of Toulon and afterwards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly
contrary to the declaration as it is to the practice of the allied
powers. The king of Prussia did better. When he took Verdun, he actually
reinstated the bishop and his chapter. When he thought he should be the
master of Chalons, he called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into
possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy wherever they
obtained possession. We have proposed to restore religion as well as
monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other.
It is very likely that the Jacobin _sans-culottes_, or some of them,
objected to this measure, who rather choose to have the atheistic
buffoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till they are ready to
come forward, with the rest of their worthy brethren, in Paris and other
places, to declare that they are a set of impostors, that they never
believed in God, and never will preach any sort of religion. If we give
way to our Jacobins in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the
government, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the king of France, to
whom, as the protector and governor, and in substance the head of the
Gallican Church, the nomination to the bishoprics belonged, and who made
the Bishop of Toulon,--it does not leave it with him, or even in the
hands of the king of England, or the king of Spain,--but in the basest
Jacobins of a low seaport, to exercise, _pro tempore_, the sovereignty.
If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for
reclaiming France is abandoned. We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves
about the true state of this dreadful contest. _It is a religious war_.
It includes in its object, undoubtedly, every other interest of society
as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is
through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the
accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious
at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign
empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly, from the
first day of declaring itself such, in the year 1789, to this very hour,
and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this
subject. In fact, it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system,
called the Constitutional Church, was, on the face of the whole
proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and
so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should
come when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all
religion whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with
fire and sword. The Constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any
religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible
conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that, in the
English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all
religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and
buffoons.
This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as
formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is
not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant.
Such an idea, in the present state of the world, is too contemptible.
Our business is, to leave to the schools the discussion of the
controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of
disputants on all sides. It is for Christian statesmen, as the world is
now circumstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risk the
subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an
ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand alliance all modes of
government, as well as all modes of religion. In government, we mean to
restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms, we are all
agreed in as fundamental in government. The same principle ought to
guide us in the religious part: conforming the mode, not to our
particular ideas, (for in that point we have no ideas in common,) but to
what will best promote the great, general ends of the alliance. As
statesmen, we are to see which of those modes best suits with the
interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There
can be no doubt but that the Catholic religion, which is fundamentally
the religion of France, must go with the monarchy of France. We know
that the monarchy did not survive the hierarchy, no, not even in
appearance, for many months,--in substance, not for a single hour. As
little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even
shattered and impaired.
If it should please God to give to the allies the means of restoring
peace and order in that focus of war and confusion, I would, as I said
in the beginning of this memorial, first replace the whole of the old
clergy; because we have proof more than sufficient, that, whether they
err or not in the scholastic disputes with us, they are not tainted with
atheism, the great political evil of the time. I hope I need not
apologize for this phrase, as if I thought religion nothing but policy:
it is far from my thoughts, and I hope it is not to be inferred from my
expressions. But in the light of policy alone I am here considering the
question. I speak of policy, too, in a large light; in which large
light, policy, too, is a sacred thing.
There are many, perhaps half a million or more, calling themselves
Protestants, in the South of France, and in other of the provinces. Some
raise them to a much greater number; but I think this nearer to the
mark. I am sorry to say that they have behaved shockingly since the very
beginning of this rebellion, and have been uniformly concerned in its
worst and most atrocious acts. Their clergy are just the same atheists
with those of the Constitutional Catholics, but still more wicked and
daring. Three of their number have met from their republican associates
the reward of their crimes.
As the ancient Catholic religion is to be restored for the body of
France, the ancient Calvinistic religion ought to be restored for the
Protestants, with every kind of protection and privilege. But not one
minister concerned in this rebellion ought to be suffered amongst them.
