protect. Such are the right of contributing by representatives to
legislation and taxation, religious toleration, the liberty of the
press. As the rights are equal, the power of ensuring them must be
equal. All men alike have a share in representation, all alike are
admissible to office, all must be taxed in the same proportion. The
law is the same for all. The principle of equality is the idea on
which the Declaration most earnestly insists. Privilege had just been
overthrown, and the duty of providing against indirect means for its
recovery was the occupation of the hour. That this may be secured, all
powers must be granted by the people, and none must be exercised by
the people. They act only through their agents. The agent who
exercises power is responsible, and is controlled by the sovereign
authority that delegates it. Certain corollaries seem to follow:
restricted suffrage, progressive taxation, an established church, are
difficult to reconcile with equality so profoundly conceived. But this
is not explicit. Questions regarding education, poverty, revision,
are not admitted among the fundamentals and are left to future
legislation. The most singular passage is that which ordains that no
man may be molested for his opinions, even religious. It would appear
that Toleration was that part of the liberal dogma for which the
deputies were least prepared.
The Declaration passed, by August 26, after a hurried debate, and with
no further resistance. The Assembly, which had abolished the past at
the beginning of the month, attempted, at the end, to institute and
regulate the future. These are its abiding works, and the perpetual
heritage of the Revolution. With them a new era dawned upon mankind.
And yet this single page of print, which outweighs libraries, and is
stronger than all the armies of Napoleon, is not the work of superior
minds, and bears no mark of the lion's claw. The stamp of Cartesian
clearness is upon it, but without the logic, the precision, the
thoroughness of French thought. There is no indication in it that
Liberty is the goal, and not the starting-point, that it is a faculty
to be acquired, not a capital to invest, or that it depends on the
union of innumerable conditions, which embrace the entire life of man.
Therefore it is justly arraigned by those who say that it is
defective, and that its defects have been a peril and a snare.
It was right that the attempt should be made; for the extinction of
privilege involved a declaration of rights. When those that were
exclusive and unequal were abandoned, it was necessary to define and
to insist on those that were equal and the property of all. After
destroying, the French had to rebuild, and to base their new structure
upon principles unknown to the law, unfamiliar to the people,
absolutely opposed to the lesson of their history and to all the
experience of the ages in which France had been so great. It could not
rest on traditions, or interests, or any persistent force of
gravitation. Unless the idea that was to govern the future was
impressed with an extreme distinctness upon the minds of all, they
would not understand the consequences of so much ruin, and such
irrevocable change, and would drift without a compass. The country
that had been so proud of its kings, of its nobles, and of its chains,
could not learn without teaching that popular power may be tainted
with the same poison as personal power.
VIII
THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES
When the Assembly passed the Rights of Man, they acted in harmony for
the last time. Agreement on first principles did not involve agreement
in policy, and in applying them to the Constitution, a week later, the
division of parties appeared.
From the tennis court to the great constitutional debate, the
Moderates, who may be called the Liberals, were predominant. Mounier
was their tactician, Clermont Tonnerre and Lally Tollendal were their
orators, Malouet was their discreet adviser. They hoped, by the
division of powers and the multiplication of checks, to make their
country as free as England or America. They desired to control the
Representatives in three ways: by a Second Chamber, the royal veto,
and the right of dissolution. Their success depended on the support of
Ministers and of reconciled Conservatives. Whilst the Constitution for
them was a means of regulating and restraining the national will, it
was an instrument for accomplishing the popular will for their rivals
rising to power on the crest of the wave.
The Democrats refused to resist the people, legitimately governing
itself, either by the English or the American division of power. There
was little concentration yet of the working class in towns, for the
industrial age had hardly dawned, and it was hard to understand that
the Third Estate contained divergent interests and the material of a
coming conflict. The managers of the democratic party were Duport,
Lameth, and Barnave, aided sometimes by Sieyes, sometimes by
Talleyrand, and by their sworn enemy Mirabeau.
