There, too, it
appeared that full as little regard was had to the
general security of property, or to the aptitude of the
deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of
their election.
appeared that full as little regard was had to the
general security of property, or to the aptitude of the
deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of
their election.
Edmund Burke
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278 REFLECTIONS ON THE
been moulded into civil society, and had everything
to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by
despising everything that belonged to you. You set
up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre
in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and
derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar
practice of the hour; and you would have risen with
the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecti-ng your forefathers, you would have been taught to
respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to
consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a
nation of low-born, servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the
expense of your honor, an excuse to your apologists
here for several enormities of yours, you would not
have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of
bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse
of the liberty to which you were not accustomed, and
were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have
been wiser to have you thought, what I for. one always thought you, a generous and gallant nation,
long misled to your disadvantage by your high and
romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty;
that events had been unfavorable to you, but that
you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile
disposition; that, in your most devoted submission,
you were actuated by a principle of public spirit; and
that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be under
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 279
stood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you
had gone further than your wise ancestors, --that you
were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst
you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient
principles and models of the old common law of Eu.
rope, meliorated and adapted to its present state, --
by following wise examples you would have given
new examples of wisdom to the world. You would
have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the
eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You
would have shamed despotism from the earth, by
showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but,
as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You
would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce
to feed it. You would have had a free Constitution,
a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed
and venerated clergy, - a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and
to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found
by virtue in all conditions,-in which consists the true
moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous
fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter
that real inequality which it never can remove, anc
which the order of civil life establishes as much foi
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the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state as those whorf it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open
to you, beyond anything recorded in the history of
the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good
for man.
Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have
taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors,
and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became
truly despicable. By following those false lights,
France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed her virtue to her
interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that
she might prostitute her. virtue. All other nations
have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or
by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or
other of religion. All other people have laid the
foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and
a system of a more austere and masculine morality.
France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness
in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions
and practices, - and has extended through all ranks
of life, as if she were communicating some privilege,
or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy
corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth
and power. This is one of the new principles of
equality in France.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 281
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly
disgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets
of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics.
She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at
(what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider
those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones,as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading
their easy good-nature, under specious pretences, to
admit combinations of bold and faithless men into
a participation of their power. This alone (if there
were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you
and to mankind. Remember that your Parliament
of Paris told your king, that, in calling the states
together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal
excess of their zeal in providing for the support of
the throne. It is right that these men should hide
their heads. It is right that they should bear their
part in the ruin which their counsel has brought on
their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine
declarations tend to lull authority asleep, - to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy, - to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from
imbecility, and without which no man can answer for
the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government
or of freedom. ' For want of these, they have seen
the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.
They have seen the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult
than ever any people has been known to rise against
the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary ty
? ? ? ? 282 REFLECTIONS ON THE
rant. Their resistance was made to concession; their
revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at
a hand holding out graces, favors, and immunities.
This was unnatural. The'rest is in order. They
have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without
vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet
the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a
state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made
the constitution of the kingdom; everything human
and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and
national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown
all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering
power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting,
conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared
and hid themselves in the earth from whence they
came, when the principle of property, whose creatures
and representatives they are, was systematically subverted.
Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were
they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle
of determined patriots, compelled to wade through
blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil
and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The
fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation
of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and irresistible
authority. The persons who have thus squandered
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 283
away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of
public evils, (the last stake reserved for the ultimate
ransom of the state,) have met in their progress with
little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their
whole march was more like a triumphal procession
than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have
gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood
have they shed in the cause of the country they have
ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles,
whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering
their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men
and worthy families. Their cruelty has. not even been
the base result of fear. It has been the effect of their
sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning.
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil,
would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not
consider the composition of the National Assembly:
I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it
now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is composed,
which is of ten thousand times greater consequence
than all the formalities in the world. If we were to
know nothing of this assembly but by its. title and
function, no colors could paint to the imagination
anything more venerable. In that light, the mind of
an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that
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of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected
into one focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead
of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But
n10 name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and Nature, and education, and their habits of life
have made them. Capacities beyond these the people
have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the
objects of their choice; but their choice confers
neither the one nor the other on those upon whom
they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the
engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of
Revelation for any such powers.
After I had read over the list of the persons and
descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing
which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank,
some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not one man was to be found. The
best were only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and
mass of the body which constitutes its character, and
must finally determine its direction. In all bodies,
those who will lead must also, in a considerable
degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition of those
whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great
part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of
virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for
that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 285
becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, what is the more likely event, instead of
that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious
glory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom
at first they conform, becomes, in its turn, the dupe
and instrument of their designs. In this political
traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become
subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.
