But these ministers, who were chosen by affairs, not by affections, acted in the name of
and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters.
and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters.
Edmund Burke
Who will study to increase
what none can estimate? Who will accumulate,
when he does not know the value of what he saves?
If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw.
The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a -nation of gamesters is this, --
that, though all are forced to play, few can understand
the game, and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of that knowledge. The many must be
the dupes of the few who conduct the machine of
these speculations. What effect it must have on the
country-people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day to day; not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first brings his corn to
? ? ? ? 490 REFLECTIONS ON THE
market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to
take the assignat at par; when he goes to the shop
with this money, he finds it seven per cent the
worse for crossing the way. This market he will not
readily resort to again. The towns-people will be
inflamed; they will force the country-people to bring
their corn. Resistance will begin, and the murders
of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all
France.
What signifies the empty compliment paid to the
country, by giving it, perhaps, more than its share in
the theory of your representation? Where have you
placed the real power over moneyed and landed circulation? Where have you placed the means of raising and falling the value of every man's freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add ten
per cent to the possessions of every man in France
must be the masters of every man in France. The
whole of the power obtained by this Revolution will
settle in the towns among the burghers, and the
moneyed directors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant have, none of
them, habits or inclinations or experience which can
lead them to any share in this the sole source of
power and influence now left in France. The very
nature of a country life, the very nature of landed
property, in all the occupations and all the pleasures
they afford, render combination and arrangement
(the sole way of procuring and exerting influence)
in a manner impossible amongst country-people.
Combine them by all the art you can, and all the
industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 491
jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business
and dies in a day, all these things, which are the reins
and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds
of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all,
amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm,
they act, with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed systematically. If the country-gentlemen attempt an
influence through the mere income of their property,
what is it to that of those who have ten times their
income to sell, and who can ruin their property by
bringing their plunder to meet it at market? If the
landed man wishes to mortgage, he falls the value of
his land and raises the value of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he
must take to contend with him. The country-gentleman, therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man
of liberal views and habits, attached to no profession,
will be as completely excluded from the government
of his country as if he were legislatively proscribed.
It is obvious, that, in the towns, all the things which
conspire against the country-gentleman combine in
favor of the money manager and director. In towns
combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their
occupations, their diversion, their business, th6ir idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact.
Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are
always in garrison; and they come embodied and
half-disciplined into the hands of those who mean to
form them for civil or military action.
All these considerations leave no doubt on my
mind, that, if this monster of a Constitution can continue, France will be wholly governed by the agita
? ? ? ? 492 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tors in corporations, by societies in the towns, formed
of directors in assignats, and trustees for the sale of
Churchl lands, attorneys, agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown, the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all
the deceitful dreams and visions of the equality and
rights of men. In " the Serbonian bog" of this base
oligarchy they are all absorbed, sunk, and lost forever.
Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would
be tempted to think some great offences in France
must cry to Heaven, which has thought fit to punish
it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious domination, in which no comfort or compensation is to be
found in any even of those false splendors which,
playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind from
feeling themselves dishonored even whilst they are
oppressed. I must confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed with some indignation, at the conduct of
a few men, once of great rank, and still of great character, who, deluded with specious names, have engaged in a business too deep for the line of their understanding to fathom, --who have lent their fair
reputation and the authority of their high-sounding
names to the designs of men with whom they could
not be acquainted, and have thereby made their very
virtues operate to the ruin of their country.
So far as to the first cementing principle.
The second material of cement for their new repub
lie is the superiority of the city of Paris; and this,
I admit, is strongly connected with the other cementing principle of paper circulation and confiscation.
It is in this part of the project we must look for the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 493
cause of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions, ecclesiastical and secular, and
the dissolution of all ancient combinations of things,
as well as the formation of so many small unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one great spring of all their politics. . It is
through the power of Paris, now become the centre
and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of this faction
direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and
the whole executive government. Everything, therefore, must be done which can confirm the authority
of that city over the other republics. Paris is compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the force of any of the square republics;
and this strength is collected and condensed within
a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connection of its parts, which will not be affected by
any scheme of a geometrical constitution; nor does
it much signify whether its proportion of representation be more or less, since it has the whole draught
of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the
kingdom, being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual means and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate members, but weakness, disconnection,
and confusion. To confirm this part of the plan,
the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that
no two of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the
strength of Paris, thus formed, will appear a system
of general weakness. It is boasted that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas
? ? ? ? 494 REFLECTIONS ON THE
should be sunk, and that the people should be no
longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans,-but
Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one
Assembly. But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the
greater likelihood is that the inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever was
attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement. He
never will glory in belonging to the chequer No. 71,
or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public
affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighborhoods, and
our habitual provincial connections. These are inns
and resting-places. Shich divisions of our country as
have been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk
of authority, were so many little images of the great
country, in which the heart found something which it
could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished
by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort
of elemental training to those higher and more large
regards by which alone men come to be affected, as
with their own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general
territory itself, as in the old name of Provinces, the
citizens are interested from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the geometric
properties of its figure. The power and preeminence of Paris does certainly press down and hold
these republics together as long as it lasts: but, for
the reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot last very long.
Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing principles of this Constitution to the National Assembly, which is to appear and act as sovereign,
? ? ? ? RFVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 495
we see a body in its constitution with every possible
power and no possible external control. We see a
body without findamental laws, without established
maxims, without respected rules of proceeding, which
nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever.
