He
flattered
himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his
ease without danger to his safety.
men in his situation will, that he might consult his
ease without danger to his safety.
Edmund Burke
?
LETTER II.
367
first cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came
to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics
of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark
and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the throne; and even then the Revolution strongly operated in all its causes.
There was no point on which the discontented diplomatic politicians so bitterly arraigned their cabinet as for the decay of French influence in all others. From quarrelling with the court, they began to complain of monarchy itself, as a system of government
too variable for any regular plan of national aggrandizement. They observed that in that sort of regimen
too much depended on the personal character of the
prince: that the vicissitudes produced by the succession of princes of a different character, and even the
vicissitudes produced in the same man, by the different views and inclinations belonging to youth,
manhood, and age, disturbed and distracted the policy of a country made by Nature for extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, for that sort of general overruling influence which prepared
empire or supplied the place of it. They had continually in their hands the observations of Machiavel on Livy. They had Montegquieu's Grandeur et Dlecadence des Romains as a manual; and they compared, with mortification, the systematic proceedings
of a Roman Senate with the fluctuations of a monarchy. They observed the very small additions of
territory which all the power of France, actuated by
all the ambition of France, had acquired in two centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired more
in a single year. They severely and in every part
of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth,
? ? ? ? 368 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE, PEACE.
whose irregular and desultory ambition had more
provoked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they
who will be at the pains of seriously considering
the history of that period will see that those French
politicians had some reason. They who will not take
the trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and
all its negotiations will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical merit of which I am unable
to form a judgment.
The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and
who formed by far the majority in that class, made
disadvantageous comparisons even between their more
legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies
of other states, as a system of power and influence.
They observed that France not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce
at naval force which she never could attain without
losing more on one side than she could gain on
the other, three great powers, each of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. . Russia and Prussia had been
created almost within memory; and Austria, though
not a new power, and even curtailed in territory,
was, by the very collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her military discipline and force. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the support of great armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a merely military power, they observed that one war had enriched her
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 369
with as considerable a conquest as France had acquired in centuries. Russia had broken the Turkish
power, by which Austria might be, as formerly she
had been, balanced in favor of France. They felt
it with pain, that the two Northern powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway
of Russia, - or that, at best, France kept up a very
doubtful conflict, with many fluctuations of fortune,
and at an enormous expense, in Sweden. In Holland the French party seemed, if not extinguished,
at least utterly obscured, and kept under by a Stadtholder, leaning for support sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on both, never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon fami --
ly had become merely a family accommodation, and'
had little effect on the national politics. This alli --
ance, they said, extinguished Spain by destroying
all its energy, without adding anything to the real
power of France in the accession of the forces of its
great rival. In Italy the same family accommodation, the same national insignificance, were equally
visible. What cure for the radical weakness of the
French monarchy, to which all the means which wit
could devise, or Nature and fortune could bestow,
towards universal empire, was not of force to give
life or vigor or consistency, but in a republic? Out
the word came: and it never went back.
Whether they reasoned right or wrong, or that
there was some mixture of right and wrong in their
reasoning, I am sure that in this manner they felt
and reasoned. The different effects of a great military and ambitious republic and of a monarchy of
the same description were constantly in their mouths.
The principle was ready to operate, when opportuniVOL. V. 24
? ? ? ? 370 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ties should offer, which few of them, indeed, foresaw
in the extent in which they were afterwards presented; but these opportunities, in some degree or other,
they all ardently wished for.
When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756
between Austria and France was deplored as a national calamity; because it united France in friendship with a power at whose expense alone they could hope any Continental aggrandizement. When the
first partition of Poland was made, in which France
had no share, and which had farther aggrandized
every one of the three powers of which they were
most jealous, I found them in a perfect frenzy of
rage and indignation: not that they were hurt at
the shocking and uncolored violence and injustice
of that partition, but at the debility, improvidence,
and want of activity in their government, in not
preventing it as a means of aggrandizement to their
rivals, or in not contriving, by exchanges of some
kind or other, to obtain their share of advantage
from that robbery.
In that or nearly in that state of things and of
opinions came the Austrian match, which promised
to draw the knot, as afterwards in effect it did, still
more closely between the old rival houses. This
added exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of
their monarchy. It was for this reason that the late
glorious queen, who on all accounts was formed to
produce general love and admiration, and whose life
was as mild and beneficent as her death was beyond
example great and heroic, became so very soon and
so very much the object of an implacable rancor,
never to be extinguished but in her blood. When
I wrote my letter in answer to M. de Menonville, in
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 371
the beginning of January, 1791, I had good reason
for thinking that this description of revolutionists did
not so early nor so steadily point their murderous
designs at the martyr king as at the royal heroine.
It was accident, and the momentary depression of
that part of the faction, that gave to the husband
the happy priority in death.
From this their restless desire of an overruling
influence, they bent a very great part of their designs and efforts to revive the old French party,
which was a democratic party, in Holland, and to
make a revolution there. They were happy at the
troubles which the singular imprudence of Joseph
the Second had stirred up in the Austrian Netherlands. They rejoiced, when they saw him irritate
his subjects, profess philosophy, send away the Dutch
garrisons, and dismantle his fortifications. As to
Holland, they never forgave either the king or the
ministry for suffering that object, which they justly
looked on as principal in their design of reducing
the power of England, to escape out of their hands.
This was the true secret of the commercial treaty,
made, on their part, against all the old rules and
principles of commerce, with a view of diverting the
English nation, by a pursuit of immediate profit,
from an attention to the progress of France in its designs upon that republic. The system of the economists, which led to the general opening of commerce, facilitated that treaty, but did not produce it. They were in despair, when they found, that,
by the vigor of Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by
Mr. Fox and the opposition, the object to which they
had sacrificed their manufactures was lost to their
ambition.
? ? ? ? 372 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
This eager desire of raising France from the con
dition into which she had fallen, as they conceived,
from her monarchical imbecility, had been the main
spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy American quarrel, the bad effects of which to this
nation have not as yet fully disclosed themselves.
These sentiments had been long lurking in their
breasts, though their views were only discovered
now and then in heat and as by escapes, but on
this occasion they exploded suddenly. They were
professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal.