If they have not clergy of their own, men well recommended, as untainted
with Jacobinism, by the synods of those places where Calvinism prevails
and French is spoken, ought to be sought. Many such there are. The
Presbyterian discipline ought, in my opinion, to be established in its
vigor, and the people professing it ought to be bound to its
maintenance. No man, under the false and hypocritical pretence of
liberty of conscience, ought to be suffered to have no conscience at
all. The king's commissioner ought also to sit in their synods, as
before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I am conscious that this
discipline disposes men to republicanism: but it is still a discipline,
and it is a cure (such as it is) for the perverse and undisciplined
habits which for some time have prevailed. Republicanism repressed may
have its use in the composition of a state. Inspection may be
practicable, and responsibility in the teachers and elders may be
established, in such an hierarchy as the Presbyterian. For a time like
ours, it is a great point gained, that people should be taught to meet,
to combine, and to be classed and arrayed in some other way than in
clubs of Jacobins. If it be not the best mode of Protestantism under a
monarchy, it is still an orderly Christian church, orthodox in the
fundamentals, and, what is to our point, capable enough of rendering men
useful citizens. It was the impolitic abolition of their discipline,
which exposed them to the wild opinions and conduct that have prevailed
amongst the Huguenots. The toleration in 1787 was owing to the good
disposition of the late king; but it was modified by the profligate
folly of his atheistic minister, the Cardinal de Loménie. This
mischievous minister did not follow, in the edict of toleration, the
wisdom of the Edict of Nantes. But his toleration was granted to
_non-Catholics_,--a dangerous word, which might signify anything, and
was but too expressive of a fatal indifference with regard to all piety.
I speak for myself: I do not wish any man to be converted from his sect.
The distinctions which we have reformed from animosity to emulation may
be even useful to the cause of religion. By some moderate contention
they keep alive zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong
conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early
prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any
political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity,
and often downright atheism.
Another political question arises about the mode of government which
ought to be established. I think the proclamation (which I read before I
had proceeded far in this memorial) puts it on the best footing, by
postponing that arrangement to a time of peace.
When our politics lead us to enterprise a great and almost total
political revolution in Europe, we ought to look seriously into the
consequences of what we are about to do. Some eminent persons discover
an apprehension that the monarchy, if restored in France, may be
restored in too great strength for the liberty and happiness of the
natives, and for the tranquillity of other states. They are therefore of
opinion that terms ought to be made for the modification of that
monarchy. They are persons too considerable, from the powers of their
mind, and from their situation, as well as from the real respect I have
for them, who seem to entertain these apprehensions, to let me pass them
by unnoticed.
As to the power of France as a state, and in its exterior relations, I
confess my fears are on the part of its extreme reduction. There is
undoubtedly something in the vicinity of France, which makes it
naturally and properly an object of our watchfulness and jealousy,
whatever form its government may take. But the difference is great
between a plan for our own security and a scheme for the utter
destruction of France. If there were no other countries in the political
map but these two, I admit that policy might justify a wish to lower our
neighbor to a standard which would even render her in some measure, if
not wholly, our dependant. But the system of Europe is extensive and
extremely complex. However formidable to us, as taken in this one
relation, France is not equally dreadful to all other states. On the
contrary, my clear opinion is, that the liberties of Europe cannot
possibly be preserved but by her remaining a very great and
preponderating power. The design at present evidently pursued by the
combined potentates, or of the two who lead, is totally to destroy her
as such a power. For Great Britain resolves that she shall have no
colonies, no commerce, and no marine. Austria means to take away the
whole frontier, from the borders of Switzerland to Dunkirk. It is their
plan also to render the interior government lax and feeble, by
prescribing, by force of the arms of rival and jealous nations, and
without consulting the natural interests of the kingdom, such
arrangements as, in the actual state of Jacobinism in France, and the
unsettled state in which property must remain for a long time, will
inevitably produce such distraction and debility in government as to
reduce it to nothing, or to throw it back into its old confusion. One
cannot conceive so frightful a state of a nation. A maritime country
without a marine and without commerce; a continental country without a
frontier, and for a thousand miles surrounded with powerful, warlike,
and ambitious neighbors! It is possible that she might submit to lose
her commerce and her colonies: her security she never can abandon. If,
contrary to all expectations, under such a disgraced and impotent
government, any energy should remain in that country, she will make
every effort to recover her security, which will involve Europe for a
century in war and blood. What has it cost to France to make that
frontier? What will it cost to recover it? Austria thinks that without a
frontier she cannot secure the _Netherlands_. But without her frontier
France cannot secure _herself_. Austria has been, however, secure for an
hundred years in those very Netherlands, and has never been dispossessed
of them by the chance of war without a moral certainty of receiving them
again on the restoration of peace. Her late dangers have arisen not from
the power or ambition of the king of France. They arose from her own ill
policy, which dismantled all her towns, and discontented all her
subjects by Jacobinical innovations. She dismantles her own towns, and
then says, "Give me the frontier of France!" But let us depend upon it,
whatever tends, under the name of security, to aggrandize Austria, will
discontent and alarm Prussia. Such a length of frontier on the side of
France, separated from itself, and separated from the mass of the
Austrian country, will be weak, unless connected at the expense of the
Elector of Bavaria (the Elector Palatine) and other lesser princes, or
by such exchanges as will again convulse the Empire.
