
that appeared to be unknown to the king. The Count D'Artois (as if to
intimidate, for the Bastille was then in being) asked the Marquis if he
would render the charge in writing? He replied that he would. The Count
D'Artois did not demand it, but brought a message from the king to that
purport. M. de la Fayette then delivered in his charge in writing, to
be given to the king, undertaking to support it. No farther proceedings
were had upon this affair, but M. Calonne was soon after dismissed by
the king and set off to England.
As M. de la Fayette, from the experience of what he had seen in America,
was better acquainted with the science of civil government than the
generality of the members who composed the Assembly of the Notables
could then be, the brunt of the business fell considerably to his share.
The plan of those who had a constitution in view was to contend with the
Court on the ground of taxes, and some of them openly professed their
object. Disputes frequently arose between Count D'Artois and M. de
la Fayette upon various subjects. With respect to the arrears already
incurred the latter proposed to remedy them by accommodating the
expenses to the revenue instead of the revenue to the expenses; and as
objects of reform he proposed to abolish the Bastille and all the State
prisons throughout the nation (the keeping of which was attended with
great expense), and to suppress Lettres de Cachet; but those matters
were not then much attended to, and with respect to Lettres de Cachet, a
majority of the Nobles appeared to be in favour of them.
On the subject of supplying the Treasury by new taxes the Assembly
declined taking the matter on themselves, concurring in the opinion that
they had not authority. In a debate on this subject M. de la Fayette
said that raising money by taxes could only be done by a National
Assembly, freely elected by the people, and acting as their
representatives. Do you mean, said the Count D'Artois, the
States-General? M. de la Fayette replied that he did. Will you, said
the Count D'Artois, sign what you say to be given to the king? The other
replied that he would not only do this but that he would go farther,
and say that the effectual mode would be for the king to agree to the
establishment of a constitution.
As one of the plans had thus failed, that of getting the Assembly to act
as a Parliament, the other came into view, that of recommending. On
this subject the Assembly agreed to recommend two new taxes to be
unregistered by the Parliament: the one a stamp-tax and the other a
territorial tax, or sort of land-tax. The two have been estimated
at about five millions sterling per annum. We have now to turn our
attention to the Parliaments, on whom the business was again devolving.
The Archbishop of Thoulouse (since Archbishop of Sens, and now a
Cardinal), was appointed to the administration of the finances soon
after the dismission of Calonne. He was also made Prime Minister, an
office that did not always exist in France. When this office did
not exist, the chief of each of the principal departments transacted
business immediately with the King, but when a Prime Minister was
appointed they did business only with him. The Archbishop arrived to
more state authority than any minister since the Duke de Choiseul, and
the nation was strongly disposed in his favour; but by a line of conduct
scarcely to be accounted for he perverted every opportunity, turned out
a despot, and sunk into disgrace, and a Cardinal.
The Assembly of the Notables having broken up, the minister sent
the edicts for the two new taxes recommended by the Assembly to the
Parliaments to be unregistered. They of course came first before the
Parliament of Paris, who returned for answer: "that with such a revenue
as the nation then supported the name of taxes ought not to be mentioned
but for the purpose of reducing them"; and threw both the edicts
out.*[8] On this refusal the Parliament was ordered to Versailles,
where, in the usual form, the King held what under the old government
was called a Bed of justice; and the two edicts were unregistered
in presence of the Parliament by an order of State, in the manner
mentioned, earlier. On this the Parliament immediately returned to
Paris, renewed their session in form, and ordered the enregistering to
be struck out, declaring that everything done at Versailles was illegal.
All the members of the Parliament were then served with Lettres de
Cachet, and exiled to Troyes; but as they continued as inflexible in
exile as before, and as vengeance did not supply the place of taxes,
they were after a short time recalled to Paris.
The edicts were again tendered to them, and the Count D'Artois undertook
to act as representative of the King. For this purpose he came from
Versailles to Paris, in a train of procession; and the Parliament were
assembled to receive him. But show and parade had lost their influence
in France; and whatever ideas of importance he might set off with,
he had to return with those of mortification and disappointment. On
alighting from his carriage to ascend the steps of the Parliament House,
the crowd (which was numerously collected) threw out trite expressions,
saying: "This is Monsieur D'Artois, who wants more of our money to
spend." The marked disapprobation which he saw impressed him with
apprehensions, and the word Aux armes! (To arms!) was given out by the
officer of the guard who attended him. It was so loudly vociferated,
that it echoed through the avenues of the house, and produced a
temporary confusion. I was then standing in one of the apartments
through which he had to pass, and could not avoid reflecting how
wretched was the condition of a disrespected man.
He endeavoured to impress the Parliament by great words, and opened his
authority by saying, "The King, our Lord and Master." The Parliament
received him very coolly, and with their usual determination not to
register the taxes: and in this manner the interview ended.
After this a new subject took place: In the various debates and contests
which arose between the Court and the Parliaments on the subject of
taxes, the Parliament of Paris at last declared that although it had
been customary for Parliaments to enregister edicts for taxes as a
matter of convenience, the right belonged only to the States-General;
and that, therefore, the Parliament could no longer with propriety
continue to debate on what it had not authority to act. The King after
this came to Paris and held a meeting with the Parliament, in which he
continued from ten in the morning till about six in the evening, and, in
a manner that appeared to proceed from him as if unconsulted upon
with the Cabinet or Ministry, gave his word to the Parliament that the
States-General should be convened.
But after this another scene arose, on a ground different from all
the former. The Minister and the Cabinet were averse to calling
the States-General. They well knew that if the States-General were
assembled, themselves must fall; and as the King had not mentioned any
time, they hit on a project calculated to elude, without appearing to
oppose.
For this purpose, the Court set about making a sort of constitution
itself. It was principally the work of M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the
Seals, who afterwards shot himself. This new arrangement consisted in
establishing a body under the name of a Cour Pleniere, or Full Court,
in which were invested all the powers that the Government might have
occasion to make use of. The persons composing this Court were to be
nominated by the King; the contended right of taxation was given up
on the part of the King, and a new criminal code of laws and law
proceedings was substituted in the room of the former. The thing, in
many points, contained better principles than those upon which the
Government had hitherto been administered; but with respect to the Cour
Pleniere, it was no other than a medium through which despotism was to
pass, without appearing to act directly from itself.
The Cabinet had high expectations from their new contrivance. The people
who were to compose the Cour Pleniere were already nominated; and as it
was necessary to carry a fair appearance, many of the best characters in
the nation were appointed among the number. It was to commence on May
8, 1788; but an opposition arose to it on two grounds the one as to
principle, the other as to form.
On the ground of Principle it was contended that Government had not a
right to alter itself, and that if the practice was once admitted it
would grow into a principle and be made a precedent for any future
alterations the Government might wish to establish: that the right
of altering the Government was a national right, and not a right of
Government. And on the ground of form it was contended that the Cour
Pleniere was nothing more than a larger Cabinet.
The then Duke de la Rochefoucault, Luxembourg, De Noailles, and many
others, refused to accept the nomination, and strenuously opposed the
whole plan. When the edict for establishing this new court was sent to
the Parliaments to be unregistered and put into execution, they
resisted also. The Parliament of Paris not only refused, but denied the
authority; and the contest renewed itself between the Parliament and the
Cabinet more strongly than ever. While the Parliament were sitting in
debate on this subject, the Ministry ordered a regiment of soldiers to
surround the House and form a blockade. The members sent out for beds
and provisions, and lived as in a besieged citadel: and as this had no
effect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter the Parliament House
and seize them, which he did, and some of the principal members were
shut up in different prisons. About the same time a deputation of
persons arrived from the province of Brittany to remonstrate against the
establishment of the Cour Pleniere, and those the archbishop sent to the
Bastille. But the spirit of the nation was not to be overcome, and
it was so fully sensible of the strong ground it had taken--that of
withholding taxes--that it contented itself with keeping up a sort of
quiet resistance, which effectually overthrew all the plans at that time
formed against it. The project of the Cour Pleniere was at last obliged
to be given up, and the Prime Minister not long afterwards followed its
fate, and M. Neckar was recalled into office.
The attempt to establish the Cour Pleniere had an effect upon the nation
which itself did not perceive. It was a sort of new form of government
that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge
it from the superstitious authority of antiquity. It was Government
dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one,
made a chasm.
The failure of this scheme renewed the subject of convening the
State-General; and this gave rise to a new series of politics. There was
no settled form for convening the States-General: all that it positively
meant was a deputation from what was then called the Clergy, the
Noblesse, and the Commons; but their numbers or their proportions had
not been always the same. They had been convened only on extraordinary
occasions, the last of which was in 1614; their numbers were then in
equal proportions, and they voted by orders.
It could not well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of
1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the
nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been
too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been
endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of
the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would
have been attended to. But as he did not choose to take the decision
upon himself, he summoned again the Assembly of the Notables and
referred it to them. This body was in general interested in the
decision, being chiefly of aristocracy and high-paid clergy, and they
decided in favor of the mode of 1614. This decision was against the
sense of the Nation, and also against the wishes of the Court; for
the aristocracy opposed itself to both and contended for privileges
independent of either. The subject was then taken up by the Parliament,
who recommended that the number of the Commons should be equal to the
other two: and they should all sit in one house and vote in one body.
The number finally determined on was 1,200; 600 to be chosen by the
Commons (and this was less than their proportion ought to have been when
their worth and consequence is considered on a national scale), 300 by
the Clergy, and 300 by the Aristocracy; but with respect to the mode of
assembling themselves, whether together or apart, or the manner in which
they should vote, those matters were referred.*[9]
The election that followed was not a contested election, but an animated
one. The candidates were not men, but principles. Societies were formed
in Paris, and committees of correspondence and communication established
throughout the nation, for the purpose of enlightening the people, and
explaining to them the principles of civil government; and so orderly
was the election conducted, that it did not give rise even to the rumour
of tumult.
The States-General were to meet at Versailles in April 1789, but did not
assemble till May. They situated themselves in three separate chambers,
or rather the Clergy and Aristocracy withdrew each into a separate
chamber. The majority of the Aristocracy claimed what they called the
privilege of voting as a separate body, and of giving their consent
or their negative in that manner; and many of the bishops and the
high-beneficed clergy claimed the same privilege on the part of their
Order.
The Tiers Etat (as they were then called) disowned any knowledge of
artificial orders and artificial privileges; and they were not only
resolute on this point, but somewhat disdainful. They began to consider
the Aristocracy as a kind of fungus growing out of the corruption of
society, that could not be admitted even as a branch of it; and from the
disposition the Aristocracy had shown by upholding Lettres de Cachet,
and in sundry other instances, it was manifest that no constitution
could be formed by admitting men in any other character than as National
Men.
After various altercations on this head, the Tiers Etat or Commons (as
they were then called) declared themselves (on a motion made for that
purpose by the Abbe Sieyes) "The Representative Of The Nation; and that
the two Orders could be considered but as deputies of corporations, and
could only have a deliberate voice when they assembled in a national
character with the national representatives." This proceeding
extinguished the style of Etats Generaux, or States-General, and erected
it into the style it now bears, that of L'Assemblee Nationale, or
National Assembly.
This motion was not made in a precipitate manner. It was the result of
cool deliberation, and concerned between the national representatives
and the patriotic members of the two chambers, who saw into the folly,
mischief, and injustice of artificial privileged distinctions. It was
become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that
name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.
