No More Learning

What hardy pencil of a great
master, from the school of the rights of men, will
finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not
yet the complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined superstition and error;
and the king of France wants another object or two
to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the
good which is to arise from his own sufferings, and
the patriotic crimes of an enlightened age. *
* It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject by
an eyewitness. That eyewitness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of the most active and zealous reformers of the state. He was obliged to
secede from the Assembly; and he afterwards became a voluntary
exile, on account of the horrors of this pious triumph, and the dispositions of men, who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead in public affairs.
Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend.
" Parlons du parti que j'ai pris; il est bien justifie dans ma conscience. - Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assembl6e plus coupable
encore, ne meritoient que je me justifie; mais j'ai'a coeur que vous, et
les personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me condamnent pas. -
Ma santd, je vous jure, me rendoit mes fonctions impossibles; mais
meme en les mettant de c6te il a e'te au-dessus de mes forces de supporter plus longtems l'horreur que me causoit ce sang, - ces tetes, - cette reine presque egorgee,- ce roi, amend esclave, entrant ia Paris
au milieu de ses assassins, et prce'de' des tetes de ses malheureux
gardes, - ces perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales,
-ce cri de TOUS LES EVEQUES X LA LANTERNE, dans le moment
oh le roi entre sa capitale avec deux e'vques de son conseil dans sa
voiture, - un coup de fusil, que j'ai vu tirer dans un des carrosses de la
reine, - M. Bailly appellant cela un beau jour, - l'assemblde ayant ddclare froidement le matin, qu'il n'dtoit pas de sa dignit6 d'aller toute entiere environner le roi, --M. Mirabeau disant impunement dans
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Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go to the length that in all probability
it was intended it should be carried, yet I must think
that such treatment of any human creatures must be
shocking to any but those who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, and not cette assenmblee, que le vaisseau de l'etat, loin d'etre arrete dans sa
course, s'dlanceroit avec plus de rapiditd que jamais vers sa regeneration, - M. Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang couloient
altour de nous, --le vertueux Mounier * echappant par miracle k
vingt assassins, qui avoien~ voulu faire de sa tete un trophe'e de plus:
Voilk ce qui me fit jurer de ne plus mettre le pied dans cette caverne
d'Antropophages [the National Assembly], oh je n'avois plus de force
d'dlever la voix, oh depuis six semaines je l'avois dlevde en vain.
"' Moi, Mounier, et tous les hounntes gens, ont pensd que le dernier
effort a faire pour le bien etoit d'en sortir. Aucune idde de crainte ne
s'est approched de moi. Je rougirois de m'en d6fendre. J'avois encore recfi sur la route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que
ceux qui l'ont enivre' de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissements, dont d'autres auroient dte flattds, et qui m'ont fait fremir.
C'est k l'indignation, c'est a l'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques, que le seul aspect du sang me fait 6prouver que j'ai cede'. On
brave une seule mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut 8tre
utile. Mais aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou privee n'ont le droit de me condamner a souffrir inutilement
mille supplices par minute, et k pdrir de desespoir, de rage, au milieu
des trliomphes, du crime que je n'ai pu arreter. Ils me proscriront, ils
confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai
plus. Voila ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier; tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera
alors moi qui auroit eu tort de la leur donner. "
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen of the Old Jewry. - See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these
transactions: a man also of honor and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive.
* N. B. M. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He has since
been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertors of liberty.
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being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung
modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted
rank of the persons suffering, and particularly the
sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of the descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender age of royal infants, insensible only through
infancy and innocence of the cruel outrages to which
their parents were exposed, instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that most melancholy occasion.
I hear that the august person who was the principal object of our preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his person that were massacred in cold blood about him;
as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange and
frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and
to be more grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. I am
very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such
personages are in a situation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues of the great.
I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady,
the other object of the triumph, has borne that day,
(one is interested that beings made for suffering
should suffer well,) and that she bears all the succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her
friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and
the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with
a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank
and race, and becoming the offspring of a sovereign
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distinguished for her piety and her courage; that,
like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with
the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble
hand.
tit is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw
the queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.