To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions
made by the leaders in any public assembly, they
ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear,
those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise
than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not
for actors, at least for judges; they must also be
judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing
can secure a steady and moderate conduct in such
assemblies, but that the body of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition in life, of
permanent property, of education, and of such habits
as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.
In the calling of the States-General of France, the
first thing that struck me was a great departure
from the ancient course. I found the representation
for the third estate composed of six hundred persons.
They were equal in number to the representatives of
both the other orders. If the orders were to-act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But when it became apparent that the three orders were
to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary
effect of this numerous representation became obvious A very small desertion from either of the
? ? ? ? 286 REFLECTIONS ON THE
other two orders must throw the power of both into
the hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of
the state was soon resolved into that body. Its due
composition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater
importance.
Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a
very great proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I
believe, of the members who attended) was composed
of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of
distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to
their country of their science, prudence, and integrity,- not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar, -
not of renowned professors in universities,- but for
the far greater part, as it must in such a number,
of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of
petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries,
and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war
of village vexation. From the moment I read the
list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happelled, all that was to follow.
The degree of estimation in which any profession
is held becomes the standard of the estimation in
which the professors hold themselves. Whatever the
personal merits of many individual lawyers might
have been, (and in many it was undoubtedly very
considerable,) in that military kingdom no part of the
profession had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their professional offices
great family splendor, and were invested witb great
power and authority. These certainly were highly
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 287
respected, and even with no small degree of awe.
The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a
body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the hands
of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,who had no previous fortune in character at stake,who could not be expected to bear with moderation
or to conduct with discretion a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised
to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself
that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active,
of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would
easily fall back into their old condition of obscure
contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense
to the state, of which they understood nothing, they
must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well? It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it
was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things.
They must join (if their capacity did not permit them
to lead) in any project which could procure to them
a litigious constitution, -- which could lay open to them
those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the
train of all great convulsions and revolutions in the
state, and particularly in all great anid violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected that
they would attend to the stability of property, whose
? ? ? ? 288 REFLECTIONS ON THE
existence had always depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode
of accomplishing their designs must remain the
same.
Well! but these men were to be tempered and re
strained by other descriptions, of more sober minds
and more enlarged understandings. Were they, then,
to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful
dignity of a handful of country clowns, who have
seats in that assembly, some of whom are said not to
be able to read and write, ---and by not a greater
number of traders, who, though somewhat more
instructed, and more conspicuous in the order of society, had never known anything beyond their counting-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be overborne and swayed by the intrigues
and artifices of lawyers than to become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous disproportion, the
whole must needs be governed by them.
To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of the faculty of medicine. This
faculty had not, any more than that of the law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors,
therefore, must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing they
had ranked as they ought to do, and as with itus they
do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators. Then
came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be
eager, at any expense, to change their ideal paper
wealth for the more solid substance of land. To
these were joined men of other descriptions, from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 289
whom as little knowledge of or attention to the interests of a great state was to be expected, and as
little regard to the stability of any institution, -- men
formed to be instruments, not controls. -- Such, in
general, was the composition of the Tiers. tat in the
National Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural
landed interest of the country.
We know that the British House of Commons,
without shutting its doors to any merit in any class,
is, by the sure operation of adequate causes, filled
with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in
hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cultivated
talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic distinc --
tion, that the country can afford. But supposing,.
what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the
House of Commons should be composed in the same
manner with the Tiers Etat in France, - would this
dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even,
conceived without horror? God forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory to that profession which
is another priesthood, administering the rights of sacred justice! But whilst I revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as much; as one man can do to prevent their exclusion from
any, I cannot, to flatter them, give the lie to Nature. .
They are good and useful in the composition. ; they
must be mischievous, if they preponderate so as virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in
their peculiar functions may be far from a qualification for others. It cannot escape observation, that,
when men are too much confined to professional and
faculty habits, and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are
VOL. III. 19
? ? ? ? 290 REFLECTIONS ON THE
rather disabled than qualified for whatever depends
on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, oni a comprehensive, connected view of
the various, complicated, external, and internal interests which go to the formation of that multifarious
thing called a State.
After all, if the House of Commons were to have
an wholly professional and faculty composition, what
is the power of the House of Commons, circumscribed
and shut in by the immovable barriers of laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House of Lords, and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of the
House of Commons, direct or indirect, is, indeed,
great: and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, and the spirit belonging to true greatness, at the
full! - and it will do so, as long as it can keep the
breakers of law in India from becoming the makers
of law for England. The power, however, of the
House of Commons, when least diminished, is as a
drop of water in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled majority of your National Assembly.
That assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has
no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves
obliged, to conform to a fixed constitution, they have
a power to make a constitution which shall conform to
their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can
serve as a control on them. What ought to be the
heads, the hearts, the dispositions, that are qualified,
or tlhat dare, not only to make laws under a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new
constitution for a great kingdom, and in every part
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 291
of it, from the monarch on the throne to the vestry
of a parish? But
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. "
In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined
and undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral aid
almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen
in the management of human affairs.
Having considered the composition of the third estate, as it stood in its original frame, I took a view
of the representatives of the clergy.
There, too, it
appeared that full as little regard was had to the
general security of property, or to the aptitude of the
deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of
their election. That election was so contrived as to
send a very large proportion of mere country curates
to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a
state: mnen who never had seen the state so much as
in a picture; men who knew nothing of the world
beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy; among whom must be many
who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in
plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a
body of wealth in which they could hardly look to
have any share, except in a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners
in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily
become the active coadjutors, or at best the passive
instruments, of those by whom they had been habitually guided in their petty village concerns. They, too,
could hardly be the most conscientious of their kind,
who, presuming upon their incompetent understand
? ? ? ? 292 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ing, could intrigue for a trust which led them from
their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to undertake the regeneration
of kingdoms. This preponderating weight, being added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers
Etat, completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.
To observing men it must have appeared from the
beginning, that the majority of the third estate, in
conjunction with such a deputation from the clergy
as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction
of the nobility, would inevitably become subservient
to the worst designs of individuals in that class. In
the spoil and humiliation of their own order these
individuals would possess a sure fund for the pay of
their new followers. To squander away the objects
which made the happiness of their fellows would be
to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented
men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up
with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise
their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love
the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first
principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections.
It is the first link in the series by which we proceed
towards a love to our country and to mankind. The
interest of that portion of social arrangement is a
trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and
as none but bad men would justify it in abuse,none
but traitors would barter it away for their own per.
sonal advantage.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 293
There were, in the time of our civil troubles in
England, (I do not know whether you have any such
in your Assembly in France,) several persons, like
the then Earl of Holland, who by themselves or their
families had brought an odium on the throne by
the prodigal dispensation of its bounties towards
them, who afterwards joined in the rebellions arising from the discontents of which they were themselves the cause: men who helped to subvert that throne to which they owed, some of them, their existence, others all that power which they employed
to ruin their benefactor. If any bounds are set to
the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that
others are permitted to partake in the objects they
would engross, revenge and envy soon fill up' the
craving void that is left in their avarice. Confound! k
ed by the complication of distempered passions, their
reason is disturbed; their views become vast and
perplexed, -- to others inexplicable, to themselves
uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to their
unprincipled ambition in any fixed order of things;
but in the fog and haze of confusion all is enlarged,
and appears without any limit.
When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to
all ambition without a distinct object, and work with
low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Does not something like
this now appear in France? Does it not produce
something ignoble and inglorious: a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy; a tendency in all
that is done to lower along with individuals all the
dignity and importance of the state? Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they
attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth,
? ? ? ? 294 REFLECTIONS ON THE
sanctified their ambition by ad ancing the dignity of
the people whose peace they troubled. They had long
views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction of their country. They were men of great civil
and great military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers contending with each other who could best remedy
with fiaudulent circulation and depreciated paper the
wretchedness and ruin brought on their country by
their degenerate councils. The compliment made to
one of the great bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favorite poet of that time, shows what it was he proposed, and what indeed to
a great degree he accomplished in the success of his
ambition:"Still as you rise, the state, exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst't is changed by you:
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys. "
These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power as asserting their natural place in society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the world.
Their conquest over their competitors was by outshining them. The hand, that, like a destroying angel, smote the country, communicated to it the force and
energy under which it suffered. I do not say, (God
forbid! ) I do not say that the virtues of such men
were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but
they were some corrective to their effects. Such was,
as I said, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race
of Guises, Condes, and Colignys. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of
a civil war. Such, as better:men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry the Fourth, and your
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 295
Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and not
wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to
be wondered at, to see how very soon France, when
she had a moment to respire, recovered and emerged
from the longest and most dreadful civil war that
ever was known ill any nation. Why? Because,
among all their massacres, they had not slain the
mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble
pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was
not extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled
and inflamed. The organs also of the state, however
shattered, existed. All the prizes of honor and virtue, all the rewards, all the distinctions, remained.
But your present confusion, like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle
of honor, is disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation will
quickly pass away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and mloney-jobbers, usurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their masters. Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize.
In all societies consisting of various descriptions of
citizens, some description must be uppermost. The
levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The associations of tailors and carpenters, of which the republic (of
Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to
the situation into which, by the worst of usurpations,
an usurpation on the prerogatives of Nature, you attempt to force them.
