No More Learning

phblets from the pen of Condorcet prepared the people
for liberty; the 10th of August, the republican decrees, the battle of Valmy, the retreat of the Prussians, the victory of Jemappes, all spoke in favor of France: all was rapidly destroyed by the revolutionary power. Without doubt, good intentions made
the majority of the Assembly adopt it; they would
plant the tree of liberty in a foreign soil, under the
shade of a people already free. To the eyes of the
people of Belgium it seemed but the mask of a new
foreign tyranny. This opinion was erroneous; I will
suppose it so for a moment; but still this opinion of
Belgium deserved to be considered. In general, we
have always considered our own opinions and our
own intentions rather than the people whose cause
we defend. We have given those people a will: that
is to say, we have more than ever alienated them from
liberty.
How could the Belgic people believe themselves
free, since we exercise for them, and over them, the
rights of sovereignty, - when, without consulting
them, we suppress, all in a mass, their ancient usages, their abuses, their prejudices, those classes of society which without doubt are contrary to the spirit of liberty, but the utility of whose destruction was
not as yet proved to them? How could they believe
themselves free and sovereign, when we made them
take such an oath as we thought fit, as a test to give
them the right of voting? How could they believe
themselves free, when openly despising their religious worship, which religious worship that superstitious people valued beyond their liberty, beyond even their life; when we proscribed their priests; when
we banished them from their assemblies, where. theS
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. 97
were in the practice of seeing them govern; when we
seized their revenues, their domains, and riches, to
the profit of the nation; when we carried to the very
censer those hands which they regarded as profane?
Doubtless these operations were founded on principles; but those principles ought to have had the consent of the Belgians, before they were carried into practice; otherwise they necessarily became our most
cruel enemies.
Arrived ourselves at the last bounds of liberty and
equality, trampling under our feet all human superstitions, (after, however, a four years' war with them,)
we attempt all at once to raise to the same eminence
men, strangers even to the first elementary principles
of liberty, and plunged for fifteen hundred years in
ignorance and superstition; we wished to force men
to see, when a thick cataract covered their eyes, even
before we had removed that cataract; we would force
men to see, whose dulness of character had raised a
mist before their eyes, and before that character was
altered. *
* It may not be amiss, once for all, to remark on the style of all
the philosophical politicians of France. Without any distinction in
their several sects and parties, they agree in treating all nations who
will not conform their government, laws, manners, and religion to
the new French fashion, as an herd of slaves. They consider the content with which men live under those governments as stupidity, andt
all attachment to religion as the effect of the grossest ignorance.
The people of the Netherlands, by their Constitution, are as muchl
entitled to be called free as any nation upon earth. The Austrian
government ( until some wild attempts the Emperor Joseph made on
the French principle, but which have been since abandoned by the
court of Vienna) has been remarkably mild. No people were more
at their ease than the Flemish subjects, particularly the lower classes.
It is curious to hear this great oculist talk of couching the cataract
by which the Netherlands were blinded, and hindered from seeing in
VOL. V. 7
? ? ? ? 98 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS.
Do you believe that the doctrine which now prevails in France would have found many partisans
among us in 1789? No: a revolution in ideas and
in prejudices is not made with that rapidity; it
moves gradually; it does not escalade.
Philosophy does not inspire by violence, nor by
seduction; nor is it the sword that begets love of
li iberty.
Joseph the Second also borrowed the language of
philosophy, when he wished to suppress the monks
in Belgium, and to seize upon their revenues. There
was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering
the hideous countenance of a greedy despot; and the
people ran to arms. Nothing better than another
kind of despotism has been seen in the revolutionary
power.
We have seen in the commissioners of the National Convention nothing but proconsuls working
the mine of Belgium for the profit of the French
nation, seeking to conquer it for the sovereign of
Paris, - either to aggrandize his empire, or to share
the burdens of the debts, and furnish a rich prize
to the robbers who domineered in France.
