There is scarcely anything in history
more remarkable than the descriptions which remain to us of that
extraordinary man.
more remarkable than the descriptions which remain to us of that
extraordinary man.
Macaulay
They bawled; they hooted; they shook their fists.
They
kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by
the crowd which filled their galleries. They gave long and solemn
consideration to trifles. They hurried through the most important
resolutions with fearful expedition. They wasted months in quibbling
about the words of that false and childish Declaration of Rights on
which they professed to found their new constitution, and which was at
irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. They
annihilated in a single night privileges, many of which partook of the
nature of property, and ought therefore to have been most delicately
handled.
They are called the Constituent Assembly. Never was a name less
appropriate. They were not constituent, but the very reverse of
constituent. They constituted nothing that stood or that deserved to
last. They had not, and they could not possibly have, the information
or the habits of mind which are necessary for the framing of that most
exquisite of all machines--a government. The metaphysical cant with
which they prefaced their constitution has long been the scoff of
all parties. Their constitution itself,--that constitution which
they described as absolutely perfect, and to which they predicted
immortality,--disappeared in a few months, and left no trace behind it.
They were great only in the work of destruction.
The glory of the National Assembly is this, that they were in truth,
what Mr Burke called them in austere irony, the ablest architects of
ruin that ever the world saw. They were utterly incompetent to perform
any work which required a discriminating eye and a skilful hand. But the
work which was then to be done was a work of devastation. They had
to deal with abuses so horrible and so deeply rooted that the highest
political wisdom could scarcely have produced greater good to mankind
than was produced by their fierce and senseless temerity. Demolition
is undoubtedly a vulgar task; the highest glory of the statesman is to
construct. But there is a time for everything,--a time to set up, and a
time to pull down. The talents of revolutionary leaders and those of the
legislator have equally their use and their season. It is the
natural, the almost universal, law, that the age of insurrections and
proscriptions shall precede the age of good government, of temperate
liberty, and liberal order.
And how should it be otherwise? It is not in swaddling-bands that
we learn to walk. It is not in the dark that we learn to distinguish
colours. It is not under oppression that we learn how to use freedom.
The ordinary sophism by which misrule is defended is, when truly
stated, this:--The people must continue in slavery, because slavery has
generated in them all the vices of slaves. Because they are ignorant,
they must remain under a power which has made and which keeps them
ignorant. Because they have been made ferocious by misgovernment, they
must be misgoverned for ever. If the system under which they live were
so mild and liberal that under its operation they had become humane
and enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a change. But, as this
system has destroyed morality, and prevented the development of the
intellect,--as it has turned men, who might under different training
have formed a virtuous and happy community, into savage and stupid wild
beasts,--therefore it ought to last for ever. The English Revolution,
it is said, was truly a glorious Revolution. Practical evils were
redressed; no excesses were committed; no sweeping confiscations took
place; the authority of the laws was scarcely for a moment suspended;
the fullest and freest discussion was tolerated in Parliament; the
nation showed, by the calm and temperate manner in which it asserted its
liberty, that it was fit to enjoy liberty. The French Revolution was,
on the other hand, the most horrible event recorded in history,--all
madness and wickedness,--absurdity in theory, and atrocity in practice.
What folly and injustice in the revolutionary laws! What grotesque
affectation in the revolutionary ceremonies! What fanaticism! What
licentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat,--feasts of
the Supreme Being, and marriages of the Loire--trees of liberty, and
heads dancing on pikes--the whole forms a kind of infernal farce, made
up of everything ridiculous, and everything frightful. This it is to
give freedom to those who have neither wisdom nor virtue.
It is not only by bad men interested in the defence of abuses that
arguments like these have been urged against all schemes of political
improvement. Some of the highest and purest of human beings conceived
such scorn and aversion for the follies and crimes of the French
Revolution that they recanted, in the moment of triumph, those liberal
opinions to which they had clung in defiance of persecution. And, if
we inquire why it was that they began to doubt whether liberty were a
blessing, we shall find that it was only because events had proved, in
the clearest manner, that liberty is the parent of virtue and of order.
They ceased to abhor tyranny merely because it had been signally shown
that the effect of tyranny on the hearts and understandings of men is
more demoralising and more stupifying than had ever been imagined by
the most zealous friend of popular rights. The truth is, that a stronger
argument against the old monarchy of France may be drawn from the
noyades and the fusillades than from the Bastile and the Parc-aux-cerfs.
We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a
revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovernment which has
produced that revolution. Why was the French Revolution so bloody and
destructive? Why was our revolution of 1641 comparatively mild? Why was
our revolution of 1688 milder still? Why was the American Revolution,
considered as an internal movement, the mildest of all? There is an
obvious and complete solution of the problem. The English under James
the First and Charles the First were less oppressed than the French
under Louis the Fifteenth and Louis the Sixteenth. The English were less
oppressed after the Restoration than before the great Rebellion. And
America under George the Third was less oppressed than England under
the Stuarts. The reaction was exactly proportioned to the pressure,--the
vengeance to the provocation.
When Mr Burke was reminded in his later years of the zeal which he had
displayed in the cause of the Americans, he vindicated himself from the
charge of inconsistency, by contrasting the wisdom and moderation of the
Colonial insurgents of 1776 with the fanaticism and wickedness of the
Jacobins of 1792. He was in fact bringing an argument a fortiori against
himself. The circumstances on which he rested his vindication fully
proved that the old government of France stood in far more need of
a complete change than the old government of America. The difference
between Washington and Robespierre,--the difference between Franklin and
Barere,--the difference between the destruction of a few barrels of
tea and the confiscation of thousands of square miles,--the difference
between the tarring and feathering of a tax-gatherer and the massacres
of September,--measure the difference between the government of America
under the rule of England and the government of France under the rule of
the Bourbons.
Louis the Sixteenth made great voluntary concessions to his people;
and they sent him to the scaffold. Charles the Tenth violated the
fundamental laws of the state, established a despotism, and butchered
his subjects for not submitting quietly to that despotism. He failed in
his wicked attempt. He was at the mercy of those whom he had injured.
The pavements of Paris were still heaped up in barricades;--the
hospitals were still full of the wounded;--the dead were still
unburied;--a thousand families were in mourning;--a hundred thousand
citizens were in arms. The crime was recent;--the life of the criminal
was in the hands of the sufferers;--and they touched not one hair of his
head. In the first revolution, victims were sent to death by scores for
the most trifling acts proved by the lowest testimony, before the most
partial tribunals. After the second revolution, those ministers who had
signed the ordinances, those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of the
foulest kind, was proved by the clearest evidence,--were punished only
with imprisonment. In the first revolution, property was attacked. In
the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions, it is true, left
the public mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions were
followed by insurrectionary movements. But, after the first revolution,
the insurgents were almost always stronger than the law; and, since the
second revolution, the law has invariably been found stronger than the
insurgents. There is, indeed, much in the present state of France which
may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire to see her free,
happy, powerful, and secure. Yet, if we compare the present state of
France with the state in which she was forty years ago, how vast a
change for the better has taken place! How little effect, for example,
during the first revolution, would the sentence of a judicial body
have produced on an armed and victorious partty! If, after the 10th of
August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the 9th of
Thermidor, or after the carnage of Vendemiaire, or after the arrests of
Fructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of
the conquered, with what contempt, with what derision, would its award
have been received! The judges would have lost their heads, or would
have been sent to die in some unwholesome colony. The fate of the victim
whom they had endeavoured to save would only have been made darker and
more hopeless by their interference. We have lately seen a signal proof
that, in France, the law is now stronger than the sword. We have seen a
government, in the very moment of triumph and revenge, submitting itself
to the authority of a court of law. A just and independent sentence
has been pronounced--a sentence worthy of the ancient renown of
that magistracy to which belong the noblest recollections of French
history--which, in an age of persecutors, produced L'Hopital,--which,
in an age of courtiers, produced D'Aguesseau,--which, in an age of
wickedness and madness, exhibited to mankind a pattern of every virtue
in the life and in the death of Malesherbes. The respectful manner in
which that sentence has been received is alone sufficient to show how
widely the French of this generation differ from their fathers. And how
is the difference to be explained? The race, the soil, the climate, are
the same. If those dull, honest Englishmen, who explain the events of
1793 and 1794 by saying that the French are naturally frivolous and
cruel, were in the right, why is the guillotine now standing idle?
Not surely for want of Carlists, of aristocrats, of people guilty of
incivism, of people suspected of being suspicious characters. Is not the
true explanation this, that the Frenchman of 1832 has been far better
governed than the Frenchman of 1789,--that his soul has never been
galled by the oppressive privileges of a separate caste,--that he has
been in some degree accustomed to discuss political questions, and
to perform political functions,--that he has lived for seventeen or
eighteen years under institutions which, however defective, have yet
been far superior to any institutions that had before existed in France?
As the second French Revolution has been far milder than the first,
so that great change which has just been effected in England has
been milder even than the second French Revolution,--milder than any
revolution recorded in history. Some orators have described the
reform of the House of Commons as a revolution. Others have denied the
propriety of the term. The question, though in seeming merely a
question of definition, suggests much curious and interesting matter for
reflection. If we look at the magnitude of the reform, it may well
be called a revolution. If we look at the means by which it has been
effected, it is merely an Act of Parliament, regularly brought in, read,
committed, and passed. In the whole history of England, there is no
prouder circumstance than this,--that a change, which could not, in any
other age, or in any other country, have been effected without physical
violence, should here have been effected by the force of reason,
and under the forms of law. The work of three civil wars has been
accomplished by three sessions of Parliament. An ancient and deeply
rooted system of abuses has been fiercely attacked and stubbornly
defended. It has fallen; and not one sword has been drawn; not one
estate has been confiscated; not one family has been forced to emigrate.