Their idea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of legislative competency, and their examples for common cases from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in most
respects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode
of the new elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of the small degree of
internal control existing in a minority chosen originally from various interests, and preserving something
of their spirit. If possible, the next Assembly must
be worse than the present. The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to their successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will
be roused by emulation and example to enterprises
the boldest and the most absurd. To suppose such
an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Y6our all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do
everything at once, have forgot one thing that seems
essential, and which, I believe, never has been before,
in the theory or the practice, omitted by any projector of a republic. They have fotr tlo -c s9, tietp. , a
senate, or something of that nature and character. 'e;er', ]before this time, was heard of a body politic
composed of one legislative and active assembly, and
its'executive officers, without such a council: without something to which foreign states might connect
themselves, -- something to which, in the ordinary
detail of government, the people could look up,something which might give a bias and steadiness,
------ ~~ ------- ~'~-~ ----'- ~~ --~' ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~''*". . . . . . . . . . . ~. . . . . . . . . .
? ? ? ? 496 REFLECTIONS ON THE
and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally have
as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but
it seems to be in the very essence of a republican
government. It holds a sort of mddle place between
the supreme power exercised by the people, or immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive.
Of this there are no traces in your Constitution; and
in providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and
Numas have, as much as in anything else, discovered
a sovereign incapacity.
Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done
towards the formation of an executive power. For
this they have chosen a degraded king. This their
first executive officer is to be a machine, without any
sort of deliberative discretion in any one act of his
function. At best, he is but a channel to convey to
the National Assembly such matter as may import
that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, the power would not have been without its importance, though infinitely perilous to those who would choose to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts may pass to the Assembly with equal authenticity through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a
direction to measures by the statement of an authorized reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing.
To consider the French scheme of an executive
officer, in its two natural divisions of civil and political. - In the first it must be observed, that, according
to the new Constitution, the higher parts of judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The
king of France is not the fountain of justice. The
judges, neither the original nor the appellate, are of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 497
his nomination. He neither proposes the candidates
nor has a negative on the choice. HIe is not even
the public prosecutor. He serves only as a notary,
to authenticate the choice made of the judges in the
several districts. By his officers he is to execute
their sentence. When we look into the true nature
of his authority, he. appears to be nothing more than
a chief of bumbailiffs, sergeants-at-mace, catchpoles,
jailers, and hangmen. It is impossible to place anything called royalty in a more degrading point of
view. A thousand times better it had been for the
dignity of this unhappy prince, that he had nothing
at all to do with the administration of justice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable and all that
is consolatory in that function, without power of
originating any process, without a power of suspelsion, mitigation, or pardon. Everything in justice
that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It. was
not for nothing that the Assembly has been at such
pains to remove the stigma from certain offices, when
they were resolved to place the person who had lately
been their king in a situation but one degree above
the executioner, and in an office nearly of the same
quality. It is not in Nature, that, situated as the
king of the French now is, he can respect himself
or can be respected by others.
View this new executive officer on the side of his
political capacity, as he acts under the orders of the
National Assembly. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. It is a trust, indeed, that has
much depending upon its faithful and diligent performance, both in the person presiding in it and in
VOL. HI. 32
? ? ? ? 498 REFLECTIONS ON THE
all its subordinates. Means of performing this duty
ought to be given by regulation; and dispositions
towards it ought to be infused by the circumstances
attendant on the trust. It ought to be environed
with dignity, authority, and consideration, and it
ought to lead to glory. The office of execution is
an office of exertion. It is not from impotence we
are to expect the tasks of power. What sort of
person is a king to command executory service, who
has no means whatsoever to reward it: -not in a
permanent office; not in a grant of land; no, not
in a pension of fifty pounds a year; not in the
vainest and most trivial title? In France the king
is no more the fountain of honor than he is the
fountain of justice. All rewards, all distinctions, are
in other hands. Those who serve the king can be actuated by no natural motive but fear,- by a fear of
everything except their master. Ilis functions of internal coercion are as odious as those which he exercises in the department of justice. If relief is to be given to any municipality, the Assembly gives it.
If troops are to be sent to reduce them to obedience to the Assembly, the king is to execute the
order; and upon every occasion he is to be spattered
over with the blood of his people. He has no negative; yet his name and authority is used to enforce
every harsh decree. Nay, he must concur in the
butchery of those who shall attempt to free him from
his imprisonment, or show the slightest attachment to
his person or to his ancient authority.
Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in
such a manner that those who compose it should
be disposed to love and to venerate those whom thev
are bound to obey. A purposed neglect, or, what is
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 499
worse, a literal, but perverse and malignant obedience,
must be the ruin of the wisest counsels. In vain
will the law attempt to anticipate or to follow such
studied neglects and fraudulent attentions. To make
them act zealously is not in the'competence of law.
Kings, even such as are truly kings, may and ought
to bear the freedom of subjects that are obnoxious
to them. They may, too, without derogating from
tllemselves, bear even the authority of such persons,
if it promotes their service. Louis the Thirteenth
mortally hated the Cardinal de Richelieu; but his
support of that minister against his rivals was the
source of all the glory of his reign, and the solid
foundation of his throne itself. Louis the Fourteenth, when come to the throne, did not love the
Cardinal Mazarin; but for his interests he preserved
him in power. When old, he detested Louvois; but
for years, whilst he faithfully served his greatness, he
endured his person. When George the Second took
Mr. Pitt, who certainly was not agreeable to him,
into his councils, he did nothing which could humble
a wise sovereign.