Do you believe the Belgians have ever been the
its proper colors the beautiful vision of the French republic, which
he has himself painted with so masterly an hand. That people must
needs be dull, blind, and brutalized by fifteen hundred years of superstition, (the time elapsed since the introduction of Christianity amongst them,) who could prefer their former state to the present
state of IFralce! The reader will remark, that the only difference
between Brissot and his adversaries is in the nmode of bringing other
nations into the pale of the French republic. They would abolish
the order and classes of society, and all religion, at a stroke: Brissot
would have just the same thing done, but with more address and
management. - TRANSLATOR.
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. 99
dupes of those well-rounded periods which they vended in the pulpit in order to familiarize them to the
idea of an union with France? Do you believe they
were ever imposed upon by those votes and resolutions, made by what is called acclamation, for their
union, of which corruption paid one part,* and fear
forced the remainder? Who, at this time of day,
is unacquainted with the springs and wires of their
miserable puppet-show? Who does not know the farces
of primary assemblies, composed of a president, of a
secretary, and of some assistants, whose day's work was
paid for? No: it is not by means which belong
only to thieves and despots that the foundations
of liberty can be laid in an enslaved country. It
is not by those means, that a new-born republic, a
people who know not yet the elements of republican
governments, call be united to us. Even slaves do
not suffer themselves to be seduced by such artifices;
and if they have not the strength to resist, they have
at least the sense to know how to appreciate the value of such an attempt.
If we would attach the Belgians to us, we must at
least enlighten their minds by good writings; we must
send to them missionaries, and not despotic commissioners. t We ought to give them time to see, -to
perceive by themselves the advantages of liberty, the
unhappy effects of superstition, the fatal spirit of
priesthood. And whilst we waited for this moral
* See the correspondence of Dumouriez, especially the letter of
the 12th of March.
t They have not as yet proceeded farther with regard to the English dominions. Here we only see as yet the good writings of Paine, and of his learned associates, and the labors of the missionary clubs,
and other zealous instructors. - TRANSLATOR.
? ? ? ? 100 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS.
revolution, we should have accepted the offers which
they incessantly repeated to join to the French army
an army of fifty thousand men, to entertain them at
their own expense, and to advance to France the
specie of which she stood in need.
But have we ever seen those fifty thousand soldiers who were to join our army as soon as the standard of liberty should be displayed in Belgium?
IHave we ever seen those treasures which they were
to count into our hands? Can we either accuse the
sterility of their country, or the penury of their treasure, or the coldness of their love for liberty? No! despotism and anarchy, these are the benefits which
we have transplanted into their soil. We have acted,
we have spoken, like masters; and from that time
we have found the Flemings nothing but jugglers,
who made the grimace of liberty for money, or
slaves, who in their hearts cursed their new tyrants.
Our commissioners address them in this sort: " You
have nobles and priests among you: drive them out
without delay, or we will neither be your brethren
nor your patrons. " They answered: " Give us but
time; only leave to us the care of reforming these
institutions. " Our answer to them was: " No! it
must be at the moment, it must be on the spot;
or we will treat you as enemies, we will abandon
you to the resentment of the Austrians. "
What could the disarmed Belgians object to all
this, surrounded as they were by seventy thousand
men? They had only to hold their tongues, and to
bow down their heads before their masters. They
did hold their tongues, and their silence is received
as a sincere and free assent.
Have not the strangest artifices been adopted to
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. 101
prevent that people from retreating, and to constrain
them to an union? It was foreseen, that, as long
as they were unable to effect an union, the States
would preserve the supreme authority amongst themselves. Under pretence, therefore, of relieving the people, and of exercising the sovereignty in their
right, at one stroke they abolished all the duties
and taxes, they shut up all the treasuries. From
that time no more receipts, no more public money,
no more means of paying the salaries of any man
in office appointed by the States. Thus was anarchy
organized amongst the people, that they might be
compelled to throw themselves into our arms. It
became necessary for those who administered their
affairs, under the penalty of being exposed to sedition, and in order to avoid their throats being cut,
to have recourse to the treasury of France. What
did they find in this treasury? ASSIGNATS.