The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the despotism of the Court, and
affected the language of patriotism; but it opposed it as its rival (as
the English Barons opposed King John) and it now opposed the nation from
the same motives.
On carrying this motion, the national representatives, as had been
concerted, sent an invitation to the two chambers, to unite with them in
a national character, and proceed to business. A majority of the clergy,
chiefly of the parish priests, withdrew from the clerical chamber, and
joined the nation; and forty-five from the other chamber joined in
like manner. There is a sort of secret history belonging to this last
circumstance, which is necessary to its explanation; it was not judged
prudent that all the patriotic members of the chamber styling itself the
Nobles, should quit it at once; and in consequence of this arrangement,
they drew off by degrees, always leaving some, as well to reason the
case, as to watch the suspected. In a little time the numbers increased
from forty-five to eighty, and soon after to a greater number;
which, with the majority of the clergy, and the whole of the national
representatives, put the malcontents in a very diminutive condition.
The King, who, very different from the general class called by that
name, is a man of a good heart, showed himself disposed to recommend
a union of the three chambers, on the ground the National Assembly had
taken; but the malcontents exerted themselves to prevent it, and began
now to have another project in view. Their numbers consisted of a
majority of the aristocratical chamber, and the minority of the clerical
chamber, chiefly of bishops and high-beneficed clergy; and these men
were determined to put everything to issue, as well by strength as by
stratagem. They had no objection to a constitution; but it must be such
a one as themselves should dictate, and suited to their own views and
particular situations. On the other hand, the Nation disowned knowing
anything of them but as citizens, and was determined to shut out all
such up-start pretensions. The more aristocracy appeared, the more it
was despised; there was a visible imbecility and want of intellects in
the majority, a sort of je ne sais quoi, that while it affected to be
more than citizen, was less than man. It lost ground from contempt more
than from hatred; and was rather jeered at as an ass, than dreaded as a
lion. This is the general character of aristocracy, or what are called
Nobles or Nobility, or rather No-ability, in all countries.
The plan of the malcontents consisted now of two things; either to
deliberate and vote by chambers (or orders), more especially on all
questions respecting a Constitution (by which the aristocratical chamber
would have had a negative on any article of the Constitution); or, in
case they could not accomplish this object, to overthrow the National
Assembly entirely.
To effect one or other of these objects they began to cultivate a
friendship with the despotism they had hitherto attempted to rival, and
the Count D'Artois became their chief. The king (who has since declared
himself deceived into their measures) held, according to the old form,
a Bed of Justice, in which he accorded to the deliberation and vote par
tete (by head) upon several subjects; but reserved the deliberation and
vote upon all questions respecting a constitution to the three chambers
separately. This declaration of the king was made against the advice of
M. Neckar, who now began to perceive that he was growing out of fashion
at Court, and that another minister was in contemplation.
As the form of sitting in separate chambers was yet apparently kept up,
though essentially destroyed, the national representatives immediately
after this declaration of the King resorted to their own chambers
to consult on a protest against it; and the minority of the chamber
(calling itself the Nobles), who had joined the national cause, retired
to a private house to consult in like manner. The malcontents had by
this time concerted their measures with the court, which the Count
D'Artois undertook to conduct; and as they saw from the discontent which
the declaration excited, and the opposition making against it, that they
could not obtain a control over the intended constitution by a
separate vote, they prepared themselves for their final object--that of
conspiring against the National Assembly, and overthrowing it.
The next morning the door of the chamber of the National Assembly was
shut against them, and guarded by troops; and the members were
refused admittance. On this they withdrew to a tennis-ground in the
neighbourhood of Versailles, as the most convenient place they could
find, and, after renewing their session, took an oath never to separate
from each other, under any circumstance whatever, death excepted, until
they had established a constitution. As the experiment of shutting up
the house had no other effect than that of producing a closer connection
in the members, it was opened again the next day, and the public
business recommenced in the usual place.
We are now to have in view the forming of the new ministry, which was to
accomplish the overthrow of the National Assembly. But as force would
be necessary, orders were issued to assemble thirty thousand troops, the
command of which was given to Broglio, one of the intended new ministry,
who was recalled from the country for this purpose. But as some
management was necessary to keep this plan concealed till the moment it
should be ready for execution, it is to this policy that a declaration
made by Count D'Artois must be attributed, and which is here proper to
be introduced.
It could not but occur while the malcontents continued to resort to
their chambers separate from the National Assembly, more jealousy would
be excited than if they were mixed with it, and that the plot might be
suspected. But as they had taken their ground, and now wanted a pretence
for quitting it, it was necessary that one should be devised. This was
effectually accomplished by a declaration made by the Count D'Artois:
"That if they took not a Part in the National Assembly, the life of the
king would be endangered": on which they quitted their chambers, and
mixed with the Assembly, in one body.
At the time this declaration was made, it was generally treated as a
piece of absurdity in Count D'Artois calculated merely to relieve the
outstanding members of the two chambers from the diminutive situation
they were put in; and if nothing more had followed, this conclusion
would have been good. But as things best explain themselves by their
events, this apparent union was only a cover to the machinations which
were secretly going on; and the declaration accommodated itself to
answer that purpose. In a little time the National Assembly found itself
surrounded by troops, and thousands more were daily arriving. On this a
very strong declaration was made by the National Assembly to the King,
remonstrating on the impropriety of the measure, and demanding the
reason. The King, who was not in the secret of this business, as himself
afterwards declared, gave substantially for answer, that he had no other
object in view than to preserve the public tranquility, which appeared
to be much disturbed.
But in a few days from this time the plot unravelled itself M. Neckar
and the ministry were displaced, and a new one formed of the enemies
of the Revolution; and Broglio, with between twenty-five and thirty
thousand foreign troops, was arrived to support them. The mask was now
thrown off, and matters were come to a crisis. The event was that in a
space of three days the new ministry and their abettors found it prudent
to fly the nation; the Bastille was taken, and Broglio and his foreign
troops dispersed, as is already related in the former part of this work.
There are some curious circumstances in the history of this short-lived
ministry, and this short-lived attempt at a counter-revolution. The
Palace of Versailles, where the Court was sitting, was not more than
four hundred yards distant from the hall where the National Assembly
was sitting. The two places were at this moment like the separate
headquarters of two combatant armies; yet the Court was as perfectly
ignorant of the information which had arrived from Paris to the National
Assembly, as if it had resided at an hundred miles distance. The then
Marquis de la Fayette, who (as has been already mentioned) was chosen to
preside in the National Assembly on this particular occasion, named by
order of the Assembly three successive deputations to the king, on the
day and up to the evening on which the Bastille was taken, to inform and
confer with him on the state of affairs; but the ministry, who knew not
so much as that it was attacked, precluded all communication, and were
solacing themselves how dextrously they had succeeded; but in a few
hours the accounts arrived so thick and fast that they had to start from
their desks and run. Some set off in one disguise, and some in another,
and none in their own character. Their anxiety now was to outride the
news, lest they should be stopt, which, though it flew fast, flew not so
fast as themselves.
It is worth remarking that the National Assembly neither pursued those
fugitive conspirators, nor took any notice of them, nor sought
to retaliate in any shape whatever. Occupied with establishing a
constitution founded on the Rights of Man and the Authority of the
People, the only authority on which Government has a right to exist
in any country, the National Assembly felt none of those mean passions
which mark the character of impertinent governments, founding themselves
on their own authority, or on the absurdity of hereditary succession. It
is the faculty of the human mind to become what it contemplates, and to
act in unison with its object.
The conspiracy being thus dispersed, one of the first works of the
National Assembly, instead of vindictive proclamations, as has been the
case with other governments, was to publish a declaration of the Rights
of Man, as the basis on which the new constitution was to be built, and
which is here subjoined:
Declaration
Of The
Rights Of Man And Of Citizens
By The National Assembly Of France
The representatives of the people of France, formed into a National
Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human
rights, are the sole causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of
Government, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, these
natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable rights: that this declaration
being constantly present to the minds of the members of the body social,
they may be forever kept attentive to their rights and their duties;
that the acts of the legislative and executive powers of Government,
being capable of being every moment compared with the end of political
institutions, may be more respected; and also, that the future claims of
the citizens, being directed by simple and incontestable principles,
may always tend to the maintenance of the Constitution, and the general
happiness.
For these reasons the National Assembly doth recognize and declare, in
the presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of his blessing and
favour, the following sacred rights of men and of citizens:
One: Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of
their Rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on
Public Utility.
Two: The end of all Political associations is the Preservation of the
Natural and Imprescriptible Rights of Man; and these rights are Liberty,
Property, Security, and Resistance of Oppression.
Three: The Nation is essentially the source of all Sovereignty; nor can
any individual, or any body of Men, be entitled to any authority which
is not expressly derived from it.
Four: Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not
Injure another. The exercise of the Natural Rights of every Man, has no
other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other Man
the Free exercise of the same Rights; and these limits are determinable
only by the Law.
Five: The Law ought to Prohibit only actions hurtful to Society. What is
not Prohibited by the Law should not be hindered; nor should anyone be
compelled to that which the Law does not Require.
Six: the Law is an expression of the Will of the Community. All Citizens
have a right to concur, either personally or by their Representatives,
in its formation. It Should be the same to all, whether it protects or
punishes; and all being equal in its sight, are equally eligible to
all Honours, Places, and employments, according to their different
abilities, without any other distinction than that created by their
Virtues and talents.
Seven: No Man should be accused, arrested, or held in confinement,
except in cases determined by the Law, and according to the forms which
it has prescribed. All who promote, solicit, execute, or cause to be
executed, arbitrary orders, ought to be punished, and every Citizen
called upon, or apprehended by virtue of the Law, ought immediately to
obey, and renders himself culpable by resistance.
Eight: The Law ought to impose no other penalties but such as are
absolutely and evidently necessary; and no one ought to be punished, but
in virtue of a Law promulgated before the offence, and Legally applied.
Nine: Every Man being presumed innocent till he has been convicted,
whenever his detention becomes indispensable, all rigour to him, more
than is necessary to secure his person, ought to be provided against by
the Law.
Ten: No Man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on
account of his Religious opinions, provided his avowal of them does not
disturb the Public Order established by the Law.
Eleven: The unrestrained communication of thoughts and opinions being
one of the Most Precious Rights of Man, every Citizen may speak, write,
and publish freely, provided he is responsible for the abuse of this
Liberty, in cases determined by the Law.
Twelve: A Public force being necessary to give security to the Rights
of Men and of Citizens, that force is instituted for the benefit of the
Community and not for the particular benefit of the persons to whom it
is intrusted.
Thirteen: A common contribution being necessary for the support of the
Public force, and for defraying the other expenses of Government,
it ought to be divided equally among the Members of the Community,
according to their abilities.
Fourteen: every Citizen has a Right, either by himself or his
Representative, to a free voice in determining the necessity of Public
Contributions, the appropriation of them, and their amount, mode of
assessment, and duration.
Fifteen: every Community has a Right to demand of all its agents an
account of their conduct.
Sixteen: every Community in which a Separation of Powers and a Security
of Rights is not Provided for, wants a Constitution.