But these ministers, who were chosen by affairs, not by affections, acted in the name of
and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters. I think it impossible that any king, when he has recovered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigor into
measures which he knows to be dictated by those
who, he must be persuaded, are in the highest degree
ill affected to his person. Will any ministers, who
serve such a king (or whatever he may be called)
with but a decent appearance of respect, cordially
obey the orders of those whom but the other day in
his name they had committed to the Bastile? will
? ? ? ? 500 REFLECTIONS ON THE
they obey the orders of those whom, whilst they were
exercising despotic justice upon them, they conceived
they were treating with lenity, and for whom in a
prison they thought they had provided an asylum?
If you expect such obedience, amongst your other innovations and regenerations, you ought to make a revolution in Nature, and provide a new constitution
for the human mind: otherwise your supreme government cannot harmonize with its executory system. There are cases in which we cannot take up with
names and abstractions. You may call half a dozen
leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear and
hate, the nation. It makes no other difference than
to make us fear and hate them the more. If it had
been thought justifiable and expedient to make such
a revolution by such means and through such persons as you have made yours, it would have been more wise to have completed the business of the fifth
and sixth of October. The new executive officer
would then owe his situation to those who are his
creators as well as his masters; and he might be
bound in interest, in the society of crime, and (if in
crimes there could be virtues) in gratitude, to serve
those who had promoted him to a place of great lucre and great sensual indulgence, - and of something more: for more he must have received from those
who certainly would not have limited an aggrandized
creature as they have done a submitting antagonist.
A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally stupefied by his misfortunes, so as to think it
not the necessity, but the premium and privilege of
life, to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory, can
never be fit for the office. If he feels as men commonly feel, he must be sensible that an office so cir.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 501
cumstanced is one in which he can obtain no fame or
reputation. He has no generous interest that can
excite him to action. At best, his conduct will be
passive and defensive. To inferior people such an office might be matter of honor. But to be raised to it and to descend to it are different things, and suggest different sentiments. Does he really name the ministers? They will have a sympathy with him.
Are they forced upon him? The whole business
between them and the nominal king will be mutual
counteraction. In all other countries the office of
ministers of state is of the highest dignity. In
France it is full of peril, and incapable of glory.
Rivals, however, they will have in their nothingness,
whilst shallow ambition exists in the world, or the
desire of a miserable salary is an incentive to shortsighted avarice. Those competitors of the ministers are enabled by your Constitution to attack them in
their vital parts, whilst they have not the means of
repelling their charges in any other than the degrading character of culprits. The ministers of state in France are the only persons in that country who are
incapable of a share in the national councils. What
ministers! What councils! What a nation! - But
they are responsible. It is a poor service that is to'
be had from responsibility. The elevation of mind to
be derived from fear will never make a nation glorious. Responsibility prevents crimes. It makes all attempts against the laws dangerous. But for a principle of active and zealous service, none but idiots could think of it. Is the conduct of a war to be
trusted to a mall who may abhor its principle, - who,
in every step he may take to render it successful,
confirms the power of those by whom he is oppressed?
? ? ? ? 502 REFLECTIONS ON THE
Will foreign states seriously treat with him who has
no prerogative of peace or war, - no, not so much as
in a single vote by himself or his ministers, or by any
one whom he can possibly influence? A state of contempt is not a state for a prince: better get rid of
him at once.
I know it will be said that these humors in the
court and executive government will continue only
through this generation, and that the king has been
brought to declare the dauphin shall be educated in
a conformity to his situation. If he is made to conform to his situation, he will have no education at all. His training must be worse even than that of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads, -- whether he reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him his ancestors were kings. Thenceforward his object must be
to assert himself and to avenge his parents. This
you will say is not his duty. That may be; but it is
Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you,
you do unwisely to trust to duty. In this futile
scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom, for
the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in
the executive force (I cannot call it authority) that
has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the
smallest degree of just correspondence or symmetry
or amicable relation with the supreme power, either
as it now exists, or as it is planned for the future
government.
You have settled, by an economy as perverted as
the policy, two * establishments of government,- one
* In reality three, to reckon the provincial republican establishments.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 503
real, one fictitious: both maintained at a vast expense; but the fictitious at, I think, the greatest.
Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease
of its wheels. The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the use deserve the tenth part of
the charge. - Oh! but I don't do justice to the talents of the legislators: I don't allow, as I ought to
do, for necessity. Their scheme of executive force
was not their choice. This pageant must be kept.
The people would not consent to part with it. - Right:
I understand you. You do, in spite of your grand
theories, to which you would have heaven and earth
to bend, you do know how to conform yourselves to
the nature and circumstances of things. But when
you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end.
That was in your power. For instance, among many
others, it was in your power to leave to your king
the right of peace and war. - What! to leave to the
executive magistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives? - I know none more dangerous; nor any
one more necessary to be so trusted. I do not say
that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king,
unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it,
which he does not now hold. But, if he did possess
them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages
would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensating the risk. There is no other way of keeping
the several potentates of Europe from intriguing distinctly and personally with the members of your Assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most per
? ? ? ? 504 REFLECTIONS ON THE
nicious of all factions,- factions in the interest and
under the direction of foreign powers. From that
worst of evils, thank God, we are still free. Your
skill, if you had any, would be well employed to find
out indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous trust. If you did not like those which in England
we have chosen, your leaders might have exerted
their abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary to exemplify the consequences of such an executive government as yours, in the management of great affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of M. de
Montmorin to the National Assembly, and all the
other proceedings relative to the differences between
Great Britain and Spain. It would be treating your
understanding with disrespect to point them out to
7ou.
jI hear that the persons who are called ministers
have signified an intention of resigning their places.