These assignats were advanced at par to Belgium.
By this means, on the one hand, they naturalized
this currency in that country, and on the other,
they expected to make a good pecuniary transaction.
Thus it is that covetousness cut its throat with its
own hands. The Belgians have seen in this forced
introduction of assignats nothing but a double robbery;
and they have only the more violently hated the
union with France.
Recollect the solicitude of the Belgians on that
subject. With what earnestness did they conjure
you to take off a retroactive effect from these assignats, and to prevent them from being applied to the payment of debts that were contracted anterior
to the union!
Did not this language energetically enough signify
? ? ? ? 102 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS.
that they looked upon the assignats as a leprosy, and
the union as a deadly contagion?
And yet what regard was paid to so just a demand? It was buried in the Committee of Finance.
That committee wanted to make anarchy the means
of an union. They only busied themselves in making
the Belgic Provinces subservient to their finances.
Cambon said loftily before the Belgians themselves:
The Belgian war costs us hundreds of millions. Their
ordinary revenues, and even some extraordinary taxes, will not answer to our reimbursements; and yet
we have occasion for them. The mortgage of our
assignats draws near its end. What must be done?
Sell the Church property of Brabant. There is a
mortgage of two thousand millions (eighty millions
sterling). How shall we get possession of them?
By an immediate union. Instantly they decreed this
union. Men's minds were not disposed to it. What
does it signify? Let us make them vote by means
of money. Without delay, therefore, they secretly
order the Minister of Foreign Affairs to dispose of
four or five hundred thousand livres (20,0001. sterling) to make the vagabonds of Brussels drunk, and to
buy proselytes to the union in all the States. But
even these means, it was said, will obtain but a
weak minority in our favor. What does that signify? Revolutions, said they, are made only by minorities. It is the minority which has made the Revolution of France; it is a minority which has made the people triumph.
The Belgic Provinces were not sufficient to satisfy
the voracious cravings of this financial system. Cambon wanted to unite everything, that he might sell
everything. Thus he forced the union of Savoy. In
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. 103
the war with Holland, he saw nothing but gold to
seize on, and assignats to sell at par. * "Do not
let us dissemble," said he one day to the Committee of General Defence, in presence even of the patriot deputies of Holland, "you have no ecclesiastical goods to offer us for our indemnity. IT IS A REVOLUTION IN THEIR COUNTERS AND
IRON CHESTS t that must be made amongst the
DUTCH. " The word was said, and the bankers Abema and Van Staphorst understood it.
Do you think that that word has not been worth
an army to the Stadtholder? that it has not cooled
the ardor of the Dutch patriots? that it has not commanded the vigorous defence of Williamstadt?
Do you believe that the patriots of Amsterdam,
when they read the preparatory decree which gave
France an execution on their goods, -- do you believe that those patriots would not have liked better
to have remained under the government of the Stadtholder, who took from them no more than a fixed
portion of their property, than to pass under that of
a revolutionary power, which would make a complete
revolution in their bureaus and strong-boxes, and
reduce them to wretchedness and rags? t Robbery
* The same thing will happen in Savoy. The persecution of the
clergy has soured people's minds. The commissaries represent them
to us as good Frenchmen. I put them to the proof. Where are the
legions? How! thirty thousand Savoyards, -are they not armed to
defend, in concert with us, their liberty? - BRISSOT.
t Portefeuille is the word in the original. It signifies all movable property which may be represented in bonds, notes, bills, stocks,
or any sort of public or private securities. I do not know of a single
word in English that answers it: I have therefore substituted that of
Iron Chests, as coming nearest to the idea. - TRANSLATOR.
t In the original les redauie iz la sansculotterie.