These sentiments were not produced, as some think,
by their American alliance. The American alliance
was produced by their republican principles and republican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did
much. The discourses and cabals that it produced,
the intercourse that it established, and, above all, the
example, which made it seem practicable to establish
a republic in a great extent of country, finished the
work, and gave to that part of the revolutionary faction a degree of strength which required other energies than the late king possessed to resist or even to restrain. It spread everywhere; but it was nowhere
more prevalent than in the heart of the court. The
palace of Versailles, by its language, seemed a forum
of democracy. To have pointed out to most of those'
politicians, from their dispositions and movements,
what has since happened, the fall of their own monarchy, of their own laws, of their own religion, would
have been to furnish a motive the more for pushing forward a system on which they considered all
these things as incumbrances. Such in truth they
were. And we have seen them succeed, not only
in the destruction of their monarchy, but in all the
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 373
objects of ambition that they proposed from that destruction.
When I contemplate the scheme on which France
is formed, and when I compare it with these systems
with which it is and ever must be in conflict, those
things which seem as. defects in her polity are the very
things which make me tremble. The states of the
Christian world have grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time and by a great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them with greater or less degrees of felicity
and skill. Not one of them has been formed upon
a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their
constitutions are not systematical, they have not been
directed to any peculiar end, eminently distinguished,
and superseding every other. The objects which they
embrace are of the greatest possible variety, and have
become in a manner infinite. In all these old countries, the state has been made to the people, and not
the people conformed to the state. Every state has
pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but
it has cultivated the welfare of every individual.
His wants, his wishes, even his tastes, have been
consulted. This comprehensive scheme virtually produced a degree of personal liberty in forms the most
adverse to it. That liberty was found, under monarchies styled absolute, in a degree unknown to the
ancient commonwealths. From hence the powers of
all our modern states meet, in all their movements,
with some obstruction. It is therefore no wonder,
that when these states are to be considered as machines to operate for some one great end, that this
dissipated and balanced force is not easily concentred, or made to bear with the whole force of the
nation upon one point.
? ? ? ? 374 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
The British state is, without question, that which
pursues the greatest variety of ends, and is the least
disposed to sacrifice any one of them to another or
to the whole. It aims at taking in the entire circle
of human desires, and securing for them their fair
enjoyment. Our legislature has been ever closely
connected, in its most efficient part, with individual
feeling and individual interest. Personal liberty, the
most lively of these feelings and the most important
of these interests, which in other European countries
has rather arisen from the system of manners and
the habitudes of life than from the laws of the state,
(in which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) in England has been a direct object of government.
On this principle, England would be the weakest
power in the whole system. Fortunately, however,
the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as great to spend as to accumulate, has
easily afforded a disposable surplus that gives a
mighty momentum to the state. This difficulty,
with these advantages to overcome it, has called
forth the talents of the English financiers, who, by
the surplus of industry poured out by prodigality,
have outdone everything which has been accomplished in other nations. The present minister has outdone his predecessors, and, as a minister of reve
nue, is far above my power of praise. But still there
are cases in which England feels more than several
others (though they all feel) the perplexity of an
immense body of balanced advantages and of individual demands, and of some irregularity in the whole mass.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 375
France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits.
What now stands as government in France is struck
out at a heat. The design is wicked, immoral, impious, oppressive: but it is spirited and daring; it
is systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has
unity and consistency in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of
money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of
agriculture, even to burn a city or to lay waste a
province of their own, does not cost them a moment's anxiety. To them the will, the wish, the
want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals, is
as nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme
of government. The state is all in all. Everything
is referred to the production of force; afterwards,
everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military
in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in
all its movements. The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects, - dominion over minds by
proselytism, over bodies by arms.
Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural means, which are lessened in their amount only
to be increased in their effect, France has, since the
accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity
in its direction. It has destroyed every resource of
the state which depends upon opinion and the goodwill of individuals. The riches of convention disappear. The advantages of Nature in some measure remain; even these, I admit, are astonishingly lessened; the command over what remains is complete and ab
? ? ? ? 376 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
solute. We go about asking when assignats will expire, and we laugh at the last price of them. But
what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism?
The despotism will find despotic means of supply.
They have found the short cut to the productions
of Nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are
obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit
of the labor; they seize upon the laborer himself.
Were France but half of what it is in population,
in compactness, in applicability of its force, situated
as it is, and being what it is, it would be too strong
for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they
are, and proceeding as they proceed. Would it be
wise to estimate what the world of Europe, as well
as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz
Khan, upon a contemplation of the resources of the
cold and barren spot in the remotest Tartary from
whence first issued that scourge of the human race?
Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties
of the rocks, or from the paper circulation of the
sands of Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and
his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful empires of the world, beat one of them totally
to the ground, broke to pieces the other, and, in not
much longer space of time than I have lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees? Material resources never have supplied, nor ever
can supply, the want of unity in design and constancy in pursuit. But unity in design and perseverance and boldness in pursuit have never wanted resources, and never will. We have not considered
as we ought the dreadful energy of a state in which
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 377
the property has nothing to do with the government.
Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again, on
a government in which the property is in complete
subjection, and where nothing rules but the mind of
desperate men. The condition of a commonwealth
not governed by its property was a combination of
things which the learned and ingenious speculator,
Harrington, who has tossed about society into all
forms, never could imagine to be possible. We have
seen it; the world has felt it; and if the world will
shut their eyes to this state of things, they will feel it
more. The rulers there have found their resources
in crimes. The discovery is dreadful, the mine exhaustless. They have everything to gain, and they
have nothing to lose. They have a boundless inheritance in hope, and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest elevation and death with infamy. Never can they, wrlo, from the miserable servitude of
the desk, have been raised to empire, again submit
to the bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of
copying music, or writing plaidoyers by the sheet.
It has made me often smile in bitterness, when I
have heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they returned to their allegiance.
From all this what is my inference? It is, that
this new system of robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it must be destroyed, or
that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to
it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system
exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its
vulnerable parts. These are my inferences. In one
word, with this republic nothing independent can
? ? ? ? 378 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
coexist. The errors of Louis the Sixteenth were
more pardonable to prudence than any of those of
the same kind into which the allied courts may fall.
They have the benefit of his dreadful example.
