The French revolutionists have long borne responsibility for the
first declaration of war in 1793. But from December 13, 1792, when the
Painophobia Parliament began its debates, to February 1st, when France
proclaimed itself at war with England, the British government had done
little else than declare war--and prepare war--against France. Pitt,
having to be re-elected, managed to keep away from Parliament for
several days at its opening, and the onslaught was assumed by Burke. He
began by heaping insults on France. On December 15th he boasted that
he had not been cajoled by promise of promotion or pension, though he
presently, on the same evening, took his seat for the first time on the
Treasury bench. In the "Parliamentary History" (vols. xxx. and xxxi.)
may be found Burke's epithets on France,--the "republic of assassins,"
"Cannibal Castle," "nation of murderers," "gang of plunderers,"
"murderous atheists," "miscreants," "scum of the earth." His vocabulary
grew in grossness, of course, after the King's execution and the
declaration of war, but from the first it was ribaldry and abuse. And
this did not come from a private member, but from the Treasury bench. He
was supported by a furious majority which stopped at no injustice.
Thus the Convention was burdened with guilt of the September massacres,
though it was not then in existence. Paine's works being denounced,
Erskine reminded the House of the illegality of so influencing a trial
not yet begun. He was not listened to. Fox and fifty other earnest men
had a serious purpose of trying to save the King's life, and proposed
to negotiate with the Convention. Burke fairly foamed at the motions
to that end, made by Fox and Lord Lansdowne. What, negotiate with such
villains! To whom is our agent to be accredited? Burke draws a comic
picture of the English ambassador entering the Convention, and, when he
announces himself as from "George Third, by the grace of God," denounced
by Paine. "Are we to humble ourselves before Judge Paine?" At this point
Whetstone made a disturbance and was named. There were some who found
Burke's trifling intolerable. Mr. W. Smith reminded the House that
Cromwell's ambassadors had been received by Louis XIV. Fox drew a
parallel between the contemptuous terms used toward the French, and
others about "Hancock and his crew," with whom Burke advised treaty,
and with whom His Majesty did treat. All this was answered by further
insults to France, these corresponding with a series of practical
injuries. Lord Gower had been recalled August 17th, after the formation
of a republic, and all intercourse with the French Minister in London,
Chauvelin, was terminated. In violation of the treaty of 1786, the
agents of France were refused permission to purchase grain and arms
in England, and their vessels loaded with provisions seized. The
circulation of French bonds, issued in 1790, was prohibited in England.
A coalition had been formed with the enemies of France, the Emperor
of Austria and the King of Prussia, Finally, on the execution of Louis
XVI., Chauvelin was ordered (January 24th) to leave England in eight
days. Talleyrand remained, but Chauvelin was kicked out of the country,
so to say, simply because the Convention had recognized him. This
appeared a plain _casus belli_, and was answered by the declaration of
the Convention in that sense (February 1st), which England answered ten
days later.*
* It was stipulated in the treaty of commerce between
France and England.
In all this Paine recognized the hand of Burke. While his adherents in
England, as we have seen, were finding in Pitt a successor to Satan,
there is a notable absence from Paine's writings and letters of any such
animosity towards that Minister. He concluded at Paris (1786) that the
sending away an ambassador by either party, should be taken as an act of
hostility by the other party. The declaration of war (February, 1793)
by the Convention... was made in exact conformity to this article in
the treaty; for it was not a declaration of war against England, but a
declaration that the French republic is in war with England; the first
act of hostility having been committed by England. The declaration
was made on Chauvelin's return to France, and in consequence of
it. "Paine's "Address to the People of France" (1797). The words of the
declaration of war, following the list of injuries, are: "La Convention
Nationale declare, au nom de la nation Francaise, qu'attendu les actes
multiplies et d'agressions ci-dessus mentionnes, la republique Francaise
est en guerre avec le roi d'Angleterre." The solemn protest of Lords
Lauderdale, Lansdowne, and Derby, February 1st, against the address
in answer to the royal message, before France had spoken, regards that
address as a demonstration of universal war. The facts and the situation
are carefully set forth by Louis Blanc, "Histoire de la Revolution,"
tome viii., p. 93 seq. regarded Pitt as a victim. "The father of Pitt,"
he once wrote, "when a member of the House of Commons, exclaiming one
day, during a former war, against the enormous and ruinous expense of
German connections, as the offspring of the Hanover succession, and
borrowing a metaphor from the story of Prometheus, cried out: 'Thus,
like Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of Hanover,
whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals.'" It is probable that
on the intimations from Pitt, at the close of 1792, of his desire for
private consultations with friendly Frenchmen, Paine entered into the
honorable though unauthorized conspiracy for peace which was terminated
by the expulsion of Chauvelin. In the light of later events, and the
desertion of Dumouriez, these overtures of Pitt made through Talleyrand
(then in London) were regarded by the French leaders, and are still
regarded by French writers, as treacherous. But no sufficient reason
is given for doubting Pitt's good faith in that matter. Writing to
the President (Washington), December 28, 1792, the American Minister,
Gouverneur Morris, states the British proposal to be:
"France shall deliver the royal family to such branch of the Bourbons as
the King may choose, and shall recall her troops from the countries
they now occupy. In this event Britain will send hither a Minister and
acknowledge the Republic, and mediate a peace with the Emperor and King
of Prussia. I have several reasons to believe that this information is
not far from the truth."