? ? ? ? 104 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS.
and anarchy, instead of encouraging, will always stifle revolutions.
" But why," they object to me, " have not you and
your friends chosen to expose these measures in the
rostrum of the National Convention? Why have
you not opposed yourself to all these fatal projects
of union? "
There are two answers to make here, - one general, one particular.
You complain of the silence of honest men! You
quite forget, then, honest men are the objects of
your suspicion. Suspicion, if it does not stain the
soul of a courageous man, at least arrests his
thoughts in their passage to his lips. The suspicions of a good citizen freeze those men whom the calumny of the wicked could not stop in their progress.
You complain of their'silence! You forget, then,
that you have often established an insulting equality
between them and men covered with crimes and
made up of ignominy.
You forget, then, that you have twenty times left
them covered with opprobrium by your galleries.
You forget, then, that you have not thought yourself sufficiently powerful to impose silence upon these galleries.
What ought a wise man to do in the midst of
these circumstances? He is silent. He waits the
moment when the passions give way; he waits till
reason shall preside, and till the multitude shall listen to her voice.
What has been the tactic displayed during all
these unions? Cambon, incapable of political calculation, boasting his ignorance in the diplomatic, flat
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. L05
cering the ignorant multitude, lending his name and
popularity to the anarchists, seconded by their vociferations, denounced incessantly, as counter-revolutionists, those intelligent persons who were desirous at least of having things discussed. To oppose the acts
of union appeared to Cambon an overt act of treason. The wish so much as to reflect and to deliberate was in his eyes a great crime. He calumniated
our intentions. The voice of every deputy, especially
my voice, would infallibly have been stifled. There
were spies on the very monosyllables that escaped
our lips.
? ? ? ? A
LETTER
TO
WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. ,'C'CASIONED BY
THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN A NEWSPAPER OF THE SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
BY THE **** OF *******
IN THE DEBATE
CONCERNING LORD FITZWILLIAM.
I 795.
? ? ? ? LETTER.
BEACONSFIELD, May 26, 1795.
M Y DEAR SIR, - I have been told of the voluntary which, for the entertainment of the
House of Lords, has been lately played by his Grace
the **** of ******* a great deal at my expense, and
a little at his own. I confess I should have liked the
composition rather better, if it had been quite new.
But every man has his taste, and his Grace is an admirer of ancient music.
There may be sometimes too much even of a good
thing. A toast is good, and a bumper is not bad:
but the best toasts may be so often repeated as to
disgust the palate, and ceaseless rounds of bumpers
may nauseate and overload the stomach. The ears
of the most steady-voting politicians may at last be
stunned with " three times three. " I am sure I have
been very grateful for the flattering remembrance
made of me in the toasts of the Revolution Society,
and of other clubs formed on the same laudable plan.
After giving the brimming honors to Citizen Thomas
Paine and to Citizen Dr. Priestley, the gentlemen of
these clubs seldom failed to bring me forth in my
turn, and to drink, " Mr. Burke, and thanks to him
for the discussion he has provoked. "
I found myself elevated with this honor; for, evenl! yv the collision of resistance, to be the means of
? ? ? ? 110 LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.
striking out sparkles of truth, if not merit, is at least
felicity.
Here I might have rested. But when I found that
the great advocate, Mr. Erskine, condescended to resort to these bumper toasts, as the pure and exuberant fountains of politics and of rhetoric, (as I hear he did, in three or four speeches made in defence of certain worthy citizens,) I was rather let down a little.
Though still somewhat proud of myself, I was not
quite so proud of my voucher. Though he is no
idolater of fame, in some way or other Mr. Erskine
will always do himself honor. Methinks, however,
in following the precedents of these toasts, he seemed
to do more credit to his diligence as a special pleader than to his invention as an orator. To those who
did not know the abundance of his resources, both of
genlius and erudition, there was something in it that
indicated the want of a good assortment, with regard
to richness and variety, in the magazine of topics and
commonplaces which I suppose he keeps by him, in
imitation of Cicero and other renowned declaimers of
antiquity.