The bank has kept its credit. The funds have kept their price. Every man
has gone forth to his work and to his labour till the evening. During
the fiercest excitement of the contest,--during the first fortnight of
that immortal May,--there was not one moment at which any sanguinary
act committed on the person of any of the most unpopular men in England
would not have filled the country with horror and indignation.
And now that the victory is won, has it been abused? An immense mass
of power has been transferred from an oligarchy to the nation. Are
the members of the vanquished oligarchy insecure? Does the nation seem
disposed to play the tyrant? Are not those who, in any other state of
society, would have been visited with the severest vengeance of the
triumphant party,--would have been pining in dungeons, or flying to
foreign countries,--still enjoying their possessions and their honours,
still taking part as freely as ever in public affairs? Two years ago
they were dominant. They are now vanquished. Yet the whole people would
regard with horror any man who should dare to propose any vindictive
measure. So common is this feeling,--so much is it a matter of course
among us,--that many of our readers will scarcely understand what we see
to admire in it.
To what are we to attribute the unparalleled moderation and humanity
which the English people had displayed at this great conjuncture? The
answer is plain. This moderation, this humanity, are the fruits of a
hundred and fifty years of liberty. During many generations we have had
legislative assemblies which, however defective their constitution might
be, have always contained many members chosen by the people, and many
others eager to obtain the approbation of the people:--assemblies in
which perfect freedom of debate was allowed;--assemblies in which the
smallest minority had a fair hearing; assemblies in which abuses,
even when they were not redressed, were at least exposed. For many
generations we have had the trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Act, the
freedom of the press, the right of meeting to discuss public affairs,
the right of petitioning the legislature. A vast portion of the
population has long been accustomed to the exercise of political
functions, and has been thoroughly seasoned to political excitement.
In most other countries there is no middle course between absolute
submission and open rebellion. In England there has always been for
centuries a constitutional opposition. Thus our institutions had been so
good that they had educated us into a capacity for better institutions.
There is not a large town in the kingdom which does not contain better
materials for a legislature than all France could furnish in 1789. There
is not a spouting-club at any pot-house in London in which the rules of
debate are not better understood, and more strictly observed, than in
the Constituent Assembly. There is scarcely a Political Union which
could not frame in half an hour a declaration of rights superior to that
which occupied the collective wisdom of France for several months.
It would be impossible even to glance at all the causes of the French
Revolution within the limits to which we must confine ourselves. One
thing is clear. The government, the aristocracy, and the church were
rewarded after their works. They reaped that which they had sown. They
found the nation such as they had made it. That the people had become
possessed of irresistible power before they had attained the slightest
knowledge of the art of government--that practical questions of vast
moment were left to be solved by men to whom politics had been only
matter of theory--that a legislature was composed of persons who were
scarcely fit to compose a debating society--that the whole nation was
ready to lend an ear to any flatterer who appealed to its cupidity, to
its fears, or to its thirst for vengeance--all this was the effect of
misrule, obstinately continued in defiance of solemn warnings, and of
the visible signs of an approaching retribution.
Even while the monarchy seemed to be in its highest and most palmy
state, the causes of that great destruction had already begun to
operate. They may be distinctly traced even under the reign of Louis the
Fourteenth. That reign is the time to which the Ultra-Royalists refer
as the Golden Age of France. It was in truth one of those periods which
shine with an unnatural and delusive splendour, and which are rapidly
followed by gloom and decay.
Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to
have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not
a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king.
Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would
have called kingcraft,--of all those arts which most advantageously
display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects.
Though his internal administration was bad,--though the military
triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not
achieved by himself,--though his later years were crowded with defeats
and humiliations,--though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood
the Latin of his mass-book,--though he fell under the control of a
cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,--he succeeded in passing
himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the
more extraordinary because he did not seclude himself from the public
gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose
very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no
man is a hero to his valet;--and all the world saw as much of Louis the
Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see
him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down
at the side of his bed, and said his prayer while the whole assembly
awaited the end in solemn silence--the ecclesiastics on their knees,
and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked about
his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All
Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in
the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in
the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically
in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet, though he
constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which it
is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he
to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe
and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can
be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially
subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which
affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall.
Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of
the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his
majestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was
rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of
holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and
rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years
after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists,
his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared that
the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled,
was in truth a little man. (Even M. de Chateaubriand, to whom we should
have thought all the Bourbons would have seemed at least six feet high,
admits this fact. "C'est une erreur," says he in his strange memoirs of
the Duke of Berri, "de croire que Louis XIV. etait d'une haute stature.
Une cuirasse qui nous reste de lui, et les exhumations de St Denys,
n'ont laisse sur certain point aucun doute. ") That fine expression
of Juvenal is singularly applicable, both in its literal and in its
metaphorical sense, to Louis the Fourteenth:
"Mors sola fatetur
Quantula sint hominum corpuscula. "
His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of
making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence
that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have exposed
both the deceptions. The body of the great king has been measured more
justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look
above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men
free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere. In the grave, the
most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero
and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant,--the slave
of priests and women--little in war,--little in government,--little in
everything but the art of simulating greatness.
He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a
beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment
and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the
church, an immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an
innumerable household, inestimable jewels and furniture. All the sap and
nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated and
unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidly
flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which attached
the people to the monarchy had lost strength during his reign. He had
neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests; but he had struck
their imaginations. The very things which ought to have made him most
unpopular,--the prodigies of luxury and magnificence with which his
person was surrounded, while, beyond the inclosure of his parks, nothing
was to be seen but starvation and despair,--seemed to increase the
respectful attachment which his subjects felt for him. That governments
exist only for the good of the people, appears to be the most obvious
and simple of all truths. Yet history proves that it is one of the most
recondite. We can scarcely wonder that it should be so seldom present
to the minds of rulers, when we see how slowly, and through how much
suffering, nations arrive at the knowledge of it.
There was indeed one Frenchman who had discovered those principles which
it now seems impossible to miss,--that the many are not made for the use
of one,--that the truly good government is not that which concentrates
magnificence in a court, but that which diffuses happiness among a
people,--that a king who gains victory after victory, and adds province
to province, may deserve, not the admiration, but the abhorrence and
contempt of mankind. These were the doctrines which Fenelon taught.
Considered as an epic poem, Telemachus can scarcely be placed above
Glover's Leonidas or Wilkie's Epigoniad. Considered as a treatise on
politics and morals, it abounds with errors of detail; and the truths
which it inculcates seem trite to a modern reader. But, if we compare
the spirit in which it is written with the spirit which pervades the
rest of the French literature of that age, we shall perceive that,
though in appearance trite, it was in truth one of the most original
works that have ever appeared. The fundamental principles of Fenelon's
political morality, the test by which he judged of institutions and of
men, were absolutely new to his countrymen. He had taught them indeed,
with the happiest effect, to his royal pupil. But how incomprehensible
they were to most people, we learn from Saint Simon. That amusing
writer tells us, as a thing almost incredible, that the Duke of Burgundy
declared it to be his opinion that kings existed for the good of
the people, and not the people for the good of kings. Saint Simon is
delighted with the benevolence of this saying; but startled by its
novelty and terrified by its boldness. Indeed he distinctly says that it
was not safe to repeat the sentiment in the court of Louis. Saint Simon
was, of all the members of that court, the least courtly. He was as
nearly an oppositionist as any man of his time. His disposition was
proud, bitter, and cynical. In religion he was a Jansenist; in politics,
a less hearty royalist than most of his neighbours. His opinions and his
temper had preserved him from the illusions which the demeanour of Louis
produced on others. He neither loved nor respected the king. Yet even
this man,--one of the most liberal men in France,--was struck dumb
with astonishment at hearing the fundamental axiom of all government
propounded,--an axiom which, in our time, nobody in England or France
would dispute,--which the stoutest Tory takes for granted as much as the
fiercest Radical, and concerning which the Carlist would agree with the
most republican deputy of the "extreme left. " No person will do justice
to Fenelon, who does not constantly keep in mind that Telemachus was
written in an age and nation in which bold and independent thinkers
stared to hear that twenty millions of human beings did not exist
for the gratification of one. That work is commonly considered as a
schoolbook, very fit for children, because its style is easy and its
morality blameless, but unworthy of the attention of statesmen and
philosophers. We can distinguish in it, if we are not greatly mistaken,
the first faint dawn of a long and splendid day of intellectual
light,--the dim promise of a great deliverance,--the undeveloped germ of
the charter and of the code.
What mighty interests were staked on the life of the Duke of Burgundy!
and how different an aspect might the history of France have borne if he
had attained the age of his grandfather or of his son;--if he had been
permitted to show how much could be done for humanity by the highest
virtue in the highest fortune!
There is scarcely anything in history
more remarkable than the descriptions which remain to us of that
extraordinary man. The fierce and impetuous temper which he showed in
early youth,--the complete change which a judicious education produced
in his character,--his fervid piety,--his large benevolence,--the
strictness with which he judged himself,--the liberality with which he
judged others,--the fortitude with which alone, in the whole court, he
stood up against the commands of Louis, when a religious scruple
was concerned,--the charity with which alone, in the whole court,
he defended the profligate Orleans against calumniators,--his great
projects for the good of the people,--his activity in business,--his
taste for letters,--his strong domestic attachments,--even the
ungraceful person and the shy and awkward manner which concealed from
the eyes of the sneering courtiers of his grandfather so many rare
endowments,--make his character the most interesting that is to be found
in the annals of his house. He had resolved, if he came to the throne,
to disperse that ostentatious court, which was supported at an expense
ruinous to the nation,--to preserve peace,--to correct the abuses which
were found in every part of the system of revenue,--to abolish or modify
oppressive privileges,--to reform the administration of justice,--to
revive the institution of the States-General. If he had ruled over
France during forty or fifty years, that great movement of the human
mind, which no government could have arrested, which bad government
only rendered more violent, would, we are inclined to think, have been
conducted, by peaceable means to a happy termination.
