Mirabeau. But on the same day he himself avowed to La Marck that he
had miscalculated, and was losing courage. On the 25th there was a
debate on the Regency, in which he spoke with caution, and dissembled.
That day the ambassador again wrote that Mirabeau had shown that he
alone was fit for power. Then the end came. Tissot, meeting him soon
after the scene at the Jacobins, thought that he looked like a dying
man. He was sinking under excess of work combined with excess of
dissipation. When he remonstrated with his brother for getting drunk,
the other replied, "Why grudge me the only vice you have not
appropriated?" It was remembered afterwards, when suspicion arose,
that he had several attacks of illness during that month of March. On
the 26th he was brought in to Paris from his villa in an alarming
condition. La Marck's interests were concerned in a debate on mineral
property which was fixed for the following day. Fortified with a good
deal of Tokay, Mirabeau spoke repeatedly. It was the last time. He
came back to his friend and said, "Your cause is won, but I am lost."
When his danger became known, it seemed that nothing had occurred to
diminish public confidence, or tarnish the lustre of his fame. The
crowd that gathered in the street made it almost impossible to
approach his door. He was gratified to know that Barnave had called,
and liked to hear how much feeling was shown by the people of Paris.
After a consultation, which was held on April 1, he made up his mind
to die, and signed his will. Talleyrand paid him a long visit, and
took away a discourse on the law of Inheritance, which he read in the
Assembly before the remains of his friend were cold, but which did not
deserve the honour, being, like about thirty of his speeches, the work
of a stranger. The presence of Talleyrand, with whom he had
quarrelled, was welcome to Mirabeau, who, though not a believer, did
not wish it to be thought that he had rejected the consolations of
religion. The parish priest came, but, being told of the prelate's
presence, went away; and a report spread that the dying sinner had
received the ministrations of a more spiritual ecclesiastic than the
Bishop of Autun.
Mirabeau never knew how little the royal personages whom he served
esteemed his counsels; and he died believing that he alone could have
saved the monarchy, and that it would perish with him. If he had
lived, he said that he would have given Pitt trouble, for there was a
change in his foreign policy. On January 28 he still spoke of the
eternal fraternity of England; but in March he was ready to call out
the fleet, in the interest of Russia, and was only prevented by the
attack of which he died. Whether he supported England against Spain,
or Russia against England, his support was paid for in gold. To his
confederates, his illness was a season of terror. If an enemy
disguised as a creditor caused seals to be set upon his papers, a
discovery must have ensued that would ruin many reputations and
imperil many lives. He clung to the secret documents on which he
intended that his fame should rest. On the day of his death, when they
were deposited with La Marck, the secretary who had transcribed them
stabbed himself. On the morning of Saturday, April 2, there was no
hope, and Mirabeau asked for opium. He died before the prescription
was made up. Several doctors who made the post-mortem examination
believed that there were marks of poison; but when they were warned
that they would be torn to pieces, and the king also, they held their
peace.
Odious as he was, and foredoomed to fail, he was yet the supreme
figure of the time. Tocqueville, who wrote the best book, or one of
the two best books, on the subject, looking to the permanent result,
describes the Revolution as having continued and completed the work of
the monarchy by intensifying the unity of power. It is more true to
say that the original and essential spirit of the movement was
decentralisation--to take away from the executive government, and to
give to local authorities. The executive could not govern, because it
was obliged to transmit orders to agents not its own, whom it neither
appointed nor dismissed nor controlled. The king was deprived of
administrative power, as he had been deprived of legislative power.
That distrust, reasonable in the old regime, ought to have ceased,
when the Ministers appointed by the king were deputies presented by
the Assembly. That was the idea by which Mirabeau would have preserved
the Revolution from degenerating through excess of decentralisation
into tyranny. As a Minister, he might have saved the Constitution. It
is not to the discredit of the Assembly that the horror which his life
inspired made his genius inefficient, and that their labours failed
because they deemed him too bad for power.