Mr. Erskine supplied something, I allow, from the
stores of his imagination, in metamorphosing the jovial toasts of clubs into solemn special arguments at
the bar. So far the thing showed talent: however, I
must still prefer the bar of the tavern to the other
bar. The toasts at the first hand were better than
the arguments at the second. Even when the toasts
began to grow old as sarcasms, they were washed
down with still older pricked election Port; then the
acid of the wine made some amends for the want of
anything piquant in the wit. But when his Grace
gave them a second transformation, and brought out
? ? ? ? LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. 111
the vapid stuff which had wearied the clubs and disgusted the courts, the drug made up of the bottoms of rejected bottles, all smelling so wofully of the cork
and of the cask, and of everything except the honest old lamp, and when that sad draught had been farther infected with the jail pollution of the Old
Bailey, and was dashed and brewed and ineffectually
stummed again into a senatorial exordium in the
House of Lords, I found all the high flavor and
mantling of my honors tasteless, flat, and stale.
Unluckily, the new tax on wine is felt even in the
greatest fortunes, and his Grace submits to take up
with the heel-taps of Mr. Erskine.
I have had the ill or good fortune to provoke two
great men of this age to the publication of their opinions: I mean Citizen Thomas Paine, and his Grace the **** of *******. I am not so great a leveller
as to put these two great men on a par, either in
the state, or the republic of letters; but " the field
of glory is a field for all. " It is a large one, indeed;
and we all may run, God knows where, in chase of
glory, over the boundless expanse of that wild heath
whose horizon always flies before us. I assure his
Grace, (if he will yet give me leave to call him so,)
whatever may be said on the authority of the clubs
or of the bar, that Citizen Paine (who, they will have
it, hunts with me in couples, and who only moves as
I drag him along) has a sufficient activity in his own
native benevolence to dispose and enable him to take
the lead for himself. He is ready to blaspheme his
God, to insult his king, and to libel the Constitution
of his country, without any provocation from me or
any encouragement from his Grace. I assure him
that I shall not be guilty of the injustice of charginlg
? ? ? ? 112 LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.
Mr. Paine's next work against religion and human
society upon his Grace's excellent speech in the
House of Lords. I farther assure this noble Duke
that I neither encouraged nor provoked that worthy
citizen to seek for plenty, liberty, safety, justice, or
lenity, in the famine, in the prisons, in the decrees
of Convention, in the revolutionary tribunal, and in
the guillotine of Paris, rather than quietly to take
up with what he could find in the glutted markets,
the unbarricadoed streets, the drowsy Old Bailey
judges, or, at worst, the airy, wholesome pillory of
Old England. The choice of country was his own
taste. The writings were the effects of his own zeal.
In spite of his friend Dr. Priestley, he was a free
agent. I admit, indeed, that my praises of the British government, loaded with all its incumbrance, clogged with its peers and its beef, its parsons and
its pudding, its commons and its beer, and its dull
slavish liberty of going about just as one pleases, had
something to provoke a jockey of Norfolk,* who was
inspired with the resolute ambition of becoming a citizen of France, to do something which might render him worthy of naturalization in that grand asylum
of persecuted merit, something which should entitle
him to a place in the senate of the adoptive country
of all the gallant, generous, and humane. This, I
say, was possible. But the truth is, (with great deference to his Grace I say it,) Citizen Paine acted without any provocation at all; he acted solely from
the native impulses of his own excellent heart.
His Grace, like an able orator, as he is, begins with
giving me a great deal of praise for talents which I
do not possess. He does this to entitle himself, on the
* Mr. Paine is a Norfolk man, from Thetford.
? ? ? ? LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. 113
credit of this gratuitous kindness, to exaggerate my
abuse of the parts which his bounty, and not that of
Nature, has bestowed upon me. In this, too, he has
condescended to copy Mr. Erskine. These priests (I
hope they will excuse me, I mean priests of the Rights
of Man) begin by crowning me with their flowers and
their fillets, and bedewing me with their odors, as a
preface to their knocking me on the head with their
consecrated axes. I have injured, say they, the Constitution; and I have abandoned the Whig party and
the Whig principles that I professed. I do not mean,
my dear Sir, to defend myself against his Grace. I
have not much interest in what the world shall think
or say of me; as little has the world an interest
in what I shall think or say of any one in it; and
I wish that his Grace had suffered an unhappy
man to enjoy, in his retreat, the melancholy privileges of obscurity and sorrow. At any rate, I have
spoken and I have written on the subject. If I
have written or spoken so poorly as to be quite forgot, a fresh apology will not make a more lasting
impression. " I must let the tree lie as it falls. "
Perhaps I must take some shame to myself. I confess that I have acted on my own principles of government, and not on those of his Grace, which are, I dare say, profound and wise, but which I do not
pretend to understand. As to the party to which he
alludes, and which has long taken its leave of me, I
believe the principles of the book which he condemns
are very conformable to the opinions of many of the
most considerable and most grave in that description of politicians. A few, indeed, who, I admit, are
equally respectable in all points, differ from me, and
talk his Grace's language. I am too feeble to conVOL. V. 8
? ? ? ? 114 LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.
tend with them. They have the field to themselves.
There are others, very young and very ingenious persons, who form, probably, the largest part of what his Grace, I believe, is pleased to consider as that
party. Some of them were not born into the world,
and all of them were children, when I entered into
that connection. I give due credit to the censorial
brow, to the broad phylacteries, and to the imposing
gravity of those magisterial rabbins and doctors in
the cabala of political science. I admit that "' wisdom
is as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like
honorable old age. " But, at a time when liberty is
a good deal talked of, perhaps I might be excused,
if I caught something of the general indocility. It
might not be surprising, if I lengthened my chain a
link or two, and, in an age of relaxed discipline, gave
a trifling indulgence to my own notions. If that
could be allowed, perhaps I might sometimes. (by
accident, and without an unpardonable crime) trust
as much to my own very careful and very laborious,
though perhaps somewhat purblind disquisitions, as
to their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authority. But
the modern liberty is a precious thing. It must not
be profaned by too vulgar an use. It belongs only to
the chosen few, who are born to the hereditary representation of the whole democracy, and who leave nothing at all, no, not the offal, to us poor outcasts
of the plebeian race.
Amongst those gentlemen who came to authority
as soon or sooner than they came of age I do not
mean to include his Grace. With all those native
titles to empire over our minds which distinguish the
others, he has a large share of experience. He certainly ought to understand the British Constitution
? ? ? ? LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. 115
better than I do. He has studied it in the fulldamental part. For one election I have seen, he has
been concerned in twenty. Nobody is less of a visionary theorist; nobody has drawn his speculations more from practice. No peer has condescended to
superintend with more vigilance the declining franchises of the poor commons. "With thrice great UHermes he has outwatched the Bear. " Often have
his candles been burned to the snuff, and glimmered
and stunk in the sockets, whilst he grew pale at
his constitutional studies; long, sleepless nights has
lhe wasted, long, laborious, shiftless journeys has he
made, and great sums has he expended, in order to
secure the purity, the independence, and the sobriety
of elections, and to give a check, if possible, to the
ruinous charges that go nearly to the destruction of
the right of election itself.
