men must be under the monstrous and complicated tyranny of all sorts
with which they are crushed. They want no stimulus to throw off this
dreadful yoke; but they do want, not manifestoes, which they have had
even to surfeit, but real protection, force, and succor.
The disputes and questions of men at their ease do not at all affect
their minds, or ever can occupy the minds of men in their situation.
These theories are long since gone by; they have had their day, and have
done their mischief. The question is not between the rabble of systems,
Fayettism, Condorcetism, Monarchism, or Democratism, or Federalism, on
the one side, and the fundamental laws of France on the other,--or
between all these systems amongst themselves. It is a controversy (weak,
indeed, and unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor and the
robber, between the prisoner and the jailer, between the neck and the
guillotine. Four fifths of the French inhabitants would thankfully take
protection from the emperor of Morocco, and would never trouble their
heads about the abstract principles of the power by which they were
snatched from imprisonment, robbery, and murder. But then these men can
do little or nothing for themselves. They have no arms, nor magazines,
nor chiefs, nor union, nor the possibility of these things within
themselves. On the whole, therefore, I lay it down as a certainty, that
in the Jacobins no change of mind is to be expected, and that no others
in the territory of France have an independent and deliberative
existence.
The truth is, that France is out of itself,--the moral France is
separated from the geographical. The master of the house is expelled,
and the robbers are in possession. If we look for the _corporate people_
of France, existing as corporate in the eye and intention of public law,
(that corporate people, I mean, who are free to deliberate and to
decide, and who have a capacity to treat and conclude,) they are in
Flanders, and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and England. There
are all the princes of the blood, there are all the orders of the state,
there are all the parliaments of the kingdom.
This being, as I conceive, the true state of France, as it exists
_territorially_, and as it exists _morally_, the question will be, with
whom we are to concert our arrangements, and whom we are to use as our
instruments in the reduction, in the pacification, and in the settlement
of France. The work to be done must indicate the workmen. Supposing us
to have national objects, we have two principal and one secondary. The
first two are so intimately connected as not to be separated even in
thought: the reëstablishment of royalty, and the reëstablishment of
property. One would think it requires not a great deal of argument to
prove that the most serious endeavors to restore royalty will be made by
Royalists. Property will be most energetically restored by the ancient
proprietors of that kingdom.
When I speak of Royalists, I wish to be understood of those who were
always such from principle. Every arm lifted up for royalty from the
beginning was the arm of a man so principled. I do not think there are
ten exceptions.
The principled Royalists are certainly not of force to effect these
objects by themselves. If they were, the operations of the present great
combination would be wholly unnecessary. What I contend for is, that
they should be consulted with, treated with, and employed; and that no
foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment
and local knowledge so competent to answer all these purposes, as the
natural proprietors of the country.
Their number, for an exiled party, is also considerable. Almost the
whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and
civil, have been steadily devoted to the monarchy. This body does not
amount to less than seventy thousand,--a very great number in the
composition of the respectable classes in any society. I am sure, that,
if half that number of the same description were taken out of this
country, it would leave hardly anything that I should call the people of
England. On the faith of the Emperor and the king of Prussia, a body of
ten thousand nobility on horseback, with the king's two brothers at
their head, served with the king of Prussia in the campaign of 1792, and
equipped themselves with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and
exhausted credit.[34] It is not now the question, how that great force
came to be rendered useless and totally dissipated. I state it now, only
to remark that a great part of the same force exists, and would act, if
it were enabled. I am sure everything has shown us that in this war with
France one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of
this.
If we wish to make an impression on the minds of any persons in France,
or to persuade them to join our standard, it is impossible that they
should not be more easily led, and more readily formed and disciplined,
(civilly and martially disciplined,) by those who speak their language,
who are acquainted with their manners, who are conversant with their
usages and habits of thinking, and who have a local knowledge of their
country, and some remains of ancient credit and consideration, than with
a body congregated from all tongues and tribes. Where none of the
respectable native interests are seen in the transaction, it is
impossible that any declarations can convince those that are within, or
those that are without, that anything else than some sort of hostility
in the style of a conqueror is meant. At best, it will appear to such
wavering persons, (if such there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a
choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to
be fought for as a carrion carcass and picked to the bone by all the
crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they
would, I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such
a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, Spaniards,
Neapolitans, Sardinians, Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians,
Slavonians, Croatians, _acting as principals_, it is impossible they
should think we come with a beneficent design. Many of those fierce and
barbarous people have already given proofs how little they regard any
French party whatsoever. Some of these nations the people of France are
jealous of: such are the English and the Spaniards;--others they
despise: such are the Italians;--others they hate and dread: such are
the German and Danubian powers. At best, such interposition of ancient
enemies excites apprehension; but in this case, how can they suppose
that we come to maintain their legitimate monarchy in a truly paternal
French government, to protect their privileges, their laws, their
religion, and their property, when they see us make use of no one person
who has any interest in them, any knowledge of them, or any the least
zeal for them? On the contrary, they see that we do not suffer any of
those who have shown a zeal in that cause which we seem to make our own
to come freely into any place in which the allies obtain any footing.
