To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which
threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis
the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders
were Roland, P6tion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet,
&c.
threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis
the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders
were Roland, P6tion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet,
&c.
Edmund Burke
TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.
69
most serious apprehensions for the common liberty
and safety.
A question will very naturally be asked, -- What
could induce Brissot to draw such a picture? He
must have been sensible it was his own. The answer is, --The inducement was the same with that which led him to partake in the perpetration of all
the crimes the calamitous effects of which he describes with the pen of a master, -- ambition. His faction, having obtained their stupendous and unnatural power by rooting out of the minds of his unhappy countrymen every principle of religion, morality, loyalty, fidelity, and honor, discovered, that, when authority came into their hands, it would be a
matter of no small difficulty for them to carry on
government on the principles by which they had
destroyed it.
The rights of men and the new principles of liberty and equality were very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of tranquillity
and order. They who were taught to find nothing
to respect in the title and in the virtues of Louis the
Sixteenth, a prince succeeding to the throne by the
fundamental laws, in the line of a succession of monarchs continued for fourteen hundred years, found nothing which could bind them to an implicit fidelity
and dutiful allegiance to Messrs. Brissot, Vergniaud,
Condorcet, Anacharsis Clootz, and Thomas Paine.
In this difficulty, they did as well as they could.
To govern the people, they must incline the people
to obey. The work was difficult, but it was necessary. They were to accomplish it by such materials
and by such instruments as they had in their hands. 'I'ley were to accomplish the purposes of order, mo
? ? ? ? v70 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
rality, and submission to the laws, from the principles
of atheism, profligacy, and sedition. Ill as the disguise became them, they began to assume the mask
of an austere and rigid virtue; they exhausted all the
stores of their eloquence (which in some of them were
not inconsiderable) in declamations against tumult
and confusion; they made daily harangues on the
blessings of order, discipline, quiet, and obedience
to authority; they even showed some sort of disposition to protect such property as had not been confiscated. They who on every occasion had discovered a sort of furious thirst of blood and a greedy appetite
for slaughter, who avowed and gloried in the murders
and massacres of the 14th of July, of the 5th and 6th
of October, and of the 10th of August, now began to
be squeamish and fastidious with regard to those of
the 2nd of September.
In their pretended scruples on the sequel of the
slaughter of the 10th of August, they imposed upon
no living creature, and they obtained not the smallest credit for humanity. They endeavored to establish a distinction, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of murder safely bottled up and sealed
for their own purposes, without endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared for their enemies.
Roland was the chief and the most accredited of
the faction. His morals had furnished little matter
of exception against him. Old, domestic, and uxorious, he led a private life sufficiently blameless. He
was therefore set up as the Cato of the republican party, which did not abound in such characters.
This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager of a newspaper, in which he promoted the in
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 71
terest of his party. He was a fatal present made by
the revolutionists to the unhappy king, as one of his
ministers under the new Constitution. Amongst his
colleagues were Clavidre and Servan. All the three
have since that time either lost their heads by the
axe of their associates in rebellion, or, to evade their
own revolutionary justice, have fallen by their own
hands.
These ministers were regarded by the king as in
a conspiracy to dethrone him. Nobody who considers the circumstances which preceded the deposition of Louis the Sixteenth, nobody who attends to the
subsequent conduct of those ministers, can hesitate
about the reality of such a conspiracy. The king
certainly had no doubt of it; he found himself
obliged to remove them; and the necessity, which
first obliged him to choose such regicide ministers
constrained him to replace them by Dumouriez the
Jacobin, and some others of little efficiency, though
of a better description.
A little before this removal, and evidently as a
part of the conspiracy, Roland put into the king's
hands, as a memorial, the most insolent, seditious,
and atrocious libel that has probably ever been
penned. This paper Roland a few days after delivered to the National Assembly,* who instantly published and dispersed it over all France; and in
order to give it the stronger operation, they declared
that he and his brother ministers had carried with
them the regret of the nation. None of the writings
which have inflamed the Jacobin spirit to a savage
fitry ever worked up a fiercer ferment through the
* Presented to the king June 13; delivered to him the preceding
o10! (iaV. - - TRANSLATOR.
? ? ? ? 72 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS
whole mass of the republicans in every part of
France.
Under the thin veil of prediction, he strongly recommends all the abominable practices which afterwards
followed. In particular, he inflamed the minds of
the populace against the respectable and conscientious clergy, who became the chief objects of the
massacre, and who were to him the chief objects of
a malignity and rancor that one could hardly think
to exist in an human heart.
We have the relics of his fanatical persecution
here. We are in a condition to judge of the merits of the persecutors and of the persecuted: I do
not say the accusers and accused; because, in all
the furious declamations of the atheistic faction
against these men, not one specific charge has been
made upon any one person of those who suffered in
their massacre or by their decree of exile.
The king had declared that he would sooner perish under their axe (he too well saw what was preparing for him) than give his sanction to the iniquitous act of proscription under which those innocent people were to be transported.
On this proscription of the clergy a principal part
of the ostensible quarrel between the king and those
ministers had turned. From the time of the authorized publication of this libel, some of the manoeuvres
long and uniformly pursued for the king's deposition
became more and more evident and declared.
The 10th of August came on, and in the manner
in which Roland had predicted: it was followed by
the same consequences. The king was deposed, after cruel massacres in the courts and the apartments
of his palace and in almost all parts of the city. In
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 73
reward of his treason to his old master, Roland was
by his new masters named Minister of the Home Department.
The massacres of the 2nd of September were begotten by the massacres of the 10th of August. They
were universally foreseen and hourly expected. During this short interval between the two murderous
scenes, the furies, male and female, cried out havoc
as loudly and as fiercely as ever. The ordinary jails
were all filled with prepared victims; and when they
overflowed, churches were turned into jails. At this
time the relentless Roland had the care of the general police;-he had for his colleague the bloody
Danton, who was Minister of Justice; the insidious
Petion was Mayor of Paris; the treacherous Manuel was Procurator of the Common Hall. The magistrates (some or all of them) were evidently the authors of this massacre. Lest the national guard
should, by their very name, be reminded of their
duty in preserving the lives of their fellow-citizens,
the Common Council of Paris, pretending that it
was in vain to think of resisting the murderers,
(although in truth neither their numbers nor their
arms were at all formidable,) obliged those guards
to draw the charges from their muskets, and took
away their bayonets. One of their journalists, and,
according to their fashion, one of their leading statesmen, Gorsas, mentions this fact in his newspaper,
which he formerly called the Galley Journal. The
title was well suited to the paper and its author.
For some felonies he had been sentenced to the galleys; but, by the benignity of the late king, this
felon (to be one day advanced to the rank of a regicide) had been pardoned and released at the inter
? ? ? ? 74 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
cession of the ambassadors of Tippoo Sultan. His
gratitude was such as might naturally have been
expected; and it has lately been rewarded as it deserved. This liberated galley-slave was raised, in
mockery of all criminal law, to be Minister of Justice: he became from his elevation a more conspicuous object of accusation, and he has since received
tile punishment of his former crimes in proscription
and death.
It will be asked, how the Minister of the Home
Department was employed at this crisis. The day
after the massacre had commenced, Roland appeared; but not with the powerful apparatus of a
protecting magistrate, to rescue those who had survived the slaughter of the first day: nothing of this.