Disease and sorrow removed from the world that wisdom and virtue of
which it was not worthy. During two generations France was ruled by men
who, with all the vices of Louis the Fourteenth, had none of the art
by which that magnificent prince passed off his vices for virtues. The
people had now to see tyranny naked. That foul Duessa was stripped
of her gorgeous ornaments. She had always been hideous; but a strange
enchantment had made her seem fair and glorious in the eyes of her
willing slaves. The spell was now broken; the deformity was made
manifest; and the lovers, lately so happy and so proud, turned away
loathing and horror-struck.
First came the Regency. The strictness with which Louis had, towards the
close of his life, exacted from those around him an outward attention to
religious duties, produced an effect similar to that which the rigour
of the Puritans had produced in England. It was the boast of Madame de
Maintenon, in the time of her greatness, that devotion had become the
fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and, like a fashion, it passed away.
The austerity of the tyrant's old age had injured the morality of the
higher orders more than even the licentiousness of his youth. Not only
had he not reformed their vices, but, by forcing them to be hypocrites,
he had shaken their belief in virtue. They had found it so easy to
perform the grimace of piety, that it was natural for them to consider
all piety as grimace. The times were changed. Pensions, regiments, and
abbeys, were no longer to be obtained by regular confession and severe
penance: and the obsequious courtiers, who had kept Lent like monks
of La Trappe, and who had turned up the whites of their eyes at the
edifying parts of sermons preached before the king, aspired to the title
of roue as ardently as they had aspired to that of devot; and went,
during Passion Week, to the revels of the Palais Royal as readily as
they had formerly repaired to the sermons of Massillon.
The Regent was in many respects the fac-simile of our Charles the
Second. Like Charles, he was a good-natured man, uttl destitute
of sensibility. Like Charles, he had good natural talents, which a
deplorable indolence rendered useless to the state. Like Charles, he
thought all men corrupted and interested, and yet did not dislike them
for being so. His opinion of human nature was Gulliver's; but he did not
regard human nature with Gulliver's horror. He thought that he and his
fellow-creatures were Yahoos; and he thought a Yahoo a very agreeable
kind of animal. No princes were ever more social than Charles and Philip
of Orleans: yet no princes ever had less capacity for friendship. The
tempers of these clever cynics were so easy, and their minds so languid,
that habit supplied in them the place of affection, and made them the
tools of people for whom they cared not one straw. In love, both were
mere sensualists without delicacy or tenderness. In politics, both were
utterly careless of faith and of national honour. Charles shut up the
Exchequer. Philip patronised the System. The councils of Charles were
swayed by the gold of Barillon; the councils of Philip by the gold of
Walpole. Charles for private objects made war on Holland, the natural
ally of England. Philip for private objects made war on the Spanish
branch of the house of Bourbon, the natural ally, indeed the creature of
France. Even in trifling circumstances the parallel might be carried on.
Both these princes were fond of experimental philosophy, and passed
in the laboratory much time which would have been more advantageously
passed at the council-table. Both were more strongly attached to their
female relatives than to any other human being; and in both cases it was
suspected that this attachment was not perfectly innocent. In personal
courage, and in all the virtues which are connected with personal
courage, the Regent was indisputably superior to Charles. Indeed Charles
but narrowly escaped the stain of cowardice. Philip was eminently brave,
and, like most brave men, was generally open and sincere. Charles added
dissimulation to his other vices.
The administration of the Regent was scarcely less pernicious, and
infinitely more scandalous, than that of the deceased monarch. It was
by magnificent public works, and by wars conducted on a gigantic scale,
that Louis had brought distress on his people. The Regent aggravated
that distress by frauds of which a lame duck on the stock-exchange would
have been ashamed. France, even while suffering under the most severe
calamities, had reverenced the conqueror. She despised the swindler.
When Orleans and the wretched Dubois had disappeared, the power passed
to the Duke of Bourbon; a prince degraded in the public eye by the
infamously lucrative part which he had taken in the juggles of the
System, and by the humility with which he bore the caprices of a loose
and imperious woman. It seemed to be decreed that every branch of the
royal family should successively incur the abhorrence and contempt of
the nation.
Between the fall of the Duke of Bourbon and the death of Fleury, a few
years of frugal and moderate government intervened. Then recommenced the
downward progress of the monarchy. Profligacy in the court, extravagance
in the finances, schism in the church, faction in the Parliaments,
unjust war terminated by ignominious peace,--all that indicates and all
that produces the ruin of great empires, make up the history of that
miserable period. Abroad, the French were beaten and humbled everywhere,
by land and by sea, on the Elbe and on the Rhine, in Asia and in
America. At home, they were turned over from vizier to vizier, and from
sultana to sultana, till they had reached that point beneath which there
was no lower abyss of infamy,--till the yoke of Maupeou had made them
pine for Choiseul,--till Madame du Barri had taught them to regret
Madame de Pompadour.
But unpopular as the monarchy had become, the aristocracy was more
unpopular still; and not without reason. The tyranny of an individual
is far more supportable than the tyranny of a caste. The old privileges
were galling and hateful to the new wealth and the new knowledge.
Everything indicated the approach of no common revolution,--of a
revolution destined to change, not merely the form of government,
but the distribution of property and the whole social system,--of a
revolution the effects of which were to be felt at every fireside in
France,--of a new Jaquerie, in which the victory was to remain with
Jaques bonhomme. In the van of the movement were the moneyed men and the
men of letters,--the wounded pride of wealth, and the wounded pride of
intellect. An immense multitude, made ignorant and cruel by oppression,
was raging in the rear.
We greatly doubt whether any course which could have been pursued by
Louis the Sixteenth could have averted a great convulsion. But we are
sure that, if there was such a course, it was the course recommended
by M. Turgot. The church and the aristocracy, with that blindness to
danger, that incapacity of believing that anything can be except what
has been, which the long possession of power seldom fails to generate,
mocked at the counsel which might have saved them. They would not have
reform; and they had revolution. They would not pay a small contribution
in place of the odious corvees; and they lived to see their castles
demolished, and their lands sold to strangers. They would not endure
Turgot; and they were forced to endure Robespierre.
Then the rulers of France, as if smitten with judicial blindness,
plunged headlong into the American war. They thus committed at once two
great errors. They encouraged the spirit of revolution. They augmented
at the same time those public burdens, the pressure of which is
generally the immediate cause of revolutions. The event of the war
carried to the height the enthusiasm of speculative democrats. The
financial difficulties produced by the war carried to the height
the discontent of that larger body of people who cared little about
theories, and much about taxes.
The meeting of the States-General was the signal for the explosion of
all the hoarded passions of a century. In that assembly, there were
undoubtedly very able men. But they had no practical knowledge of the
art of government. All the great English revolutions have been conducted
by practical statesmen. The French Revolution was conducted by mere
speculators. Our constitution has never been so far behind the age as to
have become an object of aversion to the people. The English revolutions
have therefore been undertaken for the purpose of defending, correcting,
and restoring,--never for the mere purpose of destroying. Our countrymen
have always, even in times of the greatest excitement, spoken reverently
of the form of government under which they lived, and attacked only what
they regarded as its corruptions. In the very act of innovating they
have constantly appealed to ancient prescription; they have seldom
looked abroad for models; they have seldom troubled themselves with
Utopian theories; they have not been anxious to prove that liberty is a
natural right of men; they have been content to regard it as the lawful
birthright of Englishmen. Their social contract is no fiction. It
is still extant on the original parchment, sealed with wax which was
affixed at Runnymede, and attested by the lordly names of the Marischals
and Fitzherberts. No general arguments about the original equality of
men, no fine stories out of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, have
ever affected them so much as their own familiar words,--Magna
Charta,--Habeas Corpus,--Trial by Jury,--Bill of Rights. This part of
our national character has undoubtedly its disadvantages. An Englishman
too often reasons on politics in the spirit rather of a lawyer than of
a philosopher. There is too often something narrow, something exclusive,
something Jewish, if we may use the word, in his love of freedom. He
is disposed to consider popular rights as the special heritage of the
chosen race to which he belongs. He is inclined rather to repel than to
encourage the alien proselyte who aspires to a share of his privileges.
Very different was the spirit of the Constituent Assembly. They had
none of our narrowness; but they had none of our practical skill in the
management of affairs. They did not understand how to regulate the order
of their own debates; and they thought themselves able to legislate for
the whole world. All the past was loathsome to them. All their agreeable
associations were connected with the future. Hopes were to them all that
recollections are to us. In the institutions of their country they found
nothing to love or to admire. As far back as they could look, they saw
only the tyranny of one class and the degradation of another,--Frank
and Gaul, knight and villein, gentleman and roturier. They hated the
monarchy, the church, the nobility. They cared nothing for the States or
the Parliament. It was long the fashion to ascribe all the follies which
they committed to the writings of the philosophers. We believe that
it was misrule, and nothing but misrule, that put the sting into those
writings. It is not true that the French abandoned experience for
theories. They took up with theories because they had no experience of
good government. It was because they had no charter that they ranted
about the original contract. As soon as tolerable institutions were
given to them, they began to look to those institutions. In 1830 their
rallying cry was "Vive la Charte". In 1789 they had nothing but theories
round which to rally. They had seen social distinctions only in a
bad form; and it was therefore natural that they should be deluded by
sophisms about the equality of men. They had experienced so much evil
from the sovereignty of kings that they might be excused for lending a
ready ear to those who preached, in an exaggerated form, the doctrine of
the sovereignty of the people.