The unhappy Louis the Sixteenth was a man of
the best intentions that probably ever reigned. He
was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading,
and even by the acquisition of elemental knowledge,
an education in all points originally defective; but
nobody told him (and it was no wonder he should
not himself divine it) that the world of which he
read and the world in which he lived were no longer
the same. Desirous of doing everything for the best,
fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment, he
sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the discernment of the prince. But an accurate and
penetrating discernment is what in a young prince
could not be looked for.
His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but,
like most other of his well-meant designs, it failed in
his hands. It failed partly from mere ill fortune, to
which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that
very large share to which she is justly entitled in
all human affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part, was
owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and
disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly
speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or
indeed under any form of government. However,
with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In
? ? ? ? LETTER II. r 379
other things he thought that he might be a king on
the terms of his predecessors. He was conscious of
the purity of his heart and the general good tendency
of his government.
He flattered himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his
ease without danger to his safety. It is not at all
wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way
abundantly in other respects to innovation, should
take up in policy with the tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of republics. First, the Swiss republics
grew under the guardianship of the French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under the influence of
France, established in the Empire, against the pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of
France, by a series of wars and negotiations, and
lastly by the Treaties of Westphalia, had obtained
the establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a
law of the Empire, the same monarchy under Louis
the Thirteenth had force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at home.
Louis the Sixteenth was a diligent reader of history. But the very lamp of prudence blinded him.
The guide of human life led him astray. A silent
revolution in the moral world preceded the political,
and prepared it. It became of more importance than
ever what examples were given, and what measures
were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in the
recesses of cabinets or in the private conspiracies of
the factious. They were no longer to be controlled
by the force and influence of the grandees, who for
? ? ? ? 380 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
merly had been able to stir up troubles by their discontents and to quiet them by their corruption. The
chain of subordination, even in cabal and sedition,
was broken in its most important links. It was
no longer the great and the populace. Other interests were formed, other dependencies, other connections, other communications. The middle classes had swelled far beyond their former proportion. Like
whatever is the most effectively rich and great in society, these classes became the seat of all the active
politics, and the preponderating weight to decide on
them. There were all the energies by which fortune
is acquired; there the consequence of their success.
There were all the talents which assert their pretensions, and are impatient of the place which settled society prescribes to them. These descriptions had got between the great and the populace; and the influence on the lower classes was with them. The spirit
of ambition had taken possession of this class as violently as ever it had done of any other. They felt
the importance of this situation. The correspondence
of the moneyed and the mercantile world, the literary intercourse of academies, but above all, the press,
of which they had in a manner entire possession,
made a kind of electric communication everywhere.
The press, in reality, has made every government, in
its spirit, almost democratic. Without the great, the
first movements in this revolution could not, perhaps,
have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now
for the first time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to be restrained at will. There was
no longer any means of arresting a principle in its
course. When Louis the Sixteenth, under the influence of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 381
but one republic, he set up two; when he meant to
take away half the crown of his neighbor, he lost the
whole of his own. Louis the Sixteenth could not
with impunity countenance a new republic. Yet between his throne and that dangerous lodgment for
an enemy, which he had erected, he had the whole
Atlantic for a ditch. He had for an outwork the
English nation itself, friendly to liberty, adverse to
that mode of it. He was surrounded by a rampart
of monarchies, most of them allied to him, and generally under his influence. Yet even thus secured,
a republic erected under his auspices, and dependent
on his power, became fatal to his throne. The very
money which he had lent to support this republic, by
a good faith which to him operated as perfidy, was
punctually paid to his enemies, and became a resource in the hands of his assassins.
With this example before their eyes, do any ministers in England, do any ministers in Austria, really
flatter themselves that they can erect, not on the remote shores of the Atlantic, but in their view, in
their vicinity, in absolute contact with one of them,
not a commercial, but a martial republic, --a republic not of simple husbandmen or fishermen, but of intriguers, and of warriors, - a republic of a character the most restless, the most enterprising, the most impious, the most fierce and bloody, the most hypocritical and perfidious, the most bold and daring,
that ever has been seen, or indeed that can be conceived to exist, without bringing on their own certain ruin? Such is the republic to which we are going to give
a place in civilized fellowship, -the republic which,
with joint consent, we are going to establish in the
? ? ? ? 382 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
centre of Europe, in a post that overlooks and commands every other state, and which eminently confronts and menaces this kingdom.
You cannot fail to observe that I speak as if the
allied powers were actually consenting, and not compelled by events, to the establishment of this faction
in France. The words have not escaped me. You
will hereafter naturally expect that I should make
them good. But whether in adopting this measure
we are madly active or weakly passive or pusillanimously panic-struck, the effects will be the same.
You may call this faction, which has eradicated the
monarchy, expelled the proprietary, persecuted religion, and trampled upon law,* --you may call this
France, if you please; but of the ancient France nothing remains but its central geography, its iron frontier, its spirit of ambition, its audacity of enterprise, its perplexing intrigue. These, and these alone, remain: and they remain heightened in their principle
and augmented in their means. All the former correctives,'whether of virtue or of weakness, which
existed in the old monarchy, are gone. No single
new corrective is to be found in the whole body
of the new institutions. How should such a thing
be found there, when everything has been chosen
with care and selection to forward all those ambitious designs and dispositions, not to control them?
The whole is a body of ways and means for the
supply of dominion, without one heterogeneous particle in it.
Here I suffer you to breathe, and leave to your
meditation what has occurred to me on the genius
and character of the French Revolution. From hav* See our Declaration.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 383
ing this before us, we may be better able to determine on the first question I proposed, - that is, How
far nations called foreign are likely to be affected
with the system established within that territory. I
intended to proceed next on the question of her facilities, from the internal state of other nations, and particularly of this, for obtaining her ends; but I ought to be aware that my notions are controverted. I
mean, therefore, in my next letter, to take notice
of what in that way has been recommended to me
as the most deserving of notice. In the examination
of those pieces, I shall have occasion to discuss some
others of the topics to which I have called your attention. You know that the letters which I now send
to the press, as well as a part of what is to follow,
have been in their substance long since written. A
circumstance which your partiality alone could make
of importance to you, but which to the public is
of no importance at all, retarded their appearance.