I am rather astonished that they have not resigned
long since. For the universe I would not have stood
in the situation in which they have been for this last
twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact be as it may,
they could not, placed as they were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be
the first to see collectively, and to feel each in his
own department, the evils which have been produced
by that Revolution. In every step which they took,
or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded
situation of their country, and their utter incapacity
of serving it. They are in a species of subordinate
servitude in which no men before them were ever
seen. Without confidence from their sovereign on
whom they were forced, or from the Assembly who
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 505
forced them upon him, all the noble functions of
their office are executed by committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their personal
or their official authority. They are to execute, without power; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are to deliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns, over neither
of whom they have any influence, they must act in
such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the
other, and always to betray themselves. Such has
been their situation; such must be the situation of
those who succeed them. I have much respect, and
many good wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to
him for attentions. I thought, when his enemies
had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was
a subject of most serious congratulation. Sed multce
urbes et publica vota vicerunt. He is now sitting on
the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of
France.
A great deal more might be observed on the strange
constitution of the executory part of the new government; but fatigue must give bounds to the discussion
of subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits.
As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in
the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly. According to their invariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old government, stood in need
of reform, even though there should be no change
made in the monarchy. They required several more
alterations to adapt them to the system of a free Con
? ? ? ? 506 REFLECTIONS ON THE
stitution. But they had particulars in their constitution, and those not a few, which deserved approbation
from the wise. They possessed one fundamental excellence: they were independent. The most doubtful circumstance attendant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, however, to this independency of character. They held for life. Indeed,
they may be said to have held by inheritance. Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as
nearly out of his power. The most determined exertions of that authority against them only showed
their radical independence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted to resist arbitrary
innovation; and from that corporate constitution,
and from most of their forms, they were well calculated to afford both certainty and stability to the
laws. They had been a safe asylum to secure these
laws, in all the revolutions of humor and opinion.
They had saved that sacred deposit of the country
during the reigns of arbitrary princes and the struggles of arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory and record of the Constitution. They were the great security to private property; which might be
said (when personal liberty had no existence) to be,
in fact, as well guarded in France as in any other
country. Whatever is supreme in a state ought to
have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so
constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but
in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make
its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the
state.
These parliaments had furnished, not the best
certainly, but some considerable corrective to the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 507
excesses and vices of the monarchy. Such an independent judicature was ten times more necessary
when a democracy became the absolute power of the
country. In that Constitution, elective, temporary,
local judges, such as you have contrived, exercising
their dependent functions in a narrow society, must
be the worst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain
to look for any appearance of justice towards strangers, towards the obnoxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards all those who in the election have supported unsuccessful candidates. It
will be impossible to keep the new tribunals clear of
the worst spirit of faction. All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be vain and childish
to prevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they
may the best answer the purposes of concealment,
they answer to produce suspicion, and this is a still
more mischievous cause of partiality.
If tIe. parliaments had been preserved, instead of
being dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation,
they might have served in this new commonwealth,
perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean an
exact parallel,) but near the same purposes as the
court and senate of Areopagus did in Athens: that
is, as one of the balances and correctives to the evils
of a light and unIjust democracy. Every one knows
that this tribunt jalso. . the great stay of tlhat. . stte;
every one knows with what care it was upheld, and
with what a religious awe it was consecrated. The
parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I admit; but this evil was exterior and accidental, and not
so' much the vice of their constitution itself as it must
be in your new contrivance of sexennial elective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of
? ? ? ? 508 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the old tribunals, as supposing that they determined
everything by bribery and corruption. But they have
stood the test of monarchic and republican scrutiny.
The court was well disposed to prove corruption on
those bodies, when they were dissolved in 1771;
those who have again dissolved them would have
done the same, if they could; but both inquisitions
having failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corruption must have been rather rare amongst them.
It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preserve their ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at least upon, all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon those
which passed in the time of the monarchy. It would
be a means of squaring the occasional decrees of a democracy to some principles of general jurisprudence.
The vice of the ancient democracies, and one cause
of their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees, psephismata. This practice soon
broke in upon the tenor and consistency of the laws;
it abated the respect of the people towards them,
and totally destroyed them in the end.
Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which,
in the time of the monarchy, existed in the Parliament of Paris, in your principal executive officer,
whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere in
calling king, is the height of absurdity. You ought
never to suffer remonstrance from him who is to execute. This is to understand neither council nor execution, neither authority nor obedience. The person whom you call king ought not to have this power,
or he ought to have more.
Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating your monarchy, and seating your
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 509
judges on a bench of independence, your object is to
reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you
have changed all things, you have invented new principles of order. You first appoint judges, who, I suppose, are to determine according to law, and then you let them know, that, at some time or other, you intend to give them some law by which they are to
determine. Any studies which they have made (if
any they have made) are to be useless to them. But
to supply these studies, they are to be sworn to obey
all the rules, orders, and instructions which from
time to time they are to receive from the National
Assembly. These if they submit to, they leave no
ground of law to the subject. They become complete
and most dangerous instruments in the hands of the
governing power, which, in the midst of a cause, or
on the prospect of it, may wholly change the rule of
decision. If these orders of the National Assembly
come to be contrary to the will of the people who
locally choose those judges, such confusion must happen as is terrible to think of. For the judges owe
their place to the local authority, and the commailds they are sworn to obey come from those who
have no share in their appointment. In the mean
time they have the example of the court of Chdtelet
to encourage and guide them in the exercise of their
functions. That court is to try criminals sent to it
by the National Assembly, or brought before it by
other courses of delation. They sit under a guard
to save their own lives. They know not by what law
they judge, nor under what authority they act, nor
by what tenure they hold. It is thought that they
are sometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their
lives. This is not perhaps certain, nor can it be as
? ? ? ? 510 REFLECTIONS ON THE
certained; but when they acquit, we know they have
seen the persons whom they discharge, with perfect
impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of their
court.
what none can estimate? Who will accumulate,
when he does not know the value of what he saves?