It is true that Pitt had no agent in France whom he might not
have disavowed, and that after the fury with which the Painophobia
Parliament, under lead of Burke, inspired by the King, had opened, could
hardly have maintained any peaceful terms. Nevertheless, the friends
of peace in France secretly acted on this information, which Gouverneur
Morris no doubt received from Paine. A grand dinner was given by Paine,
at the Hotel de Ville, to Dumouriez, where this brilliant General met
Brissot, Condorcet, Santerre, and several eminent English radicals,
among them Sampson Perry. At this time it was proposed to send Dumouriez
secretly to London, to negotiate with Pitt, but this was abandoned.
Maret went, and he found Pitt gracious and pacific. Chauvelin, however,
advised the French government of this illicit negotiation, and Maret
was ordered to return. Such was the situation when Louis was executed.
That execution, as we have seen, might have been prevented had Pitt
provided the money; but it need not be supposed that, with Burke now on
the Treasury bench, the refusal is to be ascribed to anything more
than his inability to cope with his own majority, whom the King was
patronizing. So completely convinced of Pitt's pacific disposition were
Maret and his allies in France that the clandestine ambassador again
departed for London. But on arriving at Dover, he learned that Chauvelin
had been expelled, and at once returned to France.*
* See Louis Blanc's "Histoire," etc., tome viii.f p. 100,
for the principal authorities concerning this incident.--
Annual Register, 1793, ch. vi.; "Memoires tires des papiers
d'un homme d'Etat.," ii., p. 157; "Memoires de Dumouriez,"
t. iii., p. 384.
Paine now held more firmly than ever the first article of his faith as
to practical politics: the chief task of republicanism is to break
the Anglo-German sceptre. France is now committed to war; it must be
elevated to that European aim. Lord North and America reappear in Burke
and France. Meanwhile what is said of Britain in his "Rights of Man" was
now more terribly true of France--it had no Constitution. The Committee
on the Constitution had declared themselves ready to report early in the
winter, but the Mountaineers managed that the matter should be postponed
until after the King's trial. As an American who prized his citizenship,
Paine felt chagrined and compromised at being compelled to act as a
legislator and a judge because of his connection with a Convention
elected for the purpose of framing a legislative and judicial machinery.
He and Con-dorcet continued to add touches to this Constitution, the
Committee approving, and on the first opportunity it was reported again.
This was February 15, 1793. But, says the _Moniteur_, "the struggles
between the Girondins and the Mountain caused the examination and
discussion to be postponed." It was, however, distributed.
Gouverneur Morris, in a letter to Jefferson (March 7th), says this
Constitution "was read to the Convention, but I learnt the next
morning that a Council had been held on it overnight, by which it was
condemned." Here is evidence in our American archives of a meeting or
"Council" condemning the Constitution on the night of its submission.
It must have been secret, for it does not appear in French histories,
so far as I can discover. Durand de Maillane says that "the exclusion of
Robespierre and Couthon from this eminent task [framing a Constitution]
was a new matter for discontent and jealousy against the party of Petion
"--a leading Girondin,--and that Robespierre and his men desired "to
render their work useless."* No indication of this secret condemnation
of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution, by a conclave appeared on March
1st, when the document was again submitted. The Convention now set April
15th for its discussion, and the Mountaineers fixed that day for the
opening of their attack on the Girondins. The Mayor of Paris appeared
with a petition, adopted by the Communal Council of the thirty-five
sections of Paris, for the arrest of twenty-two members of the
Convention, as slanderers of Paris,--"presenting the Parisians to
Europe as men of blood,"--friends of Roland, accomplices of the traitor
Dumouriez, enemies of the clubs. The deputies named were: Brissot,
Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Grangeneuve, Buzot, Barbaroux, Salles,
Biroteau, Pontecoulant, Petion, Lanjuinais, Valaze, Hardy, Louvet,
Lehardy, Gor-sas, Abbe Fauchet, Lanthenas, Lasource, Valady, Chambon.
Of this list five were members of the Committee on the Constitution, and
two supplementary members.** Besides this, two of the arraigned--Louvet
and Lasource--had been especially active in pressing forward the
Constitution. The Mountaineers turned the discord they thus caused into
a reason for deferring discussion of the Constitution.
* "Histoire de la Convention Nationale," p. 50. Durand-
Maillane was "the silent member" of the Convention, but a
careful observer and well-informed witness. I follow him and
Louis Blanc in relating the fate of the Paine-Condorcet
Constitution.
** See vol. i., p. 357.
They declared also that important members were absent, levying troops,
and especially that Marat's trial had been ordered. The discussion on
the petition against the Girondins, and whether the Constitution should
be considered, proceeded together for two days, when the Mountaineers
were routed on both issues. The Convention returned the petition to the
Mayor, pronouncing it "calumnious," and it made the Constitution the
order of the day. Robespierre, according to Du-rand-Maillane, showed
much spite at this defeat. He adroitly secured a decision that the
preliminary "Declaration of Rights" should be discussed first, as there
could be endless talk on those generalities.*
* This Declaration, submitted by Condorcet, April 17th,
being largely the work of Paine, is here translated: The
end of all union of men in society being maintenance of
their natural rights, civil and political, these rights
should be the basis of the social pact: their recognition
and their declaration ought to precede the Constitution
which secures and guarantees them. 1. The natural rights,
civil and political, of men are liberty, equality, security,
property, social protection, and resistance to oppression.