Take it the other way, and let us suppose that France so broken in
spirit as to be content to remain naked and defenceless by sea and by
land. Is such a country no prey? Have other nations no views? Is Poland
the only country of which it is worth while to make a partition? We
cannot be so childish as to imagine that ambition is local, and that no
others can be infected with it but those who rule within certain
parallels of latitude and longitude. In this way I hold war equally
certain. But I can conceive that both these principles may operate:
ambition on the part of Austria to cut more and more from France; and
French impatience under her degraded and unsafe condition. In such a
contest will the other powers stand by? Will not Prussia call for
indemnity, as well as Austria and England? Is she satisfied with her
gains in Poland? By no means. Germany must pay; or we shall infallibly
see Prussia leagued with France and Spain, and possibly with other
powers, for the reduction of Austria; and such may be the situation of
things, that it will not be so easy to decide what part England may take
in such a contest.
I am well aware how invidious a task it is to oppose anything which
tends to the apparent aggrandizement of our own country. But I think no
country can be aggrandized whilst France is Jacobinized. This post
removed, it will be a serious question how far her further reduction
will contribute to the general safety, which I always consider as
included. Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to
take one precaution against our _own_. I must fairly say, I dread our
_own_ power and our _own_ ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded.
It is ridiculous to say we are not men, and that, as men, we shall never
wish to aggrandize ourselves in some way or other. Can we say that even
at this very hour we are not invidiously aggrandized? We are already in
possession of almost all the commerce of the world. Our empire in India
is an awful thing. If we should come to be in a condition not only to
have all this ascendant in commerce, but to be absolutely able, without
the least control, to hold the commerce of all other nations totally
dependent upon our good pleasure, we may say that we shall not abuse
this astonishing and hitherto unheard-of power. But every other nation
will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or
later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which
may end in our ruin.
As to France, I must observe that for a long time she has been
stationary. She has, during this whole century, obtained far less by
conquest or negotiation than any of the three great Continental powers.
Some part of Lorraine excepted, I recollect nothing she has gained,--no,
not a village. In truth, this Lorraine acquisition does little more than
secure her barrier. In effect and substance it was her own before.
However that may be, I consider these things at present chiefly in one
point of view, as obstructions to the war on Jacobinism, which _must_
stand as long as the powers think its extirpation but a _secondary_
object, and think of taking advantage, under the name of _indemnity_ and
_security_, to make war upon the whole nation of France, royal and
Jacobin, for the aggrandizement of the allies, on the ordinary
principles of interest, as if no Jacobinism existed in the world.
So far is France from being formidable to its neighbors for its domestic
strength, that I conceive it will be as much as all its neighbors can
do, by a steady guaranty, to keep that monarchy at all upon its basis.
It will be their business to nurse France, not to exhaust it. France,
such as it is, is indeed highly formidable: not formidable, however, as
a great republic; but as the most dreadful gang of robbers and murderers
that ever was embodied. But this distempered strength of France will be
the cause of proportionable weakness on its recovery. Never was a
country so completely ruined; and they who calculate the resurrection of
her power by former examples have not sufficiently considered what is
the present state of things. Without detailing the inventory of what
organs of government have been destroyed, together with the very
materials of which alone they can be recomposed, I wish it to be
considered what an operose affair the whole system of taxation is in the
old states of Europe. It is such as never could be made but in a long
course of years. In France all taxes are abolished. The present powers
resort to the capital, and to the capital in kind. But a savage,
undisciplined people suffer a _robbery_ with more patience than an
_impost_. The former is in their habits and their dispositions. They
consider it as transient, and as what, in their turn, they may exercise.
But the terrors of the present power are such as no regular government
can possibly employ. They who enter into France do not succeed to
_their_ resources. They have not a system to reform, but a system to
begin. The whole estate of government is to be reacquired.