The nobles, weak in statesmanship, possessed two powerful debaters:
Cazales, who reminded men of Fox, but who, when not on his legs, had
little in him; and Maury, afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris,
a man whose character was below his talents. Numbering nearly a third
of the Assembly, and holding the balance, it was in their power to
make a Constitution like that of 1814.
How these three parties acted in that eventful September, and what in
consequence befell, we have now to consider.
The five weeks from August 27 to October 1 were occupied with the
constitutional debates. They were kept within narrow limits by the
Rights of Man, which declared that the nation transmits all powers and
exercises none. On both sides there were men who were impatient of
this restriction, and by whom it was interpreted in contrary ways.
Some wished for security that the national will should always prevail,
through its agents; the others, that they should be able to obstruct
it. They struggled for an enlarged construction, and strove to break
the barrier, in the republican or the royalist direction.
The discussion opened by a skirmish with the clergy. They observed the
significant omission of a State church in the Declaration of Rights,
and feared that they would be despoiled and the Church disestablished.
The enthusiasm of the first hour had cooled. One after another,
ecclesiastics attempted to obtain the recognition of Catholicism. Each
time the attempt was repulsed. The clergy drifted fast into the temper
which was confessed by Maury when he said, "The proposed measure would
enable the Constitution to live: we vote against it."
The scheme of the Committee was produced on August 31, and was
explained by Lally in a speech which is among the finest compositions
of the time. He insisted on the division of the legislative, and the
unity of the executive, as the essentials of a free government. On
the following day Mirabeau spoke on the same side. He said that the
danger was not from the Crown, but from the representatives; for they
may exclude strangers and debate in secret, as the English law allows,
and these may declare themselves permanent, and escape all control.
Through the king, the public possesses the means of holding them in
check. He is their natural ally against usurping deputies, and the
possible formation of a new aristocracy. The legislature enjoys a
temporary mandate only. The perpetual representative of the people is
the king. It is wrong to deny him powers necessary for the public
interest. It is the partial appearance of a view that was expanded by
Napoleon.
Mounier defended his plan on September 4. On several points there was
no large variety of opinion. It was practically admitted that there
could be no governing without Parliament, that it must meet annually,
that its acts require the royal assent, that it shall be elected
indirectly, by equal districts, and a moderate property franchise.
Mounier further conceded that the Constitution was not subject to the
royal veto, that Ministers should not be members of the Assembly, that
the Assembly, and not the king, should have the initiative of
proposing laws, and that it should have the right of refusing
supplies. The real question at issue was whether the representatives
of the people should be checked by an Upper House, by the king's power
of dissolution, and by an absolute or a temporary veto.
Mounier had private friends among his opponents, and they opened a
negotiation with him. They were prepared to accept his two Houses and
his absolute veto. They demanded in return that the Senate should have
only a suspensive veto on the acts of the representatives, that there
should be no right of Dissolution, that Conventions should be held
periodically, to revise the Constitution. These offers were a sign of
weakness. The Constitutional party was still in the ascendant, and on
August 31 the Bishop of Langres, the chief advocate of a House of
Lords, was chosen President by 499 to 328. If the division of the
legislature into two was sure of a majority, then the proposed bargain
was one-sided, and the Democrats would have taken much more than they
gave. Mounier, counting on the support of those whose interest was
that he should succeed, rejected the offer. He had already been
forced, by the defection of friends, to abandon much that he would
have wished to keep; and the plan which he brought forward closely
resembled that under which France afterwards prospered.
Nevertheless, the failure of that negotiation is a fatal date in
constitutional history. With more address, and a better knowledge of
the situation, Mounier might have saved half of the securities he
depended on. He lost the whole. The things he refused to surrender at
the conference were rejected by the Assembly; and the offers he had
rejected were not made again. When the legislature was limited to two
years, the right of dissolution lost its value. The right of revision
would have caused no more rapid changes than actually ensued; for
there were fourteen Constitutions in eighty-six years, or a
fundamental revision every six or seven years. Lastly, the veto of the
Senate had no basis of argument, until it was decided how the Senate
should be composed.