2. Liberty consists in the power to do whatever is not
contrary to the rights of others; thus, the natural rights
of each man has no limits other than those which secure to
other members of society enjoyment of the same rights. 3.
The preservation of liberty depends on the sovereignty of
the Law, which is the expression of the general will.
Nothing unforbidden by law can be impeached, and none may be
constrained to do what it does not command. 4. Every man is
free to make known his thought and his opinions. 5. Freedom
of the press (and every other means of publishing one's
thoughts) cannot be prohibited, suspended, or limited. 6.
Every citizen shall be free in the exercise of his worship
[culte]. 7. Equality consists in the power of each to enjoy
the same rights. 8. The Law should be equal for all, whether
in recompense, punishment, or restraint. 9. All citizens are
admissible to all public positions, employments, and
functions. Free peoples can recognise no grounds of
preference except talents and virtues. 10. Security consists
in the protection accorded by society to each citizen for
the preservation of his person, property, and rights. 11.
None should be sued, accused, arrested, or detained, save in
cases determined by the law, and in accordance with forms
prescribed by it. Every other act against a citizen is
arbitrary and null. 12. Those who solicit, promote, sign,
execute or cause to be executed such arbitrary acts are
culpable, and should be punished. 13. Citizens against whom
the execution of such acts is attempted have the right of
resistance by force. Every citizen summoned or arrested by
the authority of law, and in the forms prescribed by it,
should instantly obey; he renders himself guilty by
resistance. 14. Every man being presumed innocent until
declared guilty, should his arrest be judged indispensable,
all rigor not necessary to secure his person should be
severely repressed by law. 15. None should be punished save
in virtue of a law established and promulgated previous to
the offence, and legally applied. 16. A law that should
punish offences committed before its existence would be an
arbitrary Act. Retroactive effect given to any law is a
crime. 17. Law should award only penalties strictly and
evidently necessary to the general security; they should be
proportioned to the offence and useful to society. 18. The
right of property consists in a man's being master in the
disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and
industry. 19. No kind of work, commerce, or culture can be
interdicted for any one; he may make, sell, and transport
every species of production. 20. Every man may engage his
services, and his time; but he cannot sell himself; his
person is not an alienable property. 21. No one may be
deprived of the least portion of his property without his
consent, unless because of public necessity, legally
determined, exacted openly, and under the condition of a
just indemnity in advance. 22. No tax shall be established
except for the general utility, and to relieve public needs.
All citizens have the right to co-operate, personally or by
their representatives, in the establishment of public
contributions. 23. Instruction is the need of all, and
society owes it equally to all its members. 24. Public
succors are a sacred debt of society, and it is for the law
to determine their extent and application. 25. The social
guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national
sovereignty. 26. This sovereignty is one, indivisible,
imprescriptible, and inalienable. 27. It resides essentially
in the whole people, and each citizen has an equal right to
co-operate in its exercise. 28. No partial assemblage of
citizens, and no individual may attribute to themselves
sovereignty, to exercise authority and fill any public
function, without a formal delegation by the law. 29. Social
security cannot exist where the limits of public
administration are not clearly determined by law, and where
the responsibility of all public functionaries is not
assured. 30. All citizens are bound to co-operate in this
guarantee, and to enforce the law when summoned in its name.
31. Men united in society should have legal means of
resisting oppression. In every free government the mode of
resisting different acts of oppression should be regulated
by the Constitution. 32. It is oppression when a law
violates the natural rights, civil and political, which it
should ensure. It is oppression when the law is violated by
public officials in its application to individual cases. It
is oppression when arbitrary acts violate the rights of
citizens against the terms of the law. 33. A people has
always the right to revise, reform, and change its
Constitution. One generation has no right to bind future
generations, and all heredity in offices is absurd and
tyrannical.
It now appears plain that Robespierre, Marat, and the Mountaineers
generally were resolved that there should be no new government The
difference between them and their opponents was fundamental: to them
the Revolution was an end, to the others a means. The Convention was a
purely revolutionary body. It had arbitrarily absorbed all legislative
and judicial functions, exercising them without responsibility to any
code or constitution. For instance, in State Trials French law required
three fourths of the voices for condemnation; had the rule been followed
Louis XVI. would not have perished. Lanjuinais had pressed the point,
and it was answered that the sentence on Louis was political, for the
interest of the State; _salus populi suprema lex_. This implied that
the Convention, turning aside from its appointed functions, had, in
anticipation of the judicial forms it meant to establish, constituted
itself into a Vigilance Committee to save the State in an emergency. But
it never turned back again to its proper work. Now when the Constitution
was framed, every possible obstruction was placed in the way of its
adoption, which would have relegated most of the Mountaineers to private
life.
Robespierre and Marat were in luck. The Paine-Condorcet Constitution
omitted all mention of a Deity. Here was the immemorial and infallible
recipe for discord, of which Robespierre made the most He took the
"Supreme Being" under his protection; he also took morality under his
protection, insisting that the Paine-Condorcet Constitution gave liberty
even to illicit traffic. While these discussions were going on Marat
gained his triumphant acquittal from the charges made against him by the
Girondins. This damaging blow further demoralized the majority which was
eager for the Constitution. By violence, by appeals against atheism,
by all crafty tactics, the Mountaineers secured recommitment of the
Constitution. To the Committee were added Herault de Sechelles, Ramel,
Mathieu, Couthon, Saint-Just,--all from the Committee of Public Safety.
