It had, though in
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr.
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr.
Edmund Burke
305
Treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes. "
You will smile here at the consistency of those
democratists who, when they are not on their guard,
treat the humbler part of the community with the
greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It
would require a long discourse to point out to you
the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and
equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate representation. " I shall only say here, in justice to that oldfashioned Constitution under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found
perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a.
representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our Constitution to
show the conitrary. To detail the particulars in
which it is found so well to promote its ends would
demand a treatise on our practical Constitution. I
state here the doctrine of the revolutionists, only that
you and others may see what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the Constitution of their country,
and why they seem to think that some great abuse of
power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for
the blessing of a Constitution according to their ideas,
would be much palliated to their feelings; you see
why they are so much enamored of your fair and
equal representation, which being once obtained, the
same effects might follow. You see they consider
our House of Commons as only "a semblance," " a
form," " a theory," "a shadow," "a mockery,"
perhaps "a nuisance. "
These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, and not without reason. They must therefore
VOL. 111. 20
? ? ? ? 306 REFLECTIONS ON THE
look on this gross and palpable defect of representation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call it,) as
a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering
our whole government absolutely illegitimate, and not
at all better than a downright usurpation. Another
revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped
government, would of course be perfectly justifiable,
if not absolutely necessary. Indeed, their principle,
if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the House
of Commons; for, if popular representation, or choice,
is necessary to the legitimacy of all government, the
IHouse of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That House is no representative of
the people at all, even in " semblance" or " in form. "
The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain
the crown may endeavor to screen itself against these
gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made
on the Revolution. The Revolution, which is resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself.
The Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more solid than our present formalities,
as it was made by a House of Lords not representing any one but themselves, and by a House of Commons exactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a mere " shadow and mockery" of representation.
Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through the ecclesiastical; another for demolishing the ecclesiastic through the civil.
They are aware that the worst consequences might
happen to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of Church and State; but they are so heated with
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 307
their theories, that they give more than hints that
this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it
and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite
certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very
remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of
great authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and State,
says, "Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil
powers, before this most unnatural alliance be broken.
Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what
convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect? " You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest
calamities which can befall their country!
It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas
of everything in their Constitution and government
at home, either in Church or State, as illegitimate
and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they
look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it
is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed
form of a Constitution whose merits are confirmed
by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They
despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men;
and as for the rest, they have wrought under ground
a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion,
all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters,
and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights
of men. " Against these there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding: these
admit no temperament and no compromise: any
? ? ? ? 308 REFLECTIONS ON THE
thing withheld from their full demand is so much
of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights
of men let no government look for security in the
length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these
speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their
theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of
abuse, but a question of competency and a question
of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty
of their political metaphysics. Let them be their
amusement in the schools.
Illa se jactet in aula
]Eolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet.
But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and
to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us!
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my
heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,) the real rights of men. In
denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to
injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society
be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages
for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence
acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that
rule; they have a right to justice, as between their
fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function
or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the
fruits of their industry, and to the means of making
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 309
their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and
improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life
and to consolation in death. Whatever each man
can separately do, without trespassing upon others,
he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right
to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In
this partnership all men have equal rights; but not
to equal things. He that has but five shillings in
the partnership has as good a right to it as he that
has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in
the product of the joint stock. And as to the share of
power, authority, and direction which each individual
ought to have in the management of the state, that
I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights
of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing
to be settled by convention.
If civil society be the offspring of convention, that
convention must be its law. That convention must
limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution
which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures.
They can have no being in any other state of things;
and how can any man claim, under the conventions
of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence, - rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? society, and which becomes one of its fundamental
rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause.
By this each person has at once divested himself of
the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man,
One of the first motives to civil
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that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own
cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons
the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature.
Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a
civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he
gives up his right of determining what it is in points
the most essential to him. That he may secure some
liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole
of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights,
which may and do exist in total independence of it,
-- and exist in much greater clearness, and in a
much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their
abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants
should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these
wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society,
of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society
requires not only that the passions of individuals
should be subjected, but that even in the mass and
body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of
men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.
This can only be done by a power out of themselves,
and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that
will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men,
as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among
their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions
vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any
? ? ? ? REVOLUTTON IN FRANCE. 311
abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them upon that principle.