On the 3rd of September, (that is, the day after the
commencement of the massacre,*) he writes a long,
elaborate, verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which,
after magnifying, according to the bon-ton of the Revolution, his'own integrity, humanity, courage, and
patriotism, he first directly justifies all the bloody
proceedings of the 10th of August. He considers
the slaughter of that day as a necessary measure for
defeating a conspiracy which (with a full knowledge
of the falsehood of his assertion) he asserts to have
been formed for a massacre of the people of Paris,
and which he more than insinuates was the work
of his late unhappy master, --who was universally
known to carry his dread of shedding the blood of
his most guilty subjects to an excess.
" Without the day of the 10th," says he, " it is evident that we should have been lost. The court, pre* Letter to the National Assembly, signed, The Minister of the Interior, ROLAND; dated Paris, Sept. 3rd, 4th year of Liberty.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 75
pared for a long time, waited for the hour which was
to accumulate all treasons, to display over Paris the
standard of death, and to reign there by terror. The
sense of the people, (le sentiment,) always just and
ready when their opinion is not corrupted, foresaw
the epoch marked for their destruction, and rendered
it fatal to the conspirators. " He then proceeds, in
the cant which has been applied to palliate all their
atrocities from the 14th of July, 1789, to the present
time: --" It is in the nature of things," continues
he, " and in that of the human heart, that victory
should bring with it some excess. The sea, agitated
by a violent storm, roars long after the tempest; but
everything has bounds, which ought at length to be observed. "
In this memorable epistle, he considers such excesses as fatalities arising from the very nature of things, and consequently not to be punished. He
allows a space of time for the duration of these agitations; and lest he should be thought rigid and too scanty in his measure, he thinks it may be long.
But he would have things to cease at length. But
when? and where? - When they may approach his
own person.
" Yesterday," says he, " the ministers were denounced: vaguely, indeed, as to the matter, because subjects of reproach were wanting; but with that
warmth and force of assertion which strike the imagination and seduce it for a moment, and which mislead and destroy confidence, without which no
man should remain in place in a free government.
Yesterday, again, in an assembly of the presidents
of all the sections, convoked by the ministers, with
the view of conciliating all minds, and of mutual
? ? ? ? 76 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS
explanation, I perceived that distrust which suspects,
interrogates, and fetters operations. "
In this manner (that is, in mutual suspicions and
interrogatories) this virtuous Minister of the Home
Department, and all the magistracy of Paris, spent
the first day of the massacre, the atrocity of which
has spread horror and alarm throughout Europe. It
does not appear that the putting a stop to the massacre had any part in the object of their meeting, or in their consultations when they were met. Here was
a minister tremblingly alive to his own safety, dead
to that of his fellow-citizens, eager to preserve his
place, and worse than indifferent about its most important duties. Speaking of the people, he says
"that their hidden enemies may make use of this
agitation" (the tender appellation which he gives to
horrid massacre) " to hurt their best friends and their
most able defenders. Already the example begins: let
it restrain and arrest a just rage. Indignation carried to its height commences proscriptions which fall only on the guilty, but in which error and particular
passions may shortly involve the honest man. "
He saw that the able artificers in the trade and
mystery of murder did not choose that their skill
should be unemployed after their first work, and
that they were full as ready to cut off their rivals as
their enemies. This gave him one alarm that was
serious. This letter of Roland, in every part of it,
lets out the secret of all the parties in this Revolution.
Plena rimarum est; hac atque illac perfluit. We see
that none of them condemn the occasional practice of
murder, - provided it is properly applied, -provided
it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 77
feared, that, if what was occasionally useful should
become habitual, the practice might go further than
was convenient. It might involve the best friends
of the last Revolution, as it had done the heroes of
the first Revolution: he feared that it would not be
confined to the La Fayettes and Clermont-Tonnerres,
the Duponts and Barnaves, but that it might extend
to the Brissots and Vergniauds, to the Condorcets,
the P6tions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.
His observations on the massacre of the preceding
day are such as cannot be passed over. "Yesterday," said he, " was a day upon the events of which
it is perhaps necessary to leave a veil. I know that
the people with their vengeance mingled a sort of justice: they did not take for victims all who presented themselves to their fury; they directed it to them who
had for a long time been spared by the sword of the
law, and who they believed, from the peril of circumstances, should be sacrificed without delay. But I
know that it is easy to villains and traitors to misrepresent this effervescence, and that it must be checked; I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that
the executive power could not foresee or prevent this
excess; I know that it is due to the constituted authorities to place a limit to it, or consider themselves
as abolished. "
In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing
but throwing a veil over it, - which was at once to
cover the guilty from punishment, and to extinguish
all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for
it; in fact, he justifies it. He who (as the reader
has just seen in what is quoted from this letter) feels
? ? ? ? 78 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
so much indignation at " vague denunciations," when
made against himself, and from which he then feared
nothing more than the subversion of his power, is
not ashamed to consider the charge of a conspiracy
to massacre the Parisians, brought against his master
upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather
upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of
the monstrous proceedings against him. He is not
ashamed to call the murder of the unhappy priests
in the Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation whatsoever, a "vengeance mingled with a sort
of justice "; he observes that they "had been a long
time spared by the sword of the law," and calls by anticipation all those who should represent this " effervescence " in other colors villains and traitors: he did not then foresee how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the necessity of assuming the
pretended character of this new sort of " villany and
treason," in the hope of obliterating the memory of
their former real villanies and treasons; he did not
foresee that in the course of six months a formal
manifesto on the part of himself and his faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this
" effervescence " as another " St. Bartholomew," and
speak of it as " having made humanity shudder, and
sullied the Revolution forever. " *
It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself
to know the motives of the assassins, their policy, and
even what they " believed. " Howv could this be, if
he had no connection with them? He praises the
murderers for not having taken as yet all the lives
of those who had, as he calls it, "presented themselves
as victims to their fury. " He paints the miserable
* See p. 12 and p. 13 of this translation.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 79
prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one
another in the Church of the Carmelites by his faction, as presenting themselves as victims to their fury, -as if death was their choice, or (allowing the idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if
they were by some accident presented to the fury of
their assassins: whereas he knew that the leaders
of the murderers sought these pure and innocent
victims in the places where they had deposited them
and were sure to find them. The very selection,
which he praises as a sort of justice tempering their
fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation, and method with which this massacre was
made. He knew that circumstance on the very day
of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all
probability, he had begun this letter, -- for he presented it to the Assembly on the very next.
Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will appear in another light to the
world. He therefore acquits the executive power,
that is, he acquits himself, (but only by his own
assertion,) of those acts of " vengeance mixed with a
sort of justice," as an " excess which he could neither
foresee nor prevent. " He could not, he says, foresee
these acts, when he tells us the people of Paris had
sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court
on the 10th of August, -- to foresee them so well
as to mark the precise epoch on which they were to
be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on
the very day: he could not foresee these events,
though he declares in this very letter that victory
must bring with it some excess, - that "' the sea roars
long after the tempest. " So far as to his foresight.
As to his disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen,
? ? ? ? 80 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
the massacres of that day, -- this will be judged by
his care in putting a stop to the massacre then going
on. This was no matter of foresight: he was in the
very midst of it. He does not so much as pretend
that he had used any force to put a stop to it. But
if he had used any, the sanction given under his hand
to a sort of justice in the murderers was enough to
disarm the protecting force.