The late events which press upon us obliged me to
make some additions, but no substantial change in
the matter.
This discussion, my friend, will be long. But the
matter is serious; and if ever the fate of the world
could be truly said to depend on a particular measure, it is upon this peace. For the present, farewell.
? ? ? ? LETTER III.
ON THE RUPTURE OF THE NEGOTIATION; THE TERMS
OF PEACE PROPOSED; AND THE RESOURCES OF
THE COUNTRY FOR THE CONTINUANCE OF THE
WAR.
DEAR SIR, -- I thank you for the bundle of statepapers which I received yesterday. I have travelled through the negotiation, - and a sad, founderous road it is. There is a sort of standing jest against my countrymen, -that one of them on his journey
having found a piece of pleasant road, he proposed
to his companion to go over it again. This proposal, with regard to the worthy traveller's final destination, was certainly a blunder. It was no blunder
as to his immediate satisfaction; for the way was
pleasant. In the irksome journey of the Regicide
negotiations it is otherwise: our "paths are not
paths of pleasantness, nor our ways the ways to
peace. " All our mistakes, (if such they are,) like
those of our ilibernian traveller, are mistakes of repetition; and they will be full as far from bringing
us to our place of rest as his well-considered project
was from forwarding him to his inn. Yet I see we
persevere. Fatigued with our former course, too
listless to explore a new one, kept in action by inertness, moving only because we have been in motion,
with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to
measure back again the very same joyless, hopeless,
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 385
and inglorious track. Backward and forward, - oscillation, not progression, - much going in a scanty
space, -- the travels of a postilion, miles enough to
circle the globe in one short stage, -we have been,
and we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the
loose, misplaced stones and the treacherous hollows
of this rough, ill-kept, broken-up, treacherous French
causeway!
The Declaration which brings up the rear of the
papers laid before Parliament contains a review and
a reasoned summary of all our attempts and all our
failures, -- a concise, but correct narrative of the
painful steps taken to bring on the essay of a treaty
at Paris, - a clear exposure of all the rebuffs we re --
ceived in the progress of that experiment, - an honest confession of our departure from all the rules and,
all the principles of political negotiation, and of common prudence in the conduct of it, -- and to crown
the whole, a fair account of the atrocious manner in
which the Regicide enemies had broken up what had
been so inauspiciously begun and so feebly carried
on, by finally, and with all scorn, driving our suppliant ambassador out of the limits of their usurpation.
Even after all that I have lately seen, I was a little surprised at this exposure. A minute display of
hopes formed without foundation and of labors pursued without fruit is a thing not very flattering to
self-estimation. But truth has its rights, and it, will
assert them. The Declaration, after doing all this
with a mortifying candor, concludes the whole recapitulation. with an engagement still more extraordinary than all the unusual matter it contains. It says that "' His Majesty, who had entered into the
negotiation with good faith, who had suffered no imVOL. V. 25
? ? ? ? 386 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
pediment to prevent his prosecuting it with earnestness and sincerity, has now only to lament its abrupt
termination, and to renew in the face of all Europe
the solemn declaration, that, whenever his enemies
shall be disposed to enter on the work of general pacification in a spirit of conciliation and equity, nothing
shall be wanting on his part to contribute to the accomplishlment of that great object. "
If' the disrgusting detail of the accumulated insults
we have received, in what we have very properly
called our " solicitation" to a gang of felons and
murderers, had been produced as a proof of the utter
inefficacy of that mode of proceeding with that description of persons, I should have nothing at all to object
to it. It might furnish matter conclusive in argument and instructive in policy; but, with all due submission to high authority, and with all decent deference to superior lights, it does not seem quite clear to a discernment no better than mine that the premises
in that piece conduct irresistibly to the conclusion.
A labored display of the ill consequences which have
attended an uniform course of submission to every
mode of contumelious insult, with which the despotism of a proud, capricious, insulting, and implacable
foe has chosen to buffet our patience, does not appear
to my poor thoughts to be properly brought forth as
a preliminary to justify a resolution of persevering in
the very same kind of conduct, towards the very same
sort of person, and on the very same principles. We
state our experience, and then we come to the manly
resolution of acting in contradiction to it. All that
has passed at Paris, to the moment of our being
shamefully hissed off that stage, has been nothing
but a more solemn representation on the theatre of
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 387
the nation of what had been before in rehearsal at
Basle. As it is not only confessed by us, but made
a matter of charge on the enemy, that he had given
us no encouragement to believe there was a change in
his disposition or in his policy at any time subsequent
to the period of his rejecting our first overtures, there
seems to have been no assignable motive for sending
Lord Malmesbury to Paris, except to expose his hum.
bled country to the worst indignities, and the first of
the kind, as the Declaration very truly observes, that
have been known in the world of negotiation.
An honest neighbor of mine is not altogether unhappy in the application of an old common story to a present occasion. It may be said of my friend, what
Horace says of a neighbor of his, "' Garrit aniles ex re
fabellas. " Conversing on this strange subject, he told
me a current story of a simple English country squire,
who was persuaded by certain dilettanti of his acquaintance to see the world, and to become knowing in men and manners. Among other celebrated places,
it was recommended to him to visit Constantinople.
He took their advice. After various adventures, not
to our purpose to dwell upon, he happily arrived
at that famous city. As soon as he had a little
reposed himself from his fatigue, he took a walk
into the streets; but he had not gone far, before
" a malignant and a turbaned Turk" had his choler
roused by the careless and assured air with which
this infidel strutted about in the metropolis of true
believers. In this temper he lost no time in doing
to our traveller the honors of the place. The Turk
crossed over the way, and with perfect good-will gave
him two or three lusty kicks on the seat of honor.
To resent or to return the compliment in Turkey was
? ? ? ? 388 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
quite out of the question. Our traveller, since he
could not otherwise acknowledge this kind of favor,
received it with the best grace in the world: he
made one of his most ceremonious bows, and begged
the kicking Mussulman " to accept his perfect assurances of high consideration. " Our countryman was too wise to imitate Othello in the use of the dagger.
He thought it better, as better it was, to assuage his
bruised dignity with half a yard square of balmy diplomatic diachylon. In the disasters of their friends, people are seldom wanting in a laudable patience.