Amidst these his labors, his Grace will be pleased
to forgive me, if my zeal, less enlightened, to be sure,
than his by midnight lamps and studies, has presumed to talk too favorably of this Constitution, and
even to say something sounding like approbation of
that body which has the honor to reckon his Grace at
the head of it. Those who dislike this partiality, or,
if his Grace pleases, this flattery of mine, have a comfort at hand. I may be refuted and brought to shame by the most convincing of all refutations, a practical
refutation. Every individual peer for himself may
show that I was ridiculously wrong; the whole body
of those noble persons may refute me for the whole
corps. If they please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves than a thousand scribblers like me can be in their favor. If I were even possessed of those powers which his Grace, in order to
? ? ? ? 116 LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.
heighten my offence, is pleased to attribute to me,
there would be little difference. The eloquence of
Mr. Erskine might save Mr. ***** from the gallows,
but no eloquence could save Mr. Jackson from the
effects of his own potion.
In that unfortunate book of mine, which is put in
the Index Expurgatorius of the modern Whigs, I might
have spoken too favorably not only of those who wear
coronets, but of those who wear crowns. Kiings, however, have not only long arms, but strong ones too. A great Northern potentate, for instance, is able in
one moment, and with one bold stroke of his diplomatic pen, to efface all the volumes which I could write in a century, or which the most laborious publicists of Germany ever carried to the fair of Leipsic, as an apology for monarchs and monarchy. Whilst
I, or any other poor, puny, private sophist, was defending the Declaration of Pilnitz, his Majesty might refute me by the Treaty of Basle. Such a monarch
may destroy one republic because it had a king at its
head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by
founding another republic that has cut off the head
of its king. I defended that great potentate for associating in a grand alliance for the preservation of the old governments of Europe; but he puts me to
silence by delivering up all those governments (his
own virtually included) to the new system of France.
If he is accused before the Parisian tribunal (constituted for the trial of kings) for having polluted the soil of liberty by the tracks of his disciplined slaves,
he clears himself by surrendering the finest parts of
Germany (with a handsome cut of his own territories) to the offended majesty of the regicides of France. Can I resist this? Am I responsible for
? ? ? ? LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. 117
it, if, with a torch in his hand, and a rope about
his neck, he makes amende honorable to the sans-culotterie of the Republic one and indivisible? In that humiliating attitude, in spite of my protests, he may
supplicate pardon for his menacing proclamations,
and, as an expiation to those whom he failed to
terrify with his threats, he may abandon those whom
he had seduced by his promises. He may sacrifice
the royalists' of France, whom he had called to his
standard, as a salutary example to those who shall
adhere to their native sovereign, or shall confide in
any other who undertakes the cause of oppressed
kings and of loyal subjects.
How can I help it, if this high-minded prince will
subscribe to the invectives which the regicides have
made against all kings, and particularly against himself? How can I help it, if this royal propagandist
will preach the doctrine of the Rights of Men? Is it
my fault, if his professors of literature read lectures
on that code in all his academies, and if all the pensioned managers of the newspapers in his dominions diffuse it throughout Europe in an hundred journals?
Can it be attributed to me, if he will initiate all his
grenadiers and all his hussars in these high mysteries? Am I responsible, if he will make Le Droit de l'Ho'mnme, or La Souverainete du Peuple the favorite parole of his military orders? Now that his troops are to act with the brave legions of freedom, nho doubt he
will fit them for their fraternity. He will teach the
Prussians to think, to feel, and to act like them, and
to emulate the glories of the regiment de l'echafaud.
He will employ the illustrious Citizen Santerre, the
general of his new allies, to instruct the dull Gerimans how they shall conduct themselves towards
? ? ? ? 118 LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.
persons who, like Louis the Sixteenth, (whose cause
and person he once took into his protection,) shall
dare, without the sanction of the people, or with it,
to consider themselves as hereditary kings. Can I
arrest this great potentate in his career of glory?