The Constitution as committed was the most republican document of the
kind ever drafted, as remade it was a revolutionary instrument; but its
preamble read: "In the presence and under the guidance (_auspices_) of
the Supreme Being, the French People declare," etc.
God was in the Constitution; but when it was reported (June 10th)
the Mountaineers had their opponents _en route_ for the scaffold. The
arraignment of the twenty-two, declared by the Convention "calumnious"
six weeks before, was approved on June 2d. It was therefore easy to pass
such a constitution as the victors desired. Some had suggested, during
the theological debate, that "many crimes had been sanctioned by this
King of kings,"--no doubt with emphasis on the discredited royal
name. Robespierre identified his "Supreme Being" with nature, of whose
ferocities the poor Girondins soon had tragical evidence.*
* "Les rois, les aristocrates, les tyrants qu'ils soient,
sont des esclaves revoltas contre le souverain de la terre,
qui est le genre humain, et contre le legislateur de
l'univers, qui est la nature."--Robespierre's final article
of "Rights," adopted by the Jacobins, April 21,1793. Should
not slaves revolt?
The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on June 25th; it was
ratified by the Communes August 10th. When it was proposed to organize a
government under it, and dissolve the Convention, Robespierre remarked:
_That sounds like a suggestion of Pitt!_ Thereupon the Constitution
was suspended until universal peace, and the Revolution superseded the
Republic as end and aim of France.*
* "I observed in the french revolutions that they always
proceeded by stages, and made each stage a stepping stone to
another. The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a
constitution, and then voted to suspend the practical
establishment of it till after the war, and in the meantime
to carry on a revolutionary government. When Robespierre
fell they proposed bringing forward the suspended
Constitution, and apparently for this purpose appointed a
committee to frame what they called organic laws, and these
organic laws turned out to be a new Constitution (the
Directory Constitution which was in general a good one).
When Bonaparte overthrew this Constitution he got himself
appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now
Emperor with an hereditary succession."--Paine to Jefferson.
MS. (Dec. 27, 1804). The Paine-Condorcet Constitution is
printed in OEuvres Completes de Condorcet, vol. xviii. That
which superseded it may be read (the Declaration of Rights
omitted) in the "Constitutional History of France. By Henry
C. Lockwood." (New York, 1890). It is, inter alia, a
sufficient reason for describing the latter as
revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected
by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the
primaries, to revise or alter the Constitution, shall be
"formed in like manner as the legislatures, and unite in
itself the highest power." In other words, instead of being
limited to constitutional revision, may exercise all
legislative and other functions, just as the existing
Convention was doing.
Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion,
from Voltaire, _Si Dieu n' existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer_.
Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a god, made in his own
image, and to that idol offered human sacrifices,--beginning with his
own humanity. That he was genuinely superstitious is suggested by the
plausibility with which his enemies connected him with the "prophetess,"
Catharine Theot, who pronounced him the reincarnate "Word of God,"
Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticism, and largely
by their aid crushed the Girondins, who were rationalists. Condorcet had
said that in preparing a Constitution for France they had not consulted
Numa's nymph or the pigeon of Mahomet; they had found human reason
sufficient. Corruption of best is worst. In the proportion that a humane
deity would be a potent sanction for righteous laws, an inhuman deity is
the sanction of inhuman laws. He who summoned a nature-god to the French
Convention let loose the scourge on France. Nature inflicts on
mankind, every day, a hundred-fold the agonies of the Reign of Terror.
Robespierre had projected into nature a sentimental conception of his
own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked. That had to
take the shape of the nature-gods of all time, and straightway dragged
the Convention down to the savage plane where discussion becomes an
exchange of thunder-stones. Such relapses are not very difficult to
effect in revolutionary times. By killing off sceptical variations, and
cultivating conformity, a cerebral evolution proceeded for ages by which
kind-hearted people were led to worship jealous and cruel gods, who,
should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals.
Unfortunately, however, the nature-god does not so appear; it is
represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social
and human standard. Since the nature-god punishes hereditarily, kills
every man at last, and so tortures millions that the suggestion of hell
seems only too probable to those sufferers, a political system formed
under the legitimacy of such a superstition must subordinate crimes
to sins, regard atheism as worse than theft, acknowledge the arbitrary
principle, and confuse retaliation with justice. From the time that
the shekinah of the nature-god settled on the Mountain, offences
were measured, not by their injury to man, but as insults to the
Mountain-god, or to his anointed. In the mysterious counsels of the
Committee of Public Safety the rewards are as little harmonious with the
human standard as in the ages when sabbath-breaking and murder met the
same doom. Under the paralyzing splendor of a divine authority, any
such considerations as the suffering or death of men become petty. The
average Mountaineer was unable to imagine that those who tried to save
Louis had other than royalist motives. In this Armageddon the Girondins
were far above their opponents in humanity and intelligence, but the
conditions did not admit of an entire adherence to their honorable
weapons of argument and eloquence. They too often used deadly threats,
without meaning them; the Mountaineers, who did mean them, took such
phrases seriously, and believed the struggle to be one of life and
death. Such phenomena of bloodshed, connected with absurdly inadequate
causes, are known in history only where gods mingle in the fray. Reign
of Terror? What is the ancient reign of the god of battles, jealous,
angry every day, with everlasting tortures of fire prepared for the
unorthodox, however upright, even more than for the immoral? In France
too it was a suspicion of unorthodoxy in the revolutionary creed that
plunged most of the sufferers into the lake of fire and brimstone.
