They see elective
justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates,
elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective
commanders of the Parisian army.
justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates,
elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective
commanders of the Parisian army.
Edmund Burke
33
? ? ? ? 514 REFLECTIONS ON THE
horrors, the comlmandants of places have had their
throats cut under the eyes and almost in the arms
of their own soldiers.
" These evils are great; but they are not the worst
consequences which may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they may menace the nation itself. The nature of things requires
that the army should never act but as an instrument.
The moment that, erecting itself into a deliberate
body, it shall act according to its own resolutions,
the government, be it what it may, will immediately degenerate into a military democracy: a species of political monster which has always ended by devouring those who have produced it.
"- After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations and turbulent committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiers and non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge,
or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors? -although the presence and concurrence of
those superiors could give no authority to such mQnstrous democratic assemblies [comices]. "
It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture,- finished as far as its canvas admits, but, as I
apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature and
complexity of the disorders of this military democracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely
observes, wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, by whatever formal appellation
it may pass. For, though he informs the Assembly
that the more considerable part of the army have
not cast off their obedience, but are still attached to
their duty, yet those travellers who have seen the
corps whose conduct is the best rather observe in
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 515
them the absence of mutiny than the existence of
discipline.
I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect
upon the expressions of surprise which this minister
has let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To
him the departure of the troops from their ancient
principles of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees
which they have passed, the practices which they
have countenanced. The soldiers remember the sixth
of October. They recollect the French guards. They
have not forgot the taking of the king's castles in
Paris and at Marseilles. That the governors in both
places were murdered with impunity is a fact that
has not passed out of their minds. They do not
abandon the principles, laid down so ostentatiously
and laboriously, of the equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to the degradation of the whole
noblesse of France, and the suppression of the very
idea of a gentleman. The total abolition of titles
and distinctions is not lost upon them. But M. du
Pin is astonished at their disloyalty, when the doctors of the Assembly have taught them at the same
time the respect due to laws. It is easy to judge
which of the two sorts of lessons men with arms in
their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority
of the king, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argument on that head were not quite
superfluous) that it is not of more consideration with
these troops than it is with everybody else. "The
king," says he, "has over and over again repeated
his orders to put a stop to these excesses; but in so
? ? ? ? 516 REFLECTIONS ON THE
terrible a crisis, your [the Assembly's] concurrence is
become indispensably necessary to prevent the evils
which menace the state. You unite to the force of
the legislative power that of opinion, still more important. " To be sure, the army can have no opinion of the power or authority of the king. Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, that the Assembly itself does not enjoy a much greater degree of liberty than
that royal figure.
It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this
exigency, one of the greatest that can happen in a
state. The minister requests the Assembly to array
itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave and severe principles announced by them may give vigor to the king's
proclamation. After this we should have looked for
courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps,
decimating of others, and all the terrible means
which necessity has employed in such cases to arrest the progress of the most terrible of all evils; particularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry
would be made into the murder of commandants in
the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all this,
or of anything like it. After they had been told that
the soldiery trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by the king, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to make new
proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that the regiments had paid no regard to oaths, pretes avec la plus imposante solennite, they propose
-- what? More oaths. They renew decrees and
proclamations as they experience their insufficiency,
and they multiply oaths in proportion as they weaken
in the minds of men the sanctions of religion. I hope
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 517
that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons
of Voltaire, D'Alernbert, Diderot, and Helvdtius, on
the Immortality of the Soul, on a Particular Superintending Providence, and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along with their civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt;
as I understand that a certain description of reading
makes no inconsiderable part of their military exercises, and that they are full as well supplied with the
ammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges.
To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregular consultations, seditious committees,
and monstrous democratic assemblies [comitia, comices] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising
from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe the most astonishing means have been
used that ever occurred to men, even in all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this: --
The king has promulgated in circular letters to all
the regiments his direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps should join themselves
with the clubs and confederations in the several municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and
civic entertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems,
is to soften the ferocity of their minds, to reconcile
them to their bottle companions of other descriptions, and to merge particular conspiracies in more
general associations. * That this remedy would be
pleasing to the soldiers, as they are described by M.
de La Tour du Pin, I canl readily believe, - and that,
* " Comme sa Majeste y a reconnu, non un systbme d'associations
particulibres, mais une r6union de volonte's de tous les Francois pour
la liberte et la prosp6rite communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l'ordre
publique, il a pense qu'il convenoit que chaque r6giment prit part h
? ? ? ? 518 REFLECTIONS ON THE
however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully sub.
mit themselves to these royal proclamations. But I
should question whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting would dispose them, more than at
present they are disposed, to an obedience to their
officers, or teach them better to submit to the austere rules of military discipline. It will make them
admirable citizens after the French mode, but not
quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt
might well arise, whether the conversations at these
good tables would fit them a great deal the better for
the character of mere instruments, which this veteran
officer and statesman justly observes the nature of
things always requires an army to be.
Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in
discipline by the free conversation of the soldiers with
the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially
encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may
judge by the state of the municipalities themselves,
furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech.
He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavors towards restoring order for the present from the
good disposition of certain regiments; but he finds
something cloudy with regard to the future. As to
preventing the return of confusion, " for this the administration" (says he) " cannot be answerable to
you, as long as they see the municipalities arrogate
to themselves an authority over the troops which your
institutions have reserved wholly to the monarch.
You have fixed the limits of the military authority
ces fetes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et resserrer les liens
d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. " - Lest I should not be credited, I insert the words authorizing the troops to feast with the popular confederacies.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 519
and the municipal authority. You have bounded the
action which you have permitted to the latter over
the former to the right of requisition; but never
did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commons in these municipalities to break the
officers, to try them, to give orders to the soldiers, to
drive them from the posts committed to their guard,
to stop them in their marches ordered by the king,
or, in a word, to enslave the troops to the caprice
of each of the cities or even market-towns through
which they are to pass. "
Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring
them back to the true principles of military subordination, and to render them machines in the hands
of the supreme power of the country! Such are the
distempers of the French troops! Such is their cure!
As the army is, so is the navy. The municipalities
supersede the orders of the Assembly, and the seamen
in their turn supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old age to pledge the Assembly in their
civic cups, and to enter with a hoary head into all
the fantastic vagaries of these juvenile politicians.
Such schemes are not like propositions coming from
a man of fifty years' wear and tear amongst mankind.
They seem rather such as ought to be expected from
those grand compounders in politics who shorten the
road to their degrees in the state, and have a certain
inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all
subjects, -upon the credit of which, one of their doctors has thought fit, with great applause, and greater
success, to caution the Assembly not to attend to old
? ? ? ? 520 REFLECTIONS ON THE
men, or to any persons who value themselves upon
their experience. I suppose all the ministers of state
must qualify, and take this test, -wholly abjuring the
errors and heresies of experience and observation.
Every man has his own relish; but I think, if I
could not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but
at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to
be regenerated by them,- nor begin, in my grand
climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to
stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds
of their barbarous metaphysics. * Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!