Seventeen: The Right to Property being inviolable and sacred, no one
ought to be deprived of it, except in cases of evident Public necessity,
legally ascertained, and on condition of a previous just Indemnity.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
The first three articles comprehend in general terms the whole of a
Declaration of Rights, all the succeeding articles either originate
from them or follow as elucidations. The 4th, 5th, and 6th define more
particularly what is only generally expressed in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
The 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th articles are declaratory of principles
upon which laws shall be constructed, conformable to rights already
declared. But it is questioned by some very good people in France,
as well as in other countries, whether the 10th article sufficiently
guarantees the right it is intended to accord with; besides which it
takes off from the divine dignity of religion, and weakens its operative
force upon the mind, to make it a subject of human laws. It then
presents itself to man like light intercepted by a cloudy medium, in
which the source of it is obscured from his sight, and he sees nothing
to reverence in the dusky ray.*[10]
The remaining articles, beginning with the twelfth, are substantially
contained in the principles of the preceding articles; but in the
particular situation in which France then was, having to undo what was
wrong, as well as to set up what was right, it was proper to be more
particular than what in another condition of things would be necessary.
While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly some of
its members remarked that if a declaration of rights were published
it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation
discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting
far enough. A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of
Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another;
and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
The three first articles are the base of Liberty, as well individual as
national; nor can any country be called free whose government does not
take its beginning from the principles they contain, and continue to
preserve them pure; and the whole of the Declaration of Rights is of
more value to the world, and will do more good, than all the laws and
statutes that have yet been promulgated.
In the declaratory exordium which prefaces the Declaration of Rights
we see the solemn and majestic spectacle of a nation opening its
commission, under the auspices of its Creator, to establish a
Government, a scene so new, and so transcendantly unequalled by anything
in the European world, that the name of a Revolution is diminutive of
its character, and it rises into a Regeneration of man. What are the
present Governments of Europe but a scene of iniquity and oppression?
What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say it is a market
where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic
at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French
Revolution is traduced. Had it confined itself merely to the destruction
of flagrant despotism perhaps Mr. Burke and some others had been silent.
Their cry now is, "It has gone too far"--that is, it has gone too far
for them. It stares corruption in the face, and the venal tribe are all
alarmed. Their fear discovers itself in their outrage, and they are but
publishing the groans of a wounded vice. But from such opposition the
French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage. The more it
is struck the more sparks it will emit; and the fear is it will not be
struck enough. It has nothing to dread from attacks; truth has given it
an establishment, and time will record it with a name as lasting as his
own.
Having now traced the progress of the French Revolution through most
of its principal stages, from its commencement to the taking of the
Bastille, and its establishment by the Declaration of Rights, I will
close the subject with the energetic apostrophe of M. de la Fayette,
"May this great monument, raised to Liberty, serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!"*[11]
MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER
To prevent interrupting the argument in the preceding part of this work,
or the narrative that follows it, I reserved some observations to be
thrown together in a Miscellaneous Chapter; by which variety might
not be censured for confusion. Mr. Burke's book is all Miscellany. His
intention was to make an attack on the French Revolution; but instead of
proceeding with an orderly arrangement, he has stormed it with a mob of
ideas tumbling over and destroying one another.
But this confusion and contradiction in Mr. Burke's Book is easily
accounted for.--When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course
by anything else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be
lost. It is beyond the compass of his capacity to keep all the parts
of an argument together, and make them unite in one issue, by any
other means than having this guide always in view. Neither memory nor
invention will supply the want of it. The former fails him, and the
latter betrays him.
Notwithstanding the nonsense, for it deserves no better name, that Mr.
Burke has asserted about hereditary rights, and hereditary succession,
and that a Nation has not a right to form a Government of itself; it
happened to fall in his way to give some account of what Government is.
"Government," says he, "is a contrivance of human wisdom."
Admitting that government is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must
necessarily follow, that hereditary succession, and hereditary rights
(as they are called), can make no part of it, because it is impossible
to make wisdom hereditary; and on the other hand, that cannot be a
wise contrivance, which in its operation may commit the government of a
nation to the wisdom of an idiot. The ground which Mr. Burke now
takes is fatal to every part of his cause. The argument changes from
hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the
wisest man? He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary
succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king. What a
stroke has Mr. Burke now made! To use a sailor's phrase, he has swabbed
the deck, and scarcely left a name legible in the list of Kings; and
he has mowed down and thinned the House of Peers, with a scythe as
formidable as Death and Time.
But Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this retort; and he has
taken care to guard against it, by making government to be not only
a contrivance of human wisdom, but a monopoly of wisdom. He puts the
nation as fools on one side, and places his government of wisdom, all
wise men of Gotham, on the other side; and he then proclaims, and says
that "Men have a Right that their Wants should be provided for by this
wisdom." Having thus made proclamation, he next proceeds to explain to
them what their wants are, and also what their rights are. In this
he has succeeded dextrously, for he makes their wants to be a want of
wisdom; but as this is cold comfort, he then informs them, that they
have a right (not to any of the wisdom) but to be governed by it; and
in order to impress them with a solemn reverence for this
monopoly-government of wisdom, and of its vast capacity for all
purposes, possible or impossible, right or wrong, he proceeds with
astrological mysterious importance, to tell to them its powers in these
words: "The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these
are often in balance between differences of good; and in compromises
sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between
evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle;
adding--subtracting--multiplying--and dividing, morally and not
metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations."
As the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to,
may not understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be
its interpreter. The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That
government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil
good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is
arbitrary power.
But there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, he has
not shown where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has
not shown by what authority it first began to act. In the manner he
introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or
wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers
without authority. In short, it is usurpation.
Whether it be from a sense of shame, or from a consciousness of some
radical defect in a government necessary to be kept out of sight, or
from both, or from any other cause, I undertake not to determine, but
so it is, that a monarchical reasoner never traces government to its
source, or from its source. It is one of the shibboleths by which he
may be known. A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or
France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their
government, and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors! But
what can a monarchical talker say? What has he to exult in? Alas he has
nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a beginning,
lest some robber, or some Robin Hood, should rise from the long
obscurity of time and say, I am the origin. Hard as Mr. Burke laboured
at the Regency Bill and Hereditary Succession two years ago, and much
as he dived for precedents, he still had not boldness enough to bring
up William of Normandy, and say, There is the head of the list! there
is the fountain of honour! the son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of
the English nation.
The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all
countries. The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of
light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of
governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when
once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance is of a
peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of
knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made
ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it
acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has
been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition
it was in before it saw it. Those who talk of a counter-revolution in
France, show how little they understand of man. There does not exist in
the compass of language an arrangement of words to express so much
as the means of effecting a counter-revolution. The means must be an
obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how to
make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.
Mr. Burke is labouring in vain to stop the progress of knowledge; and it
comes with the worse grace from him, as there is a certain transaction
known in the city which renders him suspected of being a pensioner in
a fictitious name. This may account for some strange doctrine he has
advanced in his book, which though he points it at the Revolution
Society, is effectually directed against the whole nation.
"The King of England," says he, "holds his crown (for it does not belong
to the Nation, according to Mr. Burke) in contempt of the choice of the
Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king among them
either individually or collectively; and his Majesty's heirs each in
their time and order, will come to the Crown with the same contempt of
their choice, with which his Majesty has succeeded to that which he now
wears."
As to who is King in England, or elsewhere, or whether there is any
King at all, or whether the people choose a Cherokee chief, or a Hessian
hussar for a King, it is not a matter that I trouble myself about--be
that to themselves; but with respect to the doctrine, so far as it
relates to the Rights of Men and Nations, it is as abominable as
anything ever uttered in the most enslaved country under heaven.
Whether it sounds worse to my ear, by not being accustomed to hear such
despotism, than what it does to another person, I am not so well a judge
of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to judge.
It is not the Revolution Society that Mr. Burke means; it is the Nation,
as well in its original as in its representative character; and he has
taken care to make himself understood, by saying that they have not
a vote either collectively or individually. The Revolution Society is
composed of citizens of all denominations, and of members of both the
Houses of Parliament; and consequently, if there is not a right to a
vote in any of the characters, there can be no right to any either in
the nation or in its Parliament. This ought to be a caution to every
country how to import foreign families to be kings. It is somewhat
curious to observe, that although the people of England had been in the
habit of talking about kings, it is always a Foreign House of Kings;
hating Foreigners yet governed by them.--It is now the House of
Brunswick, one of the petty tribes of Germany.
It has hitherto been the practice of the English Parliaments to regulate
what was called the succession (taking it for granted that the Nation
then continued to accord to the form of annexing a monarchical branch
of its government; for without this the Parliament could not have had
authority to have sent either to Holland or to Hanover, or to impose
a king upon the nation against its will). And this must be the utmost
limit to which Parliament can go upon this case; but the right of the
Nation goes to the whole case, because it has the right of changing its
whole form of government. The right of a Parliament is only a right in
trust, a right by delegation, and that but from a very small part of the
Nation; and one of its Houses has not even this. But the right of the
Nation is an original right, as universal as taxation. The nation is
the paymaster of everything, and everything must conform to its general
will.
I remember taking notice of a speech in what is called the English House
of Peers, by the then Earl of Shelburne, and I think it was at the time
he was Minister, which is applicable to this case. I do not directly
charge my memory with every particular; but the words and the purport,
as nearly as I remember, were these: "That the form of a Government was
a matter wholly at the will of the Nation at all times, that if it chose
a monarchical form, it had a right to have it so; and if it afterwards
chose to be a Republic, it had a right to be a Republic, and to say to a
King, 'We have no longer any occasion for you.'"
When Mr. Burke says that "His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in
their time and order, will come to the crown with the same content of
their choice with which His Majesty had succeeded to that he wears," it
is saying too much even to the humblest individual in the country;
part of whose daily labour goes towards making up the million sterling
a-year, which the country gives the person it styles a king. Government
with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes
worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery. This species
of government comes from Germany; and reminds me of what one of the
Brunswick soldiers told me, who was taken prisoner by, the Americans
in the late war: "Ah!" said he, "America is a fine free country, it is
worth the people's fighting for; I know the difference by knowing my
own: in my country, if the prince says eat straw, we eat straw."
God help that country, thought I, be it England or elsewhere, whose
liberties are to be protected by German principles of government, and
Princes of Brunswick!
As Mr. Burke sometimes speaks of England, sometimes of France, and
sometimes of the world, and of government in general, it is difficult
to answer his book without apparently meeting him on the same ground.
Although principles of Government are general subjects, it is next to
impossible, in many cases, to separate them from the idea of place and
circumstance, and the more so when circumstances are put for arguments,
which is frequently the case with Mr. Burke.
In the former part of his book, addressing himself to the people of
France, he says: "No experience has taught us (meaning the English),
that in any other course or method than that of a hereditary crown,
can our liberties be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our
hereditary right." I ask Mr. Burke, who is to take them away? M. de la
Fayette, in speaking to France, says: "For a Nation to be free, it
is sufficient that she wills it." But Mr. Burke represents England as
wanting capacity to take care of itself, and that its liberties must be
taken care of by a King holding it in "contempt." If England is sunk
to this, it is preparing itself to eat straw, as in Hanover, or in
Brunswick. But besides the folly of the declaration, it happens that
the facts are all against Mr. Burke. It was by the government being
hereditary, that the liberties of the people were endangered. Charles I.
and James II. are instances of this truth; yet neither of them went so
far as to hold the Nation in contempt.