The English, content with their own national recollections and names,
have never sought for models in the institutions of Greece or Rome. The
French, having nothing in their own history to which they could look
back with pleasure, had recourse to the history of the great ancient
commonwealths: they drew their notions of those commonwealths, not from
contemporary writers, but from romances written by pedantic moralists
long after the extinction of public liberty. They neglected Thucydides
for Plutarch. Blind themselves, they took blind guides. They had no
experience of freedom; and they took their opinions concerning it
from men who had no more experience of it than themselves, and whose
imaginations, inflamed by mystery and privation, exaggerated the unknown
enjoyment;--from men who raved about patriotism without having ever had
a country, and eulogised tyrannicide while crouching before tyrants.
The maxim which the French legislators learned in this school was, that
political liberty is an end, and not a means; that it is not merely
valuable as the great safeguard of order, of property, and of morality,
but that it is in itself a high and exquisite happiness to which order,
property, and morality ought without one scruple to be sacrificed. The
lessons which may be learned from ancient history are indeed most useful
and important; but they were not likely to be learned by men who, in all
their rhapsodies about the Athenian democracy, seemed utterly to forget
that in that democracy there were ten slaves to one citizen; and who
constantly decorated their invectives against the aristocrats with
panegyrics on Brutus and Cato,--two aristocrats, fiercer, prouder, and
more exclusive, than any that emigrated with the Count of Artois.
We have never met with so vivid and interesting a picture of the
National Assembly as that which M. Dumont has set before us. His
Mirabeau, in particular, is incomparable. All the former Mirabeaus
were daubs in comparison. Some were merely painted from the
imagination--others were gross caricatures: this is the very individual,
neither god nor demon, but a man--a Frenchman--a Frenchman of the
eighteenth century, with great talents, with strong passions, depraved
by bad education, surrounded by temptations of every kind,--made
desperate at one time by disgrace, and then again intoxicated by fame.
All his opposite and seemingly inconsistent qualities are in this
representation so blended together as to make up a harmonious and
natural whole. Till now, Mirabeau was to us, and, we believe, to most
readers of history, not a man, but a string of antitheses. Henceforth he
will be a real human being, a remarkable and eccentric being indeed, but
perfectly conceivable.
He was fond, M. Dumont tells us, of giving odd compound nicknames.
Thus, M. de Lafayette was Grandison-Cromwell; the King of Prussia was
Alaric-Cottin; D'Espremenil was Crispin-Catiline. We think that Mirabeau
himself might be described, after his own fashion, as a Wilkes-Chatham.
He had Wilkes's sensuality, Wilkes's levity, Wilkes's insensibility to
shame. Like Wilkes, he had brought on himself the censure even of men
of pleasure by the peculiar grossness of his immorality, and by the
obscenity of his writings. Like Wilkes, he was heedless, not only of
the laws of morality, but of the laws of honour. Yet he affected, like
Wilkes, to unite the character of the demagogue to that of the fine
gentleman. Like Wilkes, he conciliated, by his good-humour and his high
spirits, the regard of many who despised his character. Like Wilkes,
he was hideously ugly; like Wilkes, he made a jest of his own ugliness;
and, like Wilkes, he was, in spite of his ugliness, very attentive to
his dress, and very successful in affairs of gallantry.
Resembling Wilkes in the lower and grosser parts of his character, he
had, in his higher qualities, some affinity to Chatham. His eloquence,
as far as we can judge of it, bore no inconsiderable resemblance to that
of the great English minister. He was not eminently successful in long
set speeches. He was not, on the other hand, a close and ready debater.
Sudden bursts, which seemed to be the effect of inspiration--short
sentences which came like lightning, dazzling, burning, striking down
everything before them--sentences which, spoken at critical moments,
decided the fate of great questions--sentences which at once became
proverbs--sentences which everybody still knows by heart--in these
chiefly lay the oratorical power both of Chatham and of Mirabeau. There
have been far greater speakers, and far greater statesmen, than either
of them; but we doubt whether any men have, in modern times, exercised
such vast personal influence over stormy and divided assemblies. The
power of both was as much moral as intellectual. In true dignity of
character, in private and public virtue, it may seem absurd to institute
any comparison between them; but they had the same haughtiness and
vehemence of temper. In their language and manner there was a disdainful
self-confidence, an imperiousness, a fierceness of passion, before which
all common minds quailed. Even Murray and Charles Townshend, though
intellectually not inferior to Chatham, were always cowed by him.
Barnave, in the same manner, though the best debater in the National
Assembly, flinched before the energy of Mirabeau. Men, except in bad
novels, are not all good or all evil. It can scarcely be denied that the
virtue of Lord Chatham was a little theatrical. On the other hand there
was in Mirabeau, not indeed anything deserving the name of virtue,
but that imperfect substitute for virtue which is found in almost all
superior minds,--a sensibility to the beautiful and the good, which
sometimes amounted to sincere enthusiasm; and which, mingled with
the desire of admiration, sometimes gave to his character a lustre
resembling the lustre of true goodness,--as the "faded splendour wan"
which lingered round the fallen archangel resembled the exceeding
brightness of those spirits who had kept their first estate.
There are several other admirable portraits of eminent men in these
Memoirs. That of Sieyes in particular, and that of Talleyrand, are
master-pieces, full of life and expression. But nothing in the book has
interested us more than the view which M. Dumont has presented to us,
unostentatiously, and, we may say, unconsciously, of his own character.
The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the good-nature, the modesty,
the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected
indifference to money and to fame, make up a character which, while it
has nothing unnatural, seems to us to approach nearer to perfection than
any of the Grandisons and Allworthys of fiction. The work is not indeed
precisely such a work as we had anticipated--it is more lively, more
picturesque, more amusing than we had promised ourselves; and it is, on
the other hand, less profound and philosophic. But, if it is not, in
all respects, such as might have been expected from the intellect of M.
Dumont, it is assuredly such as might have been expected from his heart.
*****
BARERE. (April 1844. )
"Memoires de Bertrand Barere": publies par MM. Hippolyte
Carnot, Membre de la Chambre des Deputes, et David d'Angers,
Membre de l'Institut: precedes d'une Notice Historique par
H. Carnot. 4 tomes. Paris: 1843.
This book has more than one title to our serious attention. It is an
appeal, solemnly made to posterity by a man who played a conspicuous
part in great events, and who represents himself as deeply aggrieved by
the rash and malevolent censure of his contemporaries. To such an appeal
we shall always give ready audience. We can perform no duty more useful
to society, or more agreeable to our own feelings, than that of making,
as far as our power extends, reparation to the slandered and
persecuted benefactors of mankind. We therefore promptly took into our
consideration this copious apology for the life of Bertrand Barere. We
have made up our minds; and we now purpose to do him, by the blessing of
God, full and signal justice. It is to be observed that the appellant in
this case does not come into court alone. He is attended to the bar
of public opinion by two compurgators who occupy highly honourable
stations. One of these is M. David of Angers, member of the institute,
an eminent sculptor, and, if we have been rightly informed, a favourite
pupil, though not a kinsman, of the painter who bore the same name. The
other, to whom we owe the biographical preface, is M. Hippolyte Carnot,
member of the Chamber of Deputies, and son of the celebrated Director.
In the judgment of M. David and of M. Hippolyte Carnot, Barere was a
deserving and an ill-used man--a man who, though by no means faultless,
must yet, when due allowance is made for the force of circumstances and
the infirmity of human nature, be considered as on the whole entitled
to our esteem. It will be for the public to determine, after a full
hearing, whether the editors have, by thus connecting their names with
that of Barere, raised his character or lowered their own.
We are not conscious that, when we opened this book, we were under the
influence of any feeling likely to pervert our judgment. Undoubtedly we
had long entertained a most unfavourable opinion of Barere: but to this
opinion we were not tied by any passion or by any interest. Our dislike
was a reasonable dislike, and might have been removed by reason. Indeed
our expectation was, that these Memoirs would in some measure clear
Barere's fame. That he could vindicate himself from all the charges
which had been brought against him, we knew to be impossible; and his
editors admit that he has not done so. But we thought it highly probable
that some grave accusations would be refuted, and that many offences
to which he would have been forced to plead guilty would be greatly
extenuated. We were not disposed to be severe. We were fully aware that
temptations such as those to which the members of the Convention and
of the Committee of Public Safety were exposed must try severely the
strength of the firmest virtue. Indeed our inclination has always been
to regard with an indulgence, which to some rigid moralists appears
excessive, those faults into which gentle and noble spirits are
sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, by the maddening
influence of sympathy, and by ill-regulated zeal for a public cause.
With such feelings we read this book, and compared it with other
accounts of the events in which Barere bore a part. It is now our duty
to express the opinion to which this investigation has led us.
Our opinion then is this: that Barere approached nearer than any person
mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of
consummate and universal depravity. In him the qualities which are the
proper objects of hatred, and the qualities which are the proper objects
of contempt, preserve an exquisite and absolute harmony. In almost every
particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His sensuality was
immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many great and
amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as he, some as cruel,
a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may also have been as great
liars, though we never met with them or read of them. But when we put
everything together, sensuality, poltroonery, baseness, effrontery,
mendacity, barbarity, the result is something which in a novel we should
condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no parallel can
be found in history.