The disastrous ruin of the cause was brought on by want of management,
and not by excess of conservatism. Mounier inclined to an hereditary
House of Peers; and that, after August 4, was not to be thought of.
But he knew the difficulty, and, however reluctantly, gave way. And he
attached undue importance to the absolute veto; but that was not the
point on which the conference broke up. He was supported by Lafayette,
who dreaded as much as he did the extinction of the royal power; at
times by Mirabeau, whom he detested. Even Sieyes was willing to have
two Houses, and even three, provided they were, in reality, one House,
deliberating in three divisions, but counting all the votes in common.
He also proposed that there should be a renewal of one-third at a
time; so that there would be three degrees of the popular infusion and
of proximity to Mother Earth.
Mounier, with some of his friends, deserves to be remembered among
the men, not so common as they say, who loved liberty sincerely; I
mean, who desired it, not for any good it might do them, but for
itself, however arduous, or costly, or perilous its approach might be.
They subordinated the means to the end, and never regarded conditional
forms as an emanation of eternal principles. Having secured the Rights
of Man, they looked with alarm at future legislation, that could not
improve, and might endanger them. They wished the Constituent Assembly
to bind and bar its successors as far as possible; for none would ever
speak with so much authority as the genuine voice of the entire
people.
By an extraordinary fortune, the nation, this time, had responded
wisely. It was certain that it would not always do so well. It had
passions; it had prejudices; it was grossly ignorant; it was not
disinterested; and it was demoralised by an evil tradition. The French
were accustomed to irresponsible power. They were not likely to
consent that the power in their hands should be inferior to that which
had been exercised over them, or to admit that an entire people is not
above the law which it obeys. It was to be expected that they would
endeavour by legislation to diminish those securities for the minority
and the weaker cause which were appointed by the Rights of Man.
Opinion was changing rapidly, and had become more favourable to
violence, more indulgent to crime. A draft project of the Rights of
Man had appeared, in which the writer avowed that, by the law of
nature, a man may do what he likes in the pursuit of happiness, and,
to elude oppression, may oppress, imprison, and destroy.
The man who wrote thus quickly acquired a dread ascendancy over the
people, and was able to defy police and governments and assemblies,
for it was the beginning of Marat. Lists of proscription were
circulated; threatening letters poured in on the deputies; and Paris,
at the end of August, was preparing to march upon Versailles, to expel
obnoxious members, and, when they ceased to be inviolable, to put them
on their trial. These were first-fruits of liberty, and the meed and
reward of Liberals. No man can tell in what country such things would
remain without effect. In France it was believed that civic courage
was often wanting. De Serre, the great orator of the Restoration, once
affirmed, from the tribune, that the bulk of the representatives had
always been sound. He was interrupted by a furious outcry, and
challenged by his legitimist audience to say whether he included the
Convention, which, by a majority, condemned the king to death. His
answer, very famous in parliamentary history, was, "Yes, even the
Convention. And if it had not deliberated under poniards, we should
have been spared the most terrible of crimes."
The opposition presented a united front, but was rent by many stages
of gravitation towards Democracy. They also were generally anxious to
establish political freedom, even by the greatest sacrifices. By
freedom they meant, first, deliverance from known and habitual causes
of oppression. True, there might be others; but they were less clear
and less certain. All European experience proclaimed that the
executive constantly masters the legislative, even in England. It was
absurd to suppose that every force that, for centuries, had helped to
build up absolutism, had been destroyed in two months. They would rise
again from the roots, and the conflict would be constantly renewed.
The salvation seemed to lie in the principle that all power is derived
from the people, and that none can exist against the people. The
popular will may be expressed by certain forms; it cannot be arrested
by obstacles. Its action may be delayed; it cannot be stopped. It is
the ultimate master of all, without responsibility or exemption, and
with no limit that is not laid down in the Rights of Man. The limits
there defined are sufficient, and individual liberty needs no further
protection. Distrust of the nation was not justified by the manner in
which it had chosen and instructed its deputies.