The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system which they call a Constitution cannot
be laid open without discovering the utter insufficiency and mischief of every other part with which
it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it. You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying the
debility of the Assembly. You cannot deliberate on
the confusion of the army of the state, without dis
closing the worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the
civil betrays the military anarchy. I wish everybody
carefully to peruse the eloquent speech (such it is)
of Mons. de La Tour du Pin. He attributes the salvation of the municipalities to the good behavior of some of the troops. These troops are to preserve
the well-disposed part of the municipalities, which is
* This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned his
office.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 521
confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage of the
worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty, and will command
those troops which are necessary for their protection. Indeed, they must command them or court
them. The municipalities, by the necessity of their
situation, and by the republican powers they have
obtained, must, with relation to the military, be the
masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each
successively, or they must make a jumble of all together, according to circumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but the municipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concord where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the Assembly attempts to cure
the distempers by the distempers themselves; and they
hope to preserve themselves from a purely military
democracy by giving it a debauched interest in the
municipal.
If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in
the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an
elective attraction will draw them to the lowest and
most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. The military conspiracies which are to be remedied by civic confederacies,
the rebellious municipalities which are to be rendered
obedient by furnishing them with the means of seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep them
in order, -- all these chimeras of a monstrous and
portentous policy must aggravate the confusion from
which they have arisen. There must be blood. The
want of common judgment manifested in the construction of all their descriptions of forces, and in
all their kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will
? ? ? ? 522 REFLECTIONS ON THE
make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time
and in one part. They will break out in others; because the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these
schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious
citizens must weaken still more and more the military connection of soldiers with their officers, as well as
add military and mutinous audacity to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real army, the officer should be first and last in the eye of the soldier,first and last in his attention, observance, and esteem. Officers, it seems, there are to be, whose chief qualification must be temper and patience. They are to
manage their troops by electioneering arts. They
must bear themselves as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means power may be occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are
to be nominated becomes of high importance.
What you may do finally does not appear: nor is
it of much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your army and all the parts of
your republic, as well as the puzzled relation of those
parts to each other and to the whole, remain as they
are. You seem to have given the provisional nomination of the officers, in the first instance, to the king,
with a reserve of approbation by the National Assembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious in discovering the true seat of
power. They must soon perceive that those who
can negative indefinitely in reality appoint. The
officers must therefore look to their intrigues in the
Assembly as the sole certain road to promotion.
Still, however, by your new Constitution, they must
begin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation for military rank seems to me a contrivance,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 523
as well adapted as if it were studied for no other
end, to promote faction in the Assembly itself relative
to this vast military patronage, - and then to poison
the corps of officers with factions of a nature still
more dangerous to the safety of government, upon
any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive in the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers who lose the promotions intended
for them by the crown must become of a faction
opposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected
their claims, and must nourish discontents in the
heart of the army against the ruling powers. Those
officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their
point through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at best only second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that of the Assembly, must
slight an authority which would not advance and
could not retard their promotion. If, to avoid these
evils, you will have no other rule for command or
promotion than seniority, you will have an army of
formality; at the same time it will become more independent and more of a military republic. Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is not to be
deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the
command of an army, he is nothing. What is the
effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the
army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or
of fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object of all things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. They must be
constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what
their necessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through such a
? ? ? ? 524 REFLECTIONS ON THE
debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army
will not long look to an Assembly acting through the
organ of false show and palpable imposition. They
-will not seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They
will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious
dilemma in your politics.
It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly
like yours, even supposing that it was in possession
of another sort of organ through which its orders
were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and
discipline of an army. It is known that armies have
hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular authority; and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which is to
have only a continuance of two years. The officers
must totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfect submission and due admiration the dominion of pleaders, - especially when they find that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession of those pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command, (if they should have any,) must be as uncertain as their
duration is transient. In the weakness of one kind
of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers
of an army will remain for some time mutinous and
full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the
eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him
on his personal account. There is no other way of
securing military obedience in this state of things.
But the moment in which that event shall happen,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 525
the person who really commands the army is your
master, - the master (that is little) of your king, the
master of your Assembly, the master of your whole
republic.
How came the Assembly by their present power
over the army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching
the soldiers from their officers. They have begun
by a most terrible operation. They have touched the
central point about which the particles that compose
armies are at repose. They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, critical link
between the officer and the soldier, just where the
chain of military subordination commences, and on
which the whole of that system depends. The soldier
is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and
citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is, to be his
own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom
he delegates that self-government. It is very natural
he should think that he ought most of all to have his
choice where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probability, systematically do what he does at present occasionally: that is, he will exercise at least a negative in the
choice of his officers. At present the officers are
known at best to be only permissive, and on their
good behavior. In fact, there have been many instances in which they have been cashiered by their
corps. Here is a second negative on the choice of the
king: a negative as effectual, at least, as the other
of the Assembly. The soldiers know already that it
has been a question, not ill received in the National
Assembly, whether they ought not to have the direct
choice of their officers, or some proportion of them.
When such matters are in deliberation, it is no ex
? ? ? ? 526 REFLECTIONS ON THE
travagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion most favorable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned king,
whilst another army in the same country, with whom
too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a free Constitution. They
will cast their eyes on the other and more permanent
army: I mean the municipal. That corps, they well
know, does actually elect its own officers. They may
not be able to discern the grounds of distinction on
which they are not to elect a Marquis de La Fayette (or what is his new name? ) of their own. If
this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the
rights of men, why not of theirs?
They see elective
justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates,
elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective
commanders of the Parisian army. Why should
they alone be excluded? Are the brave troops of
France the only men in that nation who are not the
fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications
necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid
by the state, and do they therefore lose the rights of
men? They are a part of that nation themselves,
and contribute to that pay. And is not the king, is
not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect
the National Assembly, likewise paid? Instead of
seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving
a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary
is given for the exercise of those rights. All your
resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all
the works of your doctors in religion and politics,
have industriously been put into their hands; and. you expect that they will apply to their own case
just as much of your doctrines and examples as suits
your pleasure.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 527
Everything depends upon the army in suchia. government as yours; for y oullav. ha
in youi lay, al; nte instincts which support government.
Therefore' t~he moment any difference arises between
your National Assembly and any part of the nation,
you must have recourse to force. Nothing else is left
to you, - or rather, you have left nothing else to yourselves. You see, by the report of your war minister,. that the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with a view of internal coercion. * You
must rule by an army; and you have infused into
that army by which you rule, as well as into the
whole body of the nation, principles which after a
time must disable you in the use you resolve to make
of it. The king is to call out troops to act against
his people, when the world has been told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on citizens. The colonies assert to themselves an independent constitution and a free trade. They must be constrained by troops. In what chapter of your code of the rights of men are they able
to read that it is a part of the rights of men to
have their commerce monopolized and restrained for
the benefit of others? As the colonists rise on you,
the negroes rise on them. Troops again, -- massacre,
torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!