It would be grossly unjust, we acknowledge, to try a man situated as
Barere was by a severe standard. Nor have we done so. We have formed
our opinion of him, by comparing him, not with politicians of stainless
character, not with Chancellor D'Aguesseau, or General Washington, or Mr
Wilberforce, or Earl Grey, but with his own colleagues of the Mountain.
kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by
the crowd which filled their galleries. They gave long and solemn
consideration to trifles. They hurried through the most important
resolutions with fearful expedition. They wasted months in quibbling
about the words of that false and childish Declaration of Rights on
which they professed to found their new constitution, and which was at
irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. They
annihilated in a single night privileges, many of which partook of the
nature of property, and ought therefore to have been most delicately
handled.
They are called the Constituent Assembly. Never was a name less
appropriate. They were not constituent, but the very reverse of
constituent. They constituted nothing that stood or that deserved to
last. They had not, and they could not possibly have, the information
or the habits of mind which are necessary for the framing of that most
exquisite of all machines--a government. The metaphysical cant with
which they prefaced their constitution has long been the scoff of
all parties. Their constitution itself,--that constitution which
they described as absolutely perfect, and to which they predicted
immortality,--disappeared in a few months, and left no trace behind it.
They were great only in the work of destruction.
The glory of the National Assembly is this, that they were in truth,
what Mr Burke called them in austere irony, the ablest architects of
ruin that ever the world saw. They were utterly incompetent to perform
any work which required a discriminating eye and a skilful hand. But the
work which was then to be done was a work of devastation. They had
to deal with abuses so horrible and so deeply rooted that the highest
political wisdom could scarcely have produced greater good to mankind
than was produced by their fierce and senseless temerity. Demolition
is undoubtedly a vulgar task; the highest glory of the statesman is to
construct. But there is a time for everything,--a time to set up, and a
time to pull down. The talents of revolutionary leaders and those of the
legislator have equally their use and their season. It is the
natural, the almost universal, law, that the age of insurrections and
proscriptions shall precede the age of good government, of temperate
liberty, and liberal order.
And how should it be otherwise? It is not in swaddling-bands that
we learn to walk. It is not in the dark that we learn to distinguish
colours. It is not under oppression that we learn how to use freedom.
The ordinary sophism by which misrule is defended is, when truly
stated, this:--The people must continue in slavery, because slavery has
generated in them all the vices of slaves. Because they are ignorant,
they must remain under a power which has made and which keeps them
ignorant. Because they have been made ferocious by misgovernment, they
must be misgoverned for ever. If the system under which they live were
so mild and liberal that under its operation they had become humane
and enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a change. But, as this
system has destroyed morality, and prevented the development of the
intellect,--as it has turned men, who might under different training
have formed a virtuous and happy community, into savage and stupid wild
beasts,--therefore it ought to last for ever. The English Revolution,
it is said, was truly a glorious Revolution. Practical evils were
redressed; no excesses were committed; no sweeping confiscations took
place; the authority of the laws was scarcely for a moment suspended;
the fullest and freest discussion was tolerated in Parliament; the
nation showed, by the calm and temperate manner in which it asserted its
liberty, that it was fit to enjoy liberty. The French Revolution was,
on the other hand, the most horrible event recorded in history,--all
madness and wickedness,--absurdity in theory, and atrocity in practice.
What folly and injustice in the revolutionary laws! What grotesque
affectation in the revolutionary ceremonies! What fanaticism! What
licentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat,--feasts of
the Supreme Being, and marriages of the Loire--trees of liberty, and
heads dancing on pikes--the whole forms a kind of infernal farce, made
up of everything ridiculous, and everything frightful. This it is to
give freedom to those who have neither wisdom nor virtue.
It is not only by bad men interested in the defence of abuses that
arguments like these have been urged against all schemes of political
improvement. Some of the highest and purest of human beings conceived
such scorn and aversion for the follies and crimes of the French
Revolution that they recanted, in the moment of triumph, those liberal
opinions to which they had clung in defiance of persecution. And, if
we inquire why it was that they began to doubt whether liberty were a
blessing, we shall find that it was only because events had proved, in
the clearest manner, that liberty is the parent of virtue and of order.
They ceased to abhor tyranny merely because it had been signally shown
that the effect of tyranny on the hearts and understandings of men is
more demoralising and more stupifying than had ever been imagined by
the most zealous friend of popular rights. The truth is, that a stronger
argument against the old monarchy of France may be drawn from the
noyades and the fusillades than from the Bastile and the Parc-aux-cerfs.
We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a
revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovernment which has
produced that revolution. Why was the French Revolution so bloody and
destructive? Why was our revolution of 1641 comparatively mild? Why was
our revolution of 1688 milder still? Why was the American Revolution,
considered as an internal movement, the mildest of all? There is an
obvious and complete solution of the problem. The English under James
the First and Charles the First were less oppressed than the French
under Louis the Fifteenth and Louis the Sixteenth. The English were less
oppressed after the Restoration than before the great Rebellion. And
America under George the Third was less oppressed than England under
the Stuarts. The reaction was exactly proportioned to the pressure,--the
vengeance to the provocation.
When Mr Burke was reminded in his later years of the zeal which he had
displayed in the cause of the Americans, he vindicated himself from the
charge of inconsistency, by contrasting the wisdom and moderation of the
Colonial insurgents of 1776 with the fanaticism and wickedness of the
Jacobins of 1792. He was in fact bringing an argument a fortiori against
himself. The circumstances on which he rested his vindication fully
proved that the old government of France stood in far more need of
a complete change than the old government of America. The difference
between Washington and Robespierre,--the difference between Franklin and
Barere,--the difference between the destruction of a few barrels of
tea and the confiscation of thousands of square miles,--the difference
between the tarring and feathering of a tax-gatherer and the massacres
of September,--measure the difference between the government of America
under the rule of England and the government of France under the rule of
the Bourbons.
Louis the Sixteenth made great voluntary concessions to his people;
and they sent him to the scaffold. Charles the Tenth violated the
fundamental laws of the state, established a despotism, and butchered
his subjects for not submitting quietly to that despotism. He failed in
his wicked attempt. He was at the mercy of those whom he had injured.
The pavements of Paris were still heaped up in barricades;--the
hospitals were still full of the wounded;--the dead were still
unburied;--a thousand families were in mourning;--a hundred thousand
citizens were in arms. The crime was recent;--the life of the criminal
was in the hands of the sufferers;--and they touched not one hair of his
head. In the first revolution, victims were sent to death by scores for
the most trifling acts proved by the lowest testimony, before the most
partial tribunals. After the second revolution, those ministers who had
signed the ordinances, those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of the
foulest kind, was proved by the clearest evidence,--were punished only
with imprisonment. In the first revolution, property was attacked. In
the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions, it is true, left
the public mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions were
followed by insurrectionary movements. But, after the first revolution,
the insurgents were almost always stronger than the law; and, since the
second revolution, the law has invariably been found stronger than the
insurgents. There is, indeed, much in the present state of France which
may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire to see her free,
happy, powerful, and secure. Yet, if we compare the present state of
France with the state in which she was forty years ago, how vast a
change for the better has taken place! How little effect, for example,
during the first revolution, would the sentence of a judicial body
have produced on an armed and victorious partty! If, after the 10th of
August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the 9th of
Thermidor, or after the carnage of Vendemiaire, or after the arrests of
Fructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of
the conquered, with what contempt, with what derision, would its award
have been received! The judges would have lost their heads, or would
have been sent to die in some unwholesome colony. The fate of the victim
whom they had endeavoured to save would only have been made darker and
more hopeless by their interference. We have lately seen a signal proof
that, in France, the law is now stronger than the sword. We have seen a
government, in the very moment of triumph and revenge, submitting itself
to the authority of a court of law. A just and independent sentence
has been pronounced--a sentence worthy of the ancient renown of
that magistracy to which belong the noblest recollections of French
history--which, in an age of persecutors, produced L'Hopital,--which,
in an age of courtiers, produced D'Aguesseau,--which, in an age of
wickedness and madness, exhibited to mankind a pattern of every virtue
in the life and in the death of Malesherbes. The respectful manner in
which that sentence has been received is alone sufficient to show how
widely the French of this generation differ from their fathers. And how
is the difference to be explained? The race, the soil, the climate, are
the same. If those dull, honest Englishmen, who explain the events of
1793 and 1794 by saying that the French are naturally frivolous and
cruel, were in the right, why is the guillotine now standing idle?
Not surely for want of Carlists, of aristocrats, of people guilty of
incivism, of people suspected of being suspicious characters. Is not the
true explanation this, that the Frenchman of 1832 has been far better
governed than the Frenchman of 1789,--that his soul has never been
galled by the oppressive privileges of a separate caste,--that he has
been in some degree accustomed to discuss political questions, and
to perform political functions,--that he has lived for seventeen or
eighteen years under institutions which, however defective, have yet
been far superior to any institutions that had before existed in France?
As the second French Revolution has been far milder than the first,
so that great change which has just been effected in England has
been milder even than the second French Revolution,--milder than any
revolution recorded in history. Some orators have described the
reform of the House of Commons as a revolution. Others have denied the
propriety of the term. The question, though in seeming merely a
question of definition, suggests much curious and interesting matter for
reflection. If we look at the magnitude of the reform, it may well
be called a revolution. If we look at the means by which it has been
effected, it is merely an Act of Parliament, regularly brought in, read,
committed, and passed. In the whole history of England, there is no
prouder circumstance than this,--that a change, which could not, in any
other age, or in any other country, have been effected without physical
violence, should here have been effected by the force of reason,
and under the forms of law. The work of three civil wars has been
accomplished by three sessions of Parliament. An ancient and deeply
rooted system of abuses has been fiercely attacked and stubbornly
defended. It has fallen; and not one sword has been drawn; not one
estate has been confiscated; not one family has been forced to emigrate.
