The Assembly recommends to its youth a study of the bold experimenters
in morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their
leaders, which of them is the best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth,
they all resemble him. His blood they transfuse into their minds and
into their manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him they turn
over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the
day, or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy
writ; in his life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard
figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pattern to
authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of Paris are now running for
statues, with the kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches.
If an author had written like a great genius on geometry, though its
practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might
appear, that in voting the statue, they honoured only the geometrician.
But Rousseau is a moralist, or he is nothing. It is impossible,
therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design
in choosing the author, with whom they have begun to recommend a courses
studies.
Their great problem is to find a substitute for all the principles which
hitherto have been employed to regulate the human will and action. They
find dispositions in the mind of such force and quality as may fit men,
far better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as
theirs, and may go much further in supporting their power and destroying
their enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering,
seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True humility,
the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm,
foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the
practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have totally
discarded. Their object is to merge all natural and all social sentiment
in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and conversant in little
things, vanity is of little moment. When full grown, it is the worst
of vices, and the occasional mimic of them all. It makes the whole man
false. It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him. His best
qualities are poisoned and perverted by it, and operate exactly as the
worst. When your lords had many writers as immoral as the object of
their statue (such as Voltaire and others) they chose Rousseau, because
in him that peculiar vice, which they wished to erect into ruling
virtue, was by far the most conspicuous. We have had the great professor
and founder of THE PHILOSOPHY OF VANITY in England. As I had good
opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day to day, he left
no doubt on my mind that he entertained no principle either to influence
his heart, or to guide his understanding, but VANITY. With this vice he
was possessed to a degree little short of madness. It is from the
same deranged, eccentric vanity, that this, the insane Socrates of the
National Assembly, was impelled to publish a mad confession of his mad
faults, and to attempt a new sort of glory from bringing hardily to
light the obscure and vulgar vices which we know may sometimes be
blended with eminent talents. He has not observed on the nature of
vanity who does not know that it is omnivorous; that it has no choice in
its food; that it is fond to talk even of its own faults and vices,
as what will excite surprise and draw attention, and what will pass at
worst for openness and candour.
It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity makes even of hypocrisy,
that has driven Rousseau to record a life not so much as chequered, or
spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single
good action. It is such a life he chooses to offer to the attention of
mankind. It is such a life that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the
face of his Creator, whom he acknowledges only to brave. Your Assembly,
knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen
this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model. To
him they erect their first statue. From him they commence their series
of honours and distinctions.
It is that new-invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that
led their model hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful
rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart
was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection.
Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every
individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character
of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this
their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as
the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honours
the giver and the receiver: and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse
for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by
the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away,
as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours,
and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves,
licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. Vanity,
however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural
feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate
father is hardly known in his parish.
Under this philosophic instructor in the ETHICS OF VANITY, they have
attempted in France a regeneration of the moral constitution of man.
Statesmen, like your present rulers, exist by everything which is
spurious, fictitious, and false; by everything which takes the man from
his house, and sets him on a stage; which makes him up an artificial
creature, with painted theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the glare
of candlelight, and formed to be contemplated at a due distance.
Vanity is too apt to prevail in all of us, and in all countries. To
the improvement of Frenchmen it seems not absolutely necessary that it
should be taught upon system. But it is plain that the present rebellion
was its legitimate offspring, and it is piously fed by that rebellion
with a daily dole. If the system of institution recommended by the
Assembly be false and theatric, it is because their system of government
is of the same character. To that, and to that alone, it is strictly
conformable. To understand either, we must connect the morals with the
politics of the legislators. Your practical philosophers, systematic
in everything, have wisely begun at the source. As the relation between
parents and children is the first amongst the elements of vulgar,
natural morality (Filiola tua te delectari laetor et probari tibi
phusiken esse ten pros ta tekna: etenim, si haec non est, nulla potest
homini esse ad hominem naturae adjunctio: qua sublata vitae societas
tollitur. Valete Patron (Rousseau) et tui condiscipuli (l'Assemblee
National).--Cic. Ep. ad Atticum.), they erect statues to a wild,
ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of fine general feelings; a
lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred. Your masters reject the
duties of his vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty; as not founded
in the social compact; and not binding according to the rights of men;
because the relation is not, of course, the result of FREE ELECTION;
never so on the side of the children, not always on the part of the
parents.