These are the fruits of metaphysic declarations wantonly made and shamefully retracted! It was but
the other day that the farmers of land in one of your
provinces refused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord
of the soil. In consequence of this, you decree that
* Courrier. Fran9ois, 30 July, 1790. Assemblede Nationale, Numero 210.
industriously destroyed all the opinions and prejudices, and, as far as
? ? ? ? 528 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the country-people shall pay all rents and dues, ex
cept those which as grievances you have abolished;
and if they refuse, then you order the king to march
troops against them. You lay down metaphysic
propositions which infer universal consequences, and
then you attempt to limit logic by despotism. The
leaders of the present system tell them of their rights,
as men, to take fortresses, to murder guards, to seize
on kings without the least appearance of authority
even from the Assembly, whilst, as the sovereign legislative body, that Assembly was sitting in the name of the nation; and yet these leaders presume to order out the troops which have acted in these very disorders, to coerce those who shall judge on the
principles and follow the examples which have been
guarantied by their own approbation.
The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject
all feodality as the barbarism of tyranny; and they
tell them afterwards how much of that barbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience. As they are prodigal of light with regard to grievances, so the
people find them sparing in the extreme with regard
to redress. They know that not only certain quitrents and personal duties, which you have permitted them to redeem, (but have furnished no money for
the redemption,) are as nothing to those burdens for
which you have made no provision at all; tjley know
that almost the whole system of landed property in
its origin is feudal, -that it is the distribution of
the possessions of the original proprietors made by a
barbarous conqueror to his barbarous instruments,and that the most grievous effects of the conquest are the land-rents of every kind, as without question
they are.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 529
The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of these ancient proprietors, Romans or Gauls.
But if they fail, in any degree, in the titles which
they make on the principles of antiquaries and lawyers, they retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There they find that men are equal; and the
earth, the kind and equal mother of all, ought not to
be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury of ally
men, who by nature are no better than themselves,
and who, if they do not labor for their bread, are
worse. They find, that, by the laws of Nature, the
occupant and subduer of the soil is the true proprietor,-that there is no prescription against Nature, -- and that the agreements (where any there are) which
have been made with the landlords during the time
of slavery are only the effect of duresse and force,and that, when the people reentered into the rights of men, those agreements were made as void as
everything else which had been settled under the
prevalence of the old feudal and aristocratic tyranny.
They will tell you that they see no difference between
an idler with a hat and a national cockade and an
idler in a cowl or in a rochet. If you ground the
title to rents on succession and prescription, they tell
you from the speech of M. Camus, published by the
National Assembly for their information, that things
ill begun cannot avail themselves of prescription, --
that the title of these lords was vicious in its origin,and that force is at least as bad as fraud. As to the title by succession, they will tell you that the succession of those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedigree of property, and not rotten parchments and
silly substitutions, - that the lords have enjoyed their
usurpation too long, -- and that, if they allow to these
VOL. III. 34
? ? ? ? 53(0 REFLECTIONS ON THE
lay monks any charitable pension, they ought to be
thankful to the bounty of the true proprietor, who is
so generous towards a false claimant to his goods.
When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistie reason on which you have set your image atnd
superscription, you cry it down as base money, and
tell them you will pay for the future with French
guards and dragoons and hussars. You hold up, to
chastise them, the second-hand authority of a king,
who is only the instrument of destroying, without
any power of protecting either the people or his own
person. Through him, it seems, you will make yourselves obeyed. They answer,-" You have taught us
that there are no gentlemen; and which of your principles teach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected? We know, without your teaching, that lands were given for the support of feudal dignities, feudal titles,
and feudal offices. When you took down the cause as
a grievance, why should the more grievous effect remain? As there are now no hereditary honors and
no distinguished families, why are we taxed to maintain what you tell us ought hot to exist? You have
sent down our old aristocratic landlords in no other
character and with no other title but that of exactors
under your authority. Have you endeavored to make
these your rent-gatherers respectable to us? No. You
have sent them to us with their arms reversed, their
shields broken, their impresses defaced, -and so displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged things, that we no longer know them. They are strangers to us. They do not even go by
the names of our ancient lords. Physically they may
be the same men, - though we are not quite sure of
that, on your new philosophic doctrines of personal
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 531
identity. In all other respects they are totally
changed. We do not see why we have not as good a
right to refuse them their rents as you have to abrogate all their honors, titles, and distinctions. This
we have never commissioned you to do; and it is
one instance among many, indeed, of your assumption of undelegated power. We see the burghers of
Paris, through their clubs, their mobs, and their national guards, directing you at their pleasure, and
giving that as law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as law to us. Through you, these
burghers dispose of the lives and fortunes of us all.
Why should not you attend as much to the desires
of the laborious husbandman with regard to our rent,
by which we are affected in the most serious manner,
as you do to the demands of these insolent burghers
relative to distinctions and titles of honor, by which
neither they nor we are affected at all? But we find
you pay more regard to their fancies than to our necessities. Is it among the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals? Before this measure of yours we might have thought we were not perfectly equal; we
might have entertained some old, habitual, tunmeaning prepossession in favor of those landlords; but
we cannot conceive with what other view than that
of destroying all respect to them you could have
made the law that degrades them. You have forbidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect; and now you send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission to fear and force
which you did not suffer us to yield to the mild authority of opinion. "
The ground of some of these arguments is horrid
and ridiculous to all rational ears; but to the politi
? ? ? ? 532 REFLECTIONS ON THE
cians of metaphysics, who have opened schools for
sophistry, and made establishments for anarchy, it is
solid and conclusive. It is obvious, that, on a mere
consideration of the right, the leaders in the Assembly would not in the least have scrupled to abrogate the rents along with the titles and family ensigns.
It would be only to follow up the principle of their
reasonings, and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they had newly possessed themselves of a great body of landed property by confiscation. They
had this commodity at market; and the market would
have been wholly destroyed, if they were to permit
the husbandmen to riot in the speculations with
which they so freely intoxicated themselves. The
only security which property enjoys in any one of its
descriptions is from the interests of their rapacity
with regard to. some other. They have left nothing
but their own arbitrary pleasure to determine what
property is to be protected and what subverted.
Neither have they left any principle by which any of
their municipalities can be bound to obedience, -- or
even conscientiously obliged not to separate from the
whole, to become independent, or to connect itself with
some other state. The people of Lyons, it seems, have
refused lately to pay taxes. Why should they not?
What lawful authority is there left to exact them?
The king imposed some of them. The old States,
methodized by orders, settled the more ancient.
They may say to the Assembly,-'" Who are you,
that are not our kings, nor the States we have elected,
nor sit on the principles on which we have elected
you? And who are we, that, when we see the gabelles which you have ordered to be paid wholly
shaken off, when we see the act of disobedience after
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 533
wards ratified by yourselves, who are we, that we are
not to judge what taxes we ought or ought not to
pay, and are not to avail ourselves of the same powers the validity of which you have approved in others? " To this the answer is, " We will send troops. " The last reason of kings is always the first with your
Assembly. This military aid may serve for a time,
whilst the impression of the increase of pay remains,
and the vanity of being umpires in all disputes is flattered. But this weapon will snap short, unfaithful
to the hand that employs it. The Assembly keep a
school, where, systematically, and with unremitting
perseverance, they teach principles and form regulations destructive to all spirit of subordination, civil
and military, - and then they expect that they shall
hold in obedience an anarchic people by an anarchic
army.