The bank has kept its credit. The funds have kept their price. Every man
has gone forth to his work and to his labour till the evening. During
the fiercest excitement of the contest,--during the first fortnight of
that immortal May,--there was not one moment at which any sanguinary
act committed on the person of any of the most unpopular men in England
would not have filled the country with horror and indignation.
And now that the victory is won, has it been abused? An immense mass
of power has been transferred from an oligarchy to the nation. Are
the members of the vanquished oligarchy insecure? Does the nation seem
disposed to play the tyrant? Are not those who, in any other state of
society, would have been visited with the severest vengeance of the
triumphant party,--would have been pining in dungeons, or flying to
foreign countries,--still enjoying their possessions and their honours,
still taking part as freely as ever in public affairs? Two years ago
they were dominant. They are now vanquished. Yet the whole people would
regard with horror any man who should dare to propose any vindictive
measure. So common is this feeling,--so much is it a matter of course
among us,--that many of our readers will scarcely understand what we see
to admire in it.
To what are we to attribute the unparalleled moderation and humanity
which the English people had displayed at this great conjuncture? The
answer is plain. This moderation, this humanity, are the fruits of a
hundred and fifty years of liberty. During many generations we have had
legislative assemblies which, however defective their constitution might
be, have always contained many members chosen by the people, and many
others eager to obtain the approbation of the people:--assemblies in
which perfect freedom of debate was allowed;--assemblies in which the
smallest minority had a fair hearing; assemblies in which abuses,
even when they were not redressed, were at least exposed. For many
generations we have had the trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Act, the
freedom of the press, the right of meeting to discuss public affairs,
the right of petitioning the legislature. A vast portion of the
population has long been accustomed to the exercise of political
functions, and has been thoroughly seasoned to political excitement.
In most other countries there is no middle course between absolute
submission and open rebellion. In England there has always been for
centuries a constitutional opposition. Thus our institutions had been so
good that they had educated us into a capacity for better institutions.
There is not a large town in the kingdom which does not contain better
materials for a legislature than all France could furnish in 1789. There
is not a spouting-club at any pot-house in London in which the rules of
debate are not better understood, and more strictly observed, than in
the Constituent Assembly. There is scarcely a Political Union which
could not frame in half an hour a declaration of rights superior to that
which occupied the collective wisdom of France for several months.
It would be impossible even to glance at all the causes of the French
Revolution within the limits to which we must confine ourselves. One
thing is clear. The government, the aristocracy, and the church were
rewarded after their works. They reaped that which they had sown. They
found the nation such as they had made it. That the people had become
possessed of irresistible power before they had attained the slightest
knowledge of the art of government--that practical questions of vast
moment were left to be solved by men to whom politics had been only
matter of theory--that a legislature was composed of persons who were
scarcely fit to compose a debating society--that the whole nation was
ready to lend an ear to any flatterer who appealed to its cupidity, to
its fears, or to its thirst for vengeance--all this was the effect of
misrule, obstinately continued in defiance of solemn warnings, and of
the visible signs of an approaching retribution.
Even while the monarchy seemed to be in its highest and most palmy
state, the causes of that great destruction had already begun to
operate. They may be distinctly traced even under the reign of Louis the
Fourteenth. That reign is the time to which the Ultra-Royalists refer
as the Golden Age of France. It was in truth one of those periods which
shine with an unnatural and delusive splendour, and which are rapidly
followed by gloom and decay.
Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to
have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not
a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king.
Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would
have called kingcraft,--of all those arts which most advantageously
display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects.
Though his internal administration was bad,--though the military
triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not
achieved by himself,--though his later years were crowded with defeats
and humiliations,--though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood
the Latin of his mass-book,--though he fell under the control of a
cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,--he succeeded in passing
himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the
more extraordinary because he did not seclude himself from the public
gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose
very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no
man is a hero to his valet;--and all the world saw as much of Louis the
Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see
him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down
at the side of his bed, and said his prayer while the whole assembly
awaited the end in solemn silence--the ecclesiastics on their knees,
and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked about
his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All
Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in
the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in
the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically
in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet, though he
constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which it
is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he
to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe
and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can
be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially
subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which
affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall.
Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of
the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his
majestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was
rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of
holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and
rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years
after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists,
his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared that
the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled,
was in truth a little man. (Even M. de Chateaubriand, to whom we should
have thought all the Bourbons would have seemed at least six feet high,
admits this fact. "C'est une erreur," says he in his strange memoirs of
the Duke of Berri, "de croire que Louis XIV. etait d'une haute stature.
Une cuirasse qui nous reste de lui, et les exhumations de St Denys,
n'ont laisse sur certain point aucun doute. ") That fine expression
of Juvenal is singularly applicable, both in its literal and in its
metaphorical sense, to Louis the Fourteenth:
"Mors sola fatetur
Quantula sint hominum corpuscula. "
His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of
making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence
that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have exposed
both the deceptions. The body of the great king has been measured more
justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look
above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men
free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere. In the grave, the
most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero
and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant,--the slave
of priests and women--little in war,--little in government,--little in
everything but the art of simulating greatness.
He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a
beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment
and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the
church, an immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an
innumerable household, inestimable jewels and furniture. All the sap and
nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated and
unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidly
flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which attached
the people to the monarchy had lost strength during his reign. He had
neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests; but he had struck
their imaginations. The very things which ought to have made him most
unpopular,--the prodigies of luxury and magnificence with which his
person was surrounded, while, beyond the inclosure of his parks, nothing
was to be seen but starvation and despair,--seemed to increase the
respectful attachment which his subjects felt for him. That governments
exist only for the good of the people, appears to be the most obvious
and simple of all truths. Yet history proves that it is one of the most
recondite. We can scarcely wonder that it should be so seldom present
to the minds of rulers, when we see how slowly, and through how much
suffering, nations arrive at the knowledge of it.
There was indeed one Frenchman who had discovered those principles which
it now seems impossible to miss,--that the many are not made for the use
of one,--that the truly good government is not that which concentrates
magnificence in a court, but that which diffuses happiness among a
people,--that a king who gains victory after victory, and adds province
to province, may deserve, not the admiration, but the abhorrence and
contempt of mankind. These were the doctrines which Fenelon taught.
Considered as an epic poem, Telemachus can scarcely be placed above
Glover's Leonidas or Wilkie's Epigoniad. Considered as a treatise on
politics and morals, it abounds with errors of detail; and the truths
which it inculcates seem trite to a modern reader. But, if we compare
the spirit in which it is written with the spirit which pervades the
rest of the French literature of that age, we shall perceive that,
though in appearance trite, it was in truth one of the most original
works that have ever appeared. The fundamental principles of Fenelon's
political morality, the test by which he judged of institutions and of
men, were absolutely new to his countrymen. He had taught them indeed,
with the happiest effect, to his royal pupil. But how incomprehensible
they were to most people, we learn from Saint Simon. That amusing
writer tells us, as a thing almost incredible, that the Duke of Burgundy
declared it to be his opinion that kings existed for the good of
the people, and not the people for the good of kings. Saint Simon is
delighted with the benevolence of this saying; but startled by its
novelty and terrified by its boldness. Indeed he distinctly says that it
was not safe to repeat the sentiment in the court of Louis. Saint Simon
was, of all the members of that court, the least courtly. He was as
nearly an oppositionist as any man of his time. His disposition was
proud, bitter, and cynical. In religion he was a Jansenist; in politics,
a less hearty royalist than most of his neighbours. His opinions and his
temper had preserved him from the illusions which the demeanour of Louis
produced on others. He neither loved nor respected the king. Yet even
this man,--one of the most liberal men in France,--was struck dumb
with astonishment at hearing the fundamental axiom of all government
propounded,--an axiom which, in our time, nobody in England or France
would dispute,--which the stoutest Tory takes for granted as much as the
fiercest Radical, and concerning which the Carlist would agree with the
most republican deputy of the "extreme left. " No person will do justice
to Fenelon, who does not constantly keep in mind that Telemachus was
written in an age and nation in which bold and independent thinkers
stared to hear that twenty millions of human beings did not exist
for the gratification of one. That work is commonly considered as a
schoolbook, very fit for children, because its style is easy and its
morality blameless, but unworthy of the attention of statesmen and
philosophers. We can distinguish in it, if we are not greatly mistaken,
the first faint dawn of a long and splendid day of intellectual
light,--the dim promise of a great deliverance,--the undeveloped germ of
the charter and of the code.
What mighty interests were staked on the life of the Duke of Burgundy!
and how different an aspect might the history of France have borne if he
had attained the age of his grandfather or of his son;--if he had been
permitted to show how much could be done for humanity by the highest
virtue in the highest fortune!
There is scarcely anything in history
more remarkable than the descriptions which remain to us of that
extraordinary man. The fierce and impetuous temper which he showed in
early youth,--the complete change which a judicious education produced
in his character,--his fervid piety,--his large benevolence,--the
strictness with which he judged himself,--the liberality with which he
judged others,--the fortitude with which alone, in the whole court, he
stood up against the commands of Louis, when a religious scruple
was concerned,--the charity with which alone, in the whole court,
he defended the profligate Orleans against calumniators,--his great
projects for the good of the people,--his activity in business,--his
taste for letters,--his strong domestic attachments,--even the
ungraceful person and the shy and awkward manner which concealed from
the eyes of the sneering courtiers of his grandfather so many rare
endowments,--make his character the most interesting that is to be found
in the annals of his house. He had resolved, if he came to the throne,
to disperse that ostentatious court, which was supported at an expense
ruinous to the nation,--to preserve peace,--to correct the abuses which
were found in every part of the system of revenue,--to abolish or modify
oppressive privileges,--to reform the administration of justice,--to
revive the institution of the States-General. If he had ruled over
France during forty or fifty years, that great movement of the human
mind, which no government could have arrested, which bad government
only rendered more violent, would, we are inclined to think, have been
conducted, by peaceable means to a happy termination.