I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and
cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move
in, - glittering like the morning-star, full of life and
splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what
an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion
that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream,
when she added titles of veiieration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against
disgrace concealed in that bosom! little did I dream
that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen
upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of
men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters,
economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the
glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never,
never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to
rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified
obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept
alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence' of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and
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heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility
of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain
like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing
all its grossness! i
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had
its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle,
though varied in its appearance by the varying state
of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a
long succession of generations, even to the time we
live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the
loss, I fear, will be great. It is this which has given
its character to modern Europe. It is this which has
distinguished it under all its forms of government,
and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states
of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had
produced a noble equality, and handed it down
through all the gradations of social life. It was this
opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and
raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to
the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing
illusions which made power gentle and obedience
liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life,
and which by a bland assimilation incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new con
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quering empire of light and reason. All the decent
drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the
understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded.
as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a
queen is but a woman, a woman is but an animal,
and an animal not of the highest order. All homage
paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, are but fictions
of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide,
- and if the people are by any chance or in any way
gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which
is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be
supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them
from his own private interests. In the groves of
their academy, at the end of every visto, you see
nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our
institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the
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expression, in persons,- so as to create in us love,
veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that
sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections,
combined with manners, are required sometimes as
supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids
to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as
a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:- " Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto. " There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind
would be disposed to relish. To make us love our
country, our country ought to be lovely.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the
shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it
will find other and worse means for its support.
The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancient
institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will
hold power by arts similar to those by which it has
acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous
spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear,
freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of
tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots
and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive
murder and preventive confiscation, and that long
roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings
will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels
from principle.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken
away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From
that moment we have no compass to govern us, nor
can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Eu
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rope, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your Revolution
was completed. How much of that prosperous state
was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be
indifferent in their operation, we must presume, that,
on the whole, their operation was beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state
in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting
to the causes by which they have been produced, and
possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain
than that our manners, our civilization, and all the
good things which are connected with manners and
with civilization, have, in this European world of
ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and
were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the
spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The
nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, and the
other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even
in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed.
Learning paid back what it received to nobility and
to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging
their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy,
if they had all continued to know their indissoluble
union, and their proper place! Happy, if learning,
not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians,
learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down
under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. *
* See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution of the former with this prediction.
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If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they
are always willing to own to ancient manners, so do
other interests which we value full as much as they
are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, are themselves
but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They, too, may decay with
their natural protecting principles. With you, for
the present at least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion
remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the arts
should be lost in an experiment to try how well a
state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for
nothing hereafter?
I wish you may not be going fast, and by the
shortest cut, tq! that horrible and disgustful situation.
Already there appears a poverty of conception, a
coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of
the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.
It is not clear whether in England we learned
those grand and decorous principles and manners,
of which considerable traces yet remain, from you,
or whether you took them from us. But to you, I
think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be
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gentis incunabula nostrce. France has always more or
less influenced manners in England; and when your
fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will
not run long or not run clear with us, or perhaps
with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what
is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have
dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the sixth
of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to
the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which
may be dated from that day: I mean a revolution iin
sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things
now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every
principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize
for harboring the common feelings of men.
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend
Dr. Price, and those of his lay flock who will choose
to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? - For this
plain reason: Because it is natural I should; because
we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles
with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because,
when kings are hurled from their thrones by the
Supreme Director of this great drama, and become
the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the
good, we behold such disasters in the moral as we
should behold a miracle in the physical order of
things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds
VOL. III. 22
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(as it has long since been observed) are purified by
terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom.
Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly
ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric
sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it
in real life. With such a perverted mind, I could
never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People
would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that
Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were
the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be
the tears of folly.
Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the
rights of men, and who must apply themselves to the
moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to
produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation.
There, where men follow their natural impulses, they
would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian
policy, whether applied to the attainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny. They would reject them
on the modern, as they-once did on the ancient stage,
where they could not bear even the hypothetical
proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he
sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would
bear what has been borne in the midst of the real
tragedy of this triumphal day: a principal actor
weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of
horrors, so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage, - and after putting in and out
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 339
weights, declaring that the balance was on the side
of the advantages. They would not bear to see the
crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger against
the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers
of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no
means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In
the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any
elaborate process of reasoning, would show that this
method of political computation would justify every
extent of crime. They would see, that, on these principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and blood. They would soon see that
criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred.
They present a shorter cut to the object than through
the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy
and murder for public benefit, public benefit would
soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the
end, - until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more
dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable
appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing,
in the splendor of these triumphs of the rights of
men, all natural sense of wrong and right.
