the interposing power, that he takes with him no party or description of
men in the divided state. It is not probable that these parties should
all, and all alike, be more adverse to the true interests of their
country, and less capable of forming a judgment upon them, than those
who are absolute strangers to their affairs, and to the character of the
actors in them, and have but a remote, feeble, and secondary sympathy
with their interest. Sometimes a calm and healing arbiter may be
necessary; but he is to compose differences, not to give laws. It is
impossible that any one should not feel the full force of that
presumption. Even people, whose politics for the supposed good of their
own country lead them to take advantage of the dissensions of a
neighboring nation in order to ruin it, will not directly propose to
exclude the natives, but they will take that mode of consulting and
employing them which most nearly approaches to an exclusion. In some
particulars they propose what amounts to that exclusion, in others they
do much worse. They recommend to ministry, "that no Frenchman who has
given a decided opinion or acted a decided part in this great
Revolution, for or against it, should be countenanced, brought forward,
trusted, or employed, even in the strictest subordination to the
ministers of the allied powers." Although one would think that this
advice would stand condemned on the first proposition, yet, as it has
been made popular, and has been proceeded upon practically, I think it
right to give it a full consideration.
And first, I have asked myself who these Frenchmen are, that, in the
state their own country has been in for these last five years, of all
the people of Europe, have alone not been able to form a decided
opinion, or have been unwilling to act a decided part?
Looking over all the names I have heard of in this great revolution in
all human affairs, I find no man of any distinction who has remained in
that more than Stoical apathy, but the Prince de Conti. This mean,
stupid, selfish, swinish, and cowardly animal, universally known and
despised as such, has indeed, except in one abortive attempt to elope,
been perfectly neutral. However, his neutrality, which it seems would
qualify him for trust, and on a competition must set aside the Prince de
Condé, can be of no sort of service. His moderation has not been able to
keep him from a jail. The allied powers must draw him from that jail,
before they can have the full advantage of the exertions of this great
neutralist.
Except him, I do not recollect a man of rank or talents, who by his
speeches or his votes, by his pen or by his sword, has not been active
on this scene. The time, indeed, could admit no neutrality in any person
worthy of the name of man. There were originally two great divisions in
France: the one is that which overturned the whole of the government in
Church and State, and erected a republic on the basis of atheism. Their
grand engine was the Jacobin Club, a sort of secession from which, but
exactly on the same principles, begat another short-lived one, called
the Club of Eighty-Nine,[37] which was chiefly guided by the court
rebels, who, in addition to the crimes of which they were guilty in
common with the others, had the merit of betraying a gracious master and
a kind benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction, which since we have
seen, do not in the least differ from each other in their principles,
their dispositions, or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel
has been about power: in that quarrel, like wave succeeding wave, one
faction has got the better and expelled the other. Thus, La Fayette for
a while got the better of Orléans; and Orléans afterwards prevailed over
La Fayette. Brissot overpowered Orléans; Barère and Robespierre, and
their faction, mastered them both, and cut off their heads. All who were
not Royalists have been listed in some or other of these divisions. If
it were of any use to settle a precedence, the elder ought to have his
rank. The first authors, plotters, and contrivers of this monstrous
scheme seem to me entitled to the first place in our distrust and
abhorrence. I have seen some of those who are thought the best amongst
the original rebels, and I have not neglected the means of being
informed concerning the others. I can very truly say, that I have not
found, by observation, or inquiry, that any sense of the evils produced
by their projects has produced in them, or any _one_ of them, the
smallest degree of repentance. Disappointment and mortification
undoubtedly they feel; but to them repentance is a thing impossible.
They are atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed
even to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude from their
ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the physical, the moral,
and the political world engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances
to fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious repose or
honorable action or wise speculation in the lurking-holes of a foreign
land, into which (in a common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads
amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they are at this very
hour as busy in the confection of the dirt-pies of their imaginary
constitutions as if they had not been quite fresh from destroying, by
their impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country upon earth.
It is, however, out of these, or of such as these, guilty and
impenitent, despising the experience of others, and their own, that some
people talk of choosing their negotiators with those Jacobins who they
suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind. They flatter themselves, it
seems, that the friendly habits formed during their original partnership
of iniquity, a similarity of character, and a conformity in the
groundwork of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and
gain them over to some recognition of royalty. But surely this is to
read human nature very ill. The several sectaries in this schism of the
Jacobins are the very last men in the world to trust each other.
Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence. The last quarrels
are the sorest; and the injuries received or offered by your own
associates are ever the most bitterly resented. The people of France, of
every name and description, would a thousand times sooner listen to the
Prince de Condé, or to the Archbishop of Aix, or the Bishop of St. Pol,
or to Monsieur de Cazalès, then to La Fayette, or Dumouriez, or the
Vicomte de Noailles, or the Bishop of Autun, or Necker, or his disciple
Lally Tollendal. Against the first description they have not the
smallest animosity, beyond that of a merely political dissension. The
others they regard as traitors.
The first description is that of the Christian Royalists, men who as
earnestly wished for reformation, as they opposed innovation in the
fundamental parts of their Church and State. _Their_ part has been _very
decided_. Accordingly, they are to be set aside in the restoration of
Church and State. It is an odd kind of disqualification, where the
restoration of religion and monarchy is the question. If England should
(God forbid it should!) fall into the same misfortune with France, and
that the court of Vienna should undertake the restoration of our
monarchy, I think it would be extraordinary to object to the admission
of Mr. Pitt or Lord Grenville or Mr. Dundas into any share in the
management of that business, because in a day of trial they have stood
up firmly and manfully, as I trust they always will do, and with
distinguished powers, for the monarchy and the legitimate Constitution
of their country. I am sure, if I were to suppose myself at Vienna at
such a time, I should, as a man, as an Englishman, and as a Royalist,
protest in that case, as I do in this, against a weak and ruinous
principle of proceeding, which can have no other tendency than to make
those who wish to support the crown meditate too profoundly on the
consequences of the part they take, and consider whether for their open
and forward zeal in the royal cause they may not be thrust out from any
sort of confidence and employment, where the interest of crowned heads
is concerned.
These are the _parties_. I have said, and said truly, that I know of no
neutrals. But, as a general observation on this general principle of
choosing neutrals on such occasions as the present, I have this to say,
that it amounts to neither more nor less than this shocking
proposition,--that we ought to exclude men of honor and ability from
serving theirs and our cause, and to put the dearest interests of
ourselves and our posterity into the hands of men of no decided
character, without judgment to choose and without courage to profess any
principle whatsoever.
Such men can serve no cause, for this plain reason,--they have no cause
at heart. They can, at best, work only as mere mercenaries. They have
not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not
energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks
or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their
dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these
horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never
was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous
villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy
miscreants to be the only men qualified for great affairs. If you set
them to transact with such persons, they are instantly subdued. They
dare not so much as look their antagonist in the face. They are made to
be their subjects, not to be their arbiters or controllers.
These men, to be sure, can look at atrocious acts without indignation,
and can behold suffering virtue without sympathy. Therefore they are
considered as sober, dispassionate men. But they have their passions,
though of another kind, and which are infinitely more likely to carry
them out of the path of their duty. They are of a tame, timid, languid,
inert temper, wherever the welfare of _others_ is concerned. In such
causes, as they have no motives to action, they never possess any real
ability, and are totally destitute of all resource.
Believe a man who has seen much and observed something. I have seen, in
the course of my life, a great many of that family of men. They are
generally chosen because they have no opinion of their own; and as far
as they can be got in good earnest to embrace any opinion, it is that of
whoever happens to employ them, (neither longer nor shorter, narrower
nor broader,) with whom they have no discussion or consultation. The
only thing which occurs to such a man, when he has got a business for
others into his hands, is, how to make his own fortune out of it. The
person he is to treat with is not, with him, an adversary over whom he
is to prevail, but a new friend he is to gain; therefore he always
systematically betrays some part of his trust. Instead of thinking how
he shall defend his ground to the last, and, if forced to retreat, how
little he shall give up, this kind of man considers how much of the
interest of his employer he is to sacrifice to his adversary. Having
nothing but himself in view, he knows, that, in serving his principal
with zeal, he must probably incur some resentment from the opposite
party. His object is, to obtain the good-will of the person with whom he
contends, that, when an agreement is made, he may join in rewarding him.
I would not take one of these as my arbitrator in a dispute for so much
as a fish-pond; for, if he reserved the mud to me, he would be sure to
give the water that fed the pool to my adversary. In a great cause, I
should certainly wish that my agent should possess conciliating
qualities: that he should be of a frank, open, and candid disposition,
soft in his nature, and of a temper to soften animosities and to win
confidence. He ought not to be a man odious to the person he treats
with, by personal injury, by violence, or by deceit, or, above all, by
the dereliction of his cause in any former transactions. But I would be
sure that my negotiator should be _mine_,--that he should be as earnest
in the cause as myself, and known to be so,--that he should not be
looked upon as a stipendiary advocate, but as a principled partisan. In
all treaty it is a great point that all idea of gaining your agent is
hopeless. I would not trust the cause of royalty with a man who,
professing neutrality, is half a republican. The enemy has already a
great part of his suit without a struggle,--and he contends with
advantage for all the rest. The common principle allowed between your
adversary and your agent gives your adversary the advantage in every
discussion.