As it is sometimes of advantage to the people of one country to hear
what those of other countries have to say respecting it, it is possible
that the people of France may learn something from Mr. Burke's book, and
that the people of England may also learn something from the answers
it will occasion. When Nations fall out about freedom, a wide field of
debate is opened. The argument commences with the rights of war, without
its evils, and as knowledge is the object contended for, the party that
sustains the defeat obtains the prize.
Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary crown, as if it
were some production of Nature; or as if, like Time, it had a power to
operate, not only independently, but in spite of man; or as if it were a
thing or a subject universally consented to. Alas! it has none of
those properties, but is the reverse of them all. It is a thing in
imagination, the propriety of which is more than doubted, and the
legality of which in a few years will be denied.
But, to arrange this matter in a clearer view than what general
expression can heads under which (what is called) an hereditary crown,
or more properly speaking, an hereditary succession to the Government of
a Nation, can be considered; which are:
First, The right of a particular Family to establish itself.
Secondly, The right of a Nation to establish a particular Family.
With respect to the first of these heads, that of a Family establishing
itself with hereditary powers on its own authority, and independent of
the consent of a Nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism;
and it would be trespassing on their understanding to attempt to prove
it.
But the second head, that of a Nation establishing a particular Family
with hereditary powers, does not present itself as despotism on the
first reflection; but if men will permit it a second reflection to take
place, and carry that reflection forward but one remove out of their own
persons to that of their offspring, they will then see that hereditary
succession becomes in its consequences the same despotism to others,
which they reprobated for themselves. It operates to preclude the
consent of the succeeding generations; and the preclusion of consent is
despotism. When the person who at any time shall be in possession of
a Government, or those who stand in succession to him, shall say to a
Nation, I hold this power in "contempt" of you, it signifies not on what
authority he pretends to say it. It is no relief, but an aggravation to
a person in slavery, to reflect that he was sold by his parent; and as
that which heightens the criminality of an act cannot be produced to
prove the legality of it, hereditary succession cannot be established as
a legal thing.
In order to arrive at a more perfect decision on this head, it will be
proper to consider the generation which undertakes to establish a Family
with hereditary powers, apart and separate from the generations which
are to follow; and also to consider the character in which the first
generation acts with respect to succeeding generations.
The generation which first selects a person, and puts him at the head of
its Government, either with the title of King, or any other distinction,
acts on its own choice, be it wise or foolish, as a free agent for
itself The person so set up is not hereditary, but selected and
appointed; and the generation who sets him up, does not live under a
hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice and
establishment. Were the generation who sets him up, and the person so
set up, to live for ever, it never could become hereditary succession;
and of consequence hereditary succession can only follow on the death of
the first parties.
As, therefore, hereditary succession is out of the question with respect
to the first generation, we have now to consider the character in which
that generation acts with respect to the commencing generation, and to
all succeeding ones.
It assumes a character, to which it has neither right nor title. It
changes itself from a Legislator to a Testator, and effects to make
its Will, which is to have operation after the demise of the makers, to
bequeath the Government; and it not only attempts to bequeath, but to
establish on the succeeding generation, a new and different form of
Government under which itself lived. Itself, as already observed, lived
not under a hereditary Government but under a Government of its own
choice and establishment; and it now attempts, by virtue of a will and
testament (and which it has not authority to make), to take from the
commencing generation, and all future ones, the rights and free agency
by which itself acted.
But, exclusive of the right which any generation has to act collectively
as a testator, the objects to which it applies itself in this case, are
not within the compass of any law, or of any will or testament.
The rights of men in society, are neither devisable or transferable, nor
annihilable, but are descendable only, and it is not in the power of any
generation to intercept finally, and cut off the descent. If the present
generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen
the right of the succeeding generation to be free. Wrongs cannot have
a legal descent. When Mr. Burke attempts to maintain that the English
nation did at the Revolution of 1688, most solemnly renounce and
abdicate their rights for themselves, and for all their posterity for
ever, he speaks a language that merits not reply, and which can
only excite contempt for his prostitute principles, or pity for his
ignorance.
In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of the will
and testament of some former generation, presents itself, it is an
absurdity. A cannot make a will to take from B the property of B,
and give it to C; yet this is the manner in which (what is called)
hereditary succession by law operates. A certain former generation made
a will, to take away the rights of the commencing generation, and all
future ones, and convey those rights to a third person, who afterwards
comes forward, and tells them, in Mr. Burke's language, that they have
no rights, that their rights are already bequeathed to him and that
he will govern in contempt of them. From such principles, and such
ignorance, good Lord deliver the world!
But, after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, or rather what
is monarchy? Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is it a fraud? Is it a
"contrivance of human wisdom," or of human craft to obtain money from a
nation under specious pretences? Is it a thing necessary to a nation?
If it is, in what does that necessity consist, what service does it
perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Does the virtue
consist in the metaphor, or in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes
the crown, make the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's
wishing-cap, or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer?
In fine, what is it? It appears to be something going much out of
fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as
unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered as an absurdity;
and in France it has so far declined, that the goodness of the man,
and the respect for his personal character, are the only things that
preserve the appearance of its existence.
If government be what Mr. Burke describes it, "a contrivance of human
wisdom" I might ask him, if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England,
that it was become necessary to import it from Holland and from Hanover?
But I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and
even if it was it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when
properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there
could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch
Stadtholder, or a German Elector, than there was in America to have done
a similar thing. If a country does not understand its own affairs,
how is a foreigner to understand them, who knows neither its laws, its
manners, nor its language? If there existed a man so transcendently wise
above all others, that his wisdom was necessary to instruct a nation,
some reason might be offered for monarchy; but when we cast our eyes
about a country, and observe how every part understands its own affairs;
and when we look around the world, and see that of all men in it, the
race of kings are the most insignificant in capacity, our reason cannot
fail to ask us--What are those men kept for?
If there is anything in monarchy which we people of America do not
understand, I wish Mr. Burke would be so kind as to inform us. I see
in America, a government extending over a country ten times as large
as England, and conducted with regularity, for a fortieth part of the
expense which Government costs in England. If I ask a man in America if
he wants a King, he retorts, and asks me if I take him for an idiot?
How is it that this difference happens? are we more or less wise than
others? I see in America the generality of people living in a style of
plenty unknown in monarchical countries; and I see that the principle
of its government, which is that of the equal Rights of Man, is making a
rapid progress in the world.
If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept up anywhere? and if a
necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with? That civil government
is necessary, all civilized nations will agree; but civil government is
republican government. All that part of the government of England which
begins with the office of constable, and proceeds through the department
of magistrate, quarter-sessions, and general assize, including trial by
jury, is republican government. Nothing of monarchy appears in any part
of it, except in the name which William the Conqueror imposed upon the
English, that of obliging them to call him "Their Sovereign Lord the
King."
It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as Placemen,
Pensioners, Lords of the bed-chamber, Lords of the kitchen, Lords of
the necessary-house, and the Lord knows what besides, can find as many
reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the
country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the
merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to
the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no
answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like
a sinecure.
Notwithstanding the taxes of England amount to almost seventeen millions
a year, said to be for the expenses of Government, it is still evident
that the sense of the Nation is left to govern itself, and does
govern itself, by magistrates and juries, almost at its own charge, on
republican principles, exclusive of the expense of taxes. The salaries
of the judges are almost the only charge that is paid out of the
revenue. Considering that all the internal government is executed by the
people, the taxes of England ought to be the lightest of any nation
in Europe; instead of which, they are the contrary. As this cannot be
accounted for on the score of civil government, the subject necessarily
extends itself to the monarchical part.
When the people of England sent for George the First (and it would
puzzle a wiser man than Mr. Burke to discover for what he could be
wanted, or what service he could render), they ought at least to have
conditioned for the abandonment of Hanover. Besides the endless German
intrigues that must follow from a German Elector being King of England,
there is a natural impossibility of uniting in the same person the
principles of Freedom and the principles of Despotism, or as it is
usually called in England Arbitrary Power. A German Elector is in his
electorate a despot; how then could it be expected that he should be
attached to principles of liberty in one country, while his interest in
another was to be supported by despotism? The union cannot exist; and it
might easily have been foreseen that German Electors would make German
Kings, or in Mr. Burke's words, would assume government with "contempt."
The English have been in the habit of considering a King of England only
in the character in which he appears to them; whereas the same person,
while the connection lasts, has a home-seat in another country, the
interest of which is different to their own, and the principles of the
governments in opposition to each other. To such a person England
will appear as a town-residence, and the Electorate as the estate. The
English may wish, as I believe they do, success to the principles of
liberty in France, or in Germany; but a German Elector trembles for
the fate of despotism in his electorate; and the Duchy of Mecklenburgh,
where the present Queen's family governs, is under the same wretched
state of arbitrary power, and the people in slavish vassalage.
There never was a time when it became the English to watch continental
intrigues more circumspectly than at the present moment, and to
distinguish the politics of the Electorate from the politics of the
Nation. The Revolution of France has entirely changed the ground with
respect to England and France, as nations; but the German despots, with
Prussia at their head, are combining against liberty; and the
fondness of Mr. Pitt for office, and the interest which all his family
connections have obtained, do not give sufficient security against this
intrigue.
As everything which passes in the world becomes matter for history, I
will now quit this subject, and take a concise review of the state of
parties and politics in England, as Mr. Burke has done in France.
Whether the present reign commenced with contempt, I leave to Mr. Burke:
certain, however, it is, that it had strongly that appearance. The
animosity of the English nation, it is very well remembered, ran high;
and, had the true principles of Liberty been as well understood then
as they now promise to be, it is probable the Nation would not have
patiently submitted to so much. George the First and Second were
sensible of a rival in the remains of the Stuarts; and as they could not
but consider themselves as standing on their good behaviour, they had
prudence to keep their German principles of government to themselves;
but as the Stuart family wore away, the prudence became less necessary.
The contest between rights, and what were called prerogatives, continued
to heat the nation till some time after the conclusion of the American
War, when all at once it fell a calm--Execration exchanged itself for
applause, and Court popularity sprung up like a mushroom in a night.
To account for this sudden transition, it is proper to observe that
there are two distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit,
and the other by resentment. As the Nation had formed itself into
two parties, and each was extolling the merits of its parliamentary
champions for and against prerogative, nothing could operate to give
a more general shock than an immediate coalition of the champions
themselves. The partisans of each being thus suddenly left in the lurch,
and mutually heated with disgust at the measure, felt no other relief
than uniting in a common execration against both. A higher stimulus
or resentment being thus excited than what the contest on prerogatives
occasioned, the nation quitted all former objects of rights and wrongs,
and sought only that of gratification. The indignation at the Coalition
so effectually superseded the indignation against the Court as to
extinguish it; and without any change of principles on the part of the
Court, the same people who had reprobated its despotism united with it
to revenge themselves on the Coalition Parliament. The case was not,
which they liked best, but which they hated most; and the least hated
passed for love. The dissolution of the Coalition Parliament, as it
afforded the means of gratifying the resentment of the Nation, could not
fail to be popular; and from hence arose the popularity of the Court.
Transitions of this kind exhibit a Nation under the government of
temper, instead of a fixed and steady principle; and having once
committed itself, however rashly, it feels itself urged along to justify
by continuance its first proceeding. Measures which at other times
it would censure it now approves, and acts persuasion upon itself to
suffocate its judgment.