If Mirabeau is tried by the test of public morals, the only standard
of political conduct on which men may be expected to agree, the
verdict cannot be doubtful. His ultimate policy was one vast intrigue,
and he avowedly strove to do evil that good might come. The thing is
hardly less infamous in the founder of the Left Centre than in Maury
and his unscrupulous colleagues of the Right. There was at no time a
prospect of success, for he never had the king or the queen for one
moment with him.
The answer is different if we try him by a purely political test, and
ask whether he desired power for the whole or freedom for the parts.
Mirabeau was not only a friend of freedom, which is a term to be
defined, but a friend of federalism, which both Montesquieu and
Rousseau regarded as the condition of freedom. When he spoke
confidentially, he said that there was no other way in which a great
country like France could be free. If in this he was sincere, and I
believe that he was sincere, he deserves the great place he holds in
the memory of his countrymen.
XI
SIEYES AND THE CONSTITUTION CIVILE
Before coming to the conflict between Church and State, with which the
legislation of 1790 closes, I must speak of a man memorable far beyond
Mirabeau in the history of political thought and political action, who
is the most perfect representative of the Revolution. I mean the Abbe
Sieyes. As a priest without a vocation, he employed himself with
secular studies, and mastered and meditated the French and the English
writers of the age, politicians, economists, and philosophers.
Learning from many, he became the disciple of none, and was thoroughly
independent, looking beyond the horizon of his century, and farther
than his own favourites, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Turgot. He
understood politics as the science of the State as it ought to be, and
he repudiated the product of history, which is things as they are. No
American ever grasped more firmly the principle that experience is an
incompetent teacher of the governing art. He turned resolutely from
the Past, and refused to be bound by the precepts of men who believed
in slavery and sorcery, in torture and persecution. He deemed history
a misleading and useless study, and knew little of its examples and
its warnings. But he was sure that the Future must be different, and
might be better. In the same disdainful spirit he rejected Religion as
the accumulated legacy of childhood, and believed that it arrested
progress by depreciating terrestrial objects. Nevertheless he had the
confidence of Lubersac, Bishop of Treguier, and afterwards of
Chartres, who recommended him to the clergy of Montfort as their
deputy.
Sieyes preferred to stand for the Third Estate at Paris, where he was
elected last of all the candidates. One of his preliminary tracts
circulated in 30,000 copies, and had promptly made him famous, for it
was as rich in consequences as the ninety-five theses of Wittenberg.
His philosophy of history consisted in one idea. Barbarians had come
down from Germany on the people of civilised and imperial Gaul, and
had subjugated and robbed them, and the descendants of the invading
race were now the feudal nobles, who still held power and profit, and
continued to oppress the natives. This identification of privileged
noble with conquering Frank was of older date; and in this century it
has been made the master-key to modern history. When Thierry
discovered the secret of our national development in the remarks of
Wamba the Witless to Gurth, under the Sherwood oaks, he applied to us
a formula familiar to his countrymen; and Guizot always defined French
history as a perpetual struggle between hostile nations until the
eighteenth century made good the wrong that was done in the fifth.
Right or wrong, the theory of Sieyes was adopted by his most learned
successors, and must not be imputed to ignorance. His argument is that
the real nation consisted of the mass of men enjoying no privilege,
and that they had a claim for compensation and reprisal against those
who had been privileged to oppress and to despoil them. The Third
Estate was equal to the three Estates together, for the others had no
right to be represented. As power exercised otherwise than by consent,
power that does not emanate from those for whose use it exists, is a
usurpation, the two first orders must be regarded as wrongdoers. They
ought to be repressed, and the means of doing harm taken from them.
Although Sieyes neither wrote well nor spoke well, yet within a
fortnight of his maiden speech he had vanquished the ancient order of
things in France. The Court, the Church and the _Noblesse_ had gone
down before the imposing coherence of his ideas. He soon lost
confidence in the Assembly, as it fell under the control of intruding
forces, and he drew back into an attitude of reserve and distrust.
Many of his measures were adopted, but he deemed that they were spoilt
in the process, and that men who sought popular applause were averse
from instruction.