Before I shut up this discourse about neutral agency, (which I conceive
is not to be found, or, if found, ought not to be used,) I have a few
other remarks to make on the cause which I conceive gives rise to it.
In all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary
that we should constantly have in our eye the nature and character of
the enemy we have to contend with. The Jacobin Revolution is carried on
by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of
levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity,
without prudence. What have they, then, to supply their innumerable
defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? _One_
thing, and _one_ thing only,--but that one thing is worth a
thousand;--they have _energy_. In France, all things being put into an
universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward
but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. If we meet
this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of
God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows
itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impunity,--if we
meet this energy with poor commonplace proceeding, with trivial maxims,
paltry old saws, with doubts, fears, and suspicions, with a languid,
uncertain hesitation, with a formal, official spirit, which is turned
aside by every obstacle from its purpose, and which never sees a
difficulty but to yield to it, or at best to evade it,--down we go to
the bottom of the abyss, and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us.
We must meet a vicious and distempered energy with a manly and rational
vigor. As virtue is limited in its resources, we are doubly bound to use
all that in the circle drawn about us by our morals we are able to
command.
I do not contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we
live in it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews
of discretion. But what signify commonplaces that always run parallel
and equal? Distrust is good, or it is bad, according to our position and
our purpose. Distrust is a defensive principle. They who have much to
lose have much to fear. But in France we hold nothing. We are to break
in upon a power in possession; we are to carry everything by storm, or
by surprise, or by intelligence, or by all. Adventure, therefore, and
not caution, is our policy. Here to be too presuming is the better
error.
The world will judge of the spirit of our proceeding in those places of
France which may fall into our power by our conduct in those that are
already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be vulgar. Other times,
perhaps other measures; but in this awful hour our politics ought to be
made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rectitude. We
should have all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and
commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it, we may give the
law. Never can we assume this command, if we will not risk the
consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough in
principle not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister
advantage. For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister
dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and
overborne; the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us
under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being at the head
of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our
mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish
quarrels, the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms
of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced,
whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on
every part, to Jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of
the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be
considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This
contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud
to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics
that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.
I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that, in
taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and
dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in
case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust,--that is, to hold
them for the use of the owner, and in the mean time to employ them for
our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that, if we
are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the
enemy or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a
fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the
English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.
Are we, then, so poor in resources that we can do no better with
eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for
French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had,
and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the
rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to
be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English
commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own
subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may
be said that these French officers would take them for the king of
France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands
would not be ours, but they would not be Jacobinized. This is, however,
a thing impossible. They must in effect and substance be ours. But all
is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in
strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed,
and equip, must direct. But I must speak plain upon this subject. The
French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. A
fair partition only ought to be made of those territories. This is a
subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects.
Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state
the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprised into a
virtual breach of faith by confounding our ally with our enemy, because
they both belong to the same geographical territory.
My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with,
a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the
influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of
keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component
parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is, to put the
place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being
approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst
ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold
that place with us in a sort of partnership, contrary to our mutual
interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with
Gibraltar on one side and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed
mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the
whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble
body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world absolutely at
our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree?
Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and
the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or
fear. Spain must think she sees that we are taking advantage of the
confusions which reign in France to disable that country, and of course
every country, from affording her protection, and in the end to turn the
Spanish monarchy into a province. If she saw things in a proper point of
light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politics as
of the least moment in comparison of the extinction of Jacobinism. But
her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no
wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it by
considerations of the common politics, that is, the questions of power
between _state and state_. If we manifestly endeavor to destroy the
balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe
and the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulnerable part,) from
fear of what France may do for Spain hereafter, is it to be wondered
that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are, (weaker, indeed, than such a
mass of empire ever was,) should feel the same fears from our
uncontrolled power that we give way to ourselves from a supposed
resurrection of the ancient power of France under a monarchy? It
signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in
respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in
practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can
subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily
follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a
market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided.
Switzerland is Jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen
with pain the progress of French principles in that country. Things
cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which,
well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest
misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply
troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel
amongst ourselves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is, to give
a greater degree of simplicity to our politics. Our situation does
necessarily render them a good deal involved. And to this evil, instead
of increasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power.
See what is in that place the consequence (to say nothing of every
other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates,--an
English and a Spanish. The English gate is by our policy fast barred
against the entrance of any Royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I
fear, upon no fixed principle, and with very little judgment. By means,
however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the
Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most
subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted the
Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants, they are a nest of
Jacobins, which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but
from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in a few words. It
is _differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis_. The rest of the
seaports are of the same description.