On the return of a new Parliament, the new Minister, Mr. Pitt, found
himself in a secure majority; and the Nation gave him credit, not out
of regard to himself, but because it had resolved to do it out of
resentment to another. He introduced himself to public notice by
a proposed Reform of Parliament, which in its operation would have
amounted to a public justification of corruption. The Nation was to be
at the expense of buying up the rotten boroughs, whereas it ought to
punish the persons who deal in the traffic.
Passing over the two bubbles of the Dutch business and the million
a-year to sink the national debt, the matter which most presents itself,
is the affair of the Regency. Never, in the course of my observation,
was delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more completely
deceived. But, to make this appear, it will be necessary to go over the
circumstances.
Mr. Fox had stated in the House of Commons, that the Prince of Wales,
as heir in succession, had a right in himself to assume the Government.
This was opposed by Mr. Pitt; and, so far as the opposition was
confined to the doctrine, it was just. But the principles which Mr. Pitt
maintained on the contrary side were as bad, or worse in their extent,
than those of Mr. Fox; because they went to establish an aristocracy
over the nation, and over the small representation it has in the House
of Commons.
Whether the English form of Government be good or bad, is not in this
case the question; but, taking it as it stands, without regard to its
merits or demerits, Mr. Pitt was farther from the point than Mr. Fox.
It is supposed to consist of three parts:--while therefore the Nation
is disposed to continue this form, the parts have a national standing,
independent of each other, and are not the creatures of each other. Had
Mr. Fox passed through Parliament, and said that the person alluded to
claimed on the ground of the Nation, Mr. Pitt must then have contended
what he called the right of the Parliament against the right of the
Nation.
By the appearance which the contest made, Mr. Fox took the hereditary
ground, and Mr. Pitt the Parliamentary ground; but the fact is, they
both took hereditary ground, and Mr. Pitt took the worst of the two.
What is called the Parliament is made up of two Houses, one of which is
more hereditary, and more beyond the control of the Nation than what
the Crown (as it is called) is supposed to be. It is an hereditary
aristocracy, assuming and asserting indefeasible, irrevocable rights
and authority, wholly independent of the Nation. Where, then, was
the merited popularity of exalting this hereditary power over another
hereditary power less independent of the Nation than what itself assumed
to be, and of absorbing the rights of the Nation into a House over which
it has neither election nor control?
The general impulse of the Nation was right; but it acted without
reflection. It approved the opposition made to the right set up by
Mr. Fox, without perceiving that Mr. Pitt was supporting another
indefeasible right more remote from the Nation, in opposition to it.
With respect to the House of Commons, it is elected but by a small part
of the Nation; but were the election as universal as taxation, which it
ought to be, it would still be only the organ of the Nation, and cannot
possess inherent rights.--When the National Assembly of France resolves
a matter, the resolve is made in right of the Nation; but Mr. Pitt, on
all national questions, so far as they refer to the House of Commons,
absorbs the rights of the Nation into the organ, and makes the organ
into a Nation, and the Nation itself into a cypher.
In a few words, the question on the Regency was a question of a million
a-year, which is appropriated to the executive department: and Mr. Pitt
could not possess himself of any management of this sum, without setting
up the supremacy of Parliament; and when this was accomplished, it was
indifferent who should be Regent, as he must be Regent at his own cost.
Among the curiosities which this contentious debate afforded, was that
of making the Great Seal into a King, the affixing of which to an act
was to be royal authority. If, therefore, Royal Authority is a Great
Seal, it consequently is in itself nothing; and a good Constitution
would be of infinitely more value to the Nation than what the three
Nominal Powers, as they now stand, are worth.
The continual use of the word Constitution in the English Parliament
shows there is none; and that the whole is merely a form of government
without a Constitution, and constituting itself with what powers it
pleases. If there were a Constitution, it certainly could be referred
to; and the debate on any constitutional point would terminate by
producing the Constitution. One member says this is Constitution, and
another says that is Constitution--To-day it is one thing; and to-morrow
something else--while the maintaining of the debate proves there is
none. Constitution is now the cant word of Parliament, tuning itself
to the ear of the Nation. Formerly it was the universal supremacy of
Parliament--the omnipotence of Parliament: But since the progress of
Liberty in France, those phrases have a despotic harshness in their
note; and the English Parliament have catched the fashion from
the National Assembly, but without the substance, of speaking of
Constitution.
As the present generation of the people in England did not make the
Government, they are not accountable for any of its defects; but,
that sooner or later, it must come into their hands to undergo a
constitutional reformation, is as certain as that the same thing has
happened in France. If France, with a revenue of nearly twenty-four
millions sterling, with an extent of rich and fertile country above four
times larger than England, with a population of twenty-four millions
of inhabitants to support taxation, with upwards of ninety millions
sterling of gold and silver circulating in the nation, and with a debt
less than the present debt of England--still found it necessary, from
whatever cause, to come to a settlement of its affairs, it solves the
problem of funding for both countries.
It is out of the question to say how long what is called the English
constitution has lasted, and to argue from thence how long it is to
last; the question is, how long can the funding system last? It is a
thing but of modern invention, and has not yet continued beyond the
life of a man; yet in that short space it has so far accumulated, that,
together with the current expenses, it requires an amount of taxes at
least equal to the whole landed rental of the nation in acres to defray
the annual expenditure. That a government could not have always gone on
by the same system which has been followed for the last seventy years,
must be evident to every man; and for the same reason it cannot always
go on.
The funding system is not money; neither is it, properly speaking,
credit. It, in effect, creates upon paper the sum which it appears to
borrow, and lays on a tax to keep the imaginary capital alive by the
payment of interest and sends the annuity to market, to be sold for
paper already in circulation. If any credit is given, it is to the
disposition of the people to pay the tax, and not to the government,
which lays it on. When this disposition expires, what is supposed to be
the credit of Government expires with it. The instance of France under
the former Government shows that it is impossible to compel the payment
of taxes by force, when a whole nation is determined to take its stand
upon that ground.
Mr. Burke, in his review of the finances of France, states the quantity
of gold and silver in France, at about eighty-eight millions sterling.
In doing this, he has, I presume, divided by the difference of exchange,
instead of the standard of twenty-four livres to a pound sterling; for
M. Neckar's statement, from which Mr. Burke's is taken, is two thousand
two hundred millions of livres, which is upwards of ninety-one millions
and a half sterling.
M. Neckar in France, and Mr. George Chalmers at the Office of Trade and
Plantation in England, of which Lord Hawkesbury is president, published
nearly about the same time (1786) an account of the quantity of money in
each nation, from the returns of the Mint of each nation. Mr. Chalmers,
from the returns of the English Mint at the Tower of London, states
the quantity of money in England, including Scotland and Ireland, to be
twenty millions sterling.*[12]
M. Neckar*[13] says that the amount of money in France, recoined from
the old coin which was called in, was two thousand five hundred millions
of livres (upwards of one hundred and four millions sterling); and,
after deducting for waste, and what may be in the West Indies and other
possible circumstances, states the circulation quantity at home to be
ninety-one millions and a half sterling; but, taking it as Mr. Burke has
put it, it is sixty-eight millions more than the national quantity in
England.
That the quantity of money in France cannot be under this sum, may at
once be seen from the state of the French Revenue, without referring to
the records of the French Mint for proofs. The revenue of France, prior
to the Revolution, was nearly twenty-four millions sterling; and as
paper had then no existence in France the whole revenue was collected
upon gold and silver; and it would have been impossible to have
collected such a quantity of revenue upon a less national quantity than
M. Neckar has stated. Before the establishment of paper in England,
the revenue was about a fourth part of the national amount of gold
and silver, as may be known by referring to the revenue prior to King
William, and the quantity of money stated to be in the nation at that
time, which was nearly as much as it is now.
It can be of no real service to a nation, to impose upon itself, or to
permit itself to be imposed upon; but the prejudices of some, and
the imposition of others, have always represented France as a nation
possessing but little money--whereas the quantity is not only more than
four times what the quantity is in England, but is considerably greater
on a proportion of numbers. To account for this deficiency on the
part of England, some reference should be had to the English system of
funding. It operates to multiply paper, and to substitute it in the room
of money, in various shapes; and the more paper is multiplied, the
more opportunities are offered to export the specie; and it admits of
a possibility (by extending it to small notes) of increasing paper till
there is no money left.
I know this is not a pleasant subject to English readers; but the
matters I am going to mention, are so important in themselves, as to
require the attention of men interested in money transactions of a
public nature. There is a circumstance stated by M. Neckar, in his
treatise on the administration of the finances, which has never been
attended to in England, but which forms the only basis whereon to
estimate the quantity of money (gold and silver) which ought to be in
every nation in Europe, to preserve a relative proportion with other
nations.
Lisbon and Cadiz are the two ports into which (money) gold and silver
from South America are imported, and which afterwards divide and spread
themselves over Europe by means of commerce, and increase the quantity
of money in all parts of Europe. If, therefore, the amount of the annual
importation into Europe can be known, and the relative proportion of the
foreign commerce of the several nations by which it can be distributed
can be ascertained, they give a rule sufficiently true, to ascertain the
quantity of money which ought to be found in any nation, at any given
time.
M. Neckar shows from the registers of Lisbon and Cadiz, that the
importation of gold and silver into Europe, is five millions sterling
annually. He has not taken it on a single year, but on an average of
fifteen succeeding years, from 1763 to 1777, both inclusive; in which
time, the amount was one thousand eight hundred million livres, which is
seventy-five millions sterling.*[14]
From the commencement of the Hanover succession in 1714 to the time Mr.
Chalmers published, is seventy-two years; and the quantity imported
into Europe, in that time, would be three hundred and sixty millions
sterling.
If the foreign commerce of Great Britain be stated at a sixth part of
what the whole foreign commerce of Europe amounts to (which is probably
an inferior estimation to what the gentlemen at the Exchange would
allow) the proportion which Britain should draw by commerce of this sum,
to keep herself on a proportion with the rest of Europe, would be also
a sixth part which is sixty millions sterling; and if the same allowance
for waste and accident be made for England which M. Neckar makes for
France, the quantity remaining after these deductions would be fifty-two
millions; and this sum ought to have been in the nation (at the time Mr.
Chalmers published), in addition to the sum which was in the nation
at the commencement of the Hanover succession, and to have made in the
whole at least sixty-six millions sterling; instead of which there were
but twenty millions, which is forty-six millions below its proportionate
quantity.
As the quantity of gold and silver imported into Lisbon and Cadiz
is more exactly ascertained than that of any commodity imported into
England, and as the quantity of money coined at the Tower of London
is still more positively known, the leading facts do not admit of
controversy. Either, therefore, the commerce of England is unproductive
of profit, or the gold and silver which it brings in leak continually
away by unseen means at the average rate of about three-quarters of a
million a year, which, in the course of seventy-two years, accounts for
the deficiency; and its absence is supplied by paper.*[15]
The Revolution of France is attended with many novel circumstances, not
only in the political sphere, but in the circle of money transactions.
Among others, it shows that a government may be in a state of insolvency
and a nation rich. So far as the fact is confined to the late Government
of France, it was insolvent; because the nation would no longer support
its extravagance, and therefore it could no longer support itself--but
with respect to the nation all the means existed. A government may be
said to be insolvent every time it applies to the nation to discharge
its arrears. The insolvency of the late Government of France and the
present of England differed in no other respect than as the dispositions
of the people differ. The people of France refused their aid to the
old Government; and the people of England submit to taxation without
inquiry. What is called the Crown in England has been insolvent several
times; the last of which, publicly known, was in May, 1777, when it
applied to the nation to discharge upwards of L600,000 private debts,
which otherwise it could not pay.