If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to see what it is they
expect. We have had a proposal from the Royalists of Poitou. They are
well entitled, after a bloody war maintained for eight months against
all the powers of anarchy, to speak the sentiments of the Royalists of
France. Do they desire us to exclude their princes, their clergy, their
nobility? The direct contrary. They earnestly solicit that men of every
one of these descriptions should be sent to them. They do not call for
English, Austrian, or Prussian officers. They call for French emigrant
officers. They call for the exiled priests. They have demanded the Comte
d'Artois to appear at their head. These are the demands (quite natural
demands) of those who are ready to follow the standard of monarchy.
The great means, therefore, of restoring the monarchy, which we have
made _the main object of the war_, is, to assist the dignity, the
religion, and the property of France to repossess themselves of the
means of their natural influence. This ought to be the primary object of
all our politics and all our military operations. Otherwise everything
will move in a preposterous order, and nothing but confusion and
destruction will follow.
I know that misfortune is not made to win respect from ordinary minds. I
know that there is a leaning to prosperity, however obtained, and a
prejudice in its favor. I know there is a disposition to hope something
from the variety and inconstancy of villany, rather than from the
tiresome uniformity of fixed principle. There have been, I admit,
situations in which a guiding person or party might be gained over, and
through him or them the whole body of a nation. For the hope of such a
conversion, and of deriving advantage from enemies, it might be politic
for a while to throw your friends into the shade. But examples drawn
from history in occasions like the present will be found dangerously to
mislead us. France has no resemblance to other countries which have
undergone troubles and been purified by them. If France, Jacobinized as
it has been for four full years, did contain any bodies of authority and
disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not,) such is
the levity of those who have expelled everything respectable in their
country, such their ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit,
their habits of defying everything human and divine, that no engagement
would hold with them for three months; nor, indeed, could they cohere
together for any purpose of civilized society, if left as they now are.
There must be a means, not only of breaking their strength within
themselves, but of _civilizing_ them; and these two things must go
together, before we can possibly treat with them, not only as a nation,
but with any division of them. Descriptions of men of their own race,
but better in rank, superior in property and decorum, of honorable,
decent, and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to
such a frame as to qualify them so much as to come into contact with a
civilized nation. A set of those ferocious savages with arms in their
hands, left to themselves in one part of the country whilst you proceed
to another, would break forth into outrages at least as bad as their
former. They must, as fast as gained, (if ever they are gained,) be put
under the guide, direction, and government of better Frenchmen than
themselves, or they will instantly relapse into a fever of aggravated
Jacobinism.
We must not judge of other parts of France by the temporary submission
of Toulon, with two vast fleets in its harbor, and a garrison far more
numerous than all the inhabitants able to bear arms. If they were left
to themselves, I am quite sure they would not retain their attachment to
monarchy of any name for a single week.
To administer the only cure for the unheard-of disorders of that undone
country, I think it infinitely happy for us that God has given into our
hands more effectual remedies than human contrivance could point out. We
have in our bosom, and in the bosom of other civilized states, nearer
forty than thirty thousand persons, providentially preserved, not only
from the cruelty and violence, but from the contagion of the horrid
practices, sentiments, and language of the Jacobins, and even sacredly
guarded from the view of such abominable scenes. If we should obtain, in
any considerable district, a footing in France, we possess an immense
body of physicians and magistrates of the mind, whom we now know to be
the most discreet, gentle, well-tempered, conciliatory, virtuous, and
pious persons who in any order probably existed in the world. You will
have a missioner of peace and order in every parish. Never was a wiser
national economy than in the charity of the English and of other
countries. Never was money better expended than in the maintenance of
this body of civil troops for reëstablishing order in France, and for
thus securing its civilization to Europe. This means, if properly used,
is of value inestimable.