If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw.
The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a -nation of gamesters is this, --
that, though all are forced to play, few can understand
the game, and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of that knowledge. The many must be
the dupes of the few who conduct the machine of
these speculations. What effect it must have on the
country-people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day to day; not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first brings his corn to
? ? ? ? 490 REFLECTIONS ON THE
market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to
take the assignat at par; when he goes to the shop
with this money, he finds it seven per cent the
worse for crossing the way. This market he will not
readily resort to again. The towns-people will be
inflamed; they will force the country-people to bring
their corn. Resistance will begin, and the murders
of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all
France.
What signifies the empty compliment paid to the
country, by giving it, perhaps, more than its share in
the theory of your representation? Where have you
placed the real power over moneyed and landed circulation? Where have you placed the means of raising and falling the value of every man's freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add ten
per cent to the possessions of every man in France
must be the masters of every man in France. The
whole of the power obtained by this Revolution will
settle in the towns among the burghers, and the
moneyed directors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant have, none of
them, habits or inclinations or experience which can
lead them to any share in this the sole source of
power and influence now left in France. The very
nature of a country life, the very nature of landed
property, in all the occupations and all the pleasures
they afford, render combination and arrangement
(the sole way of procuring and exerting influence)
in a manner impossible amongst country-people.
Combine them by all the art you can, and all the
industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 491
jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business
and dies in a day, all these things, which are the reins
and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds
of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all,
amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm,
they act, with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed systematically. If the country-gentlemen attempt an
influence through the mere income of their property,
what is it to that of those who have ten times their
income to sell, and who can ruin their property by
bringing their plunder to meet it at market? If the
landed man wishes to mortgage, he falls the value of
his land and raises the value of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he
must take to contend with him. The country-gentleman, therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man
of liberal views and habits, attached to no profession,
will be as completely excluded from the government
of his country as if he were legislatively proscribed.
It is obvious, that, in the towns, all the things which
conspire against the country-gentleman combine in
favor of the money manager and director. In towns
combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their
occupations, their diversion, their business, th6ir idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact.
Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are
always in garrison; and they come embodied and
half-disciplined into the hands of those who mean to
form them for civil or military action.
All these considerations leave no doubt on my
mind, that, if this monster of a Constitution can continue, France will be wholly governed by the agita
? ? ? ? 492 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tors in corporations, by societies in the towns, formed
of directors in assignats, and trustees for the sale of
Churchl lands, attorneys, agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown, the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all
the deceitful dreams and visions of the equality and
rights of men. In " the Serbonian bog" of this base
oligarchy they are all absorbed, sunk, and lost forever.
Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would
be tempted to think some great offences in France
must cry to Heaven, which has thought fit to punish
it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious domination, in which no comfort or compensation is to be
found in any even of those false splendors which,
playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind from
feeling themselves dishonored even whilst they are
oppressed. I must confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed with some indignation, at the conduct of
a few men, once of great rank, and still of great character, who, deluded with specious names, have engaged in a business too deep for the line of their understanding to fathom, --who have lent their fair
reputation and the authority of their high-sounding
names to the designs of men with whom they could
not be acquainted, and have thereby made their very
virtues operate to the ruin of their country.
So far as to the first cementing principle.
The second material of cement for their new repub
lie is the superiority of the city of Paris; and this,
I admit, is strongly connected with the other cementing principle of paper circulation and confiscation.
It is in this part of the project we must look for the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 493
cause of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions, ecclesiastical and secular, and
the dissolution of all ancient combinations of things,
as well as the formation of so many small unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one great spring of all their politics. . It is
through the power of Paris, now become the centre
and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of this faction
direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and
the whole executive government. Everything, therefore, must be done which can confirm the authority
of that city over the other republics. Paris is compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the force of any of the square republics;
and this strength is collected and condensed within
a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connection of its parts, which will not be affected by
any scheme of a geometrical constitution; nor does
it much signify whether its proportion of representation be more or less, since it has the whole draught
of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the
kingdom, being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual means and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate members, but weakness, disconnection,
and confusion. To confirm this part of the plan,
the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that
no two of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the
strength of Paris, thus formed, will appear a system
of general weakness. It is boasted that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas
? ? ? ? 494 REFLECTIONS ON THE
should be sunk, and that the people should be no
longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans,-but
Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one
Assembly. But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the
greater likelihood is that the inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever was
attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement. He
never will glory in belonging to the chequer No. 71,
or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public
affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighborhoods, and
our habitual provincial connections. These are inns
and resting-places. Shich divisions of our country as
have been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk
of authority, were so many little images of the great
country, in which the heart found something which it
could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished
by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort
of elemental training to those higher and more large
regards by which alone men come to be affected, as
with their own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general
territory itself, as in the old name of Provinces, the
citizens are interested from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the geometric
properties of its figure. The power and preeminence of Paris does certainly press down and hold
these republics together as long as it lasts: but, for
the reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot last very long.
Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing principles of this Constitution to the National Assembly, which is to appear and act as sovereign,
? ? ? ? RFVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 495
we see a body in its constitution with every possible
power and no possible external control. We see a
body without findamental laws, without established
maxims, without respected rules of proceeding, which
nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever.