In studying this group of public men, men to whom the future belonged,
we are forced to admit the element of national character. No
philosophy is cheaper or more vulgar than that which traces all
history to diversities of ethnological type and blend, and is ever
presenting the venal Greek, the perfidious Sicilian, the proud and
indolent Spaniard, the economical Swiss, the vain and vivacious
Frenchman. But it is certainly true that in France the liberty of the
press represents a power that is not familiar to those who know its
weakness and its strength, who have had experience of Swift and
Bolingbroke and Junius. Maury once said, "We have a free press: we
have everything." In 1812, when Napoleon watched the grand army
crossing the Niemen to invade Russia, and whistled the tune of
Malbrook, he interrupted his tune to exclaim, "And yet all that is not
equal to the songs of Paris!" Chateaubriand afterwards said that, with
the liberty of the press, there was no abuse he would not undertake to
destroy. For he wrote French as it had never been written, and the
magnificent roll of his sentences caught the ear of his countrymen
with convincing force. When, in 1824, he was dismissed from the
Foreign Office, his friend, the editor of the _Journal des Debats_,
called on the Prime Minister Villele and warned him, "We have
overthrown your predecessor, and we shall be strong enough to
overthrow you." Villele replied, "You succeeded against him by aid of
royalism: you cannot succeed against me but by aid of revolution."
Both prophecies came true. The alliance of Chateaubriand with the
newspaper turned out the Ministry in 1827, and the Monarchy in 1830.
In September 1789, the liberty of the press was only four months old,
and the reign of opinion was beginning on the Continent. They fancied
that it was an invincible force, and a complete security for human
rights. It was invaluable if it secured right without weakening power,
like the other contrivances of Liberalism. They thought that when men
were safe from the force above them, they required no saving from the
influence around them. Opinion finds its own level, and a man yields
easily and not unkindly to what surrounds him daily. Pressure from
equals is not to be confounded with persecution by superiors. It is
right that the majority, by degrees, should absorb the minority. The
work of limiting authority had been accomplished by the Rights of Man.
The work of creating authority was left to the Constitution. In this
way men of varying opinions were united in the conclusion that the
powers emanating from the people ought not to be needlessly divided.
Besides Sieyes, who found ideas, and Talleyrand, who found expedients,
several groups were, for the time, associated with the party which was
managed by Duport. There were some of the most eminent jurists, eager
to reform the many systems of law and custom that prevailed in France,
who became the lawgivers of successive Assemblies, until they
completed their code under Napoleon. Of all the enemies of the old
monarchical _regime_, they were the most methodical and consistent.
The leader of the Paris Bar, Target, was their most active politician.
When he heard of a plan for setting the finances in order he said, "If
anybody has such a plan, let him at once be smothered. It is the
disorder of the finances that puts the king in our power." The
Economists were as systematic and definite as the lawyers, and they
too had much to destroy. Through Dupont de Nemours their theories
obtained enduring influence.
There were two or three of the future Girondins who taught that the
people may be better trusted than representatives, and who were ready
to ratify the Constitution, and even to decide upon the adoption of
laws, by the popular vote. And there were two men, not yet distinctly
divided from these their future victims, who went farther in
opposition to the Rights of Man, and towards the confusion of powers.
In their eyes, representation and delegation were treason to true
democracy. As the people could not directly govern itself, the
principle exacted that it should do so as nearly as possible, by means
of a perpetual control over the delegates. The parliamentary vote
ought to be constantly brought into harmony with the wish of the
constituency, by the press, the galleries and the mob. To act
consciously in opposition to the delegating power was a breach of
trust. The population of Paris, being the largest collected portion of
sovereign power, expresses its will more surely than deputies at
second hand. Barere, who was one of these, proposed an ingenious plan
by which every law that passed remained suspended until after the next
elections, when the country pronounced upon it by imperative mandate.