When they are such as do not threaten to end fatally,
they become even matter of pleasantry. The English
fellow-travellers of our sufferer, finding him a little
out of spirits, entreated him not to take so slight a
business so very seriously. They told him it was the
custom of the country; that every country had its
customs; that the Turkish manners were a little
rough, but that in the main the Turks were a goodnatured people; that what would have been a deadly affront anywhere else was only a little freedom there:
in short, they told him to think no more of the matter, and to try his fortune in another promenade. But the squire, though a little clownish, had some
home-bred sense. ' What! have I come, at all this
expense and trouble, all the way to Constantinople
only to be kicked? Without going beyond my own
stable, my groom, for half a crown, would have kicked
me to my heart's content. I don't mean to stay in
Constantinople eight-and-forty hours, nor ever to return to this rough, good-natured people, that have their own customs. "
In my opinion the squire was in the right. He was
satisfied with his first ramble and his first injuries.
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 389
But reason of state and common sense are two things.
If it were not for this difference, it might not appear
of absolute necessity, after having received a certain
quantity of buffetings by advance, that we should
send a peer of the realm to the scum of the earth to
collect the debt to the last farthing, and to receive,
with infinite aggravation, the same scorns which had
been paid to our supplication through a commoner:
but it was proper, I suppose, that the whole of our
country, in all its orders, should have a share of the
indignity, and, as in reason, that the higher orders
should touch the larger proportion.
This business was not ended because our dignity
was wounded, or because our patience was worn out
with contumely and scorn. . We had not disgorged
one particle of the nauseous doses with which we
were so liberally crammed by the mountebanks of
Paris in order to drug and diet us into perfect tameness. No, -we waited till the morbid strength of
our boulimia for their physic had exhausted the wellstored dispensary of their empiricism. It is impossible to guess at the term to which our forbearance would have extended. The Regicides were more
fatigued with giving blows than the callous cheek of
British diplomacy was hurt in receiving them. They
had no way left for getting rid of this mendicant
perseverance, but by sending for the beadle, and forcibly driving our embassy " of shreds and patches,"
with all its mumping cant, from the inhospitable door
of Cannibal Castle," Wlhere the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,
Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat. "
I think we might have found, before the rude hand
of insolent office was on our shoulder, and the staff
? ? ? ? 390 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
of usurped authority brandished over our heads, that
contempt of the suppliant is not the best forwarder of
a suit, - that national disgrace is not the high-road to
security, much less to power and greatness. Patience,
indeed, strongly indicates the love of peace; but mere
love does not always lead to enrjoyment. It is the
power of winning that palm which insures our wearing it. Virtues have their place; and out of. their place they hardly deserve the name, -they pass into
the neighboring vice. The patience of fortitude and
the endurance of pusillanimity are things very different, as in their principle, so in their effects.
In truth, this Declaration, containing a narrative
of the first transaction of the kind (and I hope it will
be the last) in the intercourse of nations, as a composition, is ably drawn. It does credit to our official style. The report of the speech of the minister in a
great assembly, which I have read, is a comment upon the Declaration. Without inquiry how far that report is exact, (inferior I believe it may be to what
it would represent,) yet still it reads as a most eloquent and finished performance. Hardly one galling circumstance of the indignities offered by the Directory of Regicide to the supplications made to that junto in his Majesty's name has been spared. Every
one of the aggravations attendant on these acts of
outrage is, with wonderful perspicuity and order,
brought forward in its place, and in the manner most
fitted to produce its effect. They are turned to every
point of view in which they can be seen to the best
advantage. All the parts are so arranged as to point
out their relation, and to furnish a true idea of the
spirit of the whole transaction.
This speech may stand for a model. Never, for
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 391
the triumphal decoration of any theatre, not for the
decoration of those of Athens and Rome, or even of
this theatre of Paris, from the embroideries of Babylon or from the loom of the Gobelins, has there been sent any historic tissue so truly drawn, so closely and
so finely wrought, or in which the forms are brought
out in the rich purple of such glowing and blushing
colors. It puts me in mind of the piece of tapestry
with which Virgil proposed to adorn the theatre he
was to erect to Augustus upon the banks of the Mincio, who now hides his head in his reeds, and leads his slow and melancholy windings through banks
wasted by the barbarians of Gaul. He supposes that
the artifice is such, that the figures of the conquered
nations in his tapestry are made to play their part,
and are confounded in the machine,utque
Purpurea intexti tollant aulxea Britanni;
or, as Dryden translates it, somewhat paraphrastically, but not less in the spirit of the prophet than of the poet, --
" Where the proud theatres disclose the scene,
Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,
And show the triumph which their shame displays. "
It is something wonderful, that the sagacity shown
in the Declaration and the speech (and, so far as it
goes, greater was never shown) should have failed to
discover to the writer and to the speaker the inseparable relation between the parties to this transaction, and that nothing can be said to display the imperious
arrogance of a base enemy which does not describe
with equal force and equal truth the contemptible figure of an abject embassy to that imperious power. It is no less striking, that the same obvious re
? ?
first cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came
to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics
of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark
and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the throne; and even then the Revolution strongly operated in all its causes.
There was no point on which the discontented diplomatic politicians so bitterly arraigned their cabinet as for the decay of French influence in all others. From quarrelling with the court, they began to complain of monarchy itself, as a system of government
too variable for any regular plan of national aggrandizement. They observed that in that sort of regimen
too much depended on the personal character of the
prince: that the vicissitudes produced by the succession of princes of a different character, and even the
vicissitudes produced in the same man, by the different views and inclinations belonging to youth,
manhood, and age, disturbed and distracted the policy of a country made by Nature for extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, for that sort of general overruling influence which prepared
empire or supplied the place of it. They had continually in their hands the observations of Machiavel on Livy. They had Montegquieu's Grandeur et Dlecadence des Romains as a manual; and they compared, with mortification, the systematic proceedings
of a Roman Senate with the fluctuations of a monarchy. They observed the very small additions of
territory which all the power of France, actuated by
all the ambition of France, had acquired in two centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired more
in a single year. They severely and in every part
of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth,
? ? ? ? 368 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE, PEACE.
whose irregular and desultory ambition had more
provoked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they
who will be at the pains of seriously considering
the history of that period will see that those French
politicians had some reason. They who will not take
the trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and
all its negotiations will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical merit of which I am unable
to form a judgment.
