The author does not confine the benefit of the regicide lesson to kings
alone. He has a diffusive bounty. Nobles, and men of property, will
likewise be greatly reformed. They too will be led to a review of
their social situation and duties; "and will reflect, that their large
allotment of worldly advantages is for the aid and benefit of the
whole." Is it then from the fate of Juignie, archbishop of Paris, or
of the cardinal de Rochefoucault, and of so many others, who gave their
fortunes, and, I may say, their very beings, to the poor, that the rich
are to learn, that their "fortunes are for the aid and benefit of the
whole?" I say nothing of the liberal persons of great rank and property,
lay and ecclesiastic, men and women, to whom we have had the honour and
happiness of affording an asylum,--I pass by these, lest I should
never have done, or lest I should omit some as deserving as any I might
mention. Why will the author then suppose, that the nobles and men of
property in France have been banished, confiscated, and murdered, on
account of the savageness and ferocity of their character, and their
being tainted with vices beyond those of the same order and description
in other countries? No judge of a revolutionary tribunal, with his hands
dipped in their blood, and his maw gorged with their property, has yet
dared to assert what this author has been pleased, by way of a moral
lesson, to insinuate.
Their nobility, and their men of property, in a mass, had the very same
virtues and the very same vices, and in the very same proportions, with
the same description of men in this and in other nations. I must do
justice to suffering honour, generosity, and integrity. I do not know,
that any time, or any country, has furnished more splendid examples of
every virtue, domestic and public. I do not enter into the councils
of Providence: but, humanly speaking, many of these nobles and men
of property, from whose disastrous fate we are, it seems, to learn a
general softening of character, and a revision of our social situations
and duties, appear to me full as little deserving of that fate, as the
author, whoever he is, can be. Many of them, I am sure, were such, as I
should be proud indeed to be able to compare myself with, in knowledge,
in integrity, and in every other virtue. My feeble nature might shrink,
though theirs did not, from the proof; but my reason and my ambition
tell me, that it would be a good bargain to purchase their merits with
their fate.
For which of his vices did that great magistrate, D'Espremenil, lose his
fortune and his head? What were the abominations of Malesherbes, that
other excellent magistrate, whose sixty years of uniform virtue was
acknowledged, in the very act of his murder, by the judicial butchers,
who condemned him? On account of what misdemeanors was he robbed of his
property, and slaughtered with two generations of his offspring; and the
remains of the third race, with a refinement of cruelty, and lest they
should appear to reclaim the property forfeited by the virtues of their
ancestor, confounded in an hospital with the thousands of those unhappy
foundling infants, who are abandoned, without relation, and without
name, by the wretchedness or by the profligacy of their parents?
Is the fate of the queen of France to produce this softening of
character? Was she a person so very ferocious and cruel as, by the
example of her death, to frighten us into common humanity? Is there no
way to teach the emperor a softening of character, and a review of his
social situation and duty, but his consent, by an infamous accord with
regicide, to drive a second coach with the Austrian arms through the
streets of Paris, along which, after a series of preparatory horrors,
exceeding the atrocities of the bloody execution itself, the glory of
the imperial race had been carried to an ignominious death? Is this a
lesson of MODERATION to a descendant of Maria Theresa, drawn from the
fate of the daughter of that incomparable woman and sovereign? If he
learns this lesson from such an object, and from such teachers, the man
may remain, but the king is deposed. If he does not carry quite another
memory of that transaction in the inmost recesses of his heart, he is
unworthy to reign; he is unworthy to live. In the chronicle of disgrace
he will have but this short tale told of him, "he was the first emperor
of his house that embraced a regicide: he was the last that wore
the imperial purple."--Far am I from thinking so ill of this august
sovereign, who is at the head of the monarchies of Europe, and who is
the trustee of their dignities and his own. What ferocity of character
drew on the fate of Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis the Sixteenth?
For which of the vices of that pattern of benevolence, of piety, and of
all the virtues, did they put her to death? For which of her vices did
they put to death the mildest of all human creatures, the duchess of
Biron? What were the crimes of those crowds of matrons and virgins of
condition, whom they massacred, with their juries of blood, in prisons
and on scaffolds? What were the enormities of the infant king, whom they
caused, by lingering tortures, to perish in their dungeon, and whom, if
at last they despatched by poison, it was in that detestable crime the
only act of mercy they have ever shown?