? ? ? ? 296 REFLECTIONS ON THE
The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the
States, said, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all
occupations were honorable. If he meant only that
no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not
have gone beyond the truth. But in asserting that
anything is honorable, we imply some distinction in
its favor. The occupation of a hair-dresser, or of a
working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honor
to any person, -to say nothing of a number of other
more servile employments. Such descriptions of men
ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the
state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In
this you think you are combating prejudice, but you
are at war with Nature. *
I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that
sophistical, captious spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general observation or
sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and
exceptions which reason will presume to be included
in all the general propositions which come from reason* Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxxviii. ver. 24, 25. s" The wisdom of a
learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad; that driveth oxen, and is
occupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks? "
Ver. 27. " So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboreth night
and day," &c.
Ver. 33. " They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit
high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judge's seat, nor
understand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and
judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. "
Ver. 34. " But they will maintain the state of the world. "
I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican
Church (till lately) has considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is
taken. I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 297
able men. You do not imagine that I wish to confine,
power, authority, and distinction to blood and namesl
and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for
government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade,
the passport of Heaven to human place and honor.
Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues,
civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace
and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity
everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around
a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into
the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a
mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary
occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything ought to be open, -- but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no
mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or
rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a
view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the
other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not. to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course.
If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought
to pass through some sort of probation. The temple
of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it
be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too,
that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and
some struggle.
Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a
state, that does -not represent its ability, as well as its
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property. But as ability is a vigorous and active
principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability,
unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the
representation. It must be represented, too, in great
masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected.
The characteristic essence of property, formed out of
the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. Tlle great masses, therefore,
which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put
out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a
natural rampart about the lesser properties in all
their gradations. The same quantity of property
which is by the natural course of things divided
among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this
diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in
the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself
to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.
The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share
inconceivably small in the distribution to the many.
But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution. The power of perpetuating our property in our
families is one of the most valuable and interesting
circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends
the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It
makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it
grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which
attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned
in it,) are the natural securities for this transmisision. With us the House of Peers is formed upon
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 299
this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary
property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of the legislature, and, in the last event,
the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions.
The House of Commons, too, though not necessarily,
yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater
part. Let those large proprietors be what they will,
(and they have their chance of being amongst the
best,) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the
vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary
wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much
idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject'
admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in
shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, shortsighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent, regulated preieminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural,
nor unjust, nor impolitic.
It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.
This sort of discourse does well enough with the
lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason
calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and
their interest, must very often differ; and great will
be the difference when they make an evil choice. A
government of five hundred country attorneys and
obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions
of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a
dozen of persons of quality who have betrayed their
trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you
seem in everything to have strayed out of the high
road of Nature. The property of France does not
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govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and
rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever
be set in motion by the impulse of one mind? When
the National Assembly has completed its work, it will
have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths
will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will. not bear that this one body
should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the
dominion over the assembly calling itself national.
Each will keep its own portion of the spoil of the
Chirch to itself; and it will not suffer either that
spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, or the
natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the
insolence or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of
Paris. In this they will see none of the equality,
under the pretence of which they have been tempted
to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well
as the ancient constitution of their country. There
can be no capital city in such a constitution as they
have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually
dismembered their country. The person whom they
persevere in calling king has not power left to him
by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this
collection of republics. The republic of Paris will
endeavor, indeed, to complete the debauchery of the
army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of contin
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 301
ulng its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to
draw everything to itself: but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now violent.
If this be your actual situation, compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by
the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my
heart to congratulate you on the choice you have
made, or the success which has attended your endeavors. I can as little recommend to any other
nation a conduct grounded on such principles and
productive of such effects. That I must leave to
those who can see further into your affairs than I
am able to do, and who best know how far your actions are favorable to their designs. The gentlemen
of the Revolution Society, who were so early in their
congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that
there is some scheme of politics relative to this country, in which your proceedings may in some way be
useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have speculated himself into no small degree of fervor upon
this subject, addresses his auditors in the following
very remarkable words:- -" I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration which I have more than once alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have been all along anticipating; a consideration with which my mind is
impressed more than I can express: I mean the consideration of the favorableness of the present times to
all exertions in the cause of liberty. "
It is plain, that the mind of this political preacher
was at the time big with some extraordinary design;
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and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in his reflection, and in the
whole train of consequences to which it led.
Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had
lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the
country I lived in. I was, indeed, aware that a
jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure
of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay
and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first
duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as
a possession to be secured than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favorable to all exertions in the
cause of freedom. The present time differs from any
other only by the circumstance of what is doing in
France. If the example of that nation is to have an
influence on this, I can easily conceive why some of
their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect,
and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards the actors, and borne with
so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is
certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an
example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we
are led to a very natural question:- -What is that
cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its
favor, to which the example of France is so singularly
auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with
all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every landmark of
the country to be done away in favor of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House of
? ? ? ?
been moulded into civil society, and had everything
to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by
despising everything that belonged to you. You set
up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre
in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and
derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar
practice of the hour; and you would have risen with
the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecti-ng your forefathers, you would have been taught to
respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to
consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a
nation of low-born, servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the
expense of your honor, an excuse to your apologists
here for several enormities of yours, you would not
have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of
bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse
of the liberty to which you were not accustomed, and
were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have
been wiser to have you thought, what I for. one always thought you, a generous and gallant nation,
long misled to your disadvantage by your high and
romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty;
that events had been unfavorable to you, but that
you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile
disposition; that, in your most devoted submission,
you were actuated by a principle of public spirit; and
that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be under
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 279
stood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you
had gone further than your wise ancestors, --that you
were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst
you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient
principles and models of the old common law of Eu.
rope, meliorated and adapted to its present state, --
by following wise examples you would have given
new examples of wisdom to the world. You would
have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the
eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You
would have shamed despotism from the earth, by
showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but,
as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You
would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce
to feed it. You would have had a free Constitution,
a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed
and venerated clergy, - a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and
to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found
by virtue in all conditions,-in which consists the true
moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous
fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter
that real inequality which it never can remove, anc
which the order of civil life establishes as much foi
? ? ? ? 280 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state as those whorf it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open
to you, beyond anything recorded in the history of
the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good
for man.
Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have
taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors,
and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became
truly despicable. By following those false lights,
France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed her virtue to her
interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that
she might prostitute her. virtue. All other nations
have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or
by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or
other of religion. All other people have laid the
foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and
a system of a more austere and masculine morality.
France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness
in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions
and practices, - and has extended through all ranks
of life, as if she were communicating some privilege,
or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy
corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth
and power. This is one of the new principles of
equality in France.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 281
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly
disgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets
of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics.
She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at
(what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider
those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones,as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading
their easy good-nature, under specious pretences, to
admit combinations of bold and faithless men into
a participation of their power. This alone (if there
were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you
and to mankind. Remember that your Parliament
of Paris told your king, that, in calling the states
together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal
excess of their zeal in providing for the support of
the throne. It is right that these men should hide
their heads. It is right that they should bear their
part in the ruin which their counsel has brought on
their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine
declarations tend to lull authority asleep, - to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy, - to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from
imbecility, and without which no man can answer for
the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government
or of freedom. ' For want of these, they have seen
the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.
They have seen the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult
than ever any people has been known to rise against
the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary ty
? ? ? ? 282 REFLECTIONS ON THE
rant. Their resistance was made to concession; their
revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at
a hand holding out graces, favors, and immunities.
This was unnatural. The'rest is in order. They
have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without
vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet
the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a
state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made
the constitution of the kingdom; everything human
and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and
national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown
all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering
power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting,
conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared
and hid themselves in the earth from whence they
came, when the principle of property, whose creatures
and representatives they are, was systematically subverted.
Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were
they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle
of determined patriots, compelled to wade through
blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil
and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The
fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation
of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and irresistible
authority. The persons who have thus squandered
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 283
away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of
public evils, (the last stake reserved for the ultimate
ransom of the state,) have met in their progress with
little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their
whole march was more like a triumphal procession
than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have
gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood
have they shed in the cause of the country they have
ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles,
whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering
their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men
and worthy families. Their cruelty has. not even been
the base result of fear. It has been the effect of their
sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning.
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil,
would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not
consider the composition of the National Assembly:
I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it
now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is composed,
which is of ten thousand times greater consequence
than all the formalities in the world. If we were to
know nothing of this assembly but by its. title and
function, no colors could paint to the imagination
anything more venerable. In that light, the mind of
an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that
? ? ? ? 284 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected
into one focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead
of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But
n10 name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and Nature, and education, and their habits of life
have made them. Capacities beyond these the people
have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the
objects of their choice; but their choice confers
neither the one nor the other on those upon whom
they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the
engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of
Revelation for any such powers.
After I had read over the list of the persons and
descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing
which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank,
some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not one man was to be found. The
best were only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and
mass of the body which constitutes its character, and
must finally determine its direction. In all bodies,
those who will lead must also, in a considerable
degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition of those
whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great
part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of
virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for
that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 285
becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, what is the more likely event, instead of
that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious
glory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom
at first they conform, becomes, in its turn, the dupe
and instrument of their designs. In this political
traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become
subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.