From the time of Paine's speeches on the King's fate he was
conscious that Marat's evil eye was on him. The American's inflexible
republicanism had inspired the vigilance of the powerful journals of
Brissot and Bonneville, which barred the way to any dictatorship. Paine
was even propagating a doctrine against presidency, thus marring the
example of the United States, on which ambitious Frenchmen, from Marat
to the Napoleons, have depended for their stepping-stone to despotism.
Marat could not have any doubt of Paine's devotion to the Republic,
but knew well his weariness of the Revolution. In the simplicity of his
republican faith Paine had made a great point of the near adoption
of the Constitution, and dissolution of the Convention in five or
six months, little dreaming that the Mountaineers were concentrating
themselves on the aim of becoming masters of the existing Convention
and then rendering it permanent. Marat regarded Paine's influence as
dangerous to revolutionary government, and, as he afterwards admitted,
desired to crush him. The proposed victim had several vulnerable points:
he had been intimate with Gouverneur Morris, whose hostility to France
was known; he had been intimate with Dumouriez, declared a traitor;
and he had no connection with any of the Clubs, in which so many
found asylum. He might have joined one of them had he known the French
language, and perhaps it would have been prudent to unite himself with
the "Cordeliers," in whose _esprit de corps_ some of his friends found
refuge.
However, the time of intimidation did not come for two months after the
King's death, and Paine was busy with Condorcet on the task assigned
them, of preparing an Address to the People of England concerning the
war of their government against France. This work, if ever completed,
does not appear to have been published. It was entrusted (February 1st)
to Barrere, Paine, Condorcet, and M. Faber. As Frederic Masson, the
learned librarian and historian of the Office of Foreign Affairs, has
found some trace of its being assigned to Paine and Condorcet, it may be
that further research will bring to light the Address. It could hardly
have been completed before the warfare broke out between the Mountain
and the Girondins, when anything emanating from Condorcet and Paine
would have been delayed, if not suppressed. There are one or two brief
essays in Condorcet's works--notably "The French Republic to Free
Men"--which suggest collaboration with Paine, and may be fragments of
their Address.*
* "OEuvres Completes de Condorcet," Paris, 1804, t. xvi., p.
16: "La Republique Francoise aux homines libres." In 1794,
when Paine was in prison, a pamphlet was issued by the
revolutionary government, entitled: "An Answer to the
Declaration of the King of England, respecting his Motives
for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards
France." This anonymous pamphlet, which is in English,
replies to the royal proclamation of October 29th, and bears
evidence of being written while the English still occupied
Toulon or early in November, 1793. There are passages in it
that suggest the hand of Paine, along with others which he
could not have written. It is possible that some composition
of his, in pursuance of the task assigned him and Condorcet,
was utilized by the Committee of Public Safety in its answer
to George III.
At this time the long friendship between Paine and Condorcet, and
the Marchioness too, had become very intimate. The two men had acted
together on the King's trial at every step, and their speeches on
bringing Louis to trial suggest previous consultations between them.
Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him. General
Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said:
"Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them. They should
cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their
heads." "But you yourself are a foreigner," Ward had replied, in
allusion to Marat's Swiss birth.* The answer is not reported. At length
a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April
13th), which brought Paine face to face with this enemy. A wealthy young
Englishman, named Johnson, with whom Paine had been intimate in London,
had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his
friend. His love of Paine amounted to worship. Having heard of Marat's
intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's
despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican dreams, that he
resolved on suicide. He made a will bequeathing his property to Paine,
and stabbed himself. Fortunately he was saved by some one who entered
just as he was about to give himself the third blow. It may have been
Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so
eventually.
* "Englishmen in the French Revolution." By John G. Alger.
London, 1889, p. 176. (A book of many blunders.)
The decree for Marat's trial was made amid galleries crowded with his
adherents, male and female ("Dames de la Fraternite"), who hurled cries
of wrath on every one who said a word against him. All were armed,
the women ostentatious of their poignards. The trial before the
Revolutionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was
determined by the Girondins to bring forward this affair of Johnson.
Paine was not, apparently, a party to this move, though he had enjoined
no secrecy in telling his friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred
before Marat was accused. On April 16th there appeared in Bris-sot's
journal _Le Patriote Francais_, the following paragraph:
"A sad incident has occurred to apprise the anarchists of the mournful
fruits of their frightful teaching. An Englishman, whose name I reserve,
had abjured his country because of his detestation of kings; he came to
France hoping to find there liberty; he saw only its mask on the hideous
visage of anarchy. Heart-broken by this spectacle, he determined on
self-destruction. Before dying, he wrote the following words, which we
have read, as written by his own trembling hand, on a paper which is in
the possession of a distinguished foreigner:--'I had come to France to
enjoy Liberty, but Marat has assassinated it. Anarchy is even more
cruel than despotism. I am unable to endure this grievous sight, of the
triumph of imbecility and inhumanity over talent and virtue.'"
The acting editor of _Le Patriote Francais_, Girey-Dupre, was summoned
before the Tribunal, where Marat was on trial, and testified that the
note published had been handed to him by Brissot, who assured him that
it was from the original, in the hands of Thomas Paine. Paine deposed
that he had been unacquainted with Marat before the Convention
assembled; that he had not supposed Johnson's note to have any
connection with the accusations against Marat.
President.--Did you give a copy of the note to Brissot?
Paine.--I showed him the original.
President.--Did you send it to him as it is printed?