That approbation of what they had already done
had its natural effect on the executive assassins, then
in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their deliberate, cold-blooded system of murder. He did
not at all differ from either of them in the principle
of those executions, but only in the time of their duration,-and that only as it affected himself. This, though to him a great consideration, was none to his
confederates, who were at the same time his rivals.
They were encouraged to accomplish the work they
had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst
this grave moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their work of "vengeance mingled with a sort of justice," was before a grave
assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded
without interruption in their business for four days
together, -- that is, until the seventh of that month,
and until all the victims of the first proscription in
Paris and at Versailles and several other places were
immolated at the shrine of the grim Moloch of liberty
and equality. All the priests, all the loyalists, all the
first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789, that
could be found, were promiscuously put to death.
Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it
is curious to remark how the nerve and vigor of his
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 81
style, which had spoken so potently to his sovereign,
is relaxed when he addresses himself to the sans-culottes, - how that strength and dexterity of arm, with
which he parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes to fence with the
poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no
longer be direct. The whole compass of the language
is tried to find synonymes and circumlocutions for
massacre and murder. Things are never called by
their common names. Massacre is sometimes agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess, sometimes too continued an exercise of a revolutionary power.
However, after what had passed had been praised,
or excused, or pardoned, he declares loudly against
such proceedings in future. Crimes had pioneered
and made smooth the way for the march of the virtues, and from that time order and justice and a
sacred regard for personal property were to become
the rules for the new democracy. Here Roland and
the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by
endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will
render many of the parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in
which Roland's views and intentions are so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and
the more useful in their application by the English
reader.
Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot,
and their party hoped to gain the bankers, merchants,
substantial tradesmen, hoarders of assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to the effects which they possessed, whether
these effects were the acquisitions of fair commerce.
VOL. V 6
? ? ? ? 82 PREFACE TO BRISSOT S ADDRESS
or the gains of jobbing in the misfortunes of their
country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens. In
this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded
in a great degree. They obtained a majority in the
National Convention. Composed, however, as that
assembly is, their majority was far from steady. But
whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and
many of the outlying departments, they lost the city
of Paris entirely and irrecoverably: it was fallen into
the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their
instruments were the sans-culottes, or rabble, who
domineered in that capital, and were wholly at the
devotion of those incendiaries, and received their daily
pay. The people of property were of no consequence,
and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As
that great man had not obtained the helm of the state,
it was not yet come to his turn to act the part of Brissot and his friends in the assertion of subordination and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival chiefs, and is now the great patron of Jacobin order.
To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which
threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis
the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders
were Roland, P6tion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet,
&c. , &c. , &c. , applied themselves to gain the great
commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes,
and Bordeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin
description, to whom the concealed royalists, still very
numerous, joined themselves, obtained a temporary
superiority in all these places. In Bordeaux, on
account of the activity and eloquence of some of its
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 83
representatives, this superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the Garonne,
or Gironde; and being the centre of a department
named from that river, the appellation of Girondists
was given to the whole party. These, and some other
towns, declared strongly against the principles of anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were sent to the Con. vention, promising to maintain its' authority, which the addressers were
pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though
chosen, not to compose an executive government, but
to form a plan for a Constitution. In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed force
from the several departments to maintain the freedom
of that body, and to provide for the personal safety
of the members: neither of which, from the 14th of
July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by
their assemblies sitting under any denomination.
This scheme, which was well conceived, had not
the desired success. Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some threats of
such a departure were from time to time thrown
out, was too powerful for the party of the Gironde.
Some of the proposed guards, but neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive: they were
debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the
frontiers. The game played by the revolutionists
in 1789, with respect to the French guards of the
unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards, called together for the protection of
the revolutionists. Every part of their own policy
comes round, and strikes at their own power and
their own lives.
The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in tak
? ? ? ? 84 PREFACE TO BRISSOT S ADDRESS
ing the alarm. They had just reason to apprehend,
that, if they permitted the smallest delay, they should
see themselves besieged by an army collected from
all parts of France. Violent threats were thrown
out against that city in the Assembly. Its total
destruction was menaced. A very remarkable ex
pression was used in these debates, -" that in future
times it might be inquired on what part of the Seine
Paris had stood. " The faction which' uled in Paris,
too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn,
they accused the Girondists of a treasonable design
to break the republic one and indivisible (whose unity
they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy of Paris) into a number of confederate commonwealths. The Girondin faction on this account received also the name of Federalists.
Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities.
Paris, the mother of equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this alternative: either
that city must be reduced to a mere member of the
federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as
they said, by all France, was to be brought regularly
and systematically under the dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of
Paris.
In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the
great mother club of the Jacobins was entirely in the
Parisian interest. The Girondins no longer dared
to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths
at least of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great patriarchal Jacobinidre of Paris,
to which they were (to use their own term) affiliated. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 85
had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to
interfere: and they chose to interfere in everything,
and on every occasion. All hope of gaining them to
the support of property, or to the acknowledgment
of any law but their own will, was evidently vain
and hopeless. Nothing but an armed insurrection
against their anarchical authority could answer the
purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured
by rebellion, as it had been caused by it.
As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins
and the commons of Paris, which it was hoped would
be supported by all the remaining property of France,
it became absolutely necessary to prepare a manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character, and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which all those concerned in this Revolution were,
at the several periods of their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and under
these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of his party, which he executed with no
small ability; and in this manner the whole mystery
of the French Revolution was laid open in all its
parts.
It is almost needless to mention to the reader the
fate of the design to which this pamphlet was to
be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were more
prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to what La Fayette calls the most sacred of all duties, that of insurrection. Another era of holy
insurrection commenced the 31st of last May. As
the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on in
? ? ? ? 86 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
surrection, and of that rebellion improving upon
rebellion, the sacred, irresponsible character of the
members of the Convention was laughed to scorn.
They had themselves shown in their proceedings
against the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied upon, in their revolutionary
Constitution. The members of the Girondin party
in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to
save themselves by flight. The unhappy author of
this piece, with twenty of his associates, suffered
together on the scaffold, after a trial the iniquity of
which puts all description to defiance.
The English reader will draw from this work of
Brissot, and from the result of the last struggles of
this party, some useful lessons. He will be enabled
to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves, have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how
to appreciate the liberty of France, which has been
so much magnified in England. They will do justice
to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and
his Parliament, who have put them into a state of
defence, in the war audaciously made upon us in
favor of that kind of liberty. When we see (as here
we must see) in their true colors the character and
policy of our enemies, our gratitude will become an
active principle. It will produce a strong and zealous cooperation with the efforts of our government
in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy
advantages the full value of which the querulous
weaknes;s of human nature requires sometimes the
opportunity of a comparison to understand and to
relish.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 87
Our confidence in those who watch for the public
will not be lessened. We shall be sensible that to
alarm us in the late circumstances of our affairs was
not for our molestation, but for our security. We
shall be sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed,
and that it ought to have been given, as it was given,
before the enemy had time fully to mature and accomplish their plans for reducing us to the condition of France, as that condition is faithfully and without
exaggeration described in the following work. We
now have our arms in our hands; we have the means
of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources
of England to the deepest, the most craftily devised,
the best combined, and the most extensive design
that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the
world, against all property, all order, all religion, all
law, and all real freedom.
The reader is requested to attend to the part of
this pamphlet which relates to the conduct of the
Jacobins with regard to the Austrian Netherlands,
which they call Belgia or Belgium. It is from page
seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation.