The municipal army, which, according to their
new policy, is to balance this national army, if considered in itself only, is of a constitution much more
simple, and in every respect less exceptionable. It
is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the
crown or the kingdom, armed and trained and officered at the pleasure of the districts to which the
corps severally belong; and the personal service of
the individuals who compose, or the fine in lieu of
personal service, are directed by the same authority. *
Nothing is more uniform. If, however, considered
in any relation to the crown, to the National Assem*I see by M. Necker's account, that the national guards of Paris
have received, over and above the money levied within their own city,
about 145,0001. sterling out of the public treasure. Whether this be
an actual payment for the nine months of their existence, or an estimate of their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is of no
great importance, as certainly they may take whatever they please.
? ? ? ? 534 REFLECTIONS ON THE
bly, to the public tribunals, or to the other army, or
considered in a view to any coherence or connection
between its parts, it seems a monster, and can hardly
fail to terminate its perplexed movements in some
great national calamity. It is a worse preservative
of a general constitution than the systasis of Crete,
or the confederation of Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which has yet been imagined, in the
necessities produced by an ill-constructed system of
government.
Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of the supreme power, the executive, the judicature, the military, and on the reciprocal relation of
all these establishments, I shall say something of the
ability showed by your legislators with regard to the
revenue.
In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still fewer traces appear of political judgment or
financial resource. When the States met, it seemed
to be the great object to improve the system of revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of oppression and vexation, and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great were the expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by this
grand arrangement that France was to stand or fall;
and this became, in my opinion very properly, the
test by which the skill and patriotism of those who
ruled in that Assembly would be tried. The revenue
of the state is the state. In effect, all depends upon
it, whether for support or for reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly depends upon the
quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted
in it. As all great qualities of the mind which op
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 53fr
erate In public, and are not merely suffering and passive, require force for their display, I had almost said
for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which is
the spring of all power, becomes in its administration
the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things, and conversant about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow under confinement, and in circumstances straitened, narrow, and sordid. Through the
revenue alone the body politic can act in its true genius and character; and therefore it will display just
as much of its collective virtue, and as much of that
virtue which may characterize those who move it,
and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as
it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not
only magnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence,
and fortitude, and providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts derive their food, and the
growth of their organs, but continence, and self
denial, and labor, and vigilance, and frugality, and
whatever else there is in which the mind shows itself
above the appetite, are nowhere more in their proper
element than in the provision and distribution of the
public wealth. It is therefore not without reason
that the science of speculative and practical finance,
which must take to its aid so many auxiliary branches
of knowledge, stands high in the estimation not only
of the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best men;
and as this science has grown with the progress of its
object, the prosperity and improvement of nations
has generally increased with the increase of their
revenues; and they will both continue to grow and
flourish as long as the balance between what is left
? ? ? ? 536 REFLECTIONS OP THE
to strengthen the efforts of individuals and what is
collected for the common efforts of the state bear to
each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept
in a close correspondence and communication. And
perhaps it may -be owing to the greatness of revenues, and to the urgency of state necessities, that old abuses in the constitution of finances are discovered, and their true nature and rational theory comes to be more perfectly understood; insomuch that a
smaller revenue might have been more distressing
in one period than a far greater is found to be in
another, the proportionate wealth even remaining the
same. Ir this state of things, the French Assembly
found something in their revenues to preserve, to
secure, and wisely to administer, as well as to abrogate and alter. Though their proud assumption might justify the severest tests, yet, in trying their
abilities on their financial proceedings, I would only
consider what is the plain, obvious duty of a common
finance minister, and try them upon that, and not
upon models of ideal perfection.
The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an
ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and
equality; to employ it economically; and when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure
its foundations in that instance, and forever, by the
clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds. On these heads we may take a short and distinct view
of the merits and abilities of those in the National
Assembly who have taken to themselves the raanagement of this arduous concern.
Far from any increase of revenue in their hands,
I find, by a report of M. Vernier, from the Committee
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 537
of Finances, of the second of August last, that the
amount of the national revenue, as compared with
its produce before the Revolution, was diminished by
the sum of two hundred millions, or eight millions
sterling, of the annual income, -- considerably more
than one third of the whole.
If this be the result of great ability, never surely
was ability displayed in a more distinguished manner or with so powerful an effect. No common folly,
no vulgar incapacity, no ordinary official negligence,
even no official crime, no corruption, no peculation,
hardly any direct hostility, which we have seen in the
modern world, could in so short a time have made so
complete an overthrow of the finances, and, with them,
of the strength of a great kingdom. - Cedo qui vestram rempublicam tantam amisistis tam cito?
The sophisters and declaimers, as soon as the Assembly met, began with decrying the ancient constitution of the revenue in many of its most essential branches, such as the public monopoly of salt. They
charged it, as truly as unwisely, with being ill-contrived, oppressive, and partial. This representation
they were not satisfied to make use of in speeches
preliminary to some plan of reform; they declared
it in a solemn resolution or public sentence, as it
were judicially passed upon it; and this they dispersed throughout the nation. At the time they
passed the decree, with the same gravity they ordered the same absurd, oppressive, and partial tax to
be paid, until they could find a revenue to replace
it. The consequence was inevitable. The provinces
which had been always exempted from this salt monopoly, some of whom were charged with other contributions, perhaps equivalent, were totally disin
? ? ? ? 3 8 REFLECTIONS ON THE
dined to bear any part of the burden, which by all
equal distribution was to redeem the others. As to
the Assembly, occupied as it was with the declaration
and violation of the rights of men, and with their
arrangements for general confusion, it had neither
leisure nor capacity to contrive, nor authority to enforce, any plan of any kind relative to the replacing the tax, or equalizing it, or compensating the provinces, or for conducting their minds to any
scheme of accommodation with the other districts
which were to be relieved. The people of the salt
provinces, impatient under taxes damned by the authority which had directed their payment, very soon
found their patience exhausted. They thought themselves as skilful in demolishing as the Assembly could
be. They relieved themselves by throwing off the
whole burden. Animated by this example, each district, or part of a district, judging of its own grievance by its own feeling, and of its remedy by its own opinion, did as it pleased with other taxes.
We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriving equal impositions, proportioned
to the means of the citizens, and the least likely to
lean heavy on the active capital employed in the generation of that private wealth from whence the public
fortune must be derived. By suffering the several districts, and several of the individuals in each district,
to judge of what part of the old revenue they might
withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a
new inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments were regulated by dispositions.
The parts of the kingdom which were the most submissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate to the
commonwealth, bore the whole burden of the state.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 539
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a
feeble government. To fill up all the deficiencies in
the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of every
kind which were to be expected, what remained to
a state without authority? The National Assembly
called for a voluntary benevolence, -- for a fourth part
of the income of all the citizens, to be estimated on
the honor of those who were to pay. They obtained
something more than could be rationally calculated,
but what was far indeed from answerable to their
real necessities, and much less to their fond expectations.