Am I blamable in recommending virtue and religion
as the true foundation of all monarchies, because the
protector of the three religions of the Westphalian
arrangement, to ingratiate himself with the Republic
of Philosophy, shall abolish all the three? It is not
in my power to prevent the grand patron of the Reformed Church, if he chooses it, from annulling the Calvinistic sabbath, and establishing the decadi of
atheism in all his states. He may even renounce
and abjure his favorite mysticism in the Temple of
Reason. In these things, at least, he is truly despotic. He has now shaken hands with everything which at first had inspired him with horror. It would be
curious indeed to see (what I shall not, however,
travel so far to see) the ingenious devices and the
elegant transparencies which, on the restoration of
peace and the commencement of Prussian liberty,
are to decorate Potsdam and Charlottenburg festeygianti. What shades of his armed ancestors of the House of Brandenburg will the committee of I1lzmines raise up in the opera-house of Berlin, to dance a grand ballet in the rejoicings for this auspicious
event? Is it a grand master of the Teutonic order,
or is it the great Elector? Is it the first king of
Prussia, or the last? or is the whole long line (long,
I mean, a parte ante) to appear like Banquo's royal
procession in the tragedy of Macbeth?
How can I prevent all these arts of royal policy,
and all these displays of royal magnificence? How
? ? ? ? LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. 119
can I prevent the successor of Frederick the Great
from aspiring to a new, and, in this age, unexampled
kind of glory? Is it in my power to say that he
shall not make his confessions in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the character of the penitent and flagellant, and, grafting
monkery on philosophy, strip himself of his regal
purple, clothe his gigantic limbs in the sackcloth
and the hair-shirt, and exercise on his broad shoulders the disciplinary scourge of the holy order of the Sans-Culottes? It is not in me to hinder kings from
making new orders of religious and martial knighthood. I am not Hercules enough to uphold those orbs which the Atlases of the world are so desirous
of shifting from their weary shoulders. What can
be done against the magnanimous resolution of the
great to accomplish the degradation and the ruin
of their own character and situation?
What I say of the German princes, that I say of
all the other dignities and all the other institutions
of the Holy Roman Empire. If they have a mind to
destroy themselves, they may put their advocates to
silence and their advisers to shame. I have often
praised the Aulic Council. It is very true, I did so.
I thought it a tribunal as well formed as human wisdom could form a tribunal for coercing the great, the rich, and the powerful, -- for obliging them to
submit their necks to the imperial laws, and to those
of Nature and of nations: a tribunal well conceived
for extirpating peculation, corruption, and oppress
sion from all the parts of that vast, heterogeneous
mass, called the Germanic body. I should not be
inclined to retract these praises upon any of the ordinary lapses into which human infirmity will fall;
? ? ? ? 120 LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.
they might still stand, though some of their conclusums should taste of the prejudices of country or of faction, whether political or religious. Some degree
even of corruption should not make me think them
guilty of suicide; but if we could suppose that the
Aulic Council, not regarding duty or even common
decorum, listening neither to the secret admonitions
of conscience nor to the public voice of fame, some
of the members basely abandoning their post, and
others continuing in it only the more infamously
to betray it, should give a judgment so shameless
and so prostitute, of such monstrous and even portentous corruption, that no example in the history of human depravity, or even in the fictions of poetic imagination, could possibly match it, -- if it should be a judgment which, with cold, unfeeling cruelty, after
long deliberations, should condemn millions of innocent people to extortion, to rapine, and to blood, and should devote some of the finest countries upon earth
to ravage and desolation, - does any one think that
any servile apologies of mine, or any strutting and
bullying insolence of their own, can save them from
the ruin that must fall on all institutions of dignity
or of authority that are perverted from their purport
to the oppression of human nature in others and to
its disgrace in themselves? As the wisdom of men
makes such institutions, the folly of men destroys
them. Whatever we may pretend, there is always
more in the soundness of the materials than in the
fashion of the work. The order of a good building
is something. But if it be wholly declined from its
perpendicular, if the cement is loose and incollerent,
if the stones are scaling with every change of the
weather, and the whole toppling on our heads, what
? ? ? ?