It was the error of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and all those who were
unacquainted with the affairs of France to confound the French nation
with the French Government. The French nation, in effect, endeavoured
to render the late Government insolvent for the purpose of taking
government into its own hands: and it reserved its means for the support
of the new Government. In a country of such vast extent and population
as France the natural means cannot be wanting, and the political means
appear the instant the nation is disposed to permit them. When Mr.
Burke, in a speech last winter in the British Parliament, "cast his eyes
over the map of Europe, and saw a chasm that once was France," he talked
like a dreamer of dreams. The same natural France existed as before,
and all the natural means existed with it. The only chasm was that the
extinction of despotism had left, and which was to be filled up with
the Constitution more formidable in resources than the power which had
expired.
Although the French Nation rendered the late Government insolvent, it
did not permit the insolvency to act towards the creditors; and the
creditors, considering the Nation as the real pay-master, and the
Government only as the agent, rested themselves on the nation, in
preference to the Government. This appears greatly to disturb Mr.
Burke, as the precedent is fatal to the policy by which governments have
supposed themselves secure. They have contracted debts, with a view
of attaching what is called the monied interest of a Nation to their
support; but the example in France shows that the permanent security of
the creditor is in the Nation, and not in the Government; and that in
all possible revolutions that may happen in Governments, the means are
always with the Nation, and the Nation always in existence. Mr.
Burke argues that the creditors ought to have abided the fate of the
Government which they trusted; but the National Assembly considered
them as the creditors of the Nation, and not of the Government--of the
master, and not of the steward.
Notwithstanding the late government could not discharge the current
expenses, the present government has paid off a great part of the
capital. This has been accomplished by two means; the one by lessening
the expenses of government, and the other by the sale of the monastic
and ecclesiastical landed estates. The devotees and penitent debauchees,
extortioners and misers of former days, to ensure themselves a better
world than that they were about to leave, had bequeathed immense
property in trust to the priesthood for pious uses; and the priesthood
kept it for themselves. The National Assembly has ordered it to be sold
for the good of the whole nation, and the priesthood to be decently
provided for.
In consequence of the revolution, the annual interest of the debt of
France will be reduced at least six millions sterling, by paying off
upwards of one hundred millions of the capital; which, with lessening
the former expenses of government at least three millions, will place
France in a situation worthy the imitation of Europe.
Upon a whole review of the subject, how vast is the contrast! While Mr.
Burke has been talking of a general bankruptcy in France, the National
Assembly has been paying off the capital of its debt; and while taxes
have increased near a million a year in England, they have lowered
several millions a year in France. Not a word has either Mr. Burke
or Mr. Pitt said about the French affairs, or the state of the French
finances, in the present Session of Parliament. The subject begins to be
too well understood, and imposition serves no longer.
There is a general enigma running through the whole of Mr. Burke's
book. He writes in a rage against the National Assembly; but what is he
enraged about? If his assertions were as true as they are groundless,
and that France by her Revolution, had annihilated her power, and
become what he calls a chasm, it might excite the grief of a Frenchman
(considering himself as a national man), and provoke his rage against
the National Assembly; but why should it excite the rage of Mr. Burke?
Alas! it is not the nation of France that Mr. Burke means, but the
Court; and every Court in Europe, dreading the same fate, is in
mourning. He writes neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an
Englishman, but in the fawning character of that creature known in all
countries, and a friend to none--a courtier. Whether it be the Court of
Versailles, or the Court of St. James, or Carlton-House, or the Court in
expectation, signifies not; for the caterpillar principle of all Courts
and Courtiers are alike. They form a common policy throughout Europe,
detached and separate from the interest of Nations: and while they
appear to quarrel, they agree to plunder. Nothing can be more terrible
to a Court or Courtier than the Revolution of France. That which is
a blessing to Nations is bitterness to them: and as their existence
depends on the duplicity of a country, they tremble at the approach of
principles, and dread the precedent that threatens their overthrow.
CONCLUSION
Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the
great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently
extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on.
Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to
it.
The two modes of the Government which prevail in the world, are:
First, Government by election and representation.
Secondly, Government by hereditary succession.
The former is generally known by the name of republic; the latter by
that of monarchy and aristocracy.
Those two distinct and opposite forms erect themselves on the two
distinct and opposite bases of Reason and Ignorance.--As the exercise of
Government requires talents and abilities, and as talents and abilities
cannot have hereditary descent, it is evident that hereditary succession
requires a belief from man to which his reason cannot subscribe, and
which can only be established upon his ignorance; and the more ignorant
any country is, the better it is fitted for this species of Government.
On the contrary, Government, in a well-constituted republic, requires no
belief from man beyond what his reason can give. He sees the rationale
of the whole system, its origin and its operation; and as it is best
supported when best understood, the human faculties act with boldness,
and acquire, under this form of government, a gigantic manliness.
As, therefore, each of those forms acts on a different base, the one
moving freely by the aid of reason, the other by ignorance; we have next
to consider, what it is that gives motion to that species of Government
which is called mixed Government, or, as it is sometimes ludicrously
styled, a Government of this, that and t' other.
The moving power in this species of Government is, of necessity,
Corruption. However imperfect election and representation may be in
mixed Governments, they still give exercise to a greater portion of
reason than is convenient to the hereditary Part; and therefore it
becomes necessary to buy the reason up. A mixed Government is an
imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts
together by corruption, to act as a whole. Mr. Burke appears highly
disgusted that France, since she had resolved on a revolution, did not
adopt what he calls "A British Constitution"; and the regretful manner
in which he expresses himself on this occasion implies a suspicion
that the British Constitution needed something to keep its defects in
countenance.
In mixed Governments there is no responsibility: the parts cover each
other till responsibility is lost; and the corruption which moves the
machine, contrives at the same time its own escape. When it is laid down
as a maxim, that a King can do no wrong, it places him in a state
of similar security with that of idiots and persons insane, and
responsibility is out of the question with respect to himself. It then
descends upon the Minister, who shelters himself under a majority in
Parliament, which, by places, pensions, and corruption, he can always
command; and that majority justifies itself by the same authority with
which it protects the Minister. In this rotatory motion, responsibility
is thrown off from the parts, and from the whole.
When there is a Part in a Government which can do no wrong, it implies
that it does nothing; and is only the machine of another power, by whose
advice and direction it acts. What is supposed to be the King in the
mixed Governments, is the Cabinet; and as the Cabinet is always a part
of the Parliament, and the members justifying in one character what
they advise and act in another, a mixed Government becomes a continual
enigma; entailing upon a country by the quantity of corruption necessary
to solder the parts, the expense of supporting all the forms of
government at once, and finally resolving itself into a Government
by Committee; in which the advisers, the actors, the approvers, the
justifiers, the persons responsible, and the persons not responsible,
are the same persons.
By this pantomimical contrivance, and change of scene and character, the
parts help each other out in matters which neither of them singly
would assume to act. When money is to be obtained, the mass of variety
apparently dissolves, and a profusion of parliamentary praises passes
between the parts. Each admires with astonishment, the wisdom, the
liberality, the disinterestedness of the other: and all of them breathe
a pitying sigh at the burthens of the Nation.
But in a well-constituted republic, nothing of this soldering, praising,
and pitying, can take place; the representation being equal throughout
the country, and complete in itself, however it may be arranged into
legislative and executive, they have all one and the same natural
source. The parts are not foreigners to each other, like democracy,
aristocracy, and monarchy. As there are no discordant distinctions,
there is nothing to corrupt by compromise, nor confound by contrivance.
Public measures appeal of themselves to the understanding of the Nation,
and, resting on their own merits, disown any flattering applications to
vanity. The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however
successfully it may be practised in mixed Governments, is inconsistent
with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they
are of course advantageous; but if they require an apology, the apology
itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man thus imposed upon, or
why does he impose upon himself?
When men are spoken of as kings and subjects, or when Government
is mentioned under the distinct and combined heads of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, what is it that reasoning man is to
understand by the terms? If there really existed in the world two or
more distinct and separate elements of human power, we should then see
the several origins to which those terms would descriptively apply;
but as there is but one species of man, there can be but one element of
human power; and that element is man himself. Monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, are but creatures of imagination; and a thousand such may be
contrived as well as three.
From the Revolutions of America and France, and the symptoms that have
appeared in other countries, it is evident that the opinion of the world
is changing with respect to systems of Government, and that revolutions
are not within the compass of political calculations. The progress of
time and circumstances, which men assign to the accomplishment of great
changes, is too mechanical to measure the force of the mind, and the
rapidity of reflection, by which revolutions are generated: All the old
governments have received a shock from those that already appear, and
which were once more improbable, and are a greater subject of wonder,
than a general revolution in Europe would be now.
When we survey the wretched condition of man, under the monarchical and
hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power,
or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies,
it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general
revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is
necessary.
What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation?
It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular
man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is
supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped
into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things.
Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only,
and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent
indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds
inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest,
disposition and happiness. The romantic and barbarous distinction of men
into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers,
cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon
which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the
Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and
his obedience can be only to the laws.
When men think of what Government is, they must necessarily suppose it
to possess a knowledge of all the objects and matters upon which its
authority is to be exercised. In this view of Government, the republican
system, as established by America and France, operates to embrace the
whole of a Nation; and the knowledge necessary to the interest of
all the parts, is to be found in the center, which the parts by
representation form: But the old Governments are on a construction that
excludes knowledge as well as happiness; government by Monks, who knew
nothing of the world beyond the walls of a Convent, is as consistent as
government by Kings.
What were formerly called Revolutions, were little more than a change
of persons, or an alteration of local circumstances. They rose and fell
like things of course, and had nothing in their existence or their fate
that could influence beyond the spot that produced them. But what we
now see in the world, from the Revolutions of America and France, are
a renovation of the natural order of things, a system of principles as
universal as truth and the existence of man, and combining moral with
political happiness and national prosperity.
"I. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of
their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on
public utility.
"II. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the
natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty,
property, security, and resistance of oppression.
"III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can
any Individual, or Any Body Of Men, be entitled to any authority which
is not expressly derived from it."
In these principles, there is nothing to throw a Nation into confusion
by inflaming ambition. They are calculated to call forth wisdom and
abilities, and to exercise them for the public good, and not for
the emolument or aggrandisement of particular descriptions of men or
families. Monarchical sovereignty, the enemy of mankind, and the source
of misery, is abolished; and the sovereignty itself is restored to its
natural and original place, the Nation. Were this the case throughout
Europe, the cause of wars would be taken away.
It is attributed to Henry the Fourth of France, a man of enlarged and
benevolent heart, that he proposed, about the year 1610, a plan for
abolishing war in Europe. The plan consisted in constituting an European
Congress, or as the French authors style it, a Pacific Republic; by
appointing delegates from the several Nations who were to act as a
Court of arbitration in any disputes that might arise between nation and
nation.
Had such a plan been adopted at the time it was proposed, the taxes of
England and France, as two of the parties, would have been at least ten
millions sterling annually to each Nation less than they were at the
commencement of the French Revolution.
To conceive a cause why such a plan has not been adopted (and that
instead of a Congress for the purpose of preventing war, it has been
called only to terminate a war, after a fruitless expense of several
years) it will be necessary to consider the interest of Governments as a
distinct interest to that of Nations.