Their idea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of legislative competency, and their examples for common cases from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in most
respects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode
of the new elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of the small degree of
internal control existing in a minority chosen originally from various interests, and preserving something
of their spirit. If possible, the next Assembly must
be worse than the present. The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to their successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will
be roused by emulation and example to enterprises
the boldest and the most absurd. To suppose such
an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Y6our all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do
everything at once, have forgot one thing that seems
essential, and which, I believe, never has been before,
in the theory or the practice, omitted by any projector of a republic. They have fotr tlo -c s9, tietp. , a
senate, or something of that nature and character. 'e;er', ]before this time, was heard of a body politic
composed of one legislative and active assembly, and
its'executive officers, without such a council: without something to which foreign states might connect
themselves, -- something to which, in the ordinary
detail of government, the people could look up,something which might give a bias and steadiness,
------ ~~ ------- ~'~-~ ----'- ~~ --~' ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~''*". . . . . . . . . . . ~. . . . . . . . . .
? ? ? ? 496 REFLECTIONS ON THE
and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally have
as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but
it seems to be in the very essence of a republican
government. It holds a sort of mddle place between
the supreme power exercised by the people, or immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive.
Of this there are no traces in your Constitution; and
in providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and
Numas have, as much as in anything else, discovered
a sovereign incapacity.
Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done
towards the formation of an executive power. For
this they have chosen a degraded king. This their
first executive officer is to be a machine, without any
sort of deliberative discretion in any one act of his
function. At best, he is but a channel to convey to
the National Assembly such matter as may import
that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, the power would not have been without its importance, though infinitely perilous to those who would choose to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts may pass to the Assembly with equal authenticity through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a
direction to measures by the statement of an authorized reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing.
To consider the French scheme of an executive
officer, in its two natural divisions of civil and political. - In the first it must be observed, that, according
to the new Constitution, the higher parts of judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The
king of France is not the fountain of justice. The
judges, neither the original nor the appellate, are of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 497
his nomination. He neither proposes the candidates
nor has a negative on the choice. HIe is not even
the public prosecutor. He serves only as a notary,
to authenticate the choice made of the judges in the
several districts. By his officers he is to execute
their sentence. When we look into the true nature
of his authority, he. appears to be nothing more than
a chief of bumbailiffs, sergeants-at-mace, catchpoles,
jailers, and hangmen. It is impossible to place anything called royalty in a more degrading point of
view. A thousand times better it had been for the
dignity of this unhappy prince, that he had nothing
at all to do with the administration of justice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable and all that
is consolatory in that function, without power of
originating any process, without a power of suspelsion, mitigation, or pardon. Everything in justice
that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It. was
not for nothing that the Assembly has been at such
pains to remove the stigma from certain offices, when
they were resolved to place the person who had lately
been their king in a situation but one degree above
the executioner, and in an office nearly of the same
quality. It is not in Nature, that, situated as the
king of the French now is, he can respect himself
or can be respected by others.
View this new executive officer on the side of his
political capacity, as he acts under the orders of the
National Assembly. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. It is a trust, indeed, that has
much depending upon its faithful and diligent performance, both in the person presiding in it and in
VOL. HI. 32
? ? ? ? 498 REFLECTIONS ON THE
all its subordinates. Means of performing this duty
ought to be given by regulation; and dispositions
towards it ought to be infused by the circumstances
attendant on the trust. It ought to be environed
with dignity, authority, and consideration, and it
ought to lead to glory. The office of execution is
an office of exertion. It is not from impotence we
are to expect the tasks of power. What sort of
person is a king to command executory service, who
has no means whatsoever to reward it: -not in a
permanent office; not in a grant of land; no, not
in a pension of fifty pounds a year; not in the
vainest and most trivial title? In France the king
is no more the fountain of honor than he is the
fountain of justice. All rewards, all distinctions, are
in other hands. Those who serve the king can be actuated by no natural motive but fear,- by a fear of
everything except their master. Ilis functions of internal coercion are as odious as those which he exercises in the department of justice. If relief is to be given to any municipality, the Assembly gives it.
If troops are to be sent to reduce them to obedience to the Assembly, the king is to execute the
order; and upon every occasion he is to be spattered
over with the blood of his people. He has no negative; yet his name and authority is used to enforce
every harsh decree. Nay, he must concur in the
butchery of those who shall attempt to free him from
his imprisonment, or show the slightest attachment to
his person or to his ancient authority.
Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in
such a manner that those who compose it should
be disposed to love and to venerate those whom thev
are bound to obey. A purposed neglect, or, what is
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 499
worse, a literal, but perverse and malignant obedience,
must be the ruin of the wisest counsels. In vain
will the law attempt to anticipate or to follow such
studied neglects and fraudulent attentions. To make
them act zealously is not in the'competence of law.
Kings, even such as are truly kings, may and ought
to bear the freedom of subjects that are obnoxious
to them. They may, too, without derogating from
tllemselves, bear even the authority of such persons,
if it promotes their service. Louis the Thirteenth
mortally hated the Cardinal de Richelieu; but his
support of that minister against his rivals was the
source of all the glory of his reign, and the solid
foundation of his throne itself. Louis the Fourteenth, when come to the throne, did not love the
Cardinal Mazarin; but for his interests he preserved
him in power. When old, he detested Louvois; but
for years, whilst he faithfully served his greatness, he
endured his person. When George the Second took
Mr. Pitt, who certainly was not agreeable to him,
into his councils, he did nothing which could humble
a wise sovereign.
But these ministers, who were chosen by affairs, not by affections, acted in the name of
and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters. I think it impossible that any king, when he has recovered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigor into
measures which he knows to be dictated by those
who, he must be persuaded, are in the highest degree
ill affected to his person. Will any ministers, who
serve such a king (or whatever he may be called)
with but a decent appearance of respect, cordially
obey the orders of those whom but the other day in
his name they had committed to the Bastile? will
? ? ? ? 500 REFLECTIONS ON THE
they obey the orders of those whom, whilst they were
exercising despotic justice upon them, they conceived
they were treating with lenity, and for whom in a
prison they thought they had provided an asylum?