Here their views and designs upon all their neighbors
are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their
ferocious politics is laid open with the utmost clearness. Here the manner in which they would treat every nation into which they could introduce their
doctrines and influence is distinctly marked. We
see that no nation was out of danger, and we see
what the danger was with which every nation was
threatened. The writer of this pamphlet throws the
blame of several of the most violent of the proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded to, had a majority in the National As
? ? ? ? 88 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
sembly. He admits that neither he nor they ever
publicly opposed these measures; but he attributes
their silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that, whether from fear
or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings till Dumouriez was driven
from the Netherlands. But whatever their motive
was, it is plain that the most violent is, and since
the Revolution has always been, the predominant
party.
If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly it could not,) I am sure there
is not an Englishman who would not blush to be left
out of the general effort made in favor of the general
safety. But we are not secondary parties in this
war; we are principals in the danger, and ought to be
principals in the exertion. If any Englishman asks
whether the designs of the French assassins are confined to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot, the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war against England,
will give him his answer. He will find in this book,
that the republicans are divided into factions full of
the most furious and destructive animosity against
each other; but he will find also that there is one
point in which they perfectly agree: that they are
all enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend with each other about the
means of propagating their tenets and extending
their empire by conquest.
It is true that in this present work, which the
author professedly designed for an appeal to foreign
nations and posterity, he has dressed up the phil(,sophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 89
could to make her appearance in public; but through
every disguise her hideous figure may be distinctly
seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to see her
in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him
to a private letter of Brissot, written towards the end
of the last year, and quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet Du Pan. " We must" (says our philosopher) " set fire to the four corners of Europe "; in that alone is our safety. " IDumouriez cannot suit us.
I always distrusted him. Miranda is the general for
us: he understands the revolutionary power; he has
courage, lights," &c. * Here everything is fairly
avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the
only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez is a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of
that preference which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without assigning his
reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that
foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and
destruction. On the other hand, if there can be any
man in this country so hardy as to undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers of France, and if it should be said in their favor, that it is not just to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have actually tried and
conderfined him on the very same charges among
others, we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of this part of his book
against them: it comes from among themselves.
Camille Desmoulins published the History of the
Brissotins in answer to this very address of Bris* See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen,
p. 53.
? ? ? ? 90 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
sot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last holy
revolution of the 31st of May; and the flagitious
orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been
admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine
" which he grazed. " In the beginning of his work
he displays " the task of glory," as he calls it, which
presented itself at the opening of the Convention.
All is summed up in two points: "To create the
French Republic; to disorganize Europe; perhaps to
purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic
principles of equality. " * The coincidence is exact;
the proof is complete and irresistible.
In a cause like this, and in a time like the present,
there is no neutrality. They who are not actively,
and with decision and energy, against Jacobinism
are its partisans. They who do not dread it love it.
It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing
made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of Jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded
either with enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horror. Another great lesson may be taught by this book,
and by the fortune of the author and his party: I
mean a lesson drawn firom the consequences of engaging in daring innovations from an hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at
our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves
against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to
the world. This lesson is taught through almost all
the important pages of history; but never has it been
* See the translation of the History of the Brissotins by Camille
Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 91
taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour. The
revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious
death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, (a tribunal composed of those with whom they
had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient
governlment,) were by no means ordinary men, or
without very considerable talents and resources. But
with all their talents and resources, and the apparent
momentary extent of their power, we see the fate of
their projects, their power, and their persons. We
see before our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of confusion, or with the
materials and instruments of rebellion to build up a
solid and stable government.
Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may
not have the worst intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the morals, and the
whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the
formation and duration of any rational scheme of a
republic as it is to that of a monarchy, absolute or
limited. It is, indeed, a system which can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.
The translator has only to say for himself, that he
has found some difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps, or through the
perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his language requires to be first translated into French, - at least into such French as
the Academy would in former times have tolerated.
He writes with great force and vivacity; but the lallguage, like everything else in his country, has undergone a revolution. The translator thought it best to be as literal as possible, conceiving such a transla
? ? ? ? 92 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS.
tion would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author's peculiar mode of thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style, but he makes it up
in fidelity. Indeed, the facts and observations are so
much more important than the style, that no apology
is wanted for producing them in any intelligible manlier.
? ? ? ? APPENDIX.
[The Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents being now almost
forgotten, it has been thought right to add, as an Appendix, that part
of it to which Mr. Burke points our particular attention, and upon
which he so forcibly comments in his Preface. ]
THREE sorts of anarchy have ruined our affairs
in Belgium.
The anarchy of the administration of Pache, which
has completely disorganized the supply of our armies;
which by that disorganization reduced the army of
Dumouriez to stop in the middle of its conquests;
which struck it motionless through the months of
November and December; which hindered it from
joining Beurnonville and Custine, and from forcing
the Prussians and Austrians to repass the Rhine, and
afterwards from putting themselves in a condition to
invade Holland sooner than they did.
To this state of ministerial anarchy it is necessary
to join that other anarchy which disorganized the
troops, and occasioned their habits of pillage; and
lastly, that. anarchy which created the revolutionary
power, and forced the union to France of the countries we had invaded, before things were ripe for such a measure.
Who could, however, doubt the frightful evils that
were occasioned in our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which, under the shadow of equality of right, would establish equality of fact? This is universal
? ? ? ? 94P PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS.
equality, the scourge of society, as the other is the
support of society: an anarchical doctrine which
would level all things, talents and ignorance, virtues
and vices, places, usages, and services; a doctrine
which begot that fatal project of organizing the army,
presented by Dubois de Cranlce, to which it will be indebted for a complete disorganization.
Mark the date of the presentation of the system of
this equality of fact, entire equality. It had been
projected and decreed even at the very opening of
the Dutch campaign. If any project could encourage
the want of discipline in the soldiers, any scheme
could disgust and banish good officers, and throw all
things into confusion at the moment when order alone
could give victory, it is this project, in truth, so stubbornly defended by the anarchists, and transplanted into their ordinary tactic.
How could they expect that there should exist any
discipline, any subordination, when even in the camp
they permit motions, censures, and denunciations of
officers and of generals? Does not such a disorder
destroy all the respect that is due to superiors, and
all the mutual confidence without which success cannot be hoped for? For the spirit of distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general.
The first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and insure victory. Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to
the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the rea.
son why he more frequently conquered was, that his
discipline was severe; it was, that his soldiers, confid
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. ! )5
ing in his talents, never muttered discontent instead
of fighting. Without reciprocal confidence betweenl
the soldier and the general, there can be no army, no
victory, especially in a free government.
Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of subordination, which has been
recommended in some clubs and defended even in
the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the enormities of all kinds, which it was difficult
for the officers to put a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination, -- excesses which have rendered
the French name odious to the Belgians? Again, is
it not to this system of anarchy, and of robbery, that
we are indebted for the revolutionary power, which
has so justly aggravated the hatred of the Belgians
against France?
What did enlightened republicans think before the
10th of August, men who wished for liberty, not only
for their own country, but for all -Europe? They believed that they could generally establish it by exciting
the governed against the governors, in letting the people
see the facility and the advantages of such insurrections.
But how can the people be led to that point? By
the example of good government established among
us; by the example of order; by the care of spreading nothing but moral ideas among them: to respect
their properties and their rights; to respect their
prejudices, even when we combat them: by disinterestedness in defending the people; by a zeal to
extend the spirit of liberty amongst them.
This system was at first followed. * Excellent panm* The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries. - TRANSLATOR.