The next relation which they regenerate by their statues to Rousseau
is that which is next in sanctity to that of a father. They differ from
those old-fashioned thinkers, who considered pedagogues as sober and
venerable characters, and allied to the parental. The moralists of the
dark times, preceptorum sancti voluere parentis esse loco. In this age
of light, they teach the people that preceptors ought to be in the place
of gallants. They systematically corrupt a very corruptible race (for
some time a growing nuisance amongst you), a set of pert, petulant
literators, to whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unostentatious
duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of
gay, young, military sparks, and danglers at toilets. They call on the
rising generation in France to take a sympathy in the adventures and
fortunes, and they endeavour to engage their sensibility on the side of
pedagogues who betray the most awful family trusts, and vitiate their
female pupils. They teach the people that the debauchers of virgins,
almost in the arms of their parents, may be safe inmates in the houses,
and even fit guardians of the honour of those husbands who succeed
legally to the office which the young literators had preoccupied,
without asking leave of law or conscience.
Thus they dispose of all the family relations of parents and children,
husbands and wives. Through this same instructor, by whom they corrupt
the morals, they corrupt the taste. Taste and elegance, though they are
reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean
importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to
turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the
blandishments of pleasure; and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.
Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is totally destitute
of taste in any sense of the word. Your masters, who are his scholars,
conceive that all refinement has an aristocratic character. The last
age had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace and nobleness to our
mutual appetites, and in raising them into a higher class and order
than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your masters are
resolved to destroy these aristocratic prejudices. The passion called
love has so general and powerful an influence; it makes so much of the
entertainment, and indeed so much of the occupation of that part of life
which decides the character for ever, that the mode and the principles
on which it engages the sympathy, and strikes the imagination, become of
the utmost importance to the morals and manners of every society. Your
rulers were well aware of this; and in their system of changing your
manners to accommodate them to their politics, they found nothing so
convenient as Rousseau. Through him they teach men to love after the
fashion of philosophers; that is, they teach to men, to Frenchmen, a
love without gallantry; a love without anything of that fine flower of
youthfulness and gentility, which places it, if not among the virtues,
among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally allied
to grace and manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned,
indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medly of pedantry and lewdness; of
metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such
is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous
philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry the "Nouvelle
Eloise." When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors is broken down,
and your families are no longer protected by decent pride, and salutary
domestic prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The
rulers in the National Assembly are in good hopes that the females of
the first families in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters,
fiddlers, pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets de chambre, and other
active citizens of that description, who having the entry into your
houses, and being half domesticated by their situation, may be blended
with you by regular and irregular relations. By a law they have made
these people their equals. By adopting the sentiments of Rousseau they
have made them your rivals. In this manner these great legislators
complete their plan of levelling, and establish their rights of men on a
sure foundation.
I am certain that the writings of Rousseau lead directly to this kind
of shameful evil. I have often wondered how he comes to be so much more
admired and followed on the continent than he is here. Perhaps a
secret charm in the language may have its share in this extraordinary
difference. We certainly perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this
writer, a style glowing, animated, enthusiastic; at the same time that
we find it lax, diffuse, and not in the best taste of composition; all
the members of the piece being pretty equally laboured and expanded,
without any due selection or subordination of parts. He is generally too
much on the stretch, and his manner has little variety. We cannot
rest upon any of his works, though they contain observations which
occasionally discover a considerable insight into human nature. But his
doctrines, on the whole, are so inapplicable to real life and manners,
that we never dream of drawing from them any rule for laws or conduct,
or for fortifying or illustrating anything by a reference to his
opinions. They have with us the fate of older paradoxes.
"Cum ventum ad VERUM est, SENSUS MORESQUE repugnant,
Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et aequi."