Sieyes was essentially a revolutionist, because he held that political
oppression can never be right, and that resistance to oppression can
never be wrong. And he was a royalist, not as believing in the
proprietary right of dynasties, but because monarchy, justly limited
and controlled, is one of many forces that secure the liberty which is
given by society and not by nature. He was a Liberal, for he thought
liberty the end of government, and defined it as that which makes men
most completely masters of their faculties, in the largest sphere of
independent action. He was also a democrat, for he would revise the
constitution once in a generation; and he described the law as the
settled will of those who are governed, which those who govern have no
share in making. But he was less a democrat than a Liberal, and he
contrived scientific provision against the errors of the sovereign
nation. He sacrificed equality by refusing the vote to those who paid
no taxes, and he preferred an elaborate system of indirect and
filtered election. He broke the direct tide of opinion by successive
renewals, avoiding dissolution. According to his doctrine, the genuine
national will proceeds from debate, not from election, and is
ascertained by a refined intellectual operation, not by coarse and
obvious arithmetic. The object is to learn not what the country
thinks, but what it would think if it was present at the discussion
carried on by men whom it trusted. Therefore there is no imperative
mandate, and the deputy governs the constituent. He mitigated
democracy by another remarkable device. The Americans have made the
guardians of the law into watchers on the lawgiver, giving to the
judiciary power to preserve the Constitution against the legislature.
Sieyes invented a special body of men for the purpose, calling them
the constitutional jury, and including not judges, for he suspected
those who had administered the ancient law of France, but the _elite_
of veteran politicians.
Thus, although all power emanates from the nation alone, and very
little can be delegated to an hereditary and irresponsible monarch, he
intended to restrict its exercise at every point, and to make sure
that it would never be hasty, or violent, and that minorities should
be heard. In his sustained power of consistent thinking, Sieyes
resembles Bentham and Hegel. His flight is low, and he lacks grace and
distinction. He seems to have borrowed his departments from
Harrington, the distilled unity of power from Turgot, the rule of the
mass of taxpayers over the unproductive class above them, from the
notion that labour is the only source of wealth, which was common to
Franklin and Adam Smith. But he is profoundly original, and though
many modern writers on politics exceed him in genius and eloquence and
knowledge, none equal him in invention and resource. When he was out
of public life, during the Legislative Assembly, he acted as adviser
to the Girondins. Therefore he became odious to Robespierre who, after
the fall of Danton, turned against him, and required Barere to see
what he could be charged with. For, he said, Sieyes has more to answer
for as an enemy to freedom than any who have fallen beneath the law.
The Abbe's nerves never quite recovered from the impressions of that
time. When he fell ill, forty years later, and became feverish, he
sent down to tell the porter that he was not at home, if Robespierre
should call. He offered some ideas for the Constitution of 1795, which
found no support. He patiently waited till his time came, and refused
a seat on the Directory. In 1799, when things were at the worst, he
came back from the embassy at Berlin, took the command, and rendered
eminent service. He had no desire for power. "What I want," he said,
"is a sword." For a moment he had thought of the Duke of Brunswick and
the Archduke Charles; at last he fixed on Joubert, and sent him to
fight Suworow in Italy. If he had come home crowned with victory, the
remnant of the National Assembly was to have been convoked, to place
the daughter of Lewis on her father's throne.
At Novi, in the first action, Joubert fell, and Moreau commanded the
retreat. Sieyes now applied to him. Moreau was not yet the victor of
Hohenlinden. His ascendancy was doubtful, and he hesitated. They were
conferring together when news came that Bonaparte had escaped from
Egypt, and would soon be at Paris. Sieyes exclaimed, rather
impudently, "Then France is saved!" Moreau retorted, "I am not wanted.
That is the man for you." At first Bonaparte was reserved, and took so
much time to feel his way that Sieyes, who was the head of the
government, called him an insolent fellow who deserved to be shot.