Whatever is the cause of taxes to a Nation, becomes also the means of
revenue to Government. Every war terminates with an addition of taxes,
and consequently with an addition of revenue; and in any event of
war, in the manner they are now commenced and concluded, the power
and interest of Governments are increased. War, therefore, from its
productiveness, as it easily furnishes the pretence of necessity for
taxes and appointments to places and offices, becomes a principal part
of the system of old Governments; and to establish any mode to abolish
war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take
from such Government the most lucrative of its branches. The frivolous
matters upon which war is made, show the disposition and avidity of
Governments to uphold the system of war, and betray the motives upon
which they act.
Why are not Republics plunged into war, but because the nature of their
Government does not admit of an interest distinct from that of the
Nation? Even Holland, though an ill-constructed Republic, and with a
commerce extending over the world, existed nearly a century without
war: and the instant the form of Government was changed in France, the
republican principles of peace and domestic prosperity and economy arose
with the new Government; and the same consequences would follow the
cause in other Nations.
As war is the system of Government on the old construction, the
animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing more than
what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of
the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue,
and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective
Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of
man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead,
therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of Kings, the exclamation
should be directed against the principle of such Governments; and
instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a Nation
should apply itself to reform the system.
Whether the forms and maxims of Governments which are still in practice,
were adapted to the condition of the world at the period they were
established, is not in this case the question. The older they are, the
less correspondence can they have with the present state of things.
Time, and change of circumstances and opinions, have the same
progressive effect in rendering modes of Government obsolete as they
have upon customs and manners.--Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and
the tranquil arts, by which the prosperity of Nations is best promoted,
require a different system of Government, and a different species of
knowledge to direct its operations, than what might have been required
in the former condition of the world.
As it is not difficult to perceive, from the enlightened state of
mankind, that hereditary Governments are verging to their decline,
and that Revolutions on the broad basis of national sovereignty and
Government by representation, are making their way in Europe, it
would be an act of wisdom to anticipate their approach, and produce
Revolutions by reason and accommodation, rather than commit them to the
issue of convulsions.
From what we now see, nothing of reform in the political world ought to
be held improbable. It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything
may be looked for. The intrigue of Courts, by which the system of war
is kept up, may provoke a confederation of Nations to abolish it: and
an European Congress to patronise the progress of free Government, and
promote the civilisation of Nations with each other, is an event nearer
in probability, than once were the revolutions and alliance of France
and America.
END OF PART I.
RIGHTS OF MAN. PART SECOND, COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE.
By Thomas Paine.
FRENCH TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
(1792)
THE work of which we offer a translation to the public has created the
greatest sensation in England. Paine, that man of freedom, who seems
born to preach "Common Sense" to the whole world with the same success
as in America, explains in it to the people of England the theory of the
practice of the Rights of Man.
Owing to the prejudices that still govern that nation, the author has
been obliged to condescend to answer Mr. Burke. He has done so more
especially in an extended preface which is nothing but a piece of
very tedious controversy, in which he shows himself very sensitive to
criticisms that do not really affect him. To translate it seemed an
insult to the free French people, and similar reasons have led the
editors to suppress also a dedicatory epistle addressed by Paine to
Lafayette.
The French can no longer endure dedicatory epistles. A man should write
privately to those he esteems: when he publishes a book his thoughts
should be offered to the public alone. Paine, that uncorrupted friend
of freedom, believed too in the sincerity of Lafayette. So easy is it
to deceive men of single-minded purpose! Bred at a distance from courts,
that austere American does not seem any more on his guard against the
artful ways and speech of courtiers than some Frenchmen who resemble
him.
TO
M. DE LA FAYETTE
After an acquaintance of nearly fifteen years in difficult situations
in America, and various consultations in Europe, I feel a pleasure in
presenting to you this small treatise, in gratitude for your services
to my beloved America, and as a testimony of my esteem for the virtues,
public and private, which I know you to possess.
The only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed was not
as to principles of government, but as to time. For my own part I think
it equally as injurious to good principles to permit them to linger,
as to push them on too fast. That which you suppose accomplishable in
fourteen or fifteen years, I may believe practicable in a much shorter
period. Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to
understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to
their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by
anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where we
would wish to reform we must not reproach.
When the American revolution was established I felt a disposition to
sit serenely down and enjoy the calm. It did not appear to me that any
object could afterwards arise great enough to make me quit tranquility
and feel as I had felt before. But when principle, and not place, is the
energetic cause of action, a man, I find, is everywhere the same.
I am now once more in the public world; and as I have not a right to
contemplate on so many years of remaining life as you have, I have
resolved to labour as fast as I can; and as I am anxious for your aid
and your company, I wish you to hasten your principles and overtake me.
If you make a campaign the ensuing spring, which it is most probable
there will be no occasion for, I will come and join you. Should the
campaign commence, I hope it will terminate in the extinction of German
despotism, and in establishing the freedom of all Germany. When France
shall be surrounded with revolutions she will be in peace and safety,
and her taxes, as well as those of Germany, will consequently become
less.
Your sincere,
Affectionate Friend,
Thomas Paine
London, Feb. 9, 1792
PREFACE
When I began the chapter entitled the "Conclusion" in the former part
of the RIGHTS OF MAN, published last year, it was my intention to have
extended it to a greater length; but in casting the whole matter in my
mind, which I wish to add, I found that it must either make the work too
bulky, or contract my plan too much. I therefore brought it to a close
as soon as the subject would admit, and reserved what I had further to
say to another opportunity.
Several other reasons contributed to produce this determination.
I wished to know the manner in which a work, written in a style of
thinking and expression different to what had been customary in England,
would be received before I proceeded farther. A great field was opening
to the view of mankind by means of the French Revolution. Mr. Burke's
outrageous opposition thereto brought the controversy into England. He
attacked principles which he knew (from information) I would contest
with him, because they are principles I believe to be good, and which I
have contributed to establish, and conceive myself bound to defend. Had
he not urged the controversy, I had most probably been a silent man.
Another reason for deferring the remainder of the work was, that Mr.
Burke promised in his first publication to renew the subject at another
opportunity, and to make a comparison of what he called the English and
French Constitutions. I therefore held myself in reserve for him. He has
published two works since, without doing this: which he certainly would
not have omitted, had the comparison been in his favour.
In his last work, his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," he has
quoted about ten pages from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and having given himself
the trouble of doing this, says he "shall not attempt in the smallest
degree to refute them," meaning the principles therein contained. I am
enough acquainted with Mr. Burke to know that he would if he could. But
instead of contesting them, he immediately after consoles himself with
saying that "he has done his part."--He has not done his part. He has
not performed his promise of a comparison of constitutions. He started
the controversy, he gave the challenge, and has fled from it; and he is
now a case in point with his own opinion that "the age of chivalry is
gone!"
The title, as well as the substance of his last work, his "Appeal," is
his condemnation. Principles must stand on their own merits, and if they
are good they certainly will. To put them under the shelter of other
men's authority, as Mr. Burke has done, serves to bring them into
suspicion. Mr. Burke is not very fond of dividing his honours, but in
this case he is artfully dividing the disgrace.
But who are those to whom Mr. Burke has made his appeal? A set of
childish thinkers, and half-way politicians born in the last century,
men who went no farther with any principle than as it suited their
purposes as a party; the nation was always left out of the question; and
this has been the character of every party from that day to this.
The nation sees nothing of such works, or such politics, worthy its
attention. A little matter will move a party, but it must be something
great that moves a nation.
Though I see nothing in Mr. Burke's "Appeal" worth taking much notice
of, there is, however, one expression upon which I shall offer a few
remarks. After quoting largely from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and declining to
contest the principles contained in that work, he says: "This will most
probably be done (if such writings shall be thought to deserve any other
refutation than that of criminal justice) by others, who may think with
Mr. Burke and with the same zeal."
In the first place, it has not yet been done by anybody. Not less, I
believe, than eight or ten pamphlets intended as answers to the former
part of the RIGHTS OF MAN have been published by different persons, and
not one of them to my knowledge, has extended to a second edition, nor
are even the titles of them so much as generally remembered. As I am
averse to unnecessary multiplying publications, I have answered none of
them. And as I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation
when nobody else can do it, I am careful to avoid that rock.
But as I would decline unnecessary publications on the one hand, so
would I avoid everything that might appear like sullen pride on the
other. If Mr. Burke, or any person on his side the question, will
produce an answer to the RIGHTS OF MAN that shall extend to a half, or
even to a fourth part of the number of copies to which the Rights Of Man
extended, I will reply to his work. But until this be done, I shall so
far take the sense of the public for my guide (and the world knows I am
not a flatterer) that what they do not think worth while to read, is not
worth mine to answer. I suppose the number of copies to which the
first part of the RIGHTS OF MAN extended, taking England, Scotland, and
Ireland, is not less than between forty and fifty thousand.
I now come to remark on the remaining part of the quotation I have made
from Mr. Burke.
"If," says he, "such writings shall be thought to deserve any other
refutation than that of criminal justice."
Pardoning the pun, it must be criminal justice indeed that should
condemn a work as a substitute for not being able to refute it.
The greatest condemnation that could be passed upon it would be a
refutation. But in proceeding by the method Mr. Burke alludes to, the
condemnation would, in the final event, pass upon the criminality of
the process and not upon the work, and in this case, I had rather be the
author, than be either the judge or the jury that should condemn it.
But to come at once to the point. I have differed from some professional
gentlemen on the subject of prosecutions, and I since find they are
falling into my opinion, which I will here state as fully, but as
concisely as I can.
I will first put a case with respect to any law, and then compare it
with a government, or with what in England is, or has been, called a
constitution.
It would be an act of despotism, or what in England is called arbitrary
power, to make a law to prohibit investigating the principles, good or
bad, on which such a law, or any other is founded.
If a law be bad it is one thing to oppose the practice of it, but it is
quite a different thing to expose its errors, to reason on its defects,
and to show cause why it should be repealed, or why another ought to be
substituted in its place. I have always held it an opinion (making it
also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law, making use at the
same time of every argument to show its errors and procure its repeal,
than forcibly to violate it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law
might weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those
which are good.
The case is the same with respect to principles and forms of government,
or to what are called constitutions and the parts of which they are,
composed.
It is for the good of nations and not for the emolument or
aggrandisement of particular individuals, that government ought to be
established, and that mankind are at the expense of supporting it. The
defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and
form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the
defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to
point them out. When those defects, and the means of remedying them, are
generally seen by a nation, that nation will reform its government or
its constitution in the one case, as the government repealed or reformed
the law in the other. The operation of government is restricted to the
making and the administering of laws; but it is to a nation that the
right of forming or reforming, generating or regenerating constitutions
and governments belong; and consequently those subjects, as subjects
of investigation, are always before a country as a matter of right, and
cannot, without invading the general rights of that country, be made
subjects for prosecution. On this ground I will meet Mr. Burke whenever
he please. It is better that the whole argument should come out than to
seek to stifle it. It was himself that opened the controversy, and he
ought not to desert it.
I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years
longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe. If better reasons
can be shown for them than against them, they will stand; if the
contrary, they will not. Mankind are not now to be told they shall not
think, or they shall not read; and publications that go no farther than
to investigate principles of government, to invite men to reason and to
reflect, and to show the errors and excellences of different systems,
have a right to appear. If they do not excite attention, they are not
worth the trouble of a prosecution; and if they do, the prosecution will
amount to nothing, since it cannot amount to a prohibition of reading.