The moment you abate anything from the full
rights of men each to govern himself, and suffer any
artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from
that moment the whole organization of government
becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is
which makes the constitution of a state, and the
due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep
knowledge of human nature and human necessities,
and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to its distempers. What
is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food
or medicine? The question is upon the method of
procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the
farmer and the physician, rather than the professor
of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or
renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other
experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor
is it a short experience that can instruct us in that
practical science; because the real effects of moral
causes are not always immediate, but that which in
the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in
its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise
even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements,
have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In
states there are often some obscure and almost la
? ? ? ? 312 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tent causes, things which appear at first view. of little
moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity
or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in
itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a
matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life,
however sagacious and observing he may be, it is
with infinite caution that any man ought to venture
upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in
any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes
of society, or on building it up again without having
models and patterns of approved utility before his
eyes.
These metaphysic rights entering into common life,
like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium,
are, by the laws of Nature, refracted from their
straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated
mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive
rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions
and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of
them as if they continued in the simplicity of their
original direction. The nature of man is intricate;
the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the
simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in
any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their
trade or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say
no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 313
of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each
would answer its single end much more perfectly
than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should
be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that
while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps
materially injured, by the over-care of a favorite
member.
The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of
definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The
rights of men in governments are their advantages;
and these are often in balances between differences of
good, -in compromises sometimes between good and
evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political
reason is a computing principle: adding, subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing, morally, and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.
By these theorists the right of the people is almost
always sophistically confounded with their power.
The body of the community, whenever it can come to
act, can meet with no effectual resistance; but till
power and right are the same, the whole body of them
has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of
all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit;
for though a pleasant writer said, " Liceat perire poetis," when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have
leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, " ardentem frigidus lEtnam insiluit," I consider such a
frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than
? ? ? ? 314 REFLECTIONS ON THE
as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether
he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to
exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise,
because more charitable, thoughts would urge me
rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen
slippers as the monuments of his folly.
The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great
part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed
out of their present course, in commemorating the
fact, will cheat many out of the principles and deprive them of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I never liked
this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or
the practice of making the extreme medicine of the
Constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of
society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and' swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our
love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes
and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the
spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great
occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school,- cum perimit
scrvos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary
state of things, it produces in a country like ours the
worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which
it abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant
speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans
of my time have, after a short space, become the
most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they sooln
left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 315
resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, de
lights in the most sublime speculations; for, never
intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing
to have it magnificent. But even in cases where
rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in these
ranting speculations, the issue has been much the
same. These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance,
ill such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with
them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding
their schemes of politics not adapted to the state
of the world in which they live, they often come to
think lightly of all public principle, and are ready,
on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest
what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed,
are of more steady and persevering natures; but
these are eager politicians out of Parliament, who
have little to tempt them to abandon their favorite
projects. They have some change in the Church or
State, or both, constantly in their view. When that
is the case, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their speculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent about it. They see no merit
in the good, and no fault in the vicious management
of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as
more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or
demerit in any man, or any action, or any political
principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change; they therefore take up.
? ? ? ? 316 REFLECTIONS ON THE
one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative,
and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedoin, and pass from the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.
In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transit from one form of government
to another: you cannot see that character of men
exactly in the same situation in which we see it in
this country. With us it is militant, with you it
is triumphant; and you know how it call act, when
its power is commensurate to its will. I would not
be supposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description within them, - no, far from it! I am as
incapable of that injustice as I am of keeping terms
with those who profess principles of extremes, and
who, under the name of religion, teach little else than
wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes
which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But
as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives
a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer
not a little, when no political purpose is served by
the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man, that they
have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one
new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart.
They have perverted in themselves, and in those that
attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the
human breast.
This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes
nothing but this spirit through all the political part.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 317
Plots, massacres, assassinations, seem to some people
a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap,
bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat
and vapid to their taste. There must be a great
change of scene; there must be a magnificent stage
effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the
imagination, grown torpid with the lazy elljoyment
of sixty years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them
all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing,
from the Pisgah of his pulpit, thle free, moral, happy,
flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a birdeye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into
the following rapture: --
" What an eventful period is this! I am thankful
that I have lived to it; I could almost say, Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation. -I have lived to see a diffusion
of knowledge which has undermined superstition and
error. - I have lived to see the rights of men better
understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty
which seemed to have lost the idea of it. - I have
lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and
resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty
with an irresistible voice; their king led in triumph,
and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his
subjects. " *
* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some
of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself
thus: --' A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering subjects
is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the
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Before I proceed further, I have to remai'k that
Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have
been quite as much enlightened.