? ? ?
most serious apprehensions for the common liberty
and safety.
A question will very naturally be asked, -- What
could induce Brissot to draw such a picture? He
must have been sensible it was his own. The answer is, --The inducement was the same with that which led him to partake in the perpetration of all
the crimes the calamitous effects of which he describes with the pen of a master, -- ambition. His faction, having obtained their stupendous and unnatural power by rooting out of the minds of his unhappy countrymen every principle of religion, morality, loyalty, fidelity, and honor, discovered, that, when authority came into their hands, it would be a
matter of no small difficulty for them to carry on
government on the principles by which they had
destroyed it.
The rights of men and the new principles of liberty and equality were very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of tranquillity
and order. They who were taught to find nothing
to respect in the title and in the virtues of Louis the
Sixteenth, a prince succeeding to the throne by the
fundamental laws, in the line of a succession of monarchs continued for fourteen hundred years, found nothing which could bind them to an implicit fidelity
and dutiful allegiance to Messrs. Brissot, Vergniaud,
Condorcet, Anacharsis Clootz, and Thomas Paine.
In this difficulty, they did as well as they could.
To govern the people, they must incline the people
to obey. The work was difficult, but it was necessary. They were to accomplish it by such materials
and by such instruments as they had in their hands. 'I'ley were to accomplish the purposes of order, mo
? ? ? ? v70 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
rality, and submission to the laws, from the principles
of atheism, profligacy, and sedition. Ill as the disguise became them, they began to assume the mask
of an austere and rigid virtue; they exhausted all the
stores of their eloquence (which in some of them were
not inconsiderable) in declamations against tumult
and confusion; they made daily harangues on the
blessings of order, discipline, quiet, and obedience
to authority; they even showed some sort of disposition to protect such property as had not been confiscated. They who on every occasion had discovered a sort of furious thirst of blood and a greedy appetite
for slaughter, who avowed and gloried in the murders
and massacres of the 14th of July, of the 5th and 6th
of October, and of the 10th of August, now began to
be squeamish and fastidious with regard to those of
the 2nd of September.
In their pretended scruples on the sequel of the
slaughter of the 10th of August, they imposed upon
no living creature, and they obtained not the smallest credit for humanity. They endeavored to establish a distinction, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of murder safely bottled up and sealed
for their own purposes, without endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared for their enemies.
Roland was the chief and the most accredited of
the faction. His morals had furnished little matter
of exception against him. Old, domestic, and uxorious, he led a private life sufficiently blameless. He
was therefore set up as the Cato of the republican party, which did not abound in such characters.
This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager of a newspaper, in which he promoted the in
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 71
terest of his party. He was a fatal present made by
the revolutionists to the unhappy king, as one of his
ministers under the new Constitution. Amongst his
colleagues were Clavidre and Servan. All the three
have since that time either lost their heads by the
axe of their associates in rebellion, or, to evade their
own revolutionary justice, have fallen by their own
hands.
These ministers were regarded by the king as in
a conspiracy to dethrone him. Nobody who considers the circumstances which preceded the deposition of Louis the Sixteenth, nobody who attends to the
subsequent conduct of those ministers, can hesitate
about the reality of such a conspiracy. The king
certainly had no doubt of it; he found himself
obliged to remove them; and the necessity, which
first obliged him to choose such regicide ministers
constrained him to replace them by Dumouriez the
Jacobin, and some others of little efficiency, though
of a better description.
A little before this removal, and evidently as a
part of the conspiracy, Roland put into the king's
hands, as a memorial, the most insolent, seditious,
and atrocious libel that has probably ever been
penned. This paper Roland a few days after delivered to the National Assembly,* who instantly published and dispersed it over all France; and in
order to give it the stronger operation, they declared
that he and his brother ministers had carried with
them the regret of the nation. None of the writings
which have inflamed the Jacobin spirit to a savage
fitry ever worked up a fiercer ferment through the
* Presented to the king June 13; delivered to him the preceding
o10! (iaV. - - TRANSLATOR.
? ? ? ? 72 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS
whole mass of the republicans in every part of
France.
Under the thin veil of prediction, he strongly recommends all the abominable practices which afterwards
followed. In particular, he inflamed the minds of
the populace against the respectable and conscientious clergy, who became the chief objects of the
massacre, and who were to him the chief objects of
a malignity and rancor that one could hardly think
to exist in an human heart.
We have the relics of his fanatical persecution
here. We are in a condition to judge of the merits of the persecutors and of the persecuted: I do
not say the accusers and accused; because, in all
the furious declamations of the atheistic faction
against these men, not one specific charge has been
made upon any one person of those who suffered in
their massacre or by their decree of exile.
The king had declared that he would sooner perish under their axe (he too well saw what was preparing for him) than give his sanction to the iniquitous act of proscription under which those innocent people were to be transported.
On this proscription of the clergy a principal part
of the ostensible quarrel between the king and those
ministers had turned. From the time of the authorized publication of this libel, some of the manoeuvres
long and uniformly pursued for the king's deposition
became more and more evident and declared.
The 10th of August came on, and in the manner
in which Roland had predicted: it was followed by
the same consequences. The king was deposed, after cruel massacres in the courts and the apartments
of his palace and in almost all parts of the city. In
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 73
reward of his treason to his old master, Roland was
by his new masters named Minister of the Home Department.
The massacres of the 2nd of September were begotten by the massacres of the 10th of August. They
were universally foreseen and hourly expected. During this short interval between the two murderous
scenes, the furies, male and female, cried out havoc
as loudly and as fiercely as ever. The ordinary jails
were all filled with prepared victims; and when they
overflowed, churches were turned into jails. At this
time the relentless Roland had the care of the general police;-he had for his colleague the bloody
Danton, who was Minister of Justice; the insidious
Petion was Mayor of Paris; the treacherous Manuel was Procurator of the Common Hall. The magistrates (some or all of them) were evidently the authors of this massacre. Lest the national guard
should, by their very name, be reminded of their
duty in preserving the lives of their fellow-citizens,
the Common Council of Paris, pretending that it
was in vain to think of resisting the murderers,
(although in truth neither their numbers nor their
arms were at all formidable,) obliged those guards
to draw the charges from their muskets, and took
away their bayonets. One of their journalists, and,
according to their fashion, one of their leading statesmen, Gorsas, mentions this fact in his newspaper,
which he formerly called the Galley Journal. The
title was well suited to the paper and its author.
For some felonies he had been sentenced to the galleys; but, by the benignity of the late king, this
felon (to be one day advanced to the rank of a regicide) had been pardoned and released at the inter
? ? ? ? 74 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
cession of the ambassadors of Tippoo Sultan. His
gratitude was such as might naturally have been
expected; and it has lately been rewarded as it deserved. This liberated galley-slave was raised, in
mockery of all criminal law, to be Minister of Justice: he became from his elevation a more conspicuous object of accusation, and he has since received
tile punishment of his former crimes in proscription
and death.
It will be asked, how the Minister of the Home
Department was employed at this crisis. The day
after the massacre had commenced, Roland appeared; but not with the powerful apparatus of a
protecting magistrate, to rescue those who had survived the slaughter of the first day: nothing of this.