This would be a sentence on the public, instead of the author, and would
also be the most effectual mode of making or hastening revolution.
On all cases that apply universally to a nation, with respect to systems
of government, a jury of twelve men is not competent to decide. Where
there are no witnesses to be examined, no facts to be proved, and where
the whole matter is before the whole public, and the merits or demerits
of it resting on their opinion; and where there is nothing to be known
in a court, but what every body knows out of it, every twelve men is
equally as good a jury as the other, and would most probably reverse
each other's verdict; or, from the variety of their opinions, not be
able to form one. It is one case, whether a nation approve a work, or a
plan; but it is quite another case, whether it will commit to any such
jury the power of determining whether that nation have a right to, or
shall reform its government or not. I mention those cases that Mr. Burke
may see I have not written on Government without reflecting on what is
Law, as well as on what are Rights.--The only effectual jury in such
cases would be a convention of the whole nation fairly elected; for
in all such cases the whole nation is the vicinage. If Mr. Burke will
propose such a jury, I will waive all privileges of being the citizen
of another country, and, defending its principles, abide the issue,
provided he will do the same; for my opinion is, that his work and his
principles would be condemned instead of mine.
As to the prejudices which men have from education and habit, in favour
of any particular form or system of government, those prejudices have
yet to stand the test of reason and reflection. In fact, such prejudices
are nothing. No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be
wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and
when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a
defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men
think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that
only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection. I offer
this remark, that Mr. Burke may not confide too much in what have been
the customary prejudices of the country.
I do not believe that the people of England have ever been fairly and
candidly dealt by. They have been imposed upon by parties, and by men
assuming the character of leaders. It is time that the nation should
rise above those trifles. It is time to dismiss that inattention which
has so long been the encouraging cause of stretching taxation to excess.
It is time to dismiss all those songs and toasts which are calculated to
enslave, and operate to suffocate reflection. On all such subjects men
have but to think, and they will neither act wrong nor be misled. To
say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their
choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not. If
such a case could be proved, it would equally prove that those who
govern are not fit to govern them, for they are a part of the same
national mass.
But admitting governments to be changed all over Europe; it certainly
may be done without convulsion or revenge. It is not worth making
changes or revolutions, unless it be for some great national benefit:
and when this shall appear to a nation, the danger will be, as in
America and France, to those who oppose; and with this reflection I
close my Preface.
THOMAS PAINE
London, Feb. 9, 1792
RIGHTS OF MAN PART II.
INTRODUCTION.
What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason
and Liberty. "Had we," said he, "a place to stand upon, we might raise
the world."
The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in
mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old
world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit
established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in
Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man.
Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as
rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks,--and all
it wants,--is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription
to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American
governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock
and man began to contemplate redress.
The independence of America, considered merely as a separation from
England, would have been a matter but of little importance, had it
not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practice of
governments. She made a stand, not for herself only, but for the
world, and looked beyond the advantages herself could receive. Even
the Hessian, though hired to fight against her, may live to bless his
defeat; and England, condemning the viciousness of its government,
rejoice in its miscarriage.
As America was the only spot in the political world where the principle
of universal reformation could begin, so also was it the best in the
natural world. An assemblage of circumstances conspired, not only to
give birth, but to add gigantic maturity to its principles. The scene
which that country presents to the eye of a spectator, has something in
it which generates and encourages great ideas. Nature appears to him in
magnitude. The mighty objects he beholds, act upon his mind by enlarging
it, and he partakes of the greatness he contemplates.--Its first
settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of
diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental
persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies,
but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation
of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries
long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had
neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He
sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as
kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go
back to Nature for information.
From the rapid progress which America makes in every species of
improvement, it is rational to conclude that, if the governments of
Asia, Africa, and Europe had begun on a principle similar to that of
America, or had not been very early corrupted therefrom, those countries
must by this time have been in a far superior condition to what they
are. Age after age has passed away, for no other purpose than to behold
their wretchedness. Could we suppose a spectator who knew nothing of the
world, and who was put into it merely to make his observations, he would
take a great part of the old world to be new, just struggling with the
difficulties and hardships of an infant settlement. He could not suppose
that the hordes of miserable poor with which old countries abound
could be any other than those who had not yet had time to provide for
themselves. Little would he think they were the consequence of what in
such countries they call government.
If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those
which are in an advanced stage of improvement we still find the greedy
hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice
of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is
continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation.
It watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a
tribute.
As revolutions have begun (and as the probability is always greater
against a thing beginning, than of proceeding after it has begun), it
is natural to expect that other revolutions will follow. The amazing and
still increasing expenses with which old governments are conducted, the
numerous wars they engage in or provoke, the embarrassments they throw
in the way of universal civilisation and commerce, and the oppression
and usurpation acted at home, have wearied out the patience, and
exhausted the property of the world. In such a situation, and with such
examples already existing, revolutions are to be looked for. They are
become subjects of universal conversation, and may be considered as the
Order of the day.
If systems of government can be introduced less expensive and more
productive of general happiness than those which have existed, all
attempts to oppose their progress will in the end be fruitless. Reason,
like time, will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in a combat
with interest. If universal peace, civilisation, and commerce are
ever to be the happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a
revolution in the system of governments. All the monarchical governments
are military. War is their trade, plunder and revenue their objects.
While such governments continue, peace has not the absolute security
of a day. What is the history of all monarchical governments but a
disgustful picture of human wretchedness, and the accidental respite of
a few years' repose? Wearied with war, and tired with human butchery,
they sat down to rest, and called it peace. This certainly is not the
condition that heaven intended for man; and if this be monarchy, well
might monarchy be reckoned among the sins of the Jews.
The revolutions which formerly took place in the world had nothing in
them that interested the bulk of mankind. They extended only to a change
of persons and measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell among
the common transactions of the moment. What we now behold may not
improperly be called a "counter-revolution." Conquest and tyranny,
at some earlier period, dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now
recovering them. And as the tide of all human affairs has its ebb
and flow in directions contrary to each other, so also is it in this.
Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on
the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west
to east by a stronger impulse than the government of the sword revolved
from east to west. It interests not particular individuals, but nations
in its progress, and promises a new era to the human race.
The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is that
of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the
advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has
been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word
government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it
commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to
itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of
its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and
purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to
him as a social being.
It may therefore be of use in this day of revolutions to discriminate
between those things which are the effect of government, and those
which are not. This will best be done by taking a review of society
and civilisation, and the consequences resulting therefrom, as things
distinct from what are called governments. By beginning with this
investigation, we shall be able to assign effects to their proper causes
and analyse the mass of common errors.
CHAPTER I. OF SOCIETY AND CIVILISATION
Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect
of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the
natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and
would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual
dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the
parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain
of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer,
the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation,
prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the
whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law;
and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than
the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost
everything which is ascribed to government.
To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man,
it is necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for
social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases
she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one
man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants,
and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them
into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a centre.
But she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by
a diversity of wants which the reciprocal aid of each other can supply,
but she has implanted in him a system of social affections, which,
though not necessary to his existence, are essential to his happiness.
There is no period in life when this love for society ceases to act. It
begins and ends with our being.
If we examine with attention into the composition and constitution
of man, the diversity of his wants, and the diversity of talents in
different men for reciprocally accommodating the wants of each other,
his propensity to society, and consequently to preserve the advantages
resulting from it, we shall easily discover, that a great part of what
is called government is mere imposition.
Government is no farther necessary than to supply the few cases to which
society and civilisation are not conveniently competent; and instances
are not wanting to show, that everything which government can usefully
add thereto, has been performed by the common consent of society,
without government.
For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War,
and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no
established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished,
and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention
in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and
harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There
is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces
a greater variety of abilities and resource, to accommodate itself to
whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished,
society begins to act: a general association takes place, and common
interest produces common security.
So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition
of any formal government is the dissolution of society, that it acts by
a contrary impulse, and brings the latter the closer together. All
that part of its organisation which it had committed to its government,
devolves again upon itself, and acts through its medium. When men, as
well from natural instinct as from reciprocal benefits, have habituated
themselves to social and civilised life, there is always enough of its
principles in practice to carry them through any changes they may find
necessary or convenient to make in their government. In short, man is so
naturally a creature of society that it is almost impossible to put him
out of it.
Formal government makes but a small part of civilised life; and when
even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing
more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental
principles of society and civilisation--to the common usage universally
consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained--to the unceasing
circulation of interest, which, passing through its million channels,
invigorates the whole mass of civilised man--it is to these things,
infinitely more than to anything which even the best instituted
government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual
and of the whole depends.
The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for
government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and
govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the
reason of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion
they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilised life
requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are
enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly
the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense
men into society, and what are the motives that regulate their mutual
intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is
called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by
the natural operation of the parts upon each other.
Man, with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of
consistency than he is aware, or than governments would wish him to
believe. All the great laws of society are laws of nature. Those
of trade and commerce, whether with respect to the intercourse of
individuals or of nations, are laws of mutual and reciprocal interest.
They are followed and obeyed, because it is the interest of the parties
so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may
impose or interpose.
But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or
destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of
being ingrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for
itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes
the cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.
If we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have
happened in England, we shall find that they did not proceed from the
want of a government, but that government was itself the generating
cause; instead of consolidating society it divided it; it deprived it
of its natural cohesion, and engendered discontents and disorders
which otherwise would not have existed. In those associations which men
promiscuously form for the purpose of trade, or of any concern in which
government is totally out of the question, and in which they act merely
on the principles of society, we see how naturally the various parties
unite; and this shows, by comparison, that governments, so far from
being always the cause or means of order, are often the destruction
of it. The riots of 1780 had no other source than the remains of those
prejudices which the government itself had encouraged. But with respect
to England there are also other causes.
Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never
fail to appear in their effects. As a great mass of the community are
thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the
brink of commotion; and deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the
means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Whatever the
apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of
happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government
that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.
But as a fact is superior to reasoning, the instance of America presents
itself to confirm these observations. If there is a country in the world
where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected,
it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations,*[16]
accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking
different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it
would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by
the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of
society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the
parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed,
the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid
extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few,
because their government is just: and as there is nothing to render them
wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults.
A metaphysical man, like Mr. Burke, would have tortured his invention
to discover how such a people could be governed. He would have supposed
that some must be managed by fraud, others by force, and all by some
contrivance; that genius must be hired to impose upon ignorance, and
show and parade to fascinate the vulgar. Lost in the abundance of
his researches, he would have resolved and re-resolved, and finally
overlooked the plain and easy road that lay directly before him.
One of the great advantages of the American Revolution has been, that it
led to a discovery of the principles, and laid open the imposition, of
governments. All the revolutions till then had been worked within the
atmosphere of a court, and never on the grand floor of a nation. The
parties were always of the class of courtiers; and whatever was
their rage for reformation, they carefully preserved the fraud of the
profession.
In all cases they took care to represent government as a thing made up
of mysteries, which only themselves understood; and they hid from the
understanding of the nation the only thing that was beneficial to know,
namely, That government is nothing more than a national association
adding on the principles of society.
Having thus endeavoured to show that the social and civilised state of
man is capable of performing within itself almost everything necessary
to its protection and government, it will be proper, on the other hand,
to take a review of the present old governments, and examine whether
their principles and practice are correspondent thereto.