The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and
who formed by far the majority in that class, made
disadvantageous comparisons even between their more
legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies
of other states, as a system of power and influence.
They observed that France not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce
at naval force which she never could attain without
losing more on one side than she could gain on
the other, three great powers, each of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. . Russia and Prussia had been
created almost within memory; and Austria, though
not a new power, and even curtailed in territory,
was, by the very collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her military discipline and force. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the support of great armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a merely military power, they observed that one war had enriched her
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 369
with as considerable a conquest as France had acquired in centuries. Russia had broken the Turkish
power, by which Austria might be, as formerly she
had been, balanced in favor of France. They felt
it with pain, that the two Northern powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway
of Russia, - or that, at best, France kept up a very
doubtful conflict, with many fluctuations of fortune,
and at an enormous expense, in Sweden. In Holland the French party seemed, if not extinguished,
at least utterly obscured, and kept under by a Stadtholder, leaning for support sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on both, never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon fami --
ly had become merely a family accommodation, and'
had little effect on the national politics. This alli --
ance, they said, extinguished Spain by destroying
all its energy, without adding anything to the real
power of France in the accession of the forces of its
great rival. In Italy the same family accommodation, the same national insignificance, were equally
visible. What cure for the radical weakness of the
French monarchy, to which all the means which wit
could devise, or Nature and fortune could bestow,
towards universal empire, was not of force to give
life or vigor or consistency, but in a republic? Out
the word came: and it never went back.
Whether they reasoned right or wrong, or that
there was some mixture of right and wrong in their
reasoning, I am sure that in this manner they felt
and reasoned. The different effects of a great military and ambitious republic and of a monarchy of
the same description were constantly in their mouths.
The principle was ready to operate, when opportuniVOL. V. 24
? ? ? ? 370 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ties should offer, which few of them, indeed, foresaw
in the extent in which they were afterwards presented; but these opportunities, in some degree or other,
they all ardently wished for.
When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756
between Austria and France was deplored as a national calamity; because it united France in friendship with a power at whose expense alone they could hope any Continental aggrandizement. When the
first partition of Poland was made, in which France
had no share, and which had farther aggrandized
every one of the three powers of which they were
most jealous, I found them in a perfect frenzy of
rage and indignation: not that they were hurt at
the shocking and uncolored violence and injustice
of that partition, but at the debility, improvidence,
and want of activity in their government, in not
preventing it as a means of aggrandizement to their
rivals, or in not contriving, by exchanges of some
kind or other, to obtain their share of advantage
from that robbery.
In that or nearly in that state of things and of
opinions came the Austrian match, which promised
to draw the knot, as afterwards in effect it did, still
more closely between the old rival houses. This
added exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of
their monarchy. It was for this reason that the late
glorious queen, who on all accounts was formed to
produce general love and admiration, and whose life
was as mild and beneficent as her death was beyond
example great and heroic, became so very soon and
so very much the object of an implacable rancor,
never to be extinguished but in her blood. When
I wrote my letter in answer to M. de Menonville, in
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 371
the beginning of January, 1791, I had good reason
for thinking that this description of revolutionists did
not so early nor so steadily point their murderous
designs at the martyr king as at the royal heroine.
It was accident, and the momentary depression of
that part of the faction, that gave to the husband
the happy priority in death.
From this their restless desire of an overruling
influence, they bent a very great part of their designs and efforts to revive the old French party,
which was a democratic party, in Holland, and to
make a revolution there. They were happy at the
troubles which the singular imprudence of Joseph
the Second had stirred up in the Austrian Netherlands. They rejoiced, when they saw him irritate
his subjects, profess philosophy, send away the Dutch
garrisons, and dismantle his fortifications. As to
Holland, they never forgave either the king or the
ministry for suffering that object, which they justly
looked on as principal in their design of reducing
the power of England, to escape out of their hands.
This was the true secret of the commercial treaty,
made, on their part, against all the old rules and
principles of commerce, with a view of diverting the
English nation, by a pursuit of immediate profit,
from an attention to the progress of France in its designs upon that republic. The system of the economists, which led to the general opening of commerce, facilitated that treaty, but did not produce it. They were in despair, when they found, that,
by the vigor of Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by
Mr. Fox and the opposition, the object to which they
had sacrificed their manufactures was lost to their
ambition.
? ? ? ? 372 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
This eager desire of raising France from the con
dition into which she had fallen, as they conceived,
from her monarchical imbecility, had been the main
spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy American quarrel, the bad effects of which to this
nation have not as yet fully disclosed themselves.
These sentiments had been long lurking in their
breasts, though their views were only discovered
now and then in heat and as by escapes, but on
this occasion they exploded suddenly. They were
professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal.
These sentiments were not produced, as some think,
by their American alliance. The American alliance
was produced by their republican principles and republican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did
much. The discourses and cabals that it produced,
the intercourse that it established, and, above all, the
example, which made it seem practicable to establish
a republic in a great extent of country, finished the
work, and gave to that part of the revolutionary faction a degree of strength which required other energies than the late king possessed to resist or even to restrain. It spread everywhere; but it was nowhere
more prevalent than in the heart of the court. The
palace of Versailles, by its language, seemed a forum
of democracy. To have pointed out to most of those'
politicians, from their dispositions and movements,
what has since happened, the fall of their own monarchy, of their own laws, of their own religion, would
have been to furnish a motive the more for pushing forward a system on which they considered all
these things as incumbrances. Such in truth they
were. And we have seen them succeed, not only
in the destruction of their monarchy, but in all the
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 373
objects of ambition that they proposed from that destruction.
When I contemplate the scheme on which France
is formed, and when I compare it with these systems
with which it is and ever must be in conflict, those
things which seem as. defects in her polity are the very
things which make me tremble. The states of the
Christian world have grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time and by a great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them with greater or less degrees of felicity
and skill. Not one of them has been formed upon
a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their
constitutions are not systematical, they have not been
directed to any peculiar end, eminently distinguished,
and superseding every other. The objects which they
embrace are of the greatest possible variety, and have
become in a manner infinite. In all these old countries, the state has been made to the people, and not
the people conformed to the state. Every state has
pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but
it has cultivated the welfare of every individual.