? ? ? ? 514 REFLECTIONS ON THE
horrors, the comlmandants of places have had their
throats cut under the eyes and almost in the arms
of their own soldiers.
" These evils are great; but they are not the worst
consequences which may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they may menace the nation itself. The nature of things requires
that the army should never act but as an instrument.
The moment that, erecting itself into a deliberate
body, it shall act according to its own resolutions,
the government, be it what it may, will immediately degenerate into a military democracy: a species of political monster which has always ended by devouring those who have produced it.
"- After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations and turbulent committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiers and non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge,
or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors? -although the presence and concurrence of
those superiors could give no authority to such mQnstrous democratic assemblies [comices]. "
It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture,- finished as far as its canvas admits, but, as I
apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature and
complexity of the disorders of this military democracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely
observes, wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, by whatever formal appellation
it may pass. For, though he informs the Assembly
that the more considerable part of the army have
not cast off their obedience, but are still attached to
their duty, yet those travellers who have seen the
corps whose conduct is the best rather observe in
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 515
them the absence of mutiny than the existence of
discipline.
I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect
upon the expressions of surprise which this minister
has let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To
him the departure of the troops from their ancient
principles of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees
which they have passed, the practices which they
have countenanced. The soldiers remember the sixth
of October. They recollect the French guards. They
have not forgot the taking of the king's castles in
Paris and at Marseilles. That the governors in both
places were murdered with impunity is a fact that
has not passed out of their minds. They do not
abandon the principles, laid down so ostentatiously
and laboriously, of the equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to the degradation of the whole
noblesse of France, and the suppression of the very
idea of a gentleman. The total abolition of titles
and distinctions is not lost upon them. But M. du
Pin is astonished at their disloyalty, when the doctors of the Assembly have taught them at the same
time the respect due to laws. It is easy to judge
which of the two sorts of lessons men with arms in
their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority
of the king, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argument on that head were not quite
superfluous) that it is not of more consideration with
these troops than it is with everybody else. "The
king," says he, "has over and over again repeated
his orders to put a stop to these excesses; but in so
? ? ? ? 516 REFLECTIONS ON THE
terrible a crisis, your [the Assembly's] concurrence is
become indispensably necessary to prevent the evils
which menace the state. You unite to the force of
the legislative power that of opinion, still more important. " To be sure, the army can have no opinion of the power or authority of the king. Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, that the Assembly itself does not enjoy a much greater degree of liberty than
that royal figure.
It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this
exigency, one of the greatest that can happen in a
state. The minister requests the Assembly to array
itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave and severe principles announced by them may give vigor to the king's
proclamation. After this we should have looked for
courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps,
decimating of others, and all the terrible means
which necessity has employed in such cases to arrest the progress of the most terrible of all evils; particularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry
would be made into the murder of commandants in
the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all this,
or of anything like it. After they had been told that
the soldiery trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by the king, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to make new
proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that the regiments had paid no regard to oaths, pretes avec la plus imposante solennite, they propose
-- what? More oaths. They renew decrees and
proclamations as they experience their insufficiency,
and they multiply oaths in proportion as they weaken
in the minds of men the sanctions of religion. I hope
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 517
that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons
of Voltaire, D'Alernbert, Diderot, and Helvdtius, on
the Immortality of the Soul, on a Particular Superintending Providence, and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along with their civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt;
as I understand that a certain description of reading
makes no inconsiderable part of their military exercises, and that they are full as well supplied with the
ammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges.
To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregular consultations, seditious committees,
and monstrous democratic assemblies [comitia, comices] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising
from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe the most astonishing means have been
used that ever occurred to men, even in all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this: --
The king has promulgated in circular letters to all
the regiments his direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps should join themselves
with the clubs and confederations in the several municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and
civic entertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems,
is to soften the ferocity of their minds, to reconcile
them to their bottle companions of other descriptions, and to merge particular conspiracies in more
general associations. * That this remedy would be
pleasing to the soldiers, as they are described by M.
de La Tour du Pin, I canl readily believe, - and that,
* " Comme sa Majeste y a reconnu, non un systbme d'associations
particulibres, mais une r6union de volonte's de tous les Francois pour
la liberte et la prosp6rite communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l'ordre
publique, il a pense qu'il convenoit que chaque r6giment prit part h
? ? ? ? 518 REFLECTIONS ON THE
however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully sub.
mit themselves to these royal proclamations. But I
should question whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting would dispose them, more than at
present they are disposed, to an obedience to their
officers, or teach them better to submit to the austere rules of military discipline. It will make them
admirable citizens after the French mode, but not
quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt
might well arise, whether the conversations at these
good tables would fit them a great deal the better for
the character of mere instruments, which this veteran
officer and statesman justly observes the nature of
things always requires an army to be.
Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in
discipline by the free conversation of the soldiers with
the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially
encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may
judge by the state of the municipalities themselves,
furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech.
He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavors towards restoring order for the present from the
good disposition of certain regiments; but he finds
something cloudy with regard to the future. As to
preventing the return of confusion, " for this the administration" (says he) " cannot be answerable to
you, as long as they see the municipalities arrogate
to themselves an authority over the troops which your
institutions have reserved wholly to the monarch.
You have fixed the limits of the military authority
ces fetes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et resserrer les liens
d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. " - Lest I should not be credited, I insert the words authorizing the troops to feast with the popular confederacies.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 519
and the municipal authority. You have bounded the
action which you have permitted to the latter over
the former to the right of requisition; but never
did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commons in these municipalities to break the
officers, to try them, to give orders to the soldiers, to
drive them from the posts committed to their guard,
to stop them in their marches ordered by the king,
or, in a word, to enslave the troops to the caprice
of each of the cities or even market-towns through
which they are to pass. "
Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring
them back to the true principles of military subordination, and to render them machines in the hands
of the supreme power of the country! Such are the
distempers of the French troops! Such is their cure!
As the army is, so is the navy. The municipalities
supersede the orders of the Assembly, and the seamen
in their turn supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old age to pledge the Assembly in their
civic cups, and to enter with a hoary head into all
the fantastic vagaries of these juvenile politicians.
Such schemes are not like propositions coming from
a man of fifty years' wear and tear amongst mankind.
They seem rather such as ought to be expected from
those grand compounders in politics who shorten the
road to their degrees in the state, and have a certain
inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all
subjects, -upon the credit of which, one of their doctors has thought fit, with great applause, and greater
success, to caution the Assembly not to attend to old
? ? ? ? 520 REFLECTIONS ON THE
men, or to any persons who value themselves upon
their experience. I suppose all the ministers of state
must qualify, and take this test, -wholly abjuring the
errors and heresies of experience and observation.
Every man has his own relish; but I think, if I
could not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but
at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to
be regenerated by them,- nor begin, in my grand
climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to
stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds
of their barbarous metaphysics. * Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!