It had, though in
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of that
period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the
triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend
Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that,
when King Charles was brought to London for his
trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the
triumph. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty
ill the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before
the king triumphing. " Dr. Price, when he talks as
if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent;
for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this
precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long
prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very
triumphantly chosen his place,) said, " I have prayed
and preached these twenty years; and now I may say
with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. " * Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for
he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in
peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of
his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this
poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentle.
men agree marvellously in their feelings.
* State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 319
his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and
as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all
the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow
and repeat after him in this age, which would assume
to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the
rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of gov
ernments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had
obtained so large a share in the donative, were in
haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge
they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the
church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern,
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved
and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
" Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever
was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This " leading in triumph," a thing in its best
? ? ? ? 320 REFLECTIONS ON THE
form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind.
Several English were the stupefied and indignant
spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have
been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling
a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their
captives overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of
women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it
resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial
nation; -- if a civilized nation, or any men who had
a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph or the actors in it, and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that assembly is found in their situation;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in
us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic:
they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king
nor from their legislative power. There they are
surrounded by an army not raised either by the au
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321
thority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would
instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang
of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the
members; whilst those who held the same moderate
principles, with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and
murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes
real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a
captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand,
the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and
giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is.
beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet,,
and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses,,
they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.
Among these are found persons in comparison of
whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and
Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is
it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the
places of public resort. In these meetings of all
sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring
and violent and perfidious, is taken for then mark of
superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to
the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or' VOL. III. 21
? ? ? ? 322 -REFLECTIONS ON THE
meditated, they are forming plans for the good order
of future society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and promoting their relations
on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of
virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to
subsist by beggary or by crime.
The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the
farce of deliberation with as little decency as liberty.
They act like the comedians of a fair, before a riotous
audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a
mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to
shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes
mix and take their seats amongst them, - domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in the
place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows
kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy
and aspect of a grave legislative body, -nec color imperii, nee frons erat ulla senates. They have a power
given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and destroy, -but none to construct, except such
machines as may be fitted for further subversion and
further destruction.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is
attached to national representative assemblies, but
must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that
sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your
Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny
of which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit. I am sure many of the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 323
members who compose even the majority of that body
must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of
the Revolution Society. Miserable king! miserable
assembly! How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who could call
a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven
"u n beau jour"! * How must they be inwardly
indignant at hearing others who thought fit to declare to them, "' that the vessel of the state would
fly forward in her course towards regeneration with
more speed than ever," from the stiff gale of treason
and murder which preceded our preacher's triumph!
What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience and inward indignation, they heard of the
slaughter of innocent gentlemen in their houses,
that "the blood spilled was not the most pure"!
What must they have felt, when they were besieged
by complaints of disorders which shook their country
to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to tell
the complainants that they were under the protection
of the law, and that they would address the king (the
captive king) to cause the laws to be enforced for
their protection, when the enslaved ministers of that
captive king had formally notified to them that there
were neither law nor authority nor power left to
protect! What must they have felt at being obliged,
as a felicitation on the present new year, to request
their captive king to forget the stormy period of the
last, on account of the great good which he was likely
to produce to hits people, - to the complete attainment
of which good they adjourned the practical demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience when he should no longer possess any authority to command!
* 6th of October, 1789.
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This address was made with much good-nature and
affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions in
France must be reckoned a considerable revolution in
their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to
learn manners at second-hand from your side of the
water, and that we dress our behavior in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old cut,
and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian
mode of good breeding as to think it quite in the
most refined strain of delicate compliment (whether
in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most
humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that
great public benefits are derived from the murder of
his servants, the attempted assassination of himself
and of his wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and
degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a
topic of consolation which our ordinary of Newgate
would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot
of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and
arms in the Herald's College of the rights of men,
would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of
the sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting
consolation to any of the persons whom the leze-nation
might bring under the administration of his executive
powers.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered.
The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is
well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness,
and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory.