On the 3rd of September, (that is, the day after the
commencement of the massacre,*) he writes a long,
elaborate, verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which,
after magnifying, according to the bon-ton of the Revolution, his'own integrity, humanity, courage, and
patriotism, he first directly justifies all the bloody
proceedings of the 10th of August. He considers
the slaughter of that day as a necessary measure for
defeating a conspiracy which (with a full knowledge
of the falsehood of his assertion) he asserts to have
been formed for a massacre of the people of Paris,
and which he more than insinuates was the work
of his late unhappy master, --who was universally
known to carry his dread of shedding the blood of
his most guilty subjects to an excess.
" Without the day of the 10th," says he, " it is evident that we should have been lost. The court, pre* Letter to the National Assembly, signed, The Minister of the Interior, ROLAND; dated Paris, Sept. 3rd, 4th year of Liberty.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 75
pared for a long time, waited for the hour which was
to accumulate all treasons, to display over Paris the
standard of death, and to reign there by terror. The
sense of the people, (le sentiment,) always just and
ready when their opinion is not corrupted, foresaw
the epoch marked for their destruction, and rendered
it fatal to the conspirators. " He then proceeds, in
the cant which has been applied to palliate all their
atrocities from the 14th of July, 1789, to the present
time: --" It is in the nature of things," continues
he, " and in that of the human heart, that victory
should bring with it some excess. The sea, agitated
by a violent storm, roars long after the tempest; but
everything has bounds, which ought at length to be observed. "
In this memorable epistle, he considers such excesses as fatalities arising from the very nature of things, and consequently not to be punished. He
allows a space of time for the duration of these agitations; and lest he should be thought rigid and too scanty in his measure, he thinks it may be long.
But he would have things to cease at length. But
when? and where? - When they may approach his
own person.
" Yesterday," says he, " the ministers were denounced: vaguely, indeed, as to the matter, because subjects of reproach were wanting; but with that
warmth and force of assertion which strike the imagination and seduce it for a moment, and which mislead and destroy confidence, without which no
man should remain in place in a free government.
Yesterday, again, in an assembly of the presidents
of all the sections, convoked by the ministers, with
the view of conciliating all minds, and of mutual
? ? ? ? 76 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS
explanation, I perceived that distrust which suspects,
interrogates, and fetters operations. "
In this manner (that is, in mutual suspicions and
interrogatories) this virtuous Minister of the Home
Department, and all the magistracy of Paris, spent
the first day of the massacre, the atrocity of which
has spread horror and alarm throughout Europe. It
does not appear that the putting a stop to the massacre had any part in the object of their meeting, or in their consultations when they were met. Here was
a minister tremblingly alive to his own safety, dead
to that of his fellow-citizens, eager to preserve his
place, and worse than indifferent about its most important duties. Speaking of the people, he says
"that their hidden enemies may make use of this
agitation" (the tender appellation which he gives to
horrid massacre) " to hurt their best friends and their
most able defenders. Already the example begins: let
it restrain and arrest a just rage. Indignation carried to its height commences proscriptions which fall only on the guilty, but in which error and particular
passions may shortly involve the honest man. "
He saw that the able artificers in the trade and
mystery of murder did not choose that their skill
should be unemployed after their first work, and
that they were full as ready to cut off their rivals as
their enemies. This gave him one alarm that was
serious. This letter of Roland, in every part of it,
lets out the secret of all the parties in this Revolution.
Plena rimarum est; hac atque illac perfluit. We see
that none of them condemn the occasional practice of
murder, - provided it is properly applied, -provided
it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 77
feared, that, if what was occasionally useful should
become habitual, the practice might go further than
was convenient. It might involve the best friends
of the last Revolution, as it had done the heroes of
the first Revolution: he feared that it would not be
confined to the La Fayettes and Clermont-Tonnerres,
the Duponts and Barnaves, but that it might extend
to the Brissots and Vergniauds, to the Condorcets,
the P6tions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.
His observations on the massacre of the preceding
day are such as cannot be passed over. "Yesterday," said he, " was a day upon the events of which
it is perhaps necessary to leave a veil. I know that
the people with their vengeance mingled a sort of justice: they did not take for victims all who presented themselves to their fury; they directed it to them who
had for a long time been spared by the sword of the
law, and who they believed, from the peril of circumstances, should be sacrificed without delay. But I
know that it is easy to villains and traitors to misrepresent this effervescence, and that it must be checked; I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that
the executive power could not foresee or prevent this
excess; I know that it is due to the constituted authorities to place a limit to it, or consider themselves
as abolished. "
In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing
but throwing a veil over it, - which was at once to
cover the guilty from punishment, and to extinguish
all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for
it; in fact, he justifies it. He who (as the reader
has just seen in what is quoted from this letter) feels
? ? ? ? 78 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
so much indignation at " vague denunciations," when
made against himself, and from which he then feared
nothing more than the subversion of his power, is
not ashamed to consider the charge of a conspiracy
to massacre the Parisians, brought against his master
upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather
upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of
the monstrous proceedings against him. He is not
ashamed to call the murder of the unhappy priests
in the Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation whatsoever, a "vengeance mingled with a sort
of justice "; he observes that they "had been a long
time spared by the sword of the law," and calls by anticipation all those who should represent this " effervescence " in other colors villains and traitors: he did not then foresee how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the necessity of assuming the
pretended character of this new sort of " villany and
treason," in the hope of obliterating the memory of
their former real villanies and treasons; he did not
foresee that in the course of six months a formal
manifesto on the part of himself and his faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this
" effervescence " as another " St. Bartholomew," and
speak of it as " having made humanity shudder, and
sullied the Revolution forever. " *
It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself
to know the motives of the assassins, their policy, and
even what they " believed. " Howv could this be, if
he had no connection with them? He praises the
murderers for not having taken as yet all the lives
of those who had, as he calls it, "presented themselves
as victims to their fury. " He paints the miserable
* See p. 12 and p. 13 of this translation.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 79
prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one
another in the Church of the Carmelites by his faction, as presenting themselves as victims to their fury, -as if death was their choice, or (allowing the idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if
they were by some accident presented to the fury of
their assassins: whereas he knew that the leaders
of the murderers sought these pure and innocent
victims in the places where they had deposited them
and were sure to find them. The very selection,
which he praises as a sort of justice tempering their
fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation, and method with which this massacre was
made. He knew that circumstance on the very day
of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all
probability, he had begun this letter, -- for he presented it to the Assembly on the very next.
Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will appear in another light to the
world. He therefore acquits the executive power,
that is, he acquits himself, (but only by his own
assertion,) of those acts of " vengeance mixed with a
sort of justice," as an " excess which he could neither
foresee nor prevent. " He could not, he says, foresee
these acts, when he tells us the people of Paris had
sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court
on the 10th of August, -- to foresee them so well
as to mark the precise epoch on which they were to
be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on
the very day: he could not foresee these events,
though he declares in this very letter that victory
must bring with it some excess, - that "' the sea roars
long after the tempest. " So far as to his foresight.
As to his disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen,
? ? ? ? 80 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
the massacres of that day, -- this will be judged by
his care in putting a stop to the massacre then going
on. This was no matter of foresight: he was in the
very midst of it. He does not so much as pretend
that he had used any force to put a stop to it. But
if he had used any, the sanction given under his hand
to a sort of justice in the murderers was enough to
disarm the protecting force.
That approbation of what they had already done
had its natural effect on the executive assassins, then
in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their deliberate, cold-blooded system of murder. He did
not at all differ from either of them in the principle
of those executions, but only in the time of their duration,-and that only as it affected himself. This, though to him a great consideration, was none to his
confederates, who were at the same time his rivals.