The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system which they call a Constitution cannot
be laid open without discovering the utter insufficiency and mischief of every other part with which
it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it. You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying the
debility of the Assembly. You cannot deliberate on
the confusion of the army of the state, without dis
closing the worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the
civil betrays the military anarchy. I wish everybody
carefully to peruse the eloquent speech (such it is)
of Mons. de La Tour du Pin. He attributes the salvation of the municipalities to the good behavior of some of the troops. These troops are to preserve
the well-disposed part of the municipalities, which is
* This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned his
office.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 521
confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage of the
worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty, and will command
those troops which are necessary for their protection. Indeed, they must command them or court
them. The municipalities, by the necessity of their
situation, and by the republican powers they have
obtained, must, with relation to the military, be the
masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each
successively, or they must make a jumble of all together, according to circumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but the municipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concord where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the Assembly attempts to cure
the distempers by the distempers themselves; and they
hope to preserve themselves from a purely military
democracy by giving it a debauched interest in the
municipal.
If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in
the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an
elective attraction will draw them to the lowest and
most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. The military conspiracies which are to be remedied by civic confederacies,
the rebellious municipalities which are to be rendered
obedient by furnishing them with the means of seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep them
in order, -- all these chimeras of a monstrous and
portentous policy must aggravate the confusion from
which they have arisen. There must be blood. The
want of common judgment manifested in the construction of all their descriptions of forces, and in
all their kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will
? ? ? ? 522 REFLECTIONS ON THE
make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time
and in one part. They will break out in others; because the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these
schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious
citizens must weaken still more and more the military connection of soldiers with their officers, as well as
add military and mutinous audacity to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real army, the officer should be first and last in the eye of the soldier,first and last in his attention, observance, and esteem. Officers, it seems, there are to be, whose chief qualification must be temper and patience. They are to
manage their troops by electioneering arts. They
must bear themselves as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means power may be occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are
to be nominated becomes of high importance.
What you may do finally does not appear: nor is
it of much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your army and all the parts of
your republic, as well as the puzzled relation of those
parts to each other and to the whole, remain as they
are. You seem to have given the provisional nomination of the officers, in the first instance, to the king,
with a reserve of approbation by the National Assembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious in discovering the true seat of
power. They must soon perceive that those who
can negative indefinitely in reality appoint. The
officers must therefore look to their intrigues in the
Assembly as the sole certain road to promotion.
Still, however, by your new Constitution, they must
begin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation for military rank seems to me a contrivance,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 523
as well adapted as if it were studied for no other
end, to promote faction in the Assembly itself relative
to this vast military patronage, - and then to poison
the corps of officers with factions of a nature still
more dangerous to the safety of government, upon
any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive in the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers who lose the promotions intended
for them by the crown must become of a faction
opposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected
their claims, and must nourish discontents in the
heart of the army against the ruling powers. Those
officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their
point through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at best only second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that of the Assembly, must
slight an authority which would not advance and
could not retard their promotion. If, to avoid these
evils, you will have no other rule for command or
promotion than seniority, you will have an army of
formality; at the same time it will become more independent and more of a military republic. Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is not to be
deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the
command of an army, he is nothing. What is the
effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the
army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or
of fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object of all things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. They must be
constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what
their necessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through such a
? ? ? ? 524 REFLECTIONS ON THE
debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army
will not long look to an Assembly acting through the
organ of false show and palpable imposition. They
-will not seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They
will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious
dilemma in your politics.
It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly
like yours, even supposing that it was in possession
of another sort of organ through which its orders
were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and
discipline of an army. It is known that armies have
hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular authority; and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which is to
have only a continuance of two years. The officers
must totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfect submission and due admiration the dominion of pleaders, - especially when they find that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession of those pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command, (if they should have any,) must be as uncertain as their
duration is transient. In the weakness of one kind
of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers
of an army will remain for some time mutinous and
full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the
eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him
on his personal account. There is no other way of
securing military obedience in this state of things.
But the moment in which that event shall happen,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 525
the person who really commands the army is your
master, - the master (that is little) of your king, the
master of your Assembly, the master of your whole
republic.
How came the Assembly by their present power
over the army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching
the soldiers from their officers. They have begun
by a most terrible operation. They have touched the
central point about which the particles that compose
armies are at repose. They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, critical link
between the officer and the soldier, just where the
chain of military subordination commences, and on
which the whole of that system depends. The soldier
is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and
citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is, to be his
own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom
he delegates that self-government. It is very natural
he should think that he ought most of all to have his
choice where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probability, systematically do what he does at present occasionally: that is, he will exercise at least a negative in the
choice of his officers. At present the officers are
known at best to be only permissive, and on their
good behavior. In fact, there have been many instances in which they have been cashiered by their
corps. Here is a second negative on the choice of the
king: a negative as effectual, at least, as the other
of the Assembly. The soldiers know already that it
has been a question, not ill received in the National
Assembly, whether they ought not to have the direct
choice of their officers, or some proportion of them.
When such matters are in deliberation, it is no ex
? ? ? ? 526 REFLECTIONS ON THE
travagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion most favorable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned king,
whilst another army in the same country, with whom
too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a free Constitution. They
will cast their eyes on the other and more permanent
army: I mean the municipal. That corps, they well
know, does actually elect its own officers. They may
not be able to discern the grounds of distinction on
which they are not to elect a Marquis de La Fayette (or what is his new name? ) of their own. If
this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the
rights of men, why not of theirs?
They see elective
justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates,
elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective
commanders of the Parisian army. Why should
they alone be excluded? Are the brave troops of
France the only men in that nation who are not the
fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications
necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid
by the state, and do they therefore lose the rights of
men? They are a part of that nation themselves,
and contribute to that pay. And is not the king, is
not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect
the National Assembly, likewise paid? Instead of
seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving
a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary
is given for the exercise of those rights. All your
resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all
the works of your doctors in religion and politics,
have industriously been put into their hands; and. you expect that they will apply to their own case
just as much of your doctrines and examples as suits
your pleasure.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 527
Everything depends upon the army in suchia. government as yours; for y oullav. ha
in youi lay, al; nte instincts which support government.
Therefore' t~he moment any difference arises between
your National Assembly and any part of the nation,
you must have recourse to force. Nothing else is left
to you, - or rather, you have left nothing else to yourselves. You see, by the report of your war minister,. that the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with a view of internal coercion. * You
must rule by an army; and you have infused into
that army by which you rule, as well as into the
whole body of the nation, principles which after a
time must disable you in the use you resolve to make
of it. The king is to call out troops to act against
his people, when the world has been told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on citizens. The colonies assert to themselves an independent constitution and a free trade. They must be constrained by troops. In what chapter of your code of the rights of men are they able
to read that it is a part of the rights of men to
have their commerce monopolized and restrained for
the benefit of others? As the colonists rise on you,
the negroes rise on them. Troops again, -- massacre,
torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!