To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions
made by the leaders in any public assembly, they
ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear,
those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise
than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not
for actors, at least for judges; they must also be
judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing
can secure a steady and moderate conduct in such
assemblies, but that the body of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition in life, of
permanent property, of education, and of such habits
as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.
In the calling of the States-General of France, the
first thing that struck me was a great departure
from the ancient course. I found the representation
for the third estate composed of six hundred persons.
They were equal in number to the representatives of
both the other orders. If the orders were to-act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But when it became apparent that the three orders were
to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary
effect of this numerous representation became obvious A very small desertion from either of the
? ? ? ? 286 REFLECTIONS ON THE
other two orders must throw the power of both into
the hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of
the state was soon resolved into that body. Its due
composition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater
importance.
Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a
very great proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I
believe, of the members who attended) was composed
of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of
distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to
their country of their science, prudence, and integrity,- not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar, -
not of renowned professors in universities,- but for
the far greater part, as it must in such a number,
of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of
petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries,
and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war
of village vexation. From the moment I read the
list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happelled, all that was to follow.
The degree of estimation in which any profession
is held becomes the standard of the estimation in
which the professors hold themselves. Whatever the
personal merits of many individual lawyers might
have been, (and in many it was undoubtedly very
considerable,) in that military kingdom no part of the
profession had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their professional offices
great family splendor, and were invested witb great
power and authority. These certainly were highly
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 287
respected, and even with no small degree of awe.
The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a
body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the hands
of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,who had no previous fortune in character at stake,who could not be expected to bear with moderation
or to conduct with discretion a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised
to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself
that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active,
of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would
easily fall back into their old condition of obscure
contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense
to the state, of which they understood nothing, they
must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well? It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it
was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things.
They must join (if their capacity did not permit them
to lead) in any project which could procure to them
a litigious constitution, -- which could lay open to them
those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the
train of all great convulsions and revolutions in the
state, and particularly in all great anid violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected that
they would attend to the stability of property, whose
? ? ? ? 288 REFLECTIONS ON THE
existence had always depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode
of accomplishing their designs must remain the
same.
Well! but these men were to be tempered and re
strained by other descriptions, of more sober minds
and more enlarged understandings. Were they, then,
to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful
dignity of a handful of country clowns, who have
seats in that assembly, some of whom are said not to
be able to read and write, ---and by not a greater
number of traders, who, though somewhat more
instructed, and more conspicuous in the order of society, had never known anything beyond their counting-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be overborne and swayed by the intrigues
and artifices of lawyers than to become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous disproportion, the
whole must needs be governed by them.
To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of the faculty of medicine. This
faculty had not, any more than that of the law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors,
therefore, must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing they
had ranked as they ought to do, and as with itus they
do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators. Then
came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be
eager, at any expense, to change their ideal paper
wealth for the more solid substance of land. To
these were joined men of other descriptions, from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 289
whom as little knowledge of or attention to the interests of a great state was to be expected, and as
little regard to the stability of any institution, -- men
formed to be instruments, not controls. -- Such, in
general, was the composition of the Tiers. tat in the
National Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural
landed interest of the country.
We know that the British House of Commons,
without shutting its doors to any merit in any class,
is, by the sure operation of adequate causes, filled
with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in
hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cultivated
talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic distinc --
tion, that the country can afford. But supposing,.
what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the
House of Commons should be composed in the same
manner with the Tiers Etat in France, - would this
dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even,
conceived without horror? God forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory to that profession which
is another priesthood, administering the rights of sacred justice! But whilst I revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as much; as one man can do to prevent their exclusion from
any, I cannot, to flatter them, give the lie to Nature. .
They are good and useful in the composition. ; they
must be mischievous, if they preponderate so as virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in
their peculiar functions may be far from a qualification for others. It cannot escape observation, that,
when men are too much confined to professional and
faculty habits, and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are
VOL. III. 19
? ? ? ? 290 REFLECTIONS ON THE
rather disabled than qualified for whatever depends
on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, oni a comprehensive, connected view of
the various, complicated, external, and internal interests which go to the formation of that multifarious
thing called a State.
After all, if the House of Commons were to have
an wholly professional and faculty composition, what
is the power of the House of Commons, circumscribed
and shut in by the immovable barriers of laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House of Lords, and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of the
House of Commons, direct or indirect, is, indeed,
great: and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, and the spirit belonging to true greatness, at the
full! - and it will do so, as long as it can keep the
breakers of law in India from becoming the makers
of law for England. The power, however, of the
House of Commons, when least diminished, is as a
drop of water in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled majority of your National Assembly.
That assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has
no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves
obliged, to conform to a fixed constitution, they have
a power to make a constitution which shall conform to
their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can
serve as a control on them. What ought to be the
heads, the hearts, the dispositions, that are qualified,
or tlhat dare, not only to make laws under a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new
constitution for a great kingdom, and in every part
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of it, from the monarch on the throne to the vestry
of a parish? But
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. "
In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined
and undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral aid
almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen
in the management of human affairs.
Having considered the composition of the third estate, as it stood in its original frame, I took a view
of the representatives of the clergy.
There, too, it
appeared that full as little regard was had to the
general security of property, or to the aptitude of the
deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of
their election. That election was so contrived as to
send a very large proportion of mere country curates
to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a
state: mnen who never had seen the state so much as
in a picture; men who knew nothing of the world
beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy; among whom must be many
who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in
plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a
body of wealth in which they could hardly look to
have any share, except in a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners
in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily
become the active coadjutors, or at best the passive
instruments, of those by whom they had been habitually guided in their petty village concerns. They, too,
could hardly be the most conscientious of their kind,
who, presuming upon their incompetent understand
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ing, could intrigue for a trust which led them from
their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to undertake the regeneration
of kingdoms. This preponderating weight, being added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers
Etat, completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.
To observing men it must have appeared from the
beginning, that the majority of the third estate, in
conjunction with such a deputation from the clergy
as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction
of the nobility, would inevitably become subservient
to the worst designs of individuals in that class. In
the spoil and humiliation of their own order these
individuals would possess a sure fund for the pay of
their new followers. To squander away the objects
which made the happiness of their fellows would be
to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented
men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up
with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise
their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love
the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first
principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections.
It is the first link in the series by which we proceed
towards a love to our country and to mankind. The
interest of that portion of social arrangement is a
trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and
as none but bad men would justify it in abuse,none
but traitors would barter it away for their own per.
sonal advantage.
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There were, in the time of our civil troubles in
England, (I do not know whether you have any such
in your Assembly in France,) several persons, like
the then Earl of Holland, who by themselves or their
families had brought an odium on the throne by
the prodigal dispensation of its bounties towards
them, who afterwards joined in the rebellions arising from the discontents of which they were themselves the cause: men who helped to subvert that throne to which they owed, some of them, their existence, others all that power which they employed
to ruin their benefactor. If any bounds are set to
the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that
others are permitted to partake in the objects they
would engross, revenge and envy soon fill up' the
craving void that is left in their avarice. Confound! k
ed by the complication of distempered passions, their
reason is disturbed; their views become vast and
perplexed, -- to others inexplicable, to themselves
uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to their
unprincipled ambition in any fixed order of things;
but in the fog and haze of confusion all is enlarged,
and appears without any limit.
When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to
all ambition without a distinct object, and work with
low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Does not something like
this now appear in France? Does it not produce
something ignoble and inglorious: a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy; a tendency in all
that is done to lower along with individuals all the
dignity and importance of the state? Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they
attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth,
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sanctified their ambition by ad ancing the dignity of
the people whose peace they troubled. They had long
views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction of their country. They were men of great civil
and great military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers contending with each other who could best remedy
with fiaudulent circulation and depreciated paper the
wretchedness and ruin brought on their country by
their degenerate councils. The compliment made to
one of the great bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favorite poet of that time, shows what it was he proposed, and what indeed to
a great degree he accomplished in the success of his
ambition:"Still as you rise, the state, exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst't is changed by you:
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys. "
These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power as asserting their natural place in society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the world.
Their conquest over their competitors was by outshining them. The hand, that, like a destroying angel, smote the country, communicated to it the force and
energy under which it suffered. I do not say, (God
forbid! ) I do not say that the virtues of such men
were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but
they were some corrective to their effects. Such was,
as I said, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race
of Guises, Condes, and Colignys. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of
a civil war. Such, as better:men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry the Fourth, and your
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 295
Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and not
wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to
be wondered at, to see how very soon France, when
she had a moment to respire, recovered and emerged
from the longest and most dreadful civil war that
ever was known ill any nation. Why? Because,
among all their massacres, they had not slain the
mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble
pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was
not extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled
and inflamed. The organs also of the state, however
shattered, existed. All the prizes of honor and virtue, all the rewards, all the distinctions, remained.
But your present confusion, like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle
of honor, is disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation will
quickly pass away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and mloney-jobbers, usurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their masters. Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize.
In all societies consisting of various descriptions of
citizens, some description must be uppermost. The
levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The associations of tailors and carpenters, of which the republic (of
Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to
the situation into which, by the worst of usurpations,
an usurpation on the prerogatives of Nature, you attempt to force them.