Paine.--Brissot could only have written this note after what I read to
him, and told him. I would observe to the tribunal that Johnson gave
himself two blows with the knife after he had understood that Marat
would denounce him.
Marat.--Not because I would denounce the youth who stabbed himself, but
because I wish to denounce Thomas Paine.*
Paine (continuing).--Johnson had for some time suffered mental anguish.
As for Marat, I never spoke to him but once. In the lobby of the
Convention he said to me that the English people are free and happy; I
replied, they groan under a double despotism.**
* It would appear that Paine had not been informed until
Marat declared it, and was confirmed by the testimony of
Choppin, that the attempted suicide was on his account.
** Moniteur, April 24,1793.
No doubt it had been resolved to keep secret the fact that young Johnson
was still alive. The moment was critical; a discovery that Brissot
had written or printed "avant de mourir" of one still alive might have
precipitated matters.
It came out in the trial that Marat, addressing a club ("Friends of
Liberty and Equality"), had asked them to register a vow to recall from
the Convention "all of those faithless members who had betrayed
their duties in trying to save a tyrant's life," such deputies being
"traitors, royalists, or fools."
Meanwhile the Constitution was undergoing discussion in the Convention,
and to that Paine now gave his entire attention. On April 20th the
Convention, about midnight, when the Moderates had retired and the
Mountaineers found themselves masters of the field, voted to entertain
the petition of the Parisian sections against the Girondins. Paine saw
the star the Republic sinking. On "April 20th, 2d year of the Republic,"
he wrote as follows to Jefferson:
"My dear Friend,--The gentleman (Dr. Romer) to whom I entrust this
letter is an intimate acquaintance of Lavater; but I have not had the
opportunity of seeing him, as he had sett off for Havre prior to my
writing this letter, which I forward to him under cover from one of his
friends, who is also an acquaintance of mine.
"We are now in an extraordinary crisis, and it is not altogether without
some considerable faults here. Dumouriez, partly from having no fixed
principles of his own, and partly from the continual persecution of the
Jacobins, who act without either prudence or morality, has gone off
to the Enemy, and taken a considerable part of the Army with him. The
expedition to Holland has totally failed and all Brabant is again in the
hands of the Austrians.
"You may suppose the consternation which such a sudden reverse of
fortune has occasioned, but it has been without commotion. Dumouriez
threatened to be in Paris in three weeks. It is now three weeks ago; he
is still on the frontier near to Mons with the Enemy, who do not
make any progress. Dumouriez has proposed to re-establish the former
Constitution, in which plan the Austrians act with him. But if France
and the National Convention act prudently this project will not succeed.
In the first place there is a popular disposition against it, and there
is force sufficient to prevent it. In the next place, a great deal is to
be taken into the calculation with respect to the Enemy. There are now
so many powers accidentally jumbled together as to render it exceedingly
difficult to them to agree upon any common object.
"The first object, that of restoring the old Monarchy, is evidently
given up by the proposal to re-establish the late Constitution. The
object of England and Prussia was to preserve Holland, and the object
of Austria was to recover Brabant; while those separate objects lasted,
each party having one, the Confederation could hold together, each
helping the other; but after this I see not how a common object is to
be formed. To all this is to be added the probable disputes about
opportunity, the expense, and the projects of reimbursements. The Enemy
has once adventured into France, and they had the permission or the
good fortune to get back again. On every military calculation it is a
hazardous adventure, and armies are not much disposed to try a second
time the ground upon which they have been defeated.
"Had this revolution been conducted consistently with its principles,
there was once a good prospect of extending liberty through the greatest
part of Europe; but I now relinquish that hope. Should the Enemy by
venturing into France put themselves again in a condition of being
captured, the hope will revive; but this is a risk that I do not wish to
see tried, lest it should fail.
"As the prospect of a general freedom is now much shortened, I begin
to contemplate returning home. I shall await the event of the proposed
Constitution, and then take my final leave of Europe. I have not written
to the President, as I have nothing to communicate more than in this
letter. Please to present to him my affection and compliments,
and remember me among the circle of my friends. Your sincere and
affectionate friend,
"Thomas Paine.
"P. S. I just now received a letter from General Lewis Morris, who tells
me that the house and Barn on my farm at N. Rochelle are burnt down. I
assure you I shall not bring money enough to build another."
Four days after this letter was written Marat, triumphant, was crowned
with oak leaves. Fou-frede in his speech (April 16th) had said: "Marat
has formally demanded dictatorship." This was the mob's reply: _Bos
locutus est_.
With Danton, Paine had been on friendly terms, though he described as
"rose water" the author's pleadings against the guillotine. On May 6th,
Paine wrote to Danton a letter brought to light by Taine, who says:
"Compared with the speeches and writings of the time, it produces the
strangest effect by its practical good sense."* Dr. Robinet also finds
here evidence of "a lucid and wise intellect."**
* "La Revolution," ii., pp. 382, 413, 414.
** "Danton Emigre," p. 177.
"Paris, May 6th, and year of the Republic (1793).
"Citoyen Danton:
"As you read English, I write this letter to you without parsing it
through the hands of a translator. I am exceedingly disturbed at the
distractions, jealousies, discontents and uneasiness that reign among
us, and which, if they continue, will bring ruin and disgrace on the
Republic. When I left America in the year 1787, it was my intention to
return the year following, but the French Revolution, and the prospect
it afforded of extending the principles of liberty and fraternity
through the greater part of Europe, have induced me to prolong my stay
upwards of six years. |I now despair of seeing the great object of
European liberty accomplished, and my despair arises not from, the
combined foreign powers, not from the intrigues of aristocracy and
priestcraft, but from the tumultuous misconduct with which the internal
affairs of the present revolution is conducted.