These are the fruits of metaphysic declarations wantonly made and shamefully retracted! It was but
the other day that the farmers of land in one of your
provinces refused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord
of the soil. In consequence of this, you decree that
* Courrier. Fran9ois, 30 July, 1790. Assemblede Nationale, Numero 210.
industriously destroyed all the opinions and prejudices, and, as far as
? ? ? ? 528 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the country-people shall pay all rents and dues, ex
cept those which as grievances you have abolished;
and if they refuse, then you order the king to march
troops against them. You lay down metaphysic
propositions which infer universal consequences, and
then you attempt to limit logic by despotism. The
leaders of the present system tell them of their rights,
as men, to take fortresses, to murder guards, to seize
on kings without the least appearance of authority
even from the Assembly, whilst, as the sovereign legislative body, that Assembly was sitting in the name of the nation; and yet these leaders presume to order out the troops which have acted in these very disorders, to coerce those who shall judge on the
principles and follow the examples which have been
guarantied by their own approbation.
The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject
all feodality as the barbarism of tyranny; and they
tell them afterwards how much of that barbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience. As they are prodigal of light with regard to grievances, so the
people find them sparing in the extreme with regard
to redress. They know that not only certain quitrents and personal duties, which you have permitted them to redeem, (but have furnished no money for
the redemption,) are as nothing to those burdens for
which you have made no provision at all; tjley know
that almost the whole system of landed property in
its origin is feudal, -that it is the distribution of
the possessions of the original proprietors made by a
barbarous conqueror to his barbarous instruments,and that the most grievous effects of the conquest are the land-rents of every kind, as without question
they are.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 529
The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of these ancient proprietors, Romans or Gauls.
But if they fail, in any degree, in the titles which
they make on the principles of antiquaries and lawyers, they retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There they find that men are equal; and the
earth, the kind and equal mother of all, ought not to
be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury of ally
men, who by nature are no better than themselves,
and who, if they do not labor for their bread, are
worse. They find, that, by the laws of Nature, the
occupant and subduer of the soil is the true proprietor,-that there is no prescription against Nature, -- and that the agreements (where any there are) which
have been made with the landlords during the time
of slavery are only the effect of duresse and force,and that, when the people reentered into the rights of men, those agreements were made as void as
everything else which had been settled under the
prevalence of the old feudal and aristocratic tyranny.
They will tell you that they see no difference between
an idler with a hat and a national cockade and an
idler in a cowl or in a rochet. If you ground the
title to rents on succession and prescription, they tell
you from the speech of M. Camus, published by the
National Assembly for their information, that things
ill begun cannot avail themselves of prescription, --
that the title of these lords was vicious in its origin,and that force is at least as bad as fraud. As to the title by succession, they will tell you that the succession of those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedigree of property, and not rotten parchments and
silly substitutions, - that the lords have enjoyed their
usurpation too long, -- and that, if they allow to these
VOL. III. 34
? ? ? ? 53(0 REFLECTIONS ON THE
lay monks any charitable pension, they ought to be
thankful to the bounty of the true proprietor, who is
so generous towards a false claimant to his goods.
When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistie reason on which you have set your image atnd
superscription, you cry it down as base money, and
tell them you will pay for the future with French
guards and dragoons and hussars. You hold up, to
chastise them, the second-hand authority of a king,
who is only the instrument of destroying, without
any power of protecting either the people or his own
person. Through him, it seems, you will make yourselves obeyed. They answer,-" You have taught us
that there are no gentlemen; and which of your principles teach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected? We know, without your teaching, that lands were given for the support of feudal dignities, feudal titles,
and feudal offices. When you took down the cause as
a grievance, why should the more grievous effect remain? As there are now no hereditary honors and
no distinguished families, why are we taxed to maintain what you tell us ought hot to exist? You have
sent down our old aristocratic landlords in no other
character and with no other title but that of exactors
under your authority. Have you endeavored to make
these your rent-gatherers respectable to us? No. You
have sent them to us with their arms reversed, their
shields broken, their impresses defaced, -and so displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged things, that we no longer know them. They are strangers to us. They do not even go by
the names of our ancient lords. Physically they may
be the same men, - though we are not quite sure of
that, on your new philosophic doctrines of personal
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 531
identity. In all other respects they are totally
changed. We do not see why we have not as good a
right to refuse them their rents as you have to abrogate all their honors, titles, and distinctions. This
we have never commissioned you to do; and it is
one instance among many, indeed, of your assumption of undelegated power. We see the burghers of
Paris, through their clubs, their mobs, and their national guards, directing you at their pleasure, and
giving that as law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as law to us. Through you, these
burghers dispose of the lives and fortunes of us all.
Why should not you attend as much to the desires
of the laborious husbandman with regard to our rent,
by which we are affected in the most serious manner,
as you do to the demands of these insolent burghers
relative to distinctions and titles of honor, by which
neither they nor we are affected at all? But we find
you pay more regard to their fancies than to our necessities. Is it among the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals? Before this measure of yours we might have thought we were not perfectly equal; we
might have entertained some old, habitual, tunmeaning prepossession in favor of those landlords; but
we cannot conceive with what other view than that
of destroying all respect to them you could have
made the law that degrades them. You have forbidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect; and now you send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission to fear and force
which you did not suffer us to yield to the mild authority of opinion. "
The ground of some of these arguments is horrid
and ridiculous to all rational ears; but to the politi
? ? ? ? 532 REFLECTIONS ON THE
cians of metaphysics, who have opened schools for
sophistry, and made establishments for anarchy, it is
solid and conclusive. It is obvious, that, on a mere
consideration of the right, the leaders in the Assembly would not in the least have scrupled to abrogate the rents along with the titles and family ensigns.
It would be only to follow up the principle of their
reasonings, and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they had newly possessed themselves of a great body of landed property by confiscation. They
had this commodity at market; and the market would
have been wholly destroyed, if they were to permit
the husbandmen to riot in the speculations with
which they so freely intoxicated themselves. The
only security which property enjoys in any one of its
descriptions is from the interests of their rapacity
with regard to. some other. They have left nothing
but their own arbitrary pleasure to determine what
property is to be protected and what subverted.
Neither have they left any principle by which any of
their municipalities can be bound to obedience, -- or
even conscientiously obliged not to separate from the
whole, to become independent, or to connect itself with
some other state. The people of Lyons, it seems, have
refused lately to pay taxes. Why should they not?
What lawful authority is there left to exact them?
The king imposed some of them. The old States,
methodized by orders, settled the more ancient.
They may say to the Assembly,-'" Who are you,
that are not our kings, nor the States we have elected,
nor sit on the principles on which we have elected
you? And who are we, that, when we see the gabelles which you have ordered to be paid wholly
shaken off, when we see the act of disobedience after
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 533
wards ratified by yourselves, who are we, that we are
not to judge what taxes we ought or ought not to
pay, and are not to avail ourselves of the same powers the validity of which you have approved in others? " To this the answer is, " We will send troops. " The last reason of kings is always the first with your
Assembly. This military aid may serve for a time,
whilst the impression of the increase of pay remains,
and the vanity of being umpires in all disputes is flattered. But this weapon will snap short, unfaithful
to the hand that employs it. The Assembly keep a
school, where, systematically, and with unremitting
perseverance, they teach principles and form regulations destructive to all spirit of subordination, civil
and military, - and then they expect that they shall
hold in obedience an anarchic people by an anarchic
army.