If you expect such obedience, amongst your other innovations and regenerations, you ought to make a revolution in Nature, and provide a new constitution
for the human mind: otherwise your supreme government cannot harmonize with its executory system. There are cases in which we cannot take up with
names and abstractions. You may call half a dozen
leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear and
hate, the nation. It makes no other difference than
to make us fear and hate them the more. If it had
been thought justifiable and expedient to make such
a revolution by such means and through such persons as you have made yours, it would have been more wise to have completed the business of the fifth
and sixth of October. The new executive officer
would then owe his situation to those who are his
creators as well as his masters; and he might be
bound in interest, in the society of crime, and (if in
crimes there could be virtues) in gratitude, to serve
those who had promoted him to a place of great lucre and great sensual indulgence, - and of something more: for more he must have received from those
who certainly would not have limited an aggrandized
creature as they have done a submitting antagonist.
A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally stupefied by his misfortunes, so as to think it
not the necessity, but the premium and privilege of
life, to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory, can
never be fit for the office. If he feels as men commonly feel, he must be sensible that an office so cir.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 501
cumstanced is one in which he can obtain no fame or
reputation. He has no generous interest that can
excite him to action. At best, his conduct will be
passive and defensive. To inferior people such an office might be matter of honor. But to be raised to it and to descend to it are different things, and suggest different sentiments. Does he really name the ministers? They will have a sympathy with him.
Are they forced upon him? The whole business
between them and the nominal king will be mutual
counteraction. In all other countries the office of
ministers of state is of the highest dignity. In
France it is full of peril, and incapable of glory.
Rivals, however, they will have in their nothingness,
whilst shallow ambition exists in the world, or the
desire of a miserable salary is an incentive to shortsighted avarice. Those competitors of the ministers are enabled by your Constitution to attack them in
their vital parts, whilst they have not the means of
repelling their charges in any other than the degrading character of culprits. The ministers of state in France are the only persons in that country who are
incapable of a share in the national councils. What
ministers! What councils! What a nation! - But
they are responsible. It is a poor service that is to'
be had from responsibility. The elevation of mind to
be derived from fear will never make a nation glorious. Responsibility prevents crimes. It makes all attempts against the laws dangerous. But for a principle of active and zealous service, none but idiots could think of it. Is the conduct of a war to be
trusted to a mall who may abhor its principle, - who,
in every step he may take to render it successful,
confirms the power of those by whom he is oppressed?
? ? ? ? 502 REFLECTIONS ON THE
Will foreign states seriously treat with him who has
no prerogative of peace or war, - no, not so much as
in a single vote by himself or his ministers, or by any
one whom he can possibly influence? A state of contempt is not a state for a prince: better get rid of
him at once.
I know it will be said that these humors in the
court and executive government will continue only
through this generation, and that the king has been
brought to declare the dauphin shall be educated in
a conformity to his situation. If he is made to conform to his situation, he will have no education at all. His training must be worse even than that of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads, -- whether he reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him his ancestors were kings. Thenceforward his object must be
to assert himself and to avenge his parents. This
you will say is not his duty. That may be; but it is
Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you,
you do unwisely to trust to duty. In this futile
scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom, for
the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in
the executive force (I cannot call it authority) that
has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the
smallest degree of just correspondence or symmetry
or amicable relation with the supreme power, either
as it now exists, or as it is planned for the future
government.
You have settled, by an economy as perverted as
the policy, two * establishments of government,- one
* In reality three, to reckon the provincial republican establishments.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 503
real, one fictitious: both maintained at a vast expense; but the fictitious at, I think, the greatest.
Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease
of its wheels. The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the use deserve the tenth part of
the charge. - Oh! but I don't do justice to the talents of the legislators: I don't allow, as I ought to
do, for necessity. Their scheme of executive force
was not their choice. This pageant must be kept.
The people would not consent to part with it. - Right:
I understand you. You do, in spite of your grand
theories, to which you would have heaven and earth
to bend, you do know how to conform yourselves to
the nature and circumstances of things. But when
you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end.
That was in your power. For instance, among many
others, it was in your power to leave to your king
the right of peace and war. - What! to leave to the
executive magistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives? - I know none more dangerous; nor any
one more necessary to be so trusted. I do not say
that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king,
unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it,
which he does not now hold. But, if he did possess
them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages
would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensating the risk. There is no other way of keeping
the several potentates of Europe from intriguing distinctly and personally with the members of your Assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most per
? ? ? ? 504 REFLECTIONS ON THE
nicious of all factions,- factions in the interest and
under the direction of foreign powers. From that
worst of evils, thank God, we are still free. Your
skill, if you had any, would be well employed to find
out indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous trust. If you did not like those which in England
we have chosen, your leaders might have exerted
their abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary to exemplify the consequences of such an executive government as yours, in the management of great affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of M. de
Montmorin to the National Assembly, and all the
other proceedings relative to the differences between
Great Britain and Spain. It would be treating your
understanding with disrespect to point them out to
7ou.
jI hear that the persons who are called ministers
have signified an intention of resigning their places.