But the reverend pastor exults in this "'leading
in triumph," because, truly, Louis the Sixteenth was
"an arbitrary monarch": that is, in other words,
neither more nor less than because he was Louis the
Sixteenth, and because he had the misfortune to be
born king of France, with the prerogatives of which
a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of
the people, without any act of his, had put him in
possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out
to him, that he was born king of France. But mis
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fortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the
greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the
acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions
to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his people to a
share of freedom not known, perhaps not desired, by
their ancestors, -such a prince, though he should
be subject to the common frailties attached to men
and to princes, though he should have once thought
it necessary to provide force against the desperate
designs manifestly carrying on against his person
and the remnants of his authority, -- though all this
should be taken into consideration, I shall be led
with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel
and insulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I
tremble for the cause of liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause of humanity,
in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of
mankind. But there are some people of that low
and degenerate fashion of mind that they look up
with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to
kings who know to keep firm in their seat, to hold
a strict hand over their subjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard against the very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters from principle,
listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me that the
king and queen of France (those, I mean, who were
such before the triumph) were inexorable and cruel
tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for
massacring the National Assembly, (I think I have
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 341
seen something like the latter insinuated in certain
publications,) I should think their captivity just. If
this be true, much more ought to have been done,
but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The
punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act
of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and decorous,
and in its punishments rather seems to submit to
a necessity than to make a choice. Had Nero, or
Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or Charles the
Ninth been the subject, -- if Charles the Twelfth of
Sweden, after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor, Christina, after the murder of Monaldeschi, had
fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, I am sure
our conduct would have been different.
If the French king, or king of the French, (or by
whatever name he is known in the new vocabulary
of your Constitution,) has in his own person and
that of his queen really deserved these unavowed,
but unavenged, murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel than murder, such a
person would ill deserve even that subordinate ex
ecutory trust which I understand is to be placed in
him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which
he has outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for
such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a
deposed tyrant could not possibly be made. But to
degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals,
and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns,
as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe
in practice. Those who could make such an appoint
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ment must be guilty of a more flagrant breach of
trust than any they have yet committed against the
people. As this is the only crime in which your
leading politicians could have acted inconsistently, I
conclude that there is no sort of ground for these
horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the
other calumnies.
In England, we give no credit to them. We are
generous enemies; we are faithful allies. We spurn
from us with disgust and indignation the slanders
of those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation of the flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast in Newgate; and neither his being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor. his having, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all
sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term,
it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have preserved to him a liberty of which he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous use of it.
We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the mansion.
We have prisons almost as strong as the Bastile, for
those who dare to libel the queens of France. In this
spiritual retreat let the noble libeller remain. Let
him there meditate on his Talmud, until he learns a
conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and not so
disgraceful to the ancient religion to which he has become a proselyte, - or until some persons from your side of the water, to please your new Hebrew brethreln, shall ransom him. He may then be enabled
to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue,
and a very small poundage on the long compound
interest of the thirty pieces of silver, (Dr. Price has
shown us what miracles compound interest will perform in 1790 years,) the lands which are lately dis
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 343
covered to have been usurped by the Gallican Church.
Send us your Popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will
send you our Protestant Rabbin. We shall treat the
person you send us in exchange like a gentleman and
an honest man, as he is: but pray let him bring with
him the fund of his hospitality, bounty, and charity;
and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling of that honorable and pious fund, nor think of
enriching the Treasury with the spoils of the poorbox.
To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the
honor of our nation to be somewhat concerned ill
the disclaimer of the proceedings of this society of
the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no
man's proxy. I speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all conmmunion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from obselvation, not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and'
mixed communication with the inhabitants of this
kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after a
course of attentive observation, begun in early life,
and continued for near forty years. I have often
been astonished, considering that we are divided
from you but by a slender dike of about twentyfour miles, and that the mutual intercourse between
the two countries has lately been very great, to find
how little you seem to know of us. I suspect that
this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in England. The
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vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue
of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half
a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field
ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands
of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the
British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not
imagine that those who make the noise are the only
inhabitants of the field, -- that, of course, they are
many in number, - or that, after all, they are other
than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though
loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred amongst us participates in the'"triumph " of
the Revolution Society. If the king and queen of
France and their children were to fall into our hands
by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious of all
hostilities, (I deprecate such an event, I deprecate such
hostility,) they would be treated with another sort of
triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had
a king of France in that situation: you have read
how he was treated by the victor in the field, and in
what manner he was afterwards received in England.
Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe
we are not materially changed since that period.
Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks
to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we
still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not
(as I conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of
thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 345
we subtilized ourselves into savages. We are not the
converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of
Voltaire; ilelvetius has made no progress amongst
us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are
not our lawgivers. We know that we have made
no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are
to be made, in morality, -- nor many in the great
principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty,
which were understood long before we were born
altogether as well as they will be after the grave has
heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert
loquacity. In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails: we still
feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those
inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians,
the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters
of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been
drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled,
like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags,
and paltry, blurred shreds of paper about the rights
of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings still
native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and
infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood
beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up
with awe to kings, with affection to Parliaments,
with duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests,
and with respect to nobility. * Why? Because, when
* The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter published
in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a Dissenting minister. When writing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails at Paris, he says, -c" The spirit of the people in this place has abolished
all the proud distinctions which the king and nobles had usurped in their
minds: whether they talk of the king, the noble, or the priest, their whole
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such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural
to be so affected; because all other feelings are false
and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty, and, by teaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our low sport for a
few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for and justly
deserving of slavery through the whole course of
our lives.
You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am
bold enough to confess that we are generally men of
untaught feelings: that, instead of casting away all
our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree; and, to take more shame to ourselves,
we cherish them because they are prejudices; and
the longer they have lasted, and the more generally
they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We
are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his
own private stock of reason; because we suspect that
the stock in each mall is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the gelleral bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the
latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find
what they seek, (and they seldom fail,) they think it
more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason
involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice,
and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because
prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action
to that reason, and an affection which will give it perlanguage is that of the most enlightened and liberal amongst the English. "
If this gentleman means to confine the terms enlightened and liberal to
one set of men in England, it may be true. It is not generally so.
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manence. Prejudice is of ready application in the
emergency; it previously engages the mind in a
steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not
leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision,
skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of
unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty
becomes a part of his nature.
Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do
the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect
for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a
very full measure of confidence in their own. With
them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old schemeO
of things, because it is an old one. As to the new,
they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration
is no object to those who think little or nothing has
been done before their time, and who place all their
hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little
ill effect; that there needs no principle of attachment,
except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they
were of opinion that there is a singular species of
compact between them and their magistrates, which
binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a
right to dissolve it without any reason but its will.
Their attachment to their country itself is only so far
as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects: it
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begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls
in with their momentary opinion.
These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with your new statesmen. But they are wholly different from those on which we have always acted
in this country.
I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that
what is doing among you is after the example of
England. I. beg leave to affirm that scarcely anything done with you has originated from the practice or the prevalent opinions of this people, either in the
act or in the spirit of the proceeding. Let me add,
that we are as unwilling to learn these lessons from
France as we are sure that we never taught them to
that nation. The cabals here who take a sort of
share in your transactions as yet consist of but a
handful of people. If, unfortunately, by their intrigues, their sermons, their publications, and by a confidence derived from an expected union with the
counsels and forces of the French nation, they should
draw considerable numbers into their faction, and in
consequence should seriously attempt anything here
in imitation of what has been done with you, the
event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with
some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own destruction. This people refused to change their law in remote ages from respect to the
infallibility of Popes, and they will not now alter it
from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers, - though the former was armed with the anathema and crusade, and though the latter should
act with the libel and the lamp-iron.
Formerly your affairs were your own concern only.
We felt for them as men; but we kept aloof from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 349
them, because we were not citizens of France. But
when we see the model held up to ourselves, we must
feel as Englishmen, and, feeling, we must provide as
Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us, are made
a part of our interest,- so far at least as to keep at
a distance your panacea or your plague. If it be
a panacea, we do not want it: we know the consequences of unnecessary physic. If it be a plague, it
is such a plague that the precautions of. the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it.
I hear on all hands, that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, receives the glory of many of the late proceedings, and that their opinions and systems are the true actuating spirit of the whole of them. I
have heard of no party in England, literary or political, at any time, known by such a description. It is
not with you composed of those men, is it? whom
the vulgar, in their blunt, homely style, commonly
call Atheists and Infidels? If it be, I admit that we,
too, have had writers of that description, who made
some noise in their day. At present they repose in
lasting oblivion. Who, born within the last forty
years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and
Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole
race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who now
reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?
Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all
these lights of the world. In as few years their few
successors will go to the family vault of. " all the
Capulets. " But whatever they were, or are, with us
they were and are wholly unconnected individuals.
With us they kept the common nature of their kind,
and were not gregarious. They never acted in corps.
nor were known as a faction in the state, nor pre
? ? ? ? 850 REFLECTIONS ON THE
sumed to influence in that name or character, or for
the purposes of such a faction, on any of our public
concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so
be permitted to act, is another question. As such
cabals have not existed in England, so neither has
the spirit of them had any influence in establishing
the original frame of our Constitution, or in any one
of the several reparations and improvements it has
undergone. The whole has been done under the
auspices, and is confirmed by the sanctions, of religion and piety. The whole has emanated from the
simplicity of our national character, and from a sort
of native plainness and directness of understanding,
which for a long time characterized those men who
have successively obtained authority among us. This
disposition still remains, - at least in the great body
of the people.
We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly,
that religion is the basis of civil society, and the
source of all good, and of all comfort. * In England
we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust
of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity
of the human mind might have crusted it over in the
course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the
people of England would not prefer to impiety. We
shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to
the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construc* Sit igifur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omniun rerum ac moderatores deos; eaque, que gerantur, eorum geri vi,
ditione, ac numine; eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri;
et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua
pietate colat religiones intueri: piorum et impiorum habere rationem.
His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili et a
vera sententia. - Cic. de Legibus, 1. 2.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 351
tion. If our religious tenets should ever want a
further elucidation, we shall not call on Atheism to
explain them. We shall not light up our temple
from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated
with other lights. It will be perfumed with other
incense than the infectious stuff which is imported
by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. If our
ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it
is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we
shall employ for the audit or receipt or application
of its consecrated revenue. Violently condemning
neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats
are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant: not because we think it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our
judgment, it has more. We are Protestants, not
from indifference, but from zeal.
We know, and it is our pride to know, that manll
is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in
France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover
our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion
which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and
one great source of civilization amongst us, and
among many other nations, we are apprehensive
(being well aware that the mind will not endure a
void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading
superstition might take place of it.
For that reason, before we take from our establishment the natural, human means of estimation, and give it up to contempt, as you have done, and in
? ? ? ? 352 REFLECTIONS ON THE
doing it have incurred the penalties you well deserve
to suffer, we desire that some other may be presented
to us in the place of it. We shall then form our
judgment.
On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hostility to such institutions,
we cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep
an established church, an established monarchy, an
established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the degree it exists, and in no greater. I shall show you presently how much of each of these
we possess.
It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen
think it, the glory) of this age, that everything is to
be discussed, as if the Constitution of our country
were to be always a subject rather of altercation
than enjoyment. For this reason, as well as for the
satisfaction of those among you (if any such you
have among you) who may wish to profit of examples, I venture to trouble you with a few thoughts upon each of these establishments. I do not think
they were unwise in ancient Rome, who, when they
wished to new-model their laws, sent commissioners
to examine the best-constituted republics within their
reach.
First I beg leave to speak of our Church Establishment, which is the first of our prejudices, - not a prejudice destitute of reason, but involving in it profound and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. It
is first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on that religious system of which we are now in possession, we continue to act on the early
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 353
received and uniformly continued sense of mankind.
That sense not only, like a wise architect, hath built
up the august fabric of states, but, like a provident
proprietor, to preserve the structure from profanation
and ruin, as a sacred temple, purged from all the
impurities of fraud and violence and injustice and
tyranny, hath solemnly and forever consecrated the
commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. This con
secration is made, that all who administer in the government of men, in which they stand in the person
of God Himself, should have high and worthy notions
of their function and destination; that their hope
should be full of immortality; that they should not
look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the vulgar, but to a
solid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of
their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, in
the example they leave as a rich inheritance to the
world.
Such sublime principles ought to be infused into
persons of exalted situations, and religious establishments provided that may continually revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, every sort of politic institution, aiding the rational
and natural ties that connect the human understanding and affections to the divine, are not more than
necessary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man,- whose prerogative it is, to be in a great
degree a creature of his own making, and who,
when made as he ought to be made, is destined to
hold no trivial place in the creation. But whenever
man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever
to preside, in that case more particularly he should as
nearly as possible be approximated to his perfection.
VOL.