Thus he disposed of royal veto and dissolution.
Robespierre would not suspend the law, but left it to the next
legislature to rectify or revoke the errors of the last. He argued
that powers require to be checked in proportion to the danger they
present. Now the danger from a power not representative exceeds that
from a power that represents, and is better acquainted with the needs
and wishes of the mass. A nation governs itself, and has a single
will, not two. If the whole does not govern the part, the part will
govern the whole. Robespierre conceived that it was time to constitute
powers sufficient to conquer the outward foe, and also the inward; one
for national safety, and one for national progress, and the elevation
of the poor at the expense of the minorities that have oppressed them.
He stands at the end of the scale, and the idea of liberty, as it runs
through the various sets of thought, is transformed into the idea of
force. From Sieyes to Barnave, from Barnave to Camus, from Camus to
Buzot, and from Buzot the Girondin to Robespierre the Jacobin who
killed the Girondins, we traverse the long line of possible politics;
but the transitions are finely shaded, and the logic is continuous.
In the second week of September the Constitution of Mounier was
defeated by the union of these forces. The main question, the
institution of a Senate, was not seriously debated. It was feared as
the refuge of the defeated classes, and was not defended by those
classes themselves. They were not willing that a new aristocracy
should be raised upon their ruins; and they suspected that Government
would give the preference to that minority of the nobles who went over
in time, and who were renegades in the eyes of the rest. It was felt
that a single Chamber is stronger in resistance to the executive than
two, and that the time might come for a senate when the fallen
aristocracy had ceased to struggle, and the Crown was reconciled to
its reduced condition.
On September 9 the President of the Assembly, La Luzerne, bishop of
Langres, was driven by insult to resign. The next day the Assembly
adopted the single Chamber by 499 to 89, the nobles abstaining.
On September 11 the decisive division took place. Mounier had insisted
on the unlimited right of veto. The debate went against him. It was
admitted on his own side that the king would, sooner or later, have to
yield. The others agreed that the king might resist until two
elections had decided in favour of the vetoed measure. He might reject
the wish of one legislature, and even of two; he would give way to the
third. The Ministers themselves were unable to insist on the absolute
veto in preference to the suspensive thus defined. A letter from the
king was sent to the Assembly, to inform them that he was content with
the temporary veto. Mounier did not allow the letter to be read, that
it might not influence votes. He was defeated by 673 to 325. The
Conservatives had deserted him when he defended the Upper House; and
now the king deserted him when he defended the rights of the Crown. It
was a crushing and final disaster. For he fell, maintaining the cause
of aristocracy against the nobles, and the cause of prerogative
against the monarch. The Democrats triumphed by 410 votes one day, and
350 the next. The battle for the Constitution on the English model was
fought and lost.
On September 12 Mounier and his friends retired from the Committee. A
new one was at once elected from the victorious majority. At this
critical point a secret Council was held, at which the royalists
advised the king to take refuge in the provinces. Lewis refused to
listen to them. The majority, elated with success, now called on him
to sanction the decrees of August 4. His reply, dated September 18,
is drawn up with unusual ability. He adopted the argument of Sieyes on
the suppression of tithe. He said that a large income would be granted
to the land, and that the rich, who ought to contribute most, would,
on the contrary, receive most. Small holders would profit little,
while those who possessed no land at all would now be mulcted for
payment of the clergy. Instead of relieving the nation, it would
relieve one class at the expense of another, and the rich at the
expense of the poor.
The Assembly insisted that the abolition of feudalism was part of the
Constitution, and ought to receive an unconditional sanction. But they
promised to give most respectful attention to the remarks of the king,
whenever the decrees came to be completed by legislation. The royal
sanction was accordingly given on the following day. Thereupon the
Assembly made a considerable concession. They resolved, on September
21, that the suspensive veto should extend over two legislatures. The
numbers were 728 to 224.