Perhaps bold speculations are more acceptable because more new to you
than to us, who have been long since satiated with them. We continue, as
in the two last ages, to read, more generally than I believe is now
done on the continent, the authors of sound antiquity. These occupy our
minds. They give us another taste and turn, and will not suffer us to be
more than transiently amused with paradoxical morality. It is not that
I consider this writer as wholly destitute of just notions. Amongst
his irregularities, it must be reckoned that he is sometimes moral, and
moral in a very sublime strain. But the GENERAL SPIRIT AND TENDENCY of
his works is mischievous; and the more mischievous for this mixture: for
perfect depravity of sentiment is not reconcileable with eloquence; and
the mind (though corruptible, not complexionally vicious) would reject,
and throw off with disgust, a lesson of pure and unmixed evil. These
writers make even virtue a pander to vice.
However, I less consider the author than the system of the Assembly in
perverting morality through his means. This I confess makes me nearly
despair of any attempt upon the minds of their followers, through
reason, honour, or conscience. The great object of your tyrants is to
destroy the gentlemen of France; and for that purpose they destroy, to
the best of their power, all the effect of those relations which may
render considerable men powerful or even safe. To destroy that
order, they vitiate the whole community. That no means may exist of
confederating against their tyranny, by the false sympathies of this
"Nouvelle Eloise" they endeavour to subvert those principles of domestic
trust and fidelity, which form the discipline of social life. They
propagate principles by which every servant may think it, if not his
duty, at least his privilege, to betray his master. By these principles,
every considerable father of a family loses the sanctuary of his house.
Debet sua cuique domus esse perfugium tutissimum, says the law, which
your legislators have taken so much pains first to decry, then to
repeal. They destroy all the tranquillity and security of domestic life;
turning the asylum of the house into a gloomy prison, where the father
of the family must drag out a miserable existence, endangered in
proportion to the apparent means of his safety; where he is worse
than solitary in a crowd of domestics, and more apprehensive from his
servants and inmates, than from the hired, bloodthirsty mob without
doors, who are ready to pull him to the lanterne. It is thus, and for
the same end, that they endeavour to destroy that tribunal of conscience
which exists independently of edicts and decrees. Your despots govern
by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else: and
therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their
Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of
fear which generates true courage. Their object is, that their
fellow-citizens may be under the dominion of no awe, but that of their
committee of research, and of their lanterne.
Having found the advantage of assassination in the formation of their
tyranny, it is the grand resource in which they trust for the support
of it. Whoever opposes any of their proceedings, or is suspected of a
design to oppose them, is to answer it with his life, or the lives of
his wife and children. This infamous, cruel, and cowardly practice of
assassination they have the imprudence to call MERCIFUL. They boast that
they operated their usurpation rather by terror than by force; and that
a few seasonable murders have prevented the bloodshed of many battles.
There is no doubt they will extend these acts of mercy whenever they
see an occasion. Dreadful, however, will be the consequences of their
attempt to avoid the evils of war by the merciful policy of murder. If,
by effectual punishment of the guilty, they do not wholly disavow that
practice, and the threat of it too, as any part of their policy; if ever
a foreign prince enters into France, he must enter it as into a country
of assassins. The mode of civilized war will not be practised; nor are
the French who act on the present system entitled to expect it. They,
whose known policy is to assassinate every citizen whom they suspect to
be discontented by their tyranny, and to corrupt the soldiery of every
open enemy, must look for no modified hostility. All war, which is not
battle, will be military execution. This will beget acts of retaliation
from you; and every retaliation will beget a new revenge. The
hell-hounds of war, on all sides, will be uncoupled and unmuzzled. The
new school of murder and barbarism, set up in Paris, having destroyed
(so far as in it lies) all the other manners and principles which have
hitherto civilized Europe, will destroy also the mode of civilized war,
which, more than anything else, has distinguished the Christian world.
Such is the approaching golden age, which the Virgil of your assembly
has sung to his Pollios! (Mirabeau's speech concerning universal peace.)