Thus to administer the opiate potion of amnesty,
powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and con.
tempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of " the balm of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 325
hurt minds," the cup of human misery full to the
brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those
which were so delicately urged in the compliment on
the new year, the king of France will probably endeavor to forget these events and that compliment.
But History, who keeps a durable record of all our
acts, and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget
either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind. History will
record, that, on the morning of the sixth of October,
1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down,
under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge
nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who
cried out to her to save herself by flight, - that this
was the last proof of fidelity he could give, -- that
they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he
was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of
the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of
bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and huisband not secure of his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen,
and their infant children, (who once would have
been the pride and hope of a great and generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left
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swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed
with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence
they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made
of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed
the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with
all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly
and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in
the great court of the palace. Their heads were
stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the
royal captives who followed in the train were slowly
moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling
screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
After they had been made to taste, drop by drop,
more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture
of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours,
they were, under a guard composed of those very
soldiers who had thus conducted them through this
famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of
Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be
commemorated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with fervent prayer
and enthusiastic ejaculation? -- TheSe Theban and
Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only
ill the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom: although a saint and apostle, who may
have revelations of his own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 327
compare it with the entrance into the world of the
Prince of Peace, proclaimed in an holy temple by a
venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of
unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the suf-f
ferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to some
sort of palates. There were reflections which might
serve to keep this appetite within some bounds of
temperance. But when I took one circumstance into
my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much
allowance ought to be made for the society, and that
the temptation was too strong for common discretion:
I mean, the circumstance of the Io Pwean of the triumph, the animating cry which called for " all the
BISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts," * might
well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on the
foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to
so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into
hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which
appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and
the projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of
all Church establishments. There was, however, (as
in all human affairs there is,) in the midst of this
joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their
faith. The actual murder of the king and queen,
and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious
circumstances of this " beautiful day. " The actual
murder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. A group of
*a Tons les ]ve'ques a la lanterne! "
? ? ? ? 3328 REFLECTIONS ON THE
regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily
was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the
massacre of innocents. 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
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 329
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.
? ? ? ? 330 REFLECTIONS ON THE
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
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 331
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.
Treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes. "
You will smile here at the consistency of those
democratists who, when they are not on their guard,
treat the humbler part of the community with the
greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It
would require a long discourse to point out to you
the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and
equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate representation. " I shall only say here, in justice to that oldfashioned Constitution under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found
perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a.
representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our Constitution to
show the conitrary. To detail the particulars in
which it is found so well to promote its ends would
demand a treatise on our practical Constitution. I
state here the doctrine of the revolutionists, only that
you and others may see what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the Constitution of their country,
and why they seem to think that some great abuse of
power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for
the blessing of a Constitution according to their ideas,
would be much palliated to their feelings; you see
why they are so much enamored of your fair and
equal representation, which being once obtained, the
same effects might follow. You see they consider
our House of Commons as only "a semblance," " a
form," " a theory," "a shadow," "a mockery,"
perhaps "a nuisance. "
These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, and not without reason. They must therefore
VOL. 111. 20
? ? ? ? 306 REFLECTIONS ON THE
look on this gross and palpable defect of representation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call it,) as
a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering
our whole government absolutely illegitimate, and not
at all better than a downright usurpation. Another
revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped
government, would of course be perfectly justifiable,
if not absolutely necessary. Indeed, their principle,
if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the House
of Commons; for, if popular representation, or choice,
is necessary to the legitimacy of all government, the
IHouse of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That House is no representative of
the people at all, even in " semblance" or " in form. "
The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain
the crown may endeavor to screen itself against these
gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made
on the Revolution. The Revolution, which is resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself.
The Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more solid than our present formalities,
as it was made by a House of Lords not representing any one but themselves, and by a House of Commons exactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a mere " shadow and mockery" of representation.
Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through the ecclesiastical; another for demolishing the ecclesiastic through the civil.
They are aware that the worst consequences might
happen to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of Church and State; but they are so heated with
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 307
their theories, that they give more than hints that
this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it
and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite
certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very
remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of
great authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and State,
says, "Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil
powers, before this most unnatural alliance be broken.
Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what
convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect? " You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest
calamities which can befall their country!