Nor is this corps of instruments of civilization confined to the first
order of that state,--I mean the clergy. The allied powers possess also
an exceedingly numerous, well-informed, sensible, ingenious,
high-principled, and spirited body of cavaliers in the expatriated
landed interest of France, as well qualified, at least, as I (who have
been taught by time and experience to moderate my calculation of the
expectancy of human abilities) ever expected to see in the body of any
landed gentlemen and soldiers by their birth. France is well winnowed
and sifted. Its virtuous men are, I believe, amongst the most virtuous,
as its wicked are amongst the most abandoned upon earth. Whatever in the
territory of France may be found to be in the middle between these must
be attracted to the better part. This will be compassed, when every
gentleman, everywhere being restored to his landed estate, each on his
patrimonial ground, may join the clergy in reanimating the loyalty,
fidelity, and religion of the people,--that these gentlemen proprietors
of land may sort that people according to the trust they severally
merit, that they may arm the honest and well-affected, and disarm and
disable the factious and ill-disposed. No foreigner can make this
discrimination nor these arrangements. The ancient corporations of
burghers according to their several modes should be restored, and placed
(as they ought to be) in the hands of men of gravity and property in the
cities or bailliages, according to the proper constitutions of the
commons or third estate of France. They will restrain and regulate the
seditious rabble there, as the gentlemen will on their own estates. In
this way, and _in this way alone_, the country (once broken in upon by
foreign force well directed) may be gained and settled. It must be
gained and settled by _itself_, and through the medium of its _own_
native dignity and property. It is not honest, it is not decent, still
less is it politic, for foreign powers themselves to attempt anything in
this minute, internal, local detail, in which they could show nothing
but ignorance, imbecility, confusion, and oppression. As to the prince
who has a just claim to exercise the regency of France, like other men
he is not without his faults and his defects. But faults or defects
(always supposing them faults of common human infirmity) are not what in
any country destroy a legal title to government. These princes are kept
in a poor, obscure, country town of the king of Prussia's. Their
reputation is entirely at the mercy of every calumniator. They cannot
show themselves, they cannot explain themselves, as princes ought to do.
After being well informed as any man here can be, I do not find that
these blemishes in this eminent person are at all considerable, or that
they at all affect a character which is full of probity, honor,
generosity, and real goodness. In some points he has but too much
resemblance to his unfortunate brother, who, with all his weaknesses,
had a good understanding, and many parts of an excellent man and a good
king. But Monsieur, without supposing the other deficient, (as he was
not,) excels him in general knowledge, and in a sharp and keen
observation, with something of a better address, and an happier mode of
speaking and of writing. His conversation is open, agreeable, and
informed; his manners gracious and princely. His brother, the Comte
d'Artois, sustains still better the representation of his place. He is
eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a decided
character, full of energy and activity. In a word, he is a brave,
honorable, and accomplished cavalier. Their brethren of royalty, if they
were true to their own cause and interest, instead of relegating these
illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring them forward in
their courts and camps, and exhibit them to (what they would speedily
obtain) the esteem, respect, and affection of mankind.
[Sidenote: Objection made to the regent's endeavor to go to Spain.]
As to their knocking at every door, (which seems to give offence,) can
anything be more natural? Abandoned, despised, rendered in a manner
outlaws by all the powers of Europe, who have treated their unfortunate
brethren with all the giddy pride and improvident insolence of blind,
unfeeling prosperity, who did not even send them a compliment of
condolence on the murder of their brother and sister, in such a state is
it to be wondered at, or blamed, that they tried every way, likely or
unlikely, well or ill chosen, to get out of the horrible pit into which
they are fallen, and that in particular they tried whether the princes
of their own blood might at length be brought to think the cause of
kings, and of kings of their race, wounded in the murder and exile of
the branch of France, of as much importance as the killing of a brace of
partridges? If they were absolutely idle, and only eat in sloth their
bread of sorrow and dependence, they would be forgotten, or at best
thought of as wretches unworthy of their pretensions, which they had
done nothing to support. If they err from _our_ interests, what care has
been taken to keep them in those interests? or what desire has ever
been shown to employ them in any other way than as instruments of their
own degradation, shame, and ruin?
The Parliament of Paris, by whom the title of the regent is to be
recognized, (not made,) according to the laws of the kingdom, is ready
to recognize it, and to register it, if a place of meeting was given to
them, which might be within their own jurisdiction, supposing that only
locality was required for the exercise of their functions: for it is one
of the advantages of monarchy to have no local seat. It may maintain its
rights out of the sphere of its territorial jurisdiction, if other
powers will suffer it.
