Henri Grégoire, of France, Curate, Deputy to the States General,
Constitutional Bishop, Member of the Convention, also of the Council
of Five Hundred, and Senator, sometimes called Bishop, more frequently
Abbé, was born 4th December, 1750, and died 28th April, 1831. To these
titles add Abolitionist and Republican.
His character and career were unique, being in France what Clarkson
and Wilberforce were in England, and much more, for he was not only
an Abolitionist. In all history no hero of humanity stands forth
more conspicuous for instinctive sympathy with the Rights of Man and
constancy in their support. As early as 1788 he signalized himself
by an essay, crowned by the Academy of Metz, upholding tolerance
for the Jews.[614] His public life began, while yet a curate, as a
representative of the clergy of Lorraine in the States General, but
his sympathies with the people were at once manifest. In the engraving
by which the oath in the Tennis Court is commemorated he appears in
the foreground. His votes were always for the enfranchisement of the
people and the improvement of their condition, his hope being “to
Christianize the Revolution.”[615] In the night session of 4th August,
1789, he declared for the abolition of privileges. He was the first
to give adhesion to the civil constitution of the clergy, and himself
became a constitutional bishop. The decree abolishing royalty was
drawn by him, and he avows that for many days thereafter the excess
of joy took from him appetite and sleep. In the discussion on the
execution of the King he called for the suppression of the punishment
of death. At his instance the Convention abolished African slavery.
With similar energy he sustained public libraries, botanical gardens,
and experimental farms. He was a founder of the Bureau of Longitudes,
the _Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers_, and of the National Institute.
More than any other person he contributed to prevent the destruction of
public monuments, and was the first to call this crime “Vandalism,”--an
excellent term, since adopted in all European languages. With similar
vigor he said, in words often quoted, “Kings are in the moral order
what monsters are in the physical order”; and, “The history of kings
is the martyrology of nations.” He denounced “the oligarchs of all
countries and all the crowned brigands who pressed down the people,”
and, according to his own boast, “spat upon” duellists. “Better a loss
to deplore than an injustice to reproach ourselves with,” was his
lofty solace as he turned from the warning that the Colonies might be
endangered by the rights he demanded.
Such a man could not reconcile himself to the Empire or to Napoleon;
nor could he expect consideration under the Restoration. But he was
constant always to his original sentiments. In 1826 he wrote a work
with the expressive title, “The Nobility of the Skin, or the Prejudice
of Whites against the Color of Africans and that of their Black
and Mixed Descendants.”[616] His life was prolonged to witness the
Revolution of 1830, and shortly after his remains were borne to the
cemetery of Mont Parnasse by young men, who took the horses from the
hearse.[617]
This brief account of one little known is an introduction to signal
prophecies concerning America.
As early as 8th January, 1791, in a document addressed to citizens of
color and free negroes of the French islands, he boldly said:--
“A day will come when deputies of color will traverse the ocean
to come and sit in the national diet, and to swear with us
to live and die under our laws. A day will come when the sun
will not shine among you except upon freemen,--when the rays
of the light-spreading orb will no longer fall upon irons and
slaves.… It is according to the irresistible march of events
and the progress of intelligence, that all people dispossessed
of the domain of Liberty will at last recover this indefeasible
property.”[618]
These strong and confident words, so early in date, were followed by
others more remarkable. At the conclusion of his admirable work “De
la Littérature des Nègres,” first published in 1808, where, with
equal knowledge and feeling, homage is done to a people wronged and
degraded by man, he cites his prediction with regard to the sun shining
only upon freemen, and then, elevated by the vision, declares that
“this American Continent, asylum of Liberty, is on its way towards an
order of things which will be common to the Antilles, and _the course
of which all the powers combined will not be able to arrest_.”[619]
This vigorous language is crowned by a prophecy of singular extent
and precision, where, after dwelling on the influences at work to
accelerate progress, he foretells the eminence of our country:--
“When an energetic and powerful nation, to which everything
presages high destinies, stretching its arms over the two
oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, shall dispatch its vessels
from one to the other _by a shortened route,--whether by
cutting the Isthmus of Panama, or by forming a canal of
communication, as has been proposed, by the River St. John
and the Lake of Nicaragua,--it will change the face of the
commercial world and the face of empires_. Who knows if America
will not then avenge the outrages she has received, and if our
old Europe, placed in the rank of a subaltern power, will not
become a colony of the New World?”[620]
Thus resting on the two oceans with a canal between, so that the early
“secret of the strait” shall no longer exist, the American Republic
will change the face of the world, and perhaps make Europe subaltern.
Such was the vision of the French Abolitionist, lifted by devotion to
Humanity.