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The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the
States, said, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all
occupations were honorable. If he meant only that
no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not
have gone beyond the truth. But in asserting that
anything is honorable, we imply some distinction in
its favor. The occupation of a hair-dresser, or of a
working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honor
to any person, -to say nothing of a number of other
more servile employments. Such descriptions of men
ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the
state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In
this you think you are combating prejudice, but you
are at war with Nature. *
I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that
sophistical, captious spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general observation or
sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and
exceptions which reason will presume to be included
in all the general propositions which come from reason* Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxxviii. ver. 24, 25. s" The wisdom of a
learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad; that driveth oxen, and is
occupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks? "
Ver. 27. " So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboreth night
and day," &c.
Ver. 33. " They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit
high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judge's seat, nor
understand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and
judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. "
Ver. 34. " But they will maintain the state of the world. "
I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican
Church (till lately) has considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is
taken. I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 297
able men. You do not imagine that I wish to confine,
power, authority, and distinction to blood and namesl
and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for
government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade,
the passport of Heaven to human place and honor.
Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues,
civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace
and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity
everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around
a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into
the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a
mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary
occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything ought to be open, -- but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no
mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or
rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a
view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the
other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not. to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course.
If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought
to pass through some sort of probation. The temple
of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it
be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too,
that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and
some struggle.
Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a
state, that does -not represent its ability, as well as its
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property. But as ability is a vigorous and active
principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability,
unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the
representation. It must be represented, too, in great
masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected.
The characteristic essence of property, formed out of
the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. Tlle great masses, therefore,
which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put
out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a
natural rampart about the lesser properties in all
their gradations. The same quantity of property
which is by the natural course of things divided
among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this
diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in
the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself
to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.
The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share
inconceivably small in the distribution to the many.
But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution. The power of perpetuating our property in our
families is one of the most valuable and interesting
circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends
the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It
makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it
grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which
attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned
in it,) are the natural securities for this transmisision. With us the House of Peers is formed upon
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 299
this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary
property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of the legislature, and, in the last event,
the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions.
The House of Commons, too, though not necessarily,
yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater
part. Let those large proprietors be what they will,
(and they have their chance of being amongst the
best,) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the
vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary
wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much
idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject'
admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in
shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, shortsighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent, regulated preieminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural,
nor unjust, nor impolitic.
It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.
This sort of discourse does well enough with the
lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason
calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and
their interest, must very often differ; and great will
be the difference when they make an evil choice. A
government of five hundred country attorneys and
obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions
of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a
dozen of persons of quality who have betrayed their
trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you
seem in everything to have strayed out of the high
road of Nature. The property of France does not
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govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and
rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever
be set in motion by the impulse of one mind? When
the National Assembly has completed its work, it will
have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths
will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will. not bear that this one body
should monopolize the captivity of the king, and the
dominion over the assembly calling itself national.
Each will keep its own portion of the spoil of the
Chirch to itself; and it will not suffer either that
spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, or the
natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the
insolence or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of
Paris. In this they will see none of the equality,
under the pretence of which they have been tempted
to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well
as the ancient constitution of their country. There
can be no capital city in such a constitution as they
have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually
dismembered their country. The person whom they
persevere in calling king has not power left to him
by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this
collection of republics. The republic of Paris will
endeavor, indeed, to complete the debauchery of the
army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of contin
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 301
ulng its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to
draw everything to itself: but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now violent.
If this be your actual situation, compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by
the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my
heart to congratulate you on the choice you have
made, or the success which has attended your endeavors. I can as little recommend to any other
nation a conduct grounded on such principles and
productive of such effects. That I must leave to
those who can see further into your affairs than I
am able to do, and who best know how far your actions are favorable to their designs. The gentlemen
of the Revolution Society, who were so early in their
congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that
there is some scheme of politics relative to this country, in which your proceedings may in some way be
useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have speculated himself into no small degree of fervor upon
this subject, addresses his auditors in the following
very remarkable words:- -" I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration which I have more than once alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have been all along anticipating; a consideration with which my mind is
impressed more than I can express: I mean the consideration of the favorableness of the present times to
all exertions in the cause of liberty. "
It is plain, that the mind of this political preacher
was at the time big with some extraordinary design;
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and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in his reflection, and in the
whole train of consequences to which it led.
Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had
lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the
country I lived in. I was, indeed, aware that a
jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure
of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay
and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first
duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as
a possession to be secured than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favorable to all exertions in the
cause of freedom. The present time differs from any
other only by the circumstance of what is doing in
France. If the example of that nation is to have an
influence on this, I can easily conceive why some of
their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect,
and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards the actors, and borne with
so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is
certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an
example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we
are led to a very natural question:- -What is that
cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its
favor, to which the example of France is so singularly
auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with
all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every landmark of
the country to be done away in favor of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House of
? ? ? ?