It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas
of everything in their Constitution and government
at home, either in Church or State, as illegitimate
and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they
look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it
is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed
form of a Constitution whose merits are confirmed
by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They
despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men;
and as for the rest, they have wrought under ground
a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion,
all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters,
and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights
of men. " Against these there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding: these
admit no temperament and no compromise: any
? ? ? ? 308 REFLECTIONS ON THE
thing withheld from their full demand is so much
of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights
of men let no government look for security in the
length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these
speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their
theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of
abuse, but a question of competency and a question
of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty
of their political metaphysics. Let them be their
amusement in the schools.
Illa se jactet in aula
]Eolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet.
But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and
to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us!
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my
heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,) the real rights of men. In
denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to
injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society
be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages
for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence
acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that
rule; they have a right to justice, as between their
fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function
or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the
fruits of their industry, and to the means of making
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 309
their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and
improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life
and to consolation in death. Whatever each man
can separately do, without trespassing upon others,
he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right
to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In
this partnership all men have equal rights; but not
to equal things. He that has but five shillings in
the partnership has as good a right to it as he that
has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in
the product of the joint stock. And as to the share of
power, authority, and direction which each individual
ought to have in the management of the state, that
I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights
of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing
to be settled by convention.
If civil society be the offspring of convention, that
convention must be its law. That convention must
limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution
which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures.
They can have no being in any other state of things;
and how can any man claim, under the conventions
of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence, - rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? society, and which becomes one of its fundamental
rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause.
By this each person has at once divested himself of
the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man,
One of the first motives to civil
? ? ? ? 310 REFLECTIONS ON THE
that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own
cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons
the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature.
Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a
civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he
gives up his right of determining what it is in points
the most essential to him. That he may secure some
liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole
of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights,
which may and do exist in total independence of it,
-- and exist in much greater clearness, and in a
much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their
abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants
should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these
wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society,
of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society
requires not only that the passions of individuals
should be subjected, but that even in the mass and
body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of
men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.
This can only be done by a power out of themselves,
and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that
will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men,
as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among
their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions
vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any
? ? ? ? REVOLUTTON IN FRANCE. 311
abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them upon that principle.
The moment you abate anything from the full
rights of men each to govern himself, and suffer any
artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from
that moment the whole organization of government
becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is
which makes the constitution of a state, and the
due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep
knowledge of human nature and human necessities,
and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to its distempers. What
is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food
or medicine? The question is upon the method of
procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the
farmer and the physician, rather than the professor
of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or
renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other
experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor
is it a short experience that can instruct us in that
practical science; because the real effects of moral
causes are not always immediate, but that which in
the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in
its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise
even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements,
have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In
states there are often some obscure and almost la
? ? ? ? 312 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tent causes, things which appear at first view. of little
moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity
or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in
itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a
matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life,
however sagacious and observing he may be, it is
with infinite caution that any man ought to venture
upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in
any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes
of society, or on building it up again without having
models and patterns of approved utility before his
eyes.
These metaphysic rights entering into common life,
like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium,
are, by the laws of Nature, refracted from their
straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated
mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive
rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions
and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of
them as if they continued in the simplicity of their
original direction. The nature of man is intricate;
the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the
simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in
any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their
trade or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say
no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 313
of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each
would answer its single end much more perfectly
than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should
be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that
while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps
materially injured, by the over-care of a favorite
member.
The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of
definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The
rights of men in governments are their advantages;
and these are often in balances between differences of
good, -in compromises sometimes between good and
evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political
reason is a computing principle: adding, subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing, morally, and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.
By these theorists the right of the people is almost
always sophistically confounded with their power.
The body of the community, whenever it can come to
act, can meet with no effectual resistance; but till
power and right are the same, the whole body of them
has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of
all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit;
for though a pleasant writer said, " Liceat perire poetis," when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have
leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, " ardentem frigidus lEtnam insiluit," I consider such a
frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than
? ? ? ? 314 REFLECTIONS ON THE
as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether
he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to
exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise,
because more charitable, thoughts would urge me
rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen
slippers as the monuments of his folly.