"All that now can be hoped for is limited to France only, and I agree
with your motion of not interfering in the government of any foreign
country, nor permitting any foreign country to interfere in the
government of France. This decree was necessary as a preliminary toward
terminating the war. But while these internal contentions continue,
while the hope remains to the enemy of seeing the Republic fall to
pieces, while not only the representatives of the departments but
representation itself is publicly insulted, as it has lately been and
now is by the people of Paris, or at least by the tribunes, the enemy
will be encouraged to hang about the frontiers and await the issue of
circumstances.
"I observe that the confederated powers have not yet recognised
Monsieur, or D'Artois, as regent, nor made any proclamation in favour of
any of the Bourbons; but this negative conduct admits of two different
conclusions. The one is that of abandoning the Bourbons and the war
together; the other is that of changing the object of the war and
substituting a partition scheme in the place of their first object, as
they have done by Poland. If this should be their object, the internal
contentions that now rage will favour that object far more than it
favoured their former object. The danger every day increases of a
rupture between Paris and the departments. The departments did not send
their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them
is an insult to the departments that elected and sent them. I see but
one effectual plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to
fix the residence of the Convention, and of the future assemblies, at a
distance from Paris.
"I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience
that arose by having the government of Congress within the limits of
any Municipal Jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and
after a residence of four years it found it necessary to leave it. It
then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to
New York; it again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and after
experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of
a government, it formed the project of building a Town, not within
the limits of any municipal jurisdiction, for the future residence of
Congress. In any one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal
authority privately or openly opposed itself to the authority of
Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention
from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to.
The same thing now takes place in France, but in a far greater excess.
"I see also another embarrassing circumstance arising in Paris of which
we have had full experience in America. I mean that of fixing the price
of provisions. But if this measure is to be attempted it ought to
be done by the Municipality. The Convention has nothing to do with
regulations of this kind; neither can they be carried into practice. The
people of Paris may say they will not give more than a certain price
for provisions, but as they cannot compel the country people to bring
provisions to market the consequence will be directly contrary to their
expectations, and they will find clearness and famine instead of plenty
and cheapness. They may force the price down upon the stock in hand, but
after that the market will be empty.
"I will give you an example. In Philadelphia we undertook, among other
regulations of this kind, to regulate the price of Salt; the consequence
was that no Salt was brought to market, and the price rose to thirty-six
shillings sterling per Bushel. The price before the war was only one
shilling and sixpence per Bushel; and we regulated the price of flour
(farine) till there was none in the market, and the people were glad to
procure it at any price.
"There is also a circumstance to be taken into the account which is not
much attended to. The assignats are not of the same value they were a
year ago, and as the quantity increases the value of them will diminish.
This gives the appearance of things being dear when they are not so in
fact, for in the same proportion that any kind of money falls in
value articles rise in price. If it were not for this the quantity of
assignats would be too great to be circulated. Paper money in America
fell so much in value from this excessive quantity of it, that in the
year 1781 I gave three hundred paper dollars for one pair of worsted
stockings. What I write you upon this subject is experience, and not
merely opinion.
"I have no personal interest in any of these matters, nor in any party
disputes. I attend only to general principles.
"As soon as a constitution shall be established I shall return to
America; and be the future prosperity of France ever so great, I shall
enjoy no other part of it than the happiness of knowing it. In the mean
time I am distressed to see matters so badly conducted, and so little
attention paid to moral principles. It is these things that injure the
character of the Revolution and discourage the progress of liberty all
over the world.
"When I began this letter I did not intend making it so lengthy, but
since I have gone thus far I will fill up the remainder of the sheet
with such matters as occur to me.
"There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of
denunciation that now prevails. If every individual is to indulge his
private malignancy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and
without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all
authority be destroyed. Calumny is a species of Treachery that ought to
be punished as well as any other kind of Treachery. It is a private vice
productive of public evils; because it is possible to irritate men into
disaffection by continual calumny who never intended to be disaffected.
It is therefore, equally as necessary to guard against the evils
of unfounded or malignant suspicion as against the evils of blind
confidence. It is equally as necessary to protect the characters of
public officers from calumny as it is to punish them for treachery or
misconduct. For my own part I shall hold it a matter of doubt, until
better evidence arises than is known at present, whether Dumouriez has
been a traitor from policy or from resentment. There was certainly a
time when he acted well, but it is not every man whose mind is strong
enough to bear up against ingratitude, and I think he experienced a
great deal of this before he revolted. Calumny becomes harmless and
defeats itself when it attempts to act upon too large a scale. Thus the
denunciation of the Sections [of Paris] against the twenty-two deputies
falls to the ground. The departments that elected them are better judges
of their moral and political characters than those who have denounced
them. This denunciation will injure Paris in the opinion of the
departments because it has the appearance of dictating to them what sort
of deputies they shall elect. Most of the acquaintances that I have in
the convention are among those who are in that list, and I know there
are not better men nor better patriots than what they are.
"I have written a letter to Marat of the same date as this but not on
the same subject. He may show it to you if he chuse.
"Votre Ami,
"Thomas Paine.
"Citoyen Danton."