Talleyrand brought them together, and they soon came to an
understanding. The conspiracy of Brumaire would have failed at the
deciding moment but for the Abbe. For Bonaparte, when threatened with
outlawry, lost his head, and Sieyes quietly told him to drive out the
hostile deputies. Thereupon the soldier, obeying the man of peace,
drew his sword and expelled them.
Everybody now turned to the great legislator of 1789 for the
Constitution of the hour. With incomparable opportunities for
observation, he had maturely revolved schemes for the government of
France on the lines of that which was rejected in 1795. He refused to
write anything; but he consented to dictate, and his words were taken
down by Boulay de la Meurthe, and were published long after, in a
volume of which there is no copy at Paris or in London.
What I have just said will give you a more favourable view of Sieyes
than you may find in books. The Abbe was not a high-minded man, and he
has no friends in his own country. Some dislike him because he was a
priest, some because he was an unfrocked priest. He is odious to
royalists as a revolutionist, and to republicans as a renegade. I have
spoken of him as a political thinker, not as a writer, an orator, or
an administrator. Mr. Wentworth Dilke and Mr. Buckle[1] have pointed
out something more than specks in the character of Burke. Even if much
of what they say is true, I should not hesitate to acknowledge him as
the first political intellect of his age. Since I first spoke of
Sieyes, certain papers have come to light tending to show that he was
as wicked as the rest of them. They would not affect my judgment on
his merit as a thinker.
[1] Dilke, _Papers of a Critic_, vol. ii. pp. 309-384; Buckle,
_History of Civilisation_, ed. J. M. Robertson, pp. 258-269.
In this oracular manner the Constitution of 1799 came into existence,
and it was not his fault that it degenerated in the strong hands of
Napoleon. He named the three Consuls, refusing to be one himself, and
he passed into ceremonious obscurity as president of the Senate.
When the Emperor had quarrelled with his ablest advisers he regretted
that he had renounced the aid of such an auxiliary. He thought him
unfit to govern, for that requires sword and spurs; but he admitted
that Sieyes often had new and luminous ideas, and might have been
useful to him beyond all the ministers of the Empire. Talleyrand, who
disliked Sieyes, and ungenerously reproached him with cupidity, spoke
of him to Lord Brougham as the one statesman of the time. The best of
the political legacy of the Revolution has been his work. Others
pulled down, but he was a builder, and he closed in 1799 the era which
he had opened ten years before. In the history of political doctrine,
where almost every chapter has yet to be written, none will be more
valuable than the one that will show what is permanent and progressive
in the ideas that he originated.
* * * * *
It was the function of the constituent Assembly to recast the laws in
conformity with the Rights of Man, to abolish every survival of
absolutism, every heirloom of inorganic tradition, that was
inconsistent with them. In every department of State they were obliged
to make ruins, to remove them, and to raise a new structure from the
foundation. The transition from the reign of force to the reign of
opinion, from custom to principle, led to a new order through
confusion, uncertainty, and suspense. The efficacy of the coming
system was nowhere felt at first. The soldiers, who were so soon to
form the finest army ever known, ran away as soon as they saw a shot
fired. The prosperous finances of modern France began with bankruptcy.
But in one division of public life the Revolution not only made a bad
beginning, but went on, step by step, to a bad end, until, by civil
war and anarchy and tyranny, it had ruined its cause. The majority of
the clergy were true to the new ideas, and on some decisive occasions,
June 19 and August 4, promoted their victory. Many prelates were
enlightened reformers, and even Robespierre believed that the inferior
clergy were, in the bulk, democratic. Nevertheless the Assembly, by a
series of hostile measures, carefully studied, and long pursued,
turned them into implacable enemies, and thereby made the Revolution
odious to a large part of the French people.
This gradual but determined change of front, improbable at first, and
evidently impolitic, is the true cause of the disastrous conflict in
which the movement of 1789 came to ruin. Had there been no
ecclesiastical establishment to deal with, it may be that the
development of Jacobin theory, or the logic of socialism, would have
led to the same result. As it was, they were secondary causes of the
catastrophe that was to follow. That there was a fund of active
animosity for the church, in a generation tutored by Voltaire,
Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, Rousseau and Raynal, none could doubt.