What difficulties this will meet with in a country exhausted by the
taking of the capital, and among a people in a manner new-principled,
trained, and actually disciplined to anarchy, rebellion, disorder, and
impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is, and
who may have occupied themselves by revolving in their thoughts what
they were to do, if it fell to their lot to reëstablish the affairs of
France. What support or what limitations the restored monarchy must have
may be a doubt, or how it will pitch and settle at last. But one thing I
conceive to be far beyond a doubt: that the settlement cannot be
immediate; but that it must be preceded by some sort of power, equal at
least in vigor, vigilance, promptitude, and decision, to a military
government. For such a _preparatory_ government, no slow-paced,
methodical, formal, lawyer-like system, still less that of a showy,
superficial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or
of men like ladies, least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious
school of sophistry,--none of these ever will or ever can lay the
foundations of an order that can last. Whoever claims a right by birth
to govern there must find in his breast, or must conjure up in it, an
energy not to be expected, perhaps not always to be wished for, in
well-ordered states. The lawful prince must have, in everything but
crime, the character of an usurper. He is gone, if he imagines himself
the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after
an apparent conquest as before. His task is, to win it: he must leave
posterity to enjoy and to adorn it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to
be always (I speak nearly to the letter) on horseback. This opinion is
the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no
event is likely to alter.
A valuable friend of mine, who I hope will conduct these affairs, so far
as they fall to his share, with great ability, asked me what I thought
of acts of general indemnity and oblivion, as a means of settling
France, and reconciling it to monarchy. Before I venture upon any
opinion of my own in this matter, I totally disclaim the interference of
foreign powers in a business that properly belongs to the government
which we have declared legal. That government is likely to be the best
judge of what is to be done towards the security of that kingdom, which
it is their duty and their interest to provide for by such measures of
justice or of lenity as at the time they should find best. But if we
weaken it not only by arbitrary limitations of our own, but preserve
such persons in it as are disposed to disturb its future peace, as they
have its past, I do not know how a more direct declaration can be made
of a disposition to perpetual hostility against a government. The
persons saved from the justice of the native magistrate by foreign
authority will owe nothing to his clemency. He will, and must, look to
those to whom he is indebted for the power he has of dispensing it. A
Jacobin faction, constantly fostered with the nourishment of foreign
protection, will be kept alive.
This desire of securing the safety of the actors in the present scene is
owing to more laudable motives. Ministers have been made to consider the
brothers of the late merciful king, and the nobility of France who have
been faithful to their honor and duty, as a set of inexorable and
remorseless tyrants. How this notion has been infused into them I cannot
be quite certain. I am sure it is not justified by anything they have
done. Never were the two princes guilty, in the day of their power, of a
single hard or ill-natured act. No one instance of cruelty on the part
of the gentlemen ever came to my ears. It is true that the _English_
Jacobins, (the natives have not thought of it,) as an excuse for their
infernal system of murder, have so represented them. It is on this
principle that the massacres in the month of September, 1792, were
justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. _He_ says, indeed, that
"the whole French nation is to be given up to the hands of an irritated
and revengeful noblesse";--and, judging of others by himself and his
brethren, he says, "Whoever succeeds in a civil war will be cruel. But
here the emigrants, flying to revenge in the cars of military victory,
will almost insatiably call for their victims and their booty; and a
body of emigrant traitors were attending the King of Prussia and the
Duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most sanguinary counsels." So says
this wicked Jacobin; but so cannot say the King of Prussia nor the Duke
of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary counsel; nor did the
king's brothers, or that great body of gentlemen who attended those
princes, commit one single cruel action, or hurt the person or property
of one individual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like
the military luxury attributed to these unfortunate sufferers in our
common cause.
If these princes had shown a tyrannic disposition, it would be much to
be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we screened the body
of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in
future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of
which, in spite of all our intermeddling in their Constitution, we could
not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their
feeble lenity than any blamable rigor, we ought, in my opinion, to leave
the matter to themselves.
If, however, I were asked to give an advice merely as such, here are my
ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And
first, the body and mass of the people never ought to be treated as
criminal. They may become an object of more or less constant
watchfulness and suspicion, as their preservation may best require, but
they can never become an object of punishment. This is one of the few
fundamental and unalterable principles of politics.
To punish them capitally would be to make massacres. Massacres only
increase the ferocity of men, and teach them to regard their own lives
and those of others as of little value; whereas the great policy of
government is, to teach the people to think both of great importance in
the eyes of God and the state, and never to be sacrificed or even
hazarded to gratify their passions, or for anything but the duties
prescribed by the rules of morality, and under the direction of public
law and public authority. To punish them with lesser penalties would be
to debilitate the commonwealth, and make the nation miserable, which it
is the business of government to render happy and flourishing.