His wants, his wishes, even his tastes, have been
consulted. This comprehensive scheme virtually produced a degree of personal liberty in forms the most
adverse to it. That liberty was found, under monarchies styled absolute, in a degree unknown to the
ancient commonwealths. From hence the powers of
all our modern states meet, in all their movements,
with some obstruction. It is therefore no wonder,
that when these states are to be considered as machines to operate for some one great end, that this
dissipated and balanced force is not easily concentred, or made to bear with the whole force of the
nation upon one point.
? ? ? ? 374 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
The British state is, without question, that which
pursues the greatest variety of ends, and is the least
disposed to sacrifice any one of them to another or
to the whole. It aims at taking in the entire circle
of human desires, and securing for them their fair
enjoyment. Our legislature has been ever closely
connected, in its most efficient part, with individual
feeling and individual interest. Personal liberty, the
most lively of these feelings and the most important
of these interests, which in other European countries
has rather arisen from the system of manners and
the habitudes of life than from the laws of the state,
(in which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) in England has been a direct object of government.
On this principle, England would be the weakest
power in the whole system. Fortunately, however,
the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as great to spend as to accumulate, has
easily afforded a disposable surplus that gives a
mighty momentum to the state. This difficulty,
with these advantages to overcome it, has called
forth the talents of the English financiers, who, by
the surplus of industry poured out by prodigality,
have outdone everything which has been accomplished in other nations. The present minister has outdone his predecessors, and, as a minister of reve
nue, is far above my power of praise. But still there
are cases in which England feels more than several
others (though they all feel) the perplexity of an
immense body of balanced advantages and of individual demands, and of some irregularity in the whole mass.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 375
France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits.
What now stands as government in France is struck
out at a heat. The design is wicked, immoral, impious, oppressive: but it is spirited and daring; it
is systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has
unity and consistency in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of
money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of
agriculture, even to burn a city or to lay waste a
province of their own, does not cost them a moment's anxiety. To them the will, the wish, the
want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals, is
as nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme
of government. The state is all in all. Everything
is referred to the production of force; afterwards,
everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military
in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in
all its movements. The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects, - dominion over minds by
proselytism, over bodies by arms.
Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural means, which are lessened in their amount only
to be increased in their effect, France has, since the
accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity
in its direction. It has destroyed every resource of
the state which depends upon opinion and the goodwill of individuals. The riches of convention disappear. The advantages of Nature in some measure remain; even these, I admit, are astonishingly lessened; the command over what remains is complete and ab
? ? ? ? 376 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
solute. We go about asking when assignats will expire, and we laugh at the last price of them. But
what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism?
The despotism will find despotic means of supply.
They have found the short cut to the productions
of Nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are
obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit
of the labor; they seize upon the laborer himself.
Were France but half of what it is in population,
in compactness, in applicability of its force, situated
as it is, and being what it is, it would be too strong
for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they
are, and proceeding as they proceed. Would it be
wise to estimate what the world of Europe, as well
as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz
Khan, upon a contemplation of the resources of the
cold and barren spot in the remotest Tartary from
whence first issued that scourge of the human race?
Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties
of the rocks, or from the paper circulation of the
sands of Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and
his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful empires of the world, beat one of them totally
to the ground, broke to pieces the other, and, in not
much longer space of time than I have lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees? Material resources never have supplied, nor ever
can supply, the want of unity in design and constancy in pursuit. But unity in design and perseverance and boldness in pursuit have never wanted resources, and never will. We have not considered
as we ought the dreadful energy of a state in which
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 377
the property has nothing to do with the government.
Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again, on
a government in which the property is in complete
subjection, and where nothing rules but the mind of
desperate men. The condition of a commonwealth
not governed by its property was a combination of
things which the learned and ingenious speculator,
Harrington, who has tossed about society into all
forms, never could imagine to be possible. We have
seen it; the world has felt it; and if the world will
shut their eyes to this state of things, they will feel it
more. The rulers there have found their resources
in crimes. The discovery is dreadful, the mine exhaustless. They have everything to gain, and they
have nothing to lose. They have a boundless inheritance in hope, and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest elevation and death with infamy. Never can they, wrlo, from the miserable servitude of
the desk, have been raised to empire, again submit
to the bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of
copying music, or writing plaidoyers by the sheet.
It has made me often smile in bitterness, when I
have heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they returned to their allegiance.
From all this what is my inference? It is, that
this new system of robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it must be destroyed, or
that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to
it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system
exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its
vulnerable parts. These are my inferences. In one
word, with this republic nothing independent can
? ? ? ? 378 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
coexist. The errors of Louis the Sixteenth were
more pardonable to prudence than any of those of
the same kind into which the allied courts may fall.
They have the benefit of his dreadful example.
The unhappy Louis the Sixteenth was a man of
the best intentions that probably ever reigned. He
was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading,
and even by the acquisition of elemental knowledge,
an education in all points originally defective; but
nobody told him (and it was no wonder he should
not himself divine it) that the world of which he
read and the world in which he lived were no longer
the same. Desirous of doing everything for the best,
fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment, he
sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the discernment of the prince. But an accurate and
penetrating discernment is what in a young prince
could not be looked for.
His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but,
like most other of his well-meant designs, it failed in
his hands. It failed partly from mere ill fortune, to
which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that
very large share to which she is justly entitled in
all human affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part, was
owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and
disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly
speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or
indeed under any form of government. However,
with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In
? ? ? ? LETTER II. r 379
other things he thought that he might be a king on
the terms of his predecessors. He was conscious of
the purity of his heart and the general good tendency
of his government.
He flattered himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his
ease without danger to his safety. It is not at all
wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way
abundantly in other respects to innovation, should
take up in policy with the tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of republics. First, the Swiss republics
grew under the guardianship of the French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under the influence of
France, established in the Empire, against the pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of
France, by a series of wars and negotiations, and
lastly by the Treaties of Westphalia, had obtained
the establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a
law of the Empire, the same monarchy under Louis
the Thirteenth had force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at home.
Louis the Sixteenth was a diligent reader of history. But the very lamp of prudence blinded him.