Disease and sorrow removed from the world that wisdom and virtue of
which it was not worthy. During two generations France was ruled by men
who, with all the vices of Louis the Fourteenth, had none of the art
by which that magnificent prince passed off his vices for virtues. The
people had now to see tyranny naked. That foul Duessa was stripped
of her gorgeous ornaments. She had always been hideous; but a strange
enchantment had made her seem fair and glorious in the eyes of her
willing slaves. The spell was now broken; the deformity was made
manifest; and the lovers, lately so happy and so proud, turned away
loathing and horror-struck.
First came the Regency. The strictness with which Louis had, towards the
close of his life, exacted from those around him an outward attention to
religious duties, produced an effect similar to that which the rigour
of the Puritans had produced in England. It was the boast of Madame de
Maintenon, in the time of her greatness, that devotion had become the
fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and, like a fashion, it passed away.
The austerity of the tyrant's old age had injured the morality of the
higher orders more than even the licentiousness of his youth. Not only
had he not reformed their vices, but, by forcing them to be hypocrites,
he had shaken their belief in virtue. They had found it so easy to
perform the grimace of piety, that it was natural for them to consider
all piety as grimace. The times were changed. Pensions, regiments, and
abbeys, were no longer to be obtained by regular confession and severe
penance: and the obsequious courtiers, who had kept Lent like monks
of La Trappe, and who had turned up the whites of their eyes at the
edifying parts of sermons preached before the king, aspired to the title
of roue as ardently as they had aspired to that of devot; and went,
during Passion Week, to the revels of the Palais Royal as readily as
they had formerly repaired to the sermons of Massillon.
The Regent was in many respects the fac-simile of our Charles the
Second. Like Charles, he was a good-natured man, uttl destitute
of sensibility. Like Charles, he had good natural talents, which a
deplorable indolence rendered useless to the state. Like Charles, he
thought all men corrupted and interested, and yet did not dislike them
for being so. His opinion of human nature was Gulliver's; but he did not
regard human nature with Gulliver's horror. He thought that he and his
fellow-creatures were Yahoos; and he thought a Yahoo a very agreeable
kind of animal. No princes were ever more social than Charles and Philip
of Orleans: yet no princes ever had less capacity for friendship. The
tempers of these clever cynics were so easy, and their minds so languid,
that habit supplied in them the place of affection, and made them the
tools of people for whom they cared not one straw. In love, both were
mere sensualists without delicacy or tenderness. In politics, both were
utterly careless of faith and of national honour. Charles shut up the
Exchequer. Philip patronised the System. The councils of Charles were
swayed by the gold of Barillon; the councils of Philip by the gold of
Walpole. Charles for private objects made war on Holland, the natural
ally of England. Philip for private objects made war on the Spanish
branch of the house of Bourbon, the natural ally, indeed the creature of
France. Even in trifling circumstances the parallel might be carried on.
Both these princes were fond of experimental philosophy, and passed
in the laboratory much time which would have been more advantageously
passed at the council-table. Both were more strongly attached to their
female relatives than to any other human being; and in both cases it was
suspected that this attachment was not perfectly innocent. In personal
courage, and in all the virtues which are connected with personal
courage, the Regent was indisputably superior to Charles. Indeed Charles
but narrowly escaped the stain of cowardice. Philip was eminently brave,
and, like most brave men, was generally open and sincere. Charles added
dissimulation to his other vices.
The administration of the Regent was scarcely less pernicious, and
infinitely more scandalous, than that of the deceased monarch. It was
by magnificent public works, and by wars conducted on a gigantic scale,
that Louis had brought distress on his people. The Regent aggravated
that distress by frauds of which a lame duck on the stock-exchange would
have been ashamed. France, even while suffering under the most severe
calamities, had reverenced the conqueror. She despised the swindler.
When Orleans and the wretched Dubois had disappeared, the power passed
to the Duke of Bourbon; a prince degraded in the public eye by the
infamously lucrative part which he had taken in the juggles of the
System, and by the humility with which he bore the caprices of a loose
and imperious woman. It seemed to be decreed that every branch of the
royal family should successively incur the abhorrence and contempt of
the nation.
Between the fall of the Duke of Bourbon and the death of Fleury, a few
years of frugal and moderate government intervened. Then recommenced the
downward progress of the monarchy. Profligacy in the court, extravagance
in the finances, schism in the church, faction in the Parliaments,
unjust war terminated by ignominious peace,--all that indicates and all
that produces the ruin of great empires, make up the history of that
miserable period. Abroad, the French were beaten and humbled everywhere,
by land and by sea, on the Elbe and on the Rhine, in Asia and in
America. At home, they were turned over from vizier to vizier, and from
sultana to sultana, till they had reached that point beneath which there
was no lower abyss of infamy,--till the yoke of Maupeou had made them
pine for Choiseul,--till Madame du Barri had taught them to regret
Madame de Pompadour.
But unpopular as the monarchy had become, the aristocracy was more
unpopular still; and not without reason. The tyranny of an individual
is far more supportable than the tyranny of a caste. The old privileges
were galling and hateful to the new wealth and the new knowledge.
Everything indicated the approach of no common revolution,--of a
revolution destined to change, not merely the form of government,
but the distribution of property and the whole social system,--of a
revolution the effects of which were to be felt at every fireside in
France,--of a new Jaquerie, in which the victory was to remain with
Jaques bonhomme. In the van of the movement were the moneyed men and the
men of letters,--the wounded pride of wealth, and the wounded pride of
intellect. An immense multitude, made ignorant and cruel by oppression,
was raging in the rear.
We greatly doubt whether any course which could have been pursued by
Louis the Sixteenth could have averted a great convulsion. But we are
sure that, if there was such a course, it was the course recommended
by M. Turgot. The church and the aristocracy, with that blindness to
danger, that incapacity of believing that anything can be except what
has been, which the long possession of power seldom fails to generate,
mocked at the counsel which might have saved them. They would not have
reform; and they had revolution. They would not pay a small contribution
in place of the odious corvees; and they lived to see their castles
demolished, and their lands sold to strangers. They would not endure
Turgot; and they were forced to endure Robespierre.
Then the rulers of France, as if smitten with judicial blindness,
plunged headlong into the American war. They thus committed at once two
great errors. They encouraged the spirit of revolution. They augmented
at the same time those public burdens, the pressure of which is
generally the immediate cause of revolutions. The event of the war
carried to the height the enthusiasm of speculative democrats. The
financial difficulties produced by the war carried to the height
the discontent of that larger body of people who cared little about
theories, and much about taxes.
The meeting of the States-General was the signal for the explosion of
all the hoarded passions of a century. In that assembly, there were
undoubtedly very able men. But they had no practical knowledge of the
art of government. All the great English revolutions have been conducted
by practical statesmen. The French Revolution was conducted by mere
speculators. Our constitution has never been so far behind the age as to
have become an object of aversion to the people. The English revolutions
have therefore been undertaken for the purpose of defending, correcting,
and restoring,--never for the mere purpose of destroying. Our countrymen
have always, even in times of the greatest excitement, spoken reverently
of the form of government under which they lived, and attacked only what
they regarded as its corruptions. In the very act of innovating they
have constantly appealed to ancient prescription; they have seldom
looked abroad for models; they have seldom troubled themselves with
Utopian theories; they have not been anxious to prove that liberty is a
natural right of men; they have been content to regard it as the lawful
birthright of Englishmen. Their social contract is no fiction. It
is still extant on the original parchment, sealed with wax which was
affixed at Runnymede, and attested by the lordly names of the Marischals
and Fitzherberts. No general arguments about the original equality of
men, no fine stories out of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, have
ever affected them so much as their own familiar words,--Magna
Charta,--Habeas Corpus,--Trial by Jury,--Bill of Rights. This part of
our national character has undoubtedly its disadvantages. An Englishman
too often reasons on politics in the spirit rather of a lawyer than of
a philosopher. There is too often something narrow, something exclusive,
something Jewish, if we may use the word, in his love of freedom. He
is disposed to consider popular rights as the special heritage of the
chosen race to which he belongs. He is inclined rather to repel than to
encourage the alien proselyte who aspires to a share of his privileges.
Very different was the spirit of the Constituent Assembly. They had
none of our narrowness; but they had none of our practical skill in the
management of affairs. They did not understand how to regulate the order
of their own debates; and they thought themselves able to legislate for
the whole world. All the past was loathsome to them. All their agreeable
associations were connected with the future. Hopes were to them all that
recollections are to us. In the institutions of their country they found
nothing to love or to admire. As far back as they could look, they saw
only the tyranny of one class and the degradation of another,--Frank
and Gaul, knight and villein, gentleman and roturier. They hated the
monarchy, the church, the nobility. They cared nothing for the States or
the Parliament. It was long the fashion to ascribe all the follies which
they committed to the writings of the philosophers. We believe that
it was misrule, and nothing but misrule, that put the sting into those
writings. It is not true that the French abandoned experience for
theories. They took up with theories because they had no experience of
good government. It was because they had no charter that they ranted
about the original contract. As soon as tolerable institutions were
given to them, they began to look to those institutions. In 1830 their
rallying cry was "Vive la Charte". In 1789 they had nothing but theories
round which to rally. They had seen social distinctions only in a
bad form; and it was therefore natural that they should be deluded by
sophisms about the equality of men. They had experienced so much evil
from the sovereignty of kings that they might be excused for lending a
ready ear to those who preached, in an exaggerated form, the doctrine of
the sovereignty of the people.