I am well apprised that the little intriguers, and whisperers, and
self-conceited, thoughtless babblers, worse than either, run about to
depreciate the fallen virtue of a great nation. But whilst they talk, we
must make our choice,--they or the Jacobins. We have no other option. As
to those who in the pride of a prosperity not obtained by their wisdom,
valor, or industry, think so well of themselves, and of their own
abilities and virtues, and so ill of other men, truth obliges me to say
that they are not founded in their presumption concerning themselves,
nor in their contempt of the French princes, magistrates, nobility, and
clergy. Instead of inspiring me with dislike and distrust of the
unfortunate, engaged with us in a common cause against our Jacobin
enemy, they take away all my esteem for their own characters, and all my
deference to their judgment.
There are some few French gentlemen, indeed, who talk a language not
wholly different from this jargon. Those whom I have in my eye I respect
as gallant soldiers, as much as any one can do; but on their political
judgment and prudence I have not the slightest reliance, nor on their
knowledge of their own country, or of its laws and Constitution. They
are, if not enemies, at least not friends, to the orders of their own
state,--not to the princes, the clergy, or the nobility; they possess
only an attachment to the monarchy, or rather to the persons of the late
king and queen. In all other respects their conversation is Jacobin. I
am afraid they, or some of them, go into the closets of ministers, and
tell them that the affairs of France will be better arranged by the
allied powers than by the landed proprietors of the kingdom, or by the
princes who have a right to govern; and that, if any French are at all
to be employed in the settlement of their country, it ought to be only
those who have never declared any decided opinion, or taken any active
part in the Revolution.[35]
I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere soldiers of fortune,
who, though men of integrity and honor, would as gladly receive military
rank from Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the regent of France.
Perhaps their not having as much importance at his court as they could
wish may incline them to this strange imagination. Perhaps, having no
property in old France, they are more indifferent about its restoration.
Their language is certainly flattering to all ministers in all courts.
We all are men; we all love to be told of the extent of our own power
and our own faculties. If we love glory, we are jealous of partners, and
afraid even of our own instruments. It is of all modes of flattery the
most effectual, to be told that you can regulate the affairs of another
kingdom better than its hereditary proprietors. It is formed to flatter
the principle of conquest so natural to all men. It is this principle
which is now making the partition of Poland. The powers concerned have
been told by some perfidious Poles, and perhaps they believe, that their
usurpation is a great benefit to the people, especially to the common
people. However this may turn out with regard to Poland, I am quite sure
that France could not be so well under a foreign direction as under that
of the representatives of its own king and its own ancient estates.
I think I have myself studied France as much as most of those whom the
allied courts are likely to employ in such a work. I have likewise of
myself as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly have of
themselves. But if I could command the whole military arm of Europe, I
am sure that a bribe of the best province in that kingdom would not
tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except in perfect concurrence
and concert with the natural, legal interests of the country, composed
of the ecclesiastical, the military, the several corporate bodies of
justice and of burghership, making under a monarch (I repeat it again
and again) _the French nation according to its fundamental
Constitution_. No considerate statesman would undertake to meddle with
it upon any other condition.
The government of that kingdom is fundamentally monarchical. The public
law of Europe has never recognized in it any other form of government.
The potentates of Europe have, by that law, a right, an interest, and a
duty to know with what government they are to treat, and what they are
to admit into the federative society,--or, in other words, into the
diplomatic republic of Europe. This right is clear and indisputable.
What other and further interference they have a right to in the interior
of the concerns of another people is a matter on which, as on every
political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid
down. Our neighbors are men; and who will attempt to dictate the laws
under which it is allowable or forbidden to take a part in the concerns
of men, whether they are considered individually or in a collective
capacity, whenever charity to them, or a care of my own safety, calls
forth my activity? Circumstances perpetually variable, directing a moral
prudence and discretion, the _general_ principles of which never vary,
must alone prescribe a conduct fitting on such occasions. The latest
casuists of public law are rather of a republican cast, and, in my mind,
by no means so averse as they ought to be to a right in the people (a
word which, ill defined, is of the most dangerous use) to make changes
at their pleasure in the fundamental laws of their country. These
writers, however, when a country is divided, leave abundant liberty for
a neighbor to support any of the parties according to his choice.[36]
This interference must, indeed, always be a right, whilst the privilege
of doing good to others, and of averting from them every sort of evil,
is a right: circumstances may render that right a duty. It depends
wholly on this, whether it be a _bonâ fide_ charity to a party, and a
prudent precaution with regard to yourself, or whether, under the
pretence of aiding one of the parties in a nation, you act in such a
manner as to aggravate its calamities and accomplish its final
destruction. In truth, it is not the interfering or keeping aloof, but
iniquitous intermeddling, or treacherous inaction, which is praised or
blamed by the decision of an equitable judge.