But in the men of more immediate influence, such as Turgot, Mirabeau
and Sieyes, contempt was more visible than resentment; and it was by
slow degrees that the full force of aversion predominated over liberal
feeling and tolerant profession. But if the liberal tendency had been
stronger, and tolerant convictions more distinct, there were many
reasons which made a collision inevitable between the Church and the
prevailing ideas. The Gallican Church had been closely associated with
the entire order of things which the Assembly, at all costs, was
resolved to destroy. For three centuries from the time when they
became absolute the French kings had enjoyed all the higher patronage.
No such prerogative could be left to the Crown when it became
constitutional, and it was apparent that new methods for the
appointment of priest and prelate, that a penetrating change in the
system of ecclesiastical law, would be devised.
Two things, chiefly, made the memory of monarchy odious: dynastic war
and religious persecution. But the wars had ended in the conquest of
Alsace, and in the establishment of French kings in Spain and Naples.
The odium of persecution remained; and if it was not always assignable
to the influence of the clergy, it was largely due to them, and they
had attempted to renew it down to the eve of the Revolution. The
reduction of the royal power was sure to modify seriously the position
of men upon whom the royal power, in its excess, had so much relied,
and who had done so much to raise up and to sustain it. People had
come to believe that the cause of liberty demanded, not the
emancipation, but the repression of the priesthood. These were
underlying motives; but the signal was given by financial interests.
The clergy, being a privileged order, like the nobles, were involved
in the same fate. With the nobles, at the same night sitting of August
4, they surrendered the right of taxing, and of not being taxed.
When the principle of exemption was rejected, the economists computed
that the clergy owed 100 millions of arrears. Their tithes were
abolished, with a promise of redemption. But this the landowners would
not suffer, and they gained largely by the transaction. It followed
that the clergy, instead of a powerful and wealthy order, had to
become salaried functionaries. Their income was made a charge on the
State; and as the surplice fees went with the abolished tithe, the
services of the parish priest to his parishioners were gratuitous. It
was not intended that the priests should be losers, and the bargain
was a bad one for the public. It involved an expenditure of at least
two millions a year, at a time when means were wanting to pay the
national creditor. The consequences were obvious. The State, having
undertaken to remunerate the inferior clergy out of a falling revenue,
had a powerful motive to appropriate what remained of the Church
property when the tithes were lost. That resource was abundant for the
purpose. But it was concentrated in the hands of the higher clergy and
of religious orders--both under the ban of opinion, as nobles or as
corporations. Their wealth would clear off the debts of the clergy,
would pay all their salaries and annuities, and would strengthen the
public credit. After the first spoliation, in the month of August,
these consequences became clear to all, and the secularisation of
Church property was a foregone conclusion.
On October 10 Talleyrand moved that it be appropriated by the State.
He computed that after ample endowment of the clergy, there would be a
present and increasing surplus of L2,000,000 a year. It was difficult
for the clergy to resist the motion, after the agreement of August,
that the State should make provision for them. The Archbishop of Paris
had surrendered the tithe to be disposed of by the nation; and he
afterwards added the gold and silver vessels and ornaments, to the
value of several millions. Bethizy, Bishop of Usez, had declared the
Church property a gift of the nation, which the nation alone could
recall. Maury, loosely arguing, admitted that property is the product
of law; from which it followed that it was subject to modification by
law. It was urged in reply that corporate property is created by law,
but not private, as the individual has his rights from nature. The
clergy complained that the concessions of August were applied to their
destruction in November, but they suffered by their change of front.
Boisgelin, Archbishop of Aix, proposed a practical and statesmanlike
arrangement. As the credit of the Church stood better than the credit
of the State, he offered to advance L16,000,000 as a loan to the
Government on the security of Church property, which it would thus
become impossible for the Assembly to tamper with. The State would be
rescued from its present difficulties; the Church would secure the
enjoyment of its wealth for the future.