It is to be hoped that Paine's letter to Marat may be discovered in
France; it is shown by the Cob-bett papers, printed in the Appendix,
that he kept a copy, which there is reason to fear perished with
General Bonneville's library in St. Louis. Whatever may be the letter's
contents, there is no indication that thereafter Marat troubled Paine.
Possibly Danton and Marat compared their letters, and the latter got it
into his head that hostility to this American, anxious only to cross the
ocean, could be of no advantage to him. Or perhaps he remembered that if
a hue and cry were raised against "foreigners" it could not stop short
of his own leaf-crowned Neufchatel head. He had shown some sensitiveness
about that at his trial. Samson-Pegnet had testified that, at
conversations in Paine's house, Marat had been reported as saying that
it was necessary to massacre all the foreigners, especially the English.
This Marat pronounced an "atrocious calumny, a device of the statesmen
[his epithet for Girondins] to render me odious." Whatever his motives,
there is reason to believe that Marat no longer included Paine in his
proscribed list. Had it been otherwise a fair opportunity of striking
down Paine presented itself on the occasion, already alluded to, when
Paine gave his testimony in favor of General Miranda. Miranda was tried
before the Revolutionary Tribunal on May 12th, and three days following.
He had served under Dumouriez, was defeated, and was suspected of
connivance with his treacherous commander. Paine was known to have been
friendly with Dumouriez, and his testimony in favor of Miranda might
naturally have been used against both men. Miranda was, however,
acquitted, and that did not make Marat better disposed towards that
adventurer's friends, all Girondins, or, like Paine, who belonged to no
party, hostile to Jacobinism. Yet when, on June 2d, the doomed Girondins
were arrested, there were surprising exceptions: Paine and his literary
collaborateur, Condorcet. Moreover, though the translator of Paine's
works, Lanthenas, was among the proscribed, his name was erased on
Marat's motion.
On June 7th Robespierre demanded a more stringent law against
foreigners, and one was soon after passed ordering their imprisonment.
It was understood that this could not apply to the two foreigners in the
Convention--Paine and Anacharsis Clootz,--though it was regarded as a
kind of warning to them. I have seen it stated, but without authority,
that Paine had been admonished by Danton to stay away from the
Convention on June 2d, and from that day there could not be the
slightest utility in his attendance. The Mountaineers had it all their
own way. For simply criticising the Constitution they brought forward
in place of that of the first committee, Condorcet had to fly from
prosecution. Others also fled, among them Brissot and Duchatel. What
with the arrestations and flights Paine found himself, in June, almost
alone. In the Convention he was sometimes the solitary figure left on
the Plain, where but now sat the brilliant statesmen of France. They,
his beloved friends, have started in procession towards the guillotine,
for even flight must end there; daily others are pressed into their
ranks; his own summons, he feels, is only a question of a few weeks
or days. How Paine loved those men--Brissot, Condorcet, Lasource,
Ducha-tel, Vergniaud, Gensonne! Never was man more devoted to his
intellectual comrades. Even across a century one may realize what it
meant to him, that march of some of his best friends to the scaffold,
while others were hunted through France, and the agony of their
families, most of whom he well knew.
Alas, even this is not the worst! For what were the personal fate of
himself or any compared with the fearful fact that the harvest is past
and the republic not saved! Thus had ended all his labors, and his
visions of the Commonwealth of Man. The time had come when many besides
poor Johnson sought peace in annihilation. Paine, heartbroken,
sought oblivion in brandy. Recourse to such anaesthetic, of which any
affectionate man might fairly avail himself under such incredible agony
as the ruin of his hopes and the approaching murder of his dearest
friends, was hitherto unknown in Paine's life. He drank freely, as was
the custom of his time; but with the exception of the evidence of an
enemy at his trial in England, that he once saw him under the influence
of wine after a dinner party (1792), which he admitted was "unusual," no
intimation of excess is discoverable in any contemporary record of Paine
until this his fifty-seventh year. He afterwards told his friend Rickman
that, "borne down by public and private affliction, he had been driven
to excesses in Paris"; and, as it was about this time that Gouverneur
Morris and Colonel Bosville, who had reasons for disparaging Paine,
reported stories of his drunkenness (growing ever since), we may assign
the excesses mainly to June. It will be seen by comparison of the dates
of events and documents presently mentioned that Paine could not have
remained long in this pardonable refuge of mental misery. Charlotte
Corday's poignard cut a rift in the black cloud. After that tremendous
July 13th there is positive evidence not only of sobriety, but of life
and work on Paine's part that make the year memorable.
Marat dead, hope springs up for the arrested Girondins. They are not
yet in prison, but under "arrestation in their homes"; death seemed
inevitable while Marat lived, but Charlotte Corday has summoned a
new leader. Why may Paine's imperilled comrades not come forth again?
Certainly they will if the new chieftain is Danton, who under his
radical rage hides a heart. Or if Marat's mantle falls on Robespierre,
would not that scholarly lawyer, who would have abolished capital
punishment, reverse Marat's cruel decrees? Robespierre had agreed to the
new Constitution (reported by Paine's friend, Herault de Sechelles) and
when even that dubious instrument returns with the popular sanction, all
may be well. The Convention, which is doing everything except what it
was elected to do, will then dissolve, and the happy Republic remember
it only as a nightmare. So Paine takes heart again, abandons the bowl of
forgetfulness, and becomes a republican Socrates instructing disciples
in an old French garden.