They were encouraged to accomplish the work they
had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst
this grave moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their work of "vengeance mingled with a sort of justice," was before a grave
assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded
without interruption in their business for four days
together, -- that is, until the seventh of that month,
and until all the victims of the first proscription in
Paris and at Versailles and several other places were
immolated at the shrine of the grim Moloch of liberty
and equality. All the priests, all the loyalists, all the
first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789, that
could be found, were promiscuously put to death.
Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it
is curious to remark how the nerve and vigor of his
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 81
style, which had spoken so potently to his sovereign,
is relaxed when he addresses himself to the sans-culottes, - how that strength and dexterity of arm, with
which he parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes to fence with the
poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no
longer be direct. The whole compass of the language
is tried to find synonymes and circumlocutions for
massacre and murder. Things are never called by
their common names. Massacre is sometimes agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess, sometimes too continued an exercise of a revolutionary power.
However, after what had passed had been praised,
or excused, or pardoned, he declares loudly against
such proceedings in future. Crimes had pioneered
and made smooth the way for the march of the virtues, and from that time order and justice and a
sacred regard for personal property were to become
the rules for the new democracy. Here Roland and
the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by
endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will
render many of the parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in
which Roland's views and intentions are so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and
the more useful in their application by the English
reader.
Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot,
and their party hoped to gain the bankers, merchants,
substantial tradesmen, hoarders of assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to the effects which they possessed, whether
these effects were the acquisitions of fair commerce.
VOL. V 6
? ? ? ? 82 PREFACE TO BRISSOT S ADDRESS
or the gains of jobbing in the misfortunes of their
country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens. In
this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded
in a great degree. They obtained a majority in the
National Convention. Composed, however, as that
assembly is, their majority was far from steady. But
whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and
many of the outlying departments, they lost the city
of Paris entirely and irrecoverably: it was fallen into
the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their
instruments were the sans-culottes, or rabble, who
domineered in that capital, and were wholly at the
devotion of those incendiaries, and received their daily
pay. The people of property were of no consequence,
and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As
that great man had not obtained the helm of the state,
it was not yet come to his turn to act the part of Brissot and his friends in the assertion of subordination and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival chiefs, and is now the great patron of Jacobin order.
To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which
threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis
the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders
were Roland, P6tion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet,
&c. , &c. , &c. , applied themselves to gain the great
commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes,
and Bordeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin
description, to whom the concealed royalists, still very
numerous, joined themselves, obtained a temporary
superiority in all these places. In Bordeaux, on
account of the activity and eloquence of some of its
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 83
representatives, this superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the Garonne,
or Gironde; and being the centre of a department
named from that river, the appellation of Girondists
was given to the whole party. These, and some other
towns, declared strongly against the principles of anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were sent to the Con. vention, promising to maintain its' authority, which the addressers were
pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though
chosen, not to compose an executive government, but
to form a plan for a Constitution. In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed force
from the several departments to maintain the freedom
of that body, and to provide for the personal safety
of the members: neither of which, from the 14th of
July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by
their assemblies sitting under any denomination.
This scheme, which was well conceived, had not
the desired success. Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some threats of
such a departure were from time to time thrown
out, was too powerful for the party of the Gironde.
Some of the proposed guards, but neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive: they were
debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the
frontiers. The game played by the revolutionists
in 1789, with respect to the French guards of the
unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards, called together for the protection of
the revolutionists. Every part of their own policy
comes round, and strikes at their own power and
their own lives.
The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in tak
? ? ? ? 84 PREFACE TO BRISSOT S ADDRESS
ing the alarm. They had just reason to apprehend,
that, if they permitted the smallest delay, they should
see themselves besieged by an army collected from
all parts of France. Violent threats were thrown
out against that city in the Assembly. Its total
destruction was menaced. A very remarkable ex
pression was used in these debates, -" that in future
times it might be inquired on what part of the Seine
Paris had stood. " The faction which' uled in Paris,
too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn,
they accused the Girondists of a treasonable design
to break the republic one and indivisible (whose unity
they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy of Paris) into a number of confederate commonwealths. The Girondin faction on this account received also the name of Federalists.
Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities.
Paris, the mother of equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this alternative: either
that city must be reduced to a mere member of the
federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as
they said, by all France, was to be brought regularly
and systematically under the dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of
Paris.
In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the
great mother club of the Jacobins was entirely in the
Parisian interest. The Girondins no longer dared
to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths
at least of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great patriarchal Jacobinidre of Paris,
to which they were (to use their own term) affiliated. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 85
had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to
interfere: and they chose to interfere in everything,
and on every occasion. All hope of gaining them to
the support of property, or to the acknowledgment
of any law but their own will, was evidently vain
and hopeless. Nothing but an armed insurrection
against their anarchical authority could answer the
purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured
by rebellion, as it had been caused by it.
As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins
and the commons of Paris, which it was hoped would
be supported by all the remaining property of France,
it became absolutely necessary to prepare a manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character, and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which all those concerned in this Revolution were,
at the several periods of their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and under
these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of his party, which he executed with no
small ability; and in this manner the whole mystery
of the French Revolution was laid open in all its
parts.
It is almost needless to mention to the reader the
fate of the design to which this pamphlet was to
be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were more
prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to what La Fayette calls the most sacred of all duties, that of insurrection. Another era of holy
insurrection commenced the 31st of last May. As
the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on in
? ? ? ? 86 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
surrection, and of that rebellion improving upon
rebellion, the sacred, irresponsible character of the
members of the Convention was laughed to scorn.
They had themselves shown in their proceedings
against the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied upon, in their revolutionary
Constitution. The members of the Girondin party
in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to
save themselves by flight. The unhappy author of
this piece, with twenty of his associates, suffered
together on the scaffold, after a trial the iniquity of
which puts all description to defiance.
The English reader will draw from this work of
Brissot, and from the result of the last struggles of
this party, some useful lessons. He will be enabled
to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves, have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how
to appreciate the liberty of France, which has been
so much magnified in England. They will do justice
to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and
his Parliament, who have put them into a state of
defence, in the war audaciously made upon us in
favor of that kind of liberty. When we see (as here
we must see) in their true colors the character and
policy of our enemies, our gratitude will become an
active principle. It will produce a strong and zealous cooperation with the efforts of our government
in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy
advantages the full value of which the querulous
weaknes;s of human nature requires sometimes the
opportunity of a comparison to understand and to
relish.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 87
Our confidence in those who watch for the public
will not be lessened. We shall be sensible that to
alarm us in the late circumstances of our affairs was
not for our molestation, but for our security. We
shall be sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed,
and that it ought to have been given, as it was given,
before the enemy had time fully to mature and accomplish their plans for reducing us to the condition of France, as that condition is faithfully and without
exaggeration described in the following work. We
now have our arms in our hands; we have the means
of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources
of England to the deepest, the most craftily devised,
the best combined, and the most extensive design
that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the
world, against all property, all order, all religion, all
law, and all real freedom.
The reader is requested to attend to the part of
this pamphlet which relates to the conduct of the
Jacobins with regard to the Austrian Netherlands,
which they call Belgia or Belgium. It is from page
seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation.