The municipal army, which, according to their
new policy, is to balance this national army, if considered in itself only, is of a constitution much more
simple, and in every respect less exceptionable. It
is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the
crown or the kingdom, armed and trained and officered at the pleasure of the districts to which the
corps severally belong; and the personal service of
the individuals who compose, or the fine in lieu of
personal service, are directed by the same authority. *
Nothing is more uniform. If, however, considered
in any relation to the crown, to the National Assem*I see by M. Necker's account, that the national guards of Paris
have received, over and above the money levied within their own city,
about 145,0001. sterling out of the public treasure. Whether this be
an actual payment for the nine months of their existence, or an estimate of their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is of no
great importance, as certainly they may take whatever they please.
? ? ? ? 534 REFLECTIONS ON THE
bly, to the public tribunals, or to the other army, or
considered in a view to any coherence or connection
between its parts, it seems a monster, and can hardly
fail to terminate its perplexed movements in some
great national calamity. It is a worse preservative
of a general constitution than the systasis of Crete,
or the confederation of Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which has yet been imagined, in the
necessities produced by an ill-constructed system of
government.
Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of the supreme power, the executive, the judicature, the military, and on the reciprocal relation of
all these establishments, I shall say something of the
ability showed by your legislators with regard to the
revenue.
In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still fewer traces appear of political judgment or
financial resource. When the States met, it seemed
to be the great object to improve the system of revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of oppression and vexation, and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great were the expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by this
grand arrangement that France was to stand or fall;
and this became, in my opinion very properly, the
test by which the skill and patriotism of those who
ruled in that Assembly would be tried. The revenue
of the state is the state. In effect, all depends upon
it, whether for support or for reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly depends upon the
quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted
in it. As all great qualities of the mind which op
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 53fr
erate In public, and are not merely suffering and passive, require force for their display, I had almost said
for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which is
the spring of all power, becomes in its administration
the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things, and conversant about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow under confinement, and in circumstances straitened, narrow, and sordid. Through the
revenue alone the body politic can act in its true genius and character; and therefore it will display just
as much of its collective virtue, and as much of that
virtue which may characterize those who move it,
and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as
it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not
only magnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence,
and fortitude, and providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts derive their food, and the
growth of their organs, but continence, and self
denial, and labor, and vigilance, and frugality, and
whatever else there is in which the mind shows itself
above the appetite, are nowhere more in their proper
element than in the provision and distribution of the
public wealth. It is therefore not without reason
that the science of speculative and practical finance,
which must take to its aid so many auxiliary branches
of knowledge, stands high in the estimation not only
of the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best men;
and as this science has grown with the progress of its
object, the prosperity and improvement of nations
has generally increased with the increase of their
revenues; and they will both continue to grow and
flourish as long as the balance between what is left
? ? ? ? 536 REFLECTIONS OP THE
to strengthen the efforts of individuals and what is
collected for the common efforts of the state bear to
each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept
in a close correspondence and communication. And
perhaps it may -be owing to the greatness of revenues, and to the urgency of state necessities, that old abuses in the constitution of finances are discovered, and their true nature and rational theory comes to be more perfectly understood; insomuch that a
smaller revenue might have been more distressing
in one period than a far greater is found to be in
another, the proportionate wealth even remaining the
same. Ir this state of things, the French Assembly
found something in their revenues to preserve, to
secure, and wisely to administer, as well as to abrogate and alter. Though their proud assumption might justify the severest tests, yet, in trying their
abilities on their financial proceedings, I would only
consider what is the plain, obvious duty of a common
finance minister, and try them upon that, and not
upon models of ideal perfection.
The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an
ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and
equality; to employ it economically; and when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure
its foundations in that instance, and forever, by the
clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds. On these heads we may take a short and distinct view
of the merits and abilities of those in the National
Assembly who have taken to themselves the raanagement of this arduous concern.
Far from any increase of revenue in their hands,
I find, by a report of M. Vernier, from the Committee
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 537
of Finances, of the second of August last, that the
amount of the national revenue, as compared with
its produce before the Revolution, was diminished by
the sum of two hundred millions, or eight millions
sterling, of the annual income, -- considerably more
than one third of the whole.
If this be the result of great ability, never surely
was ability displayed in a more distinguished manner or with so powerful an effect. No common folly,
no vulgar incapacity, no ordinary official negligence,
even no official crime, no corruption, no peculation,
hardly any direct hostility, which we have seen in the
modern world, could in so short a time have made so
complete an overthrow of the finances, and, with them,
of the strength of a great kingdom. - Cedo qui vestram rempublicam tantam amisistis tam cito?
The sophisters and declaimers, as soon as the Assembly met, began with decrying the ancient constitution of the revenue in many of its most essential branches, such as the public monopoly of salt. They
charged it, as truly as unwisely, with being ill-contrived, oppressive, and partial. This representation
they were not satisfied to make use of in speeches
preliminary to some plan of reform; they declared
it in a solemn resolution or public sentence, as it
were judicially passed upon it; and this they dispersed throughout the nation. At the time they
passed the decree, with the same gravity they ordered the same absurd, oppressive, and partial tax to
be paid, until they could find a revenue to replace
it. The consequence was inevitable. The provinces
which had been always exempted from this salt monopoly, some of whom were charged with other contributions, perhaps equivalent, were totally disin
? ? ? ? 3 8 REFLECTIONS ON THE
dined to bear any part of the burden, which by all
equal distribution was to redeem the others. As to
the Assembly, occupied as it was with the declaration
and violation of the rights of men, and with their
arrangements for general confusion, it had neither
leisure nor capacity to contrive, nor authority to enforce, any plan of any kind relative to the replacing the tax, or equalizing it, or compensating the provinces, or for conducting their minds to any
scheme of accommodation with the other districts
which were to be relieved. The people of the salt
provinces, impatient under taxes damned by the authority which had directed their payment, very soon
found their patience exhausted. They thought themselves as skilful in demolishing as the Assembly could
be. They relieved themselves by throwing off the
whole burden. Animated by this example, each district, or part of a district, judging of its own grievance by its own feeling, and of its remedy by its own opinion, did as it pleased with other taxes.
We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriving equal impositions, proportioned
to the means of the citizens, and the least likely to
lean heavy on the active capital employed in the generation of that private wealth from whence the public
fortune must be derived. By suffering the several districts, and several of the individuals in each district,
to judge of what part of the old revenue they might
withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a
new inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments were regulated by dispositions.
The parts of the kingdom which were the most submissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate to the
commonwealth, bore the whole burden of the state.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 539
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a
feeble government. To fill up all the deficiencies in
the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of every
kind which were to be expected, what remained to
a state without authority? The National Assembly
called for a voluntary benevolence, -- for a fourth part
of the income of all the citizens, to be estimated on
the honor of those who were to pay. They obtained
something more than could be rationally calculated,
but what was far indeed from answerable to their
real necessities, and much less to their fond expectations.