The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great
part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed
out of their present course, in commemorating the
fact, will cheat many out of the principles and deprive them of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I never liked
this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or
the practice of making the extreme medicine of the
Constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of
society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and' swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our
love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes
and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the
spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great
occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school,- cum perimit
scrvos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary
state of things, it produces in a country like ours the
worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which
it abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant
speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans
of my time have, after a short space, become the
most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they sooln
left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 315
resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, de
lights in the most sublime speculations; for, never
intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing
to have it magnificent. But even in cases where
rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in these
ranting speculations, the issue has been much the
same. These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance,
ill such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with
them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding
their schemes of politics not adapted to the state
of the world in which they live, they often come to
think lightly of all public principle, and are ready,
on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest
what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed,
are of more steady and persevering natures; but
these are eager politicians out of Parliament, who
have little to tempt them to abandon their favorite
projects. They have some change in the Church or
State, or both, constantly in their view. When that
is the case, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their speculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent about it. They see no merit
in the good, and no fault in the vicious management
of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as
more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or
demerit in any man, or any action, or any political
principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change; they therefore take up.
? ? ? ? 316 REFLECTIONS ON THE
one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative,
and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedoin, and pass from the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.
In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transit from one form of government
to another: you cannot see that character of men
exactly in the same situation in which we see it in
this country. With us it is militant, with you it
is triumphant; and you know how it call act, when
its power is commensurate to its will. I would not
be supposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description within them, - no, far from it! I am as
incapable of that injustice as I am of keeping terms
with those who profess principles of extremes, and
who, under the name of religion, teach little else than
wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes
which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But
as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives
a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer
not a little, when no political purpose is served by
the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man, that they
have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one
new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart.
They have perverted in themselves, and in those that
attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the
human breast.
This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes
nothing but this spirit through all the political part.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 317
Plots, massacres, assassinations, seem to some people
a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap,
bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat
and vapid to their taste. There must be a great
change of scene; there must be a magnificent stage
effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the
imagination, grown torpid with the lazy elljoyment
of sixty years' security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. The preacher found them
all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing,
from the Pisgah of his pulpit, thle free, moral, happy,
flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a birdeye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into
the following rapture: --
" What an eventful period is this! I am thankful
that I have lived to it; I could almost say, Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation. -I have lived to see a diffusion
of knowledge which has undermined superstition and
error. - I have lived to see the rights of men better
understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty
which seemed to have lost the idea of it. - I have
lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and
resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty
with an irresistible voice; their king led in triumph,
and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his
subjects. " *
* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some
of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself
thus: --' A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering subjects
is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the
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Before I proceed further, I have to remai'k that
Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have
been quite as much enlightened.
It had, though in
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of that
period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the
triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend
Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that,
when King Charles was brought to London for his
trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the
triumph. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty
ill the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before
the king triumphing. " Dr. Price, when he talks as
if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent;
for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this
precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long
prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very
triumphantly chosen his place,) said, " I have prayed
and preached these twenty years; and now I may say
with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. " * Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for
he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in
peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of
his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this
poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentle.
men agree marvellously in their feelings.
* State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 319
his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and
as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all
the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow
and repeat after him in this age, which would assume
to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the
rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of gov
ernments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had
obtained so large a share in the donative, were in
haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge
they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the
church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern,
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved
and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
" Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever
was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This " leading in triumph," a thing in its best
? ? ? ? 320 REFLECTIONS ON THE
form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind.
Several English were the stupefied and indignant
spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have
been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling
a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their
captives overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of
women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it
resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial
nation; -- if a civilized nation, or any men who had
a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph or the actors in it, and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that assembly is found in their situation;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in
us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic:
they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king
nor from their legislative power. There they are
surrounded by an army not raised either by the au
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321
thority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would
instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang
of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the
members; whilst those who held the same moderate
principles, with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and
murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes
real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a
captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand,
the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and
giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is.
beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet,,
and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses,,
they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.
Among these are found persons in comparison of
whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and
Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is
it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the
places of public resort. In these meetings of all
sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring
and violent and perfidious, is taken for then mark of
superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to
the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or' VOL. III. 21
? ? ? ? 322 -REFLECTIONS ON THE
meditated, they are forming plans for the good order
of future society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and promoting their relations
on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of
virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to
subsist by beggary or by crime.
The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the
farce of deliberation with as little decency as liberty.