I am rather astonished that they have not resigned
long since. For the universe I would not have stood
in the situation in which they have been for this last
twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact be as it may,
they could not, placed as they were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be
the first to see collectively, and to feel each in his
own department, the evils which have been produced
by that Revolution. In every step which they took,
or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded
situation of their country, and their utter incapacity
of serving it. They are in a species of subordinate
servitude in which no men before them were ever
seen. Without confidence from their sovereign on
whom they were forced, or from the Assembly who
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 505
forced them upon him, all the noble functions of
their office are executed by committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their personal
or their official authority. They are to execute, without power; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are to deliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns, over neither
of whom they have any influence, they must act in
such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the
other, and always to betray themselves. Such has
been their situation; such must be the situation of
those who succeed them. I have much respect, and
many good wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to
him for attentions. I thought, when his enemies
had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was
a subject of most serious congratulation. Sed multce
urbes et publica vota vicerunt. He is now sitting on
the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of
France.
A great deal more might be observed on the strange
constitution of the executory part of the new government; but fatigue must give bounds to the discussion
of subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits.
As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in
the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly. According to their invariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old government, stood in need
of reform, even though there should be no change
made in the monarchy. They required several more
alterations to adapt them to the system of a free Con
? ? ? ? 506 REFLECTIONS ON THE
stitution. But they had particulars in their constitution, and those not a few, which deserved approbation
from the wise. They possessed one fundamental excellence: they were independent. The most doubtful circumstance attendant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, however, to this independency of character. They held for life. Indeed,
they may be said to have held by inheritance. Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as
nearly out of his power. The most determined exertions of that authority against them only showed
their radical independence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted to resist arbitrary
innovation; and from that corporate constitution,
and from most of their forms, they were well calculated to afford both certainty and stability to the
laws. They had been a safe asylum to secure these
laws, in all the revolutions of humor and opinion.
They had saved that sacred deposit of the country
during the reigns of arbitrary princes and the struggles of arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory and record of the Constitution. They were the great security to private property; which might be
said (when personal liberty had no existence) to be,
in fact, as well guarded in France as in any other
country. Whatever is supreme in a state ought to
have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so
constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but
in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make
its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the
state.
These parliaments had furnished, not the best
certainly, but some considerable corrective to the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 507
excesses and vices of the monarchy. Such an independent judicature was ten times more necessary
when a democracy became the absolute power of the
country. In that Constitution, elective, temporary,
local judges, such as you have contrived, exercising
their dependent functions in a narrow society, must
be the worst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain
to look for any appearance of justice towards strangers, towards the obnoxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards all those who in the election have supported unsuccessful candidates. It
will be impossible to keep the new tribunals clear of
the worst spirit of faction. All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be vain and childish
to prevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they
may the best answer the purposes of concealment,
they answer to produce suspicion, and this is a still
more mischievous cause of partiality.
If tIe. parliaments had been preserved, instead of
being dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation,
they might have served in this new commonwealth,
perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean an
exact parallel,) but near the same purposes as the
court and senate of Areopagus did in Athens: that
is, as one of the balances and correctives to the evils
of a light and unIjust democracy. Every one knows
that this tribunt jalso. . the great stay of tlhat. . stte;
every one knows with what care it was upheld, and
with what a religious awe it was consecrated. The
parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I admit; but this evil was exterior and accidental, and not
so' much the vice of their constitution itself as it must
be in your new contrivance of sexennial elective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of
? ? ? ? 508 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the old tribunals, as supposing that they determined
everything by bribery and corruption. But they have
stood the test of monarchic and republican scrutiny.
The court was well disposed to prove corruption on
those bodies, when they were dissolved in 1771;
those who have again dissolved them would have
done the same, if they could; but both inquisitions
having failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corruption must have been rather rare amongst them.
It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preserve their ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at least upon, all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon those
which passed in the time of the monarchy. It would
be a means of squaring the occasional decrees of a democracy to some principles of general jurisprudence.
The vice of the ancient democracies, and one cause
of their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees, psephismata. This practice soon
broke in upon the tenor and consistency of the laws;
it abated the respect of the people towards them,
and totally destroyed them in the end.
Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which,
in the time of the monarchy, existed in the Parliament of Paris, in your principal executive officer,
whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere in
calling king, is the height of absurdity. You ought
never to suffer remonstrance from him who is to execute. This is to understand neither council nor execution, neither authority nor obedience. The person whom you call king ought not to have this power,
or he ought to have more.
Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating your monarchy, and seating your
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 509
judges on a bench of independence, your object is to
reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you
have changed all things, you have invented new principles of order. You first appoint judges, who, I suppose, are to determine according to law, and then you let them know, that, at some time or other, you intend to give them some law by which they are to
determine. Any studies which they have made (if
any they have made) are to be useless to them. But
to supply these studies, they are to be sworn to obey
all the rules, orders, and instructions which from
time to time they are to receive from the National
Assembly. These if they submit to, they leave no
ground of law to the subject. They become complete
and most dangerous instruments in the hands of the
governing power, which, in the midst of a cause, or
on the prospect of it, may wholly change the rule of
decision. If these orders of the National Assembly
come to be contrary to the will of the people who
locally choose those judges, such confusion must happen as is terrible to think of. For the judges owe
their place to the local authority, and the commailds they are sworn to obey come from those who
have no share in their appointment. In the mean
time they have the example of the court of Chdtelet
to encourage and guide them in the exercise of their
functions. That court is to try criminals sent to it
by the National Assembly, or brought before it by
other courses of delation. They sit under a guard
to save their own lives. They know not by what law
they judge, nor under what authority they act, nor
by what tenure they hold. It is thought that they
are sometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their
lives. This is not perhaps certain, nor can it be as
? ? ? ? 510 REFLECTIONS ON THE
certained; but when they acquit, we know they have
seen the persons whom they discharge, with perfect
impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of their
court.