What softening of character is to be had, what review of their social
situations and duties is to be taught, by these examples, to kings, to
nobles, to men of property, to women, and to infants? The royal family
perished, because it was royal. The nobles perished, because they were
noble. The men, women, and children, who had property, because they had
property to be robbed of. The priests were punished, after they had
been robbed of their all, not for their vices, but for their virtues and
their piety, which made them an honour to their sacred profession, and
to that nature, of which we ought to be proud, since they belong to it.
My Lord, nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of
being kings, queens, nobles, priests, and children, to be butchered on
account of their inheritance. These are things, at which not vice, not
crime, not folly, but wisdom, goodness, learning, justice, probity,
beneficence, stand aghast. By these examples our reason and our moral
sense are not enlightened, but confounded; and there is no refuge for
astonished and affrighted virtue, but being annihilated in humility
and submission, sinking into a silent adoration of the inscrutable
dispensations of Providence, and flying, with trembling wings, from this
world of daring crimes, and feeble, pusillanimous, half-bred, bastard
justice, to the asylum of another order of things, in an unknown form,
but in a better life.
Whatever the politician or preacher of September or of October may
think of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating
example. Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and
the completest triumph of the completest villainy, that ever vexed
and disgraced mankind! The example is ruinous in every point of view,
religious, moral, civil, political. It establishes that dreadful maxim
of Machiavel, that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves.
This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they
cannot be angels, ought to thwart their ambition, and not endeavour to
become infernal spirits. It is too well exemplified in the present
time, where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect
timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no
crime. It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence
has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favour
of crimes; who abandon the weak, and court the friendship of the wicked.
To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is a wise
object of years of war. This is that war. This is that moral war. It was
said by old Trivulzio, that the battle of Marignan was the battle of
the giants, that all the rest of the many he had seen were those of
the cranes and pigmies. This is true of the objects, at least, of the
contest. For the greater part of those, which we have hitherto contended
for, in comparison, were the toys of children.
The October politician is so full of charity and good nature, that he
supposes, that these very robbers and murderers themselves are in a
course of melioration; on what ground I cannot conceive, except on the
long practice of every crime, and by its complete success. He is an
Origenist, and believes in the conversion of the devil. All that runs
in the place of blood in his veins is nothing but the milk of human
kindness. He is as soft as a curd, though, as a politician, he might
be supposed to be made of sterner stuff. He supposes (to use his own
expression) "that the salutary truths, which he inculcates, are making
their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which
falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor truth has had a hard
work of it with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder will do. As
a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of Truth, he gives us a
confession they had made not long before he wrote. "Their fraternity"
(as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) "has been
the brotherhood of Cain and Abel, and they have organized nothing but
Bankruptcy and Famine." A very honest confession, truly; and much in
the spirit of their oracle, Rousseau. Yet, what is still more marvellous
than the confession, this is the very fraternity to which our author
gives us such an obliging invitation to accede. There is, indeed, a
vacancy in the fraternal corps; a brother and a partner is wanted. If we
please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and, whilst we
wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of
the partnership, by entering, without delay, into a shop of ready-made
bankruptcy and famine. These are the douceurs, by which we are invited
to regicide fraternity and friendship. But still our author considers
the confession as a proof, that "truth is making its way into their
bosoms." No! It is not making its way into their bosoms. It has forced
its way into their mouths! The evil spirit, by which they are possessed,
though essentially a liar, is forced, by the tortures of conscience, to
confess the truth: to confess enough for their condemnation, but not
for their amendment. Shakspeare very aptly expresses this kind of
confession, devoid of repentance, from the mouth of a usurper, a
murderer, and a regicide--
"We are ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence."
Whence is their amendment? Why, the author writes, that, on their
murderous insurrectionary system, their own lives are not sure for an
hour; nor has their power a greater stability. True. They are convinced
of it; and accordingly the wretches have done all they can to preserve
their lives, and to secure their power; but not one step have they taken
to amend the one, or to make a more just use of the other.