Here their views and designs upon all their neighbors
are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their
ferocious politics is laid open with the utmost clearness. Here the manner in which they would treat every nation into which they could introduce their
doctrines and influence is distinctly marked. We
see that no nation was out of danger, and we see
what the danger was with which every nation was
threatened. The writer of this pamphlet throws the
blame of several of the most violent of the proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded to, had a majority in the National As
? ? ? ? 88 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
sembly. He admits that neither he nor they ever
publicly opposed these measures; but he attributes
their silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that, whether from fear
or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings till Dumouriez was driven
from the Netherlands. But whatever their motive
was, it is plain that the most violent is, and since
the Revolution has always been, the predominant
party.
If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly it could not,) I am sure there
is not an Englishman who would not blush to be left
out of the general effort made in favor of the general
safety. But we are not secondary parties in this
war; we are principals in the danger, and ought to be
principals in the exertion. If any Englishman asks
whether the designs of the French assassins are confined to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot, the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war against England,
will give him his answer. He will find in this book,
that the republicans are divided into factions full of
the most furious and destructive animosity against
each other; but he will find also that there is one
point in which they perfectly agree: that they are
all enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend with each other about the
means of propagating their tenets and extending
their empire by conquest.
It is true that in this present work, which the
author professedly designed for an appeal to foreign
nations and posterity, he has dressed up the phil(,sophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 89
could to make her appearance in public; but through
every disguise her hideous figure may be distinctly
seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to see her
in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him
to a private letter of Brissot, written towards the end
of the last year, and quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet Du Pan. " We must" (says our philosopher) " set fire to the four corners of Europe "; in that alone is our safety. " IDumouriez cannot suit us.
I always distrusted him. Miranda is the general for
us: he understands the revolutionary power; he has
courage, lights," &c. * Here everything is fairly
avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the
only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez is a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of
that preference which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without assigning his
reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that
foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and
destruction. On the other hand, if there can be any
man in this country so hardy as to undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers of France, and if it should be said in their favor, that it is not just to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have actually tried and
conderfined him on the very same charges among
others, we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of this part of his book
against them: it comes from among themselves.
Camille Desmoulins published the History of the
Brissotins in answer to this very address of Bris* See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen,
p. 53.
? ? ? ? 90 PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS
sot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last holy
revolution of the 31st of May; and the flagitious
orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been
admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine
" which he grazed. " In the beginning of his work
he displays " the task of glory," as he calls it, which
presented itself at the opening of the Convention.
All is summed up in two points: "To create the
French Republic; to disorganize Europe; perhaps to
purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic
principles of equality. " * The coincidence is exact;
the proof is complete and irresistible.
In a cause like this, and in a time like the present,
there is no neutrality. They who are not actively,
and with decision and energy, against Jacobinism
are its partisans. They who do not dread it love it.
It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing
made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of Jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded
either with enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horror. Another great lesson may be taught by this book,
and by the fortune of the author and his party: I
mean a lesson drawn firom the consequences of engaging in daring innovations from an hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at
our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves
against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to
the world. This lesson is taught through almost all
the important pages of history; but never has it been
* See the translation of the History of the Brissotins by Camille
Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.
? ? ? ? TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 91
taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour. The
revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious
death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, (a tribunal composed of those with whom they
had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient
governlment,) were by no means ordinary men, or
without very considerable talents and resources. But
with all their talents and resources, and the apparent
momentary extent of their power, we see the fate of
their projects, their power, and their persons. We
see before our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of confusion, or with the
materials and instruments of rebellion to build up a
solid and stable government.
Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may
not have the worst intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the morals, and the
whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the
formation and duration of any rational scheme of a
republic as it is to that of a monarchy, absolute or
limited. It is, indeed, a system which can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.
The translator has only to say for himself, that he
has found some difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps, or through the
perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his language requires to be first translated into French, - at least into such French as
the Academy would in former times have tolerated.
He writes with great force and vivacity; but the lallguage, like everything else in his country, has undergone a revolution. The translator thought it best to be as literal as possible, conceiving such a transla
? ? ? ? 92 PREFACE TO BRISSOT' S ADDRESS.
tion would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author's peculiar mode of thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style, but he makes it up
in fidelity. Indeed, the facts and observations are so
much more important than the style, that no apology
is wanted for producing them in any intelligible manlier.
? ? ? ? APPENDIX.
[The Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents being now almost
forgotten, it has been thought right to add, as an Appendix, that part
of it to which Mr. Burke points our particular attention, and upon
which he so forcibly comments in his Preface. ]
THREE sorts of anarchy have ruined our affairs
in Belgium.
The anarchy of the administration of Pache, which
has completely disorganized the supply of our armies;
which by that disorganization reduced the army of
Dumouriez to stop in the middle of its conquests;
which struck it motionless through the months of
November and December; which hindered it from
joining Beurnonville and Custine, and from forcing
the Prussians and Austrians to repass the Rhine, and
afterwards from putting themselves in a condition to
invade Holland sooner than they did.
To this state of ministerial anarchy it is necessary
to join that other anarchy which disorganized the
troops, and occasioned their habits of pillage; and
lastly, that. anarchy which created the revolutionary
power, and forced the union to France of the countries we had invaded, before things were ripe for such a measure.
Who could, however, doubt the frightful evils that
were occasioned in our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which, under the shadow of equality of right, would establish equality of fact? This is universal
? ? ? ? 94P PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS.
equality, the scourge of society, as the other is the
support of society: an anarchical doctrine which
would level all things, talents and ignorance, virtues
and vices, places, usages, and services; a doctrine
which begot that fatal project of organizing the army,
presented by Dubois de Cranlce, to which it will be indebted for a complete disorganization.
Mark the date of the presentation of the system of
this equality of fact, entire equality. It had been
projected and decreed even at the very opening of
the Dutch campaign. If any project could encourage
the want of discipline in the soldiers, any scheme
could disgust and banish good officers, and throw all
things into confusion at the moment when order alone
could give victory, it is this project, in truth, so stubbornly defended by the anarchists, and transplanted into their ordinary tactic.
How could they expect that there should exist any
discipline, any subordination, when even in the camp
they permit motions, censures, and denunciations of
officers and of generals? Does not such a disorder
destroy all the respect that is due to superiors, and
all the mutual confidence without which success cannot be hoped for? For the spirit of distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general.
The first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and insure victory. Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to
the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the rea.
son why he more frequently conquered was, that his
discipline was severe; it was, that his soldiers, confid
? ? ? ? APPENDIX. ! )5
ing in his talents, never muttered discontent instead
of fighting. Without reciprocal confidence betweenl
the soldier and the general, there can be no army, no
victory, especially in a free government.
Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of subordination, which has been
recommended in some clubs and defended even in
the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the enormities of all kinds, which it was difficult
for the officers to put a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination, -- excesses which have rendered
the French name odious to the Belgians? Again, is
it not to this system of anarchy, and of robbery, that
we are indebted for the revolutionary power, which
has so justly aggravated the hatred of the Belgians
against France?
What did enlightened republicans think before the
10th of August, men who wished for liberty, not only
for their own country, but for all -Europe? They believed that they could generally establish it by exciting
the governed against the governors, in letting the people
see the facility and the advantages of such insurrections.
But how can the people be led to that point? By
the example of good government established among
us; by the example of order; by the care of spreading nothing but moral ideas among them: to respect
their properties and their rights; to respect their
prejudices, even when we combat them: by disinterestedness in defending the people; by a zeal to
extend the spirit of liberty amongst them.
This system was at first followed. * Excellent panm* The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries. - TRANSLATOR.
? ? ?