The English, content with their own national recollections and names,
have never sought for models in the institutions of Greece or Rome. The
French, having nothing in their own history to which they could look
back with pleasure, had recourse to the history of the great ancient
commonwealths: they drew their notions of those commonwealths, not from
contemporary writers, but from romances written by pedantic moralists
long after the extinction of public liberty. They neglected Thucydides
for Plutarch. Blind themselves, they took blind guides. They had no
experience of freedom; and they took their opinions concerning it
from men who had no more experience of it than themselves, and whose
imaginations, inflamed by mystery and privation, exaggerated the unknown
enjoyment;--from men who raved about patriotism without having ever had
a country, and eulogised tyrannicide while crouching before tyrants.
The maxim which the French legislators learned in this school was, that
political liberty is an end, and not a means; that it is not merely
valuable as the great safeguard of order, of property, and of morality,
but that it is in itself a high and exquisite happiness to which order,
property, and morality ought without one scruple to be sacrificed. The
lessons which may be learned from ancient history are indeed most useful
and important; but they were not likely to be learned by men who, in all
their rhapsodies about the Athenian democracy, seemed utterly to forget
that in that democracy there were ten slaves to one citizen; and who
constantly decorated their invectives against the aristocrats with
panegyrics on Brutus and Cato,--two aristocrats, fiercer, prouder, and
more exclusive, than any that emigrated with the Count of Artois.
We have never met with so vivid and interesting a picture of the
National Assembly as that which M. Dumont has set before us. His
Mirabeau, in particular, is incomparable. All the former Mirabeaus
were daubs in comparison. Some were merely painted from the
imagination--others were gross caricatures: this is the very individual,
neither god nor demon, but a man--a Frenchman--a Frenchman of the
eighteenth century, with great talents, with strong passions, depraved
by bad education, surrounded by temptations of every kind,--made
desperate at one time by disgrace, and then again intoxicated by fame.
All his opposite and seemingly inconsistent qualities are in this
representation so blended together as to make up a harmonious and
natural whole. Till now, Mirabeau was to us, and, we believe, to most
readers of history, not a man, but a string of antitheses. Henceforth he
will be a real human being, a remarkable and eccentric being indeed, but
perfectly conceivable.
He was fond, M. Dumont tells us, of giving odd compound nicknames.
Thus, M. de Lafayette was Grandison-Cromwell; the King of Prussia was
Alaric-Cottin; D'Espremenil was Crispin-Catiline. We think that Mirabeau
himself might be described, after his own fashion, as a Wilkes-Chatham.
He had Wilkes's sensuality, Wilkes's levity, Wilkes's insensibility to
shame. Like Wilkes, he had brought on himself the censure even of men
of pleasure by the peculiar grossness of his immorality, and by the
obscenity of his writings. Like Wilkes, he was heedless, not only of
the laws of morality, but of the laws of honour. Yet he affected, like
Wilkes, to unite the character of the demagogue to that of the fine
gentleman. Like Wilkes, he conciliated, by his good-humour and his high
spirits, the regard of many who despised his character. Like Wilkes,
he was hideously ugly; like Wilkes, he made a jest of his own ugliness;
and, like Wilkes, he was, in spite of his ugliness, very attentive to
his dress, and very successful in affairs of gallantry.
Resembling Wilkes in the lower and grosser parts of his character, he
had, in his higher qualities, some affinity to Chatham. His eloquence,
as far as we can judge of it, bore no inconsiderable resemblance to that
of the great English minister. He was not eminently successful in long
set speeches. He was not, on the other hand, a close and ready debater.
Sudden bursts, which seemed to be the effect of inspiration--short
sentences which came like lightning, dazzling, burning, striking down
everything before them--sentences which, spoken at critical moments,
decided the fate of great questions--sentences which at once became
proverbs--sentences which everybody still knows by heart--in these
chiefly lay the oratorical power both of Chatham and of Mirabeau. There
have been far greater speakers, and far greater statesmen, than either
of them; but we doubt whether any men have, in modern times, exercised
such vast personal influence over stormy and divided assemblies. The
power of both was as much moral as intellectual. In true dignity of
character, in private and public virtue, it may seem absurd to institute
any comparison between them; but they had the same haughtiness and
vehemence of temper. In their language and manner there was a disdainful
self-confidence, an imperiousness, a fierceness of passion, before which
all common minds quailed. Even Murray and Charles Townshend, though
intellectually not inferior to Chatham, were always cowed by him.
Barnave, in the same manner, though the best debater in the National
Assembly, flinched before the energy of Mirabeau. Men, except in bad
novels, are not all good or all evil. It can scarcely be denied that the
virtue of Lord Chatham was a little theatrical. On the other hand there
was in Mirabeau, not indeed anything deserving the name of virtue,
but that imperfect substitute for virtue which is found in almost all
superior minds,--a sensibility to the beautiful and the good, which
sometimes amounted to sincere enthusiasm; and which, mingled with
the desire of admiration, sometimes gave to his character a lustre
resembling the lustre of true goodness,--as the "faded splendour wan"
which lingered round the fallen archangel resembled the exceeding
brightness of those spirits who had kept their first estate.
There are several other admirable portraits of eminent men in these
Memoirs. That of Sieyes in particular, and that of Talleyrand, are
master-pieces, full of life and expression. But nothing in the book has
interested us more than the view which M. Dumont has presented to us,
unostentatiously, and, we may say, unconsciously, of his own character.
The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the good-nature, the modesty,
the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected
indifference to money and to fame, make up a character which, while it
has nothing unnatural, seems to us to approach nearer to perfection than
any of the Grandisons and Allworthys of fiction. The work is not indeed
precisely such a work as we had anticipated--it is more lively, more
picturesque, more amusing than we had promised ourselves; and it is, on
the other hand, less profound and philosophic. But, if it is not, in
all respects, such as might have been expected from the intellect of M.
Dumont, it is assuredly such as might have been expected from his heart.
*****
BARERE. (April 1844. )
"Memoires de Bertrand Barere": publies par MM. Hippolyte
Carnot, Membre de la Chambre des Deputes, et David d'Angers,
Membre de l'Institut: precedes d'une Notice Historique par
H. Carnot. 4 tomes. Paris: 1843.
This book has more than one title to our serious attention. It is an
appeal, solemnly made to posterity by a man who played a conspicuous
part in great events, and who represents himself as deeply aggrieved by
the rash and malevolent censure of his contemporaries. To such an appeal
we shall always give ready audience. We can perform no duty more useful
to society, or more agreeable to our own feelings, than that of making,
as far as our power extends, reparation to the slandered and
persecuted benefactors of mankind. We therefore promptly took into our
consideration this copious apology for the life of Bertrand Barere. We
have made up our minds; and we now purpose to do him, by the blessing of
God, full and signal justice. It is to be observed that the appellant in
this case does not come into court alone. He is attended to the bar
of public opinion by two compurgators who occupy highly honourable
stations. One of these is M. David of Angers, member of the institute,
an eminent sculptor, and, if we have been rightly informed, a favourite
pupil, though not a kinsman, of the painter who bore the same name. The
other, to whom we owe the biographical preface, is M. Hippolyte Carnot,
member of the Chamber of Deputies, and son of the celebrated Director.
In the judgment of M. David and of M. Hippolyte Carnot, Barere was a
deserving and an ill-used man--a man who, though by no means faultless,
must yet, when due allowance is made for the force of circumstances and
the infirmity of human nature, be considered as on the whole entitled
to our esteem. It will be for the public to determine, after a full
hearing, whether the editors have, by thus connecting their names with
that of Barere, raised his character or lowered their own.
We are not conscious that, when we opened this book, we were under the
influence of any feeling likely to pervert our judgment. Undoubtedly we
had long entertained a most unfavourable opinion of Barere: but to this
opinion we were not tied by any passion or by any interest. Our dislike
was a reasonable dislike, and might have been removed by reason. Indeed
our expectation was, that these Memoirs would in some measure clear
Barere's fame. That he could vindicate himself from all the charges
which had been brought against him, we knew to be impossible; and his
editors admit that he has not done so. But we thought it highly probable
that some grave accusations would be refuted, and that many offences
to which he would have been forced to plead guilty would be greatly
extenuated. We were not disposed to be severe. We were fully aware that
temptations such as those to which the members of the Convention and
of the Committee of Public Safety were exposed must try severely the
strength of the firmest virtue. Indeed our inclination has always been
to regard with an indulgence, which to some rigid moralists appears
excessive, those faults into which gentle and noble spirits are
sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, by the maddening
influence of sympathy, and by ill-regulated zeal for a public cause.
With such feelings we read this book, and compared it with other
accounts of the events in which Barere bore a part. It is now our duty
to express the opinion to which this investigation has led us.
Our opinion then is this: that Barere approached nearer than any person
mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of
consummate and universal depravity. In him the qualities which are the
proper objects of hatred, and the qualities which are the proper objects
of contempt, preserve an exquisite and absolute harmony. In almost every
particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His sensuality was
immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many great and
amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as he, some as cruel,
a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may also have been as great
liars, though we never met with them or read of them. But when we put
everything together, sensuality, poltroonery, baseness, effrontery,
mendacity, barbarity, the result is something which in a novel we should
condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no parallel can
be found in history.
It would be grossly unjust, we acknowledge, to try a man situated as
Barere was by a severe standard. Nor have we done so. We have formed
our opinion of him, by comparing him, not with politicians of stainless
character, not with Chancellor D'Aguesseau, or General Washington, or Mr
Wilberforce, or Earl Grey, but with his own colleagues of the Mountain.