They act like the comedians of a fair, before a riotous
audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a
mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to
shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes
mix and take their seats amongst them, - domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in the
place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows
kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy
and aspect of a grave legislative body, -nec color imperii, nee frons erat ulla senates. They have a power
given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and destroy, -but none to construct, except such
machines as may be fitted for further subversion and
further destruction.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is
attached to national representative assemblies, but
must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that
sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your
Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny
of which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit. I am sure many of the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 323
members who compose even the majority of that body
must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of
the Revolution Society. Miserable king! miserable
assembly! How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who could call
a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven
"u n beau jour"! * How must they be inwardly
indignant at hearing others who thought fit to declare to them, "' that the vessel of the state would
fly forward in her course towards regeneration with
more speed than ever," from the stiff gale of treason
and murder which preceded our preacher's triumph!
What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience and inward indignation, they heard of the
slaughter of innocent gentlemen in their houses,
that "the blood spilled was not the most pure"!
What must they have felt, when they were besieged
by complaints of disorders which shook their country
to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to tell
the complainants that they were under the protection
of the law, and that they would address the king (the
captive king) to cause the laws to be enforced for
their protection, when the enslaved ministers of that
captive king had formally notified to them that there
were neither law nor authority nor power left to
protect! What must they have felt at being obliged,
as a felicitation on the present new year, to request
their captive king to forget the stormy period of the
last, on account of the great good which he was likely
to produce to hits people, - to the complete attainment
of which good they adjourned the practical demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience when he should no longer possess any authority to command!
* 6th of October, 1789.
? ? ? ? 324 REFLECTIONS ON THE
This address was made with much good-nature and
affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions in
France must be reckoned a considerable revolution in
their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to
learn manners at second-hand from your side of the
water, and that we dress our behavior in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old cut,
and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian
mode of good breeding as to think it quite in the
most refined strain of delicate compliment (whether
in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most
humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that
great public benefits are derived from the murder of
his servants, the attempted assassination of himself
and of his wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and
degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a
topic of consolation which our ordinary of Newgate
would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot
of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and
arms in the Herald's College of the rights of men,
would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of
the sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting
consolation to any of the persons whom the leze-nation
might bring under the administration of his executive
powers.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered.
The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is
well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness,
and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory.
Thus to administer the opiate potion of amnesty,
powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and con.
tempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of " the balm of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 325
hurt minds," the cup of human misery full to the
brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those
which were so delicately urged in the compliment on
the new year, the king of France will probably endeavor to forget these events and that compliment.
But History, who keeps a durable record of all our
acts, and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget
either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind. History will
record, that, on the morning of the sixth of October,
1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down,
under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge
nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who
cried out to her to save herself by flight, - that this
was the last proof of fidelity he could give, -- that
they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he
was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of
the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of
bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and huisband not secure of his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen,
and their infant children, (who once would have
been the pride and hope of a great and generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left
? ? ? ? 326 REFLECTIONS ON THE
swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed
with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence
they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made
of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed
the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with
all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly
and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in
the great court of the palace. Their heads were
stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the
royal captives who followed in the train were slowly
moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling
screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
After they had been made to taste, drop by drop,
more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture
of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours,
they were, under a guard composed of those very
soldiers who had thus conducted them through this
famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of
Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be
commemorated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with fervent prayer
and enthusiastic ejaculation? -- TheSe Theban and
Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only
ill the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom: although a saint and apostle, who may
have revelations of his own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 327
compare it with the entrance into the world of the
Prince of Peace, proclaimed in an holy temple by a
venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of
unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the suf-f
ferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to some
sort of palates. There were reflections which might
serve to keep this appetite within some bounds of
temperance. But when I took one circumstance into
my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much
allowance ought to be made for the society, and that
the temptation was too strong for common discretion:
I mean, the circumstance of the Io Pwean of the triumph, the animating cry which called for " all the
BISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts," * might
well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on the
foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to
so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into
hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which
appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and
the projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of
all Church establishments. There was, however, (as
in all human affairs there is,) in the midst of this
joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their
faith. The actual murder of the king and queen,
and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious
circumstances of this " beautiful day. " The actual
murder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. A group of
*a Tons les ]ve'ques a la lanterne! "
? ? ? ? 3328 REFLECTIONS ON THE
regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily
was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the
massacre of innocents. 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
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 329
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.
? ? ? ? 330 REFLECTIONS ON THE
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
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 331
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.