The guide of human life led him astray. A silent
revolution in the moral world preceded the political,
and prepared it. It became of more importance than
ever what examples were given, and what measures
were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in the
recesses of cabinets or in the private conspiracies of
the factious. They were no longer to be controlled
by the force and influence of the grandees, who for
? ? ? ? 380 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
merly had been able to stir up troubles by their discontents and to quiet them by their corruption. The
chain of subordination, even in cabal and sedition,
was broken in its most important links. It was
no longer the great and the populace. Other interests were formed, other dependencies, other connections, other communications. The middle classes had swelled far beyond their former proportion. Like
whatever is the most effectively rich and great in society, these classes became the seat of all the active
politics, and the preponderating weight to decide on
them. There were all the energies by which fortune
is acquired; there the consequence of their success.
There were all the talents which assert their pretensions, and are impatient of the place which settled society prescribes to them. These descriptions had got between the great and the populace; and the influence on the lower classes was with them. The spirit
of ambition had taken possession of this class as violently as ever it had done of any other. They felt
the importance of this situation. The correspondence
of the moneyed and the mercantile world, the literary intercourse of academies, but above all, the press,
of which they had in a manner entire possession,
made a kind of electric communication everywhere.
The press, in reality, has made every government, in
its spirit, almost democratic. Without the great, the
first movements in this revolution could not, perhaps,
have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now
for the first time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to be restrained at will. There was
no longer any means of arresting a principle in its
course. When Louis the Sixteenth, under the influence of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 381
but one republic, he set up two; when he meant to
take away half the crown of his neighbor, he lost the
whole of his own. Louis the Sixteenth could not
with impunity countenance a new republic. Yet between his throne and that dangerous lodgment for
an enemy, which he had erected, he had the whole
Atlantic for a ditch. He had for an outwork the
English nation itself, friendly to liberty, adverse to
that mode of it. He was surrounded by a rampart
of monarchies, most of them allied to him, and generally under his influence. Yet even thus secured,
a republic erected under his auspices, and dependent
on his power, became fatal to his throne. The very
money which he had lent to support this republic, by
a good faith which to him operated as perfidy, was
punctually paid to his enemies, and became a resource in the hands of his assassins.
With this example before their eyes, do any ministers in England, do any ministers in Austria, really
flatter themselves that they can erect, not on the remote shores of the Atlantic, but in their view, in
their vicinity, in absolute contact with one of them,
not a commercial, but a martial republic, --a republic not of simple husbandmen or fishermen, but of intriguers, and of warriors, - a republic of a character the most restless, the most enterprising, the most impious, the most fierce and bloody, the most hypocritical and perfidious, the most bold and daring,
that ever has been seen, or indeed that can be conceived to exist, without bringing on their own certain ruin? Such is the republic to which we are going to give
a place in civilized fellowship, -the republic which,
with joint consent, we are going to establish in the
? ? ? ? 382 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
centre of Europe, in a post that overlooks and commands every other state, and which eminently confronts and menaces this kingdom.
You cannot fail to observe that I speak as if the
allied powers were actually consenting, and not compelled by events, to the establishment of this faction
in France. The words have not escaped me. You
will hereafter naturally expect that I should make
them good. But whether in adopting this measure
we are madly active or weakly passive or pusillanimously panic-struck, the effects will be the same.
You may call this faction, which has eradicated the
monarchy, expelled the proprietary, persecuted religion, and trampled upon law,* --you may call this
France, if you please; but of the ancient France nothing remains but its central geography, its iron frontier, its spirit of ambition, its audacity of enterprise, its perplexing intrigue. These, and these alone, remain: and they remain heightened in their principle
and augmented in their means. All the former correctives,'whether of virtue or of weakness, which
existed in the old monarchy, are gone. No single
new corrective is to be found in the whole body
of the new institutions. How should such a thing
be found there, when everything has been chosen
with care and selection to forward all those ambitious designs and dispositions, not to control them?
The whole is a body of ways and means for the
supply of dominion, without one heterogeneous particle in it.
Here I suffer you to breathe, and leave to your
meditation what has occurred to me on the genius
and character of the French Revolution. From hav* See our Declaration.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 383
ing this before us, we may be better able to determine on the first question I proposed, - that is, How
far nations called foreign are likely to be affected
with the system established within that territory. I
intended to proceed next on the question of her facilities, from the internal state of other nations, and particularly of this, for obtaining her ends; but I ought to be aware that my notions are controverted. I
mean, therefore, in my next letter, to take notice
of what in that way has been recommended to me
as the most deserving of notice. In the examination
of those pieces, I shall have occasion to discuss some
others of the topics to which I have called your attention. You know that the letters which I now send
to the press, as well as a part of what is to follow,
have been in their substance long since written. A
circumstance which your partiality alone could make
of importance to you, but which to the public is
of no importance at all, retarded their appearance.
The late events which press upon us obliged me to
make some additions, but no substantial change in
the matter.
This discussion, my friend, will be long. But the
matter is serious; and if ever the fate of the world
could be truly said to depend on a particular measure, it is upon this peace. For the present, farewell.
? ? ? ? LETTER III.
ON THE RUPTURE OF THE NEGOTIATION; THE TERMS
OF PEACE PROPOSED; AND THE RESOURCES OF
THE COUNTRY FOR THE CONTINUANCE OF THE
WAR.
DEAR SIR, -- I thank you for the bundle of statepapers which I received yesterday. I have travelled through the negotiation, - and a sad, founderous road it is. There is a sort of standing jest against my countrymen, -that one of them on his journey
having found a piece of pleasant road, he proposed
to his companion to go over it again. This proposal, with regard to the worthy traveller's final destination, was certainly a blunder. It was no blunder
as to his immediate satisfaction; for the way was
pleasant. In the irksome journey of the Regicide
negotiations it is otherwise: our "paths are not
paths of pleasantness, nor our ways the ways to
peace. " All our mistakes, (if such they are,) like
those of our ilibernian traveller, are mistakes of repetition; and they will be full as far from bringing
us to our place of rest as his well-considered project
was from forwarding him to his inn. Yet I see we
persevere. Fatigued with our former course, too
listless to explore a new one, kept in action by inertness, moving only because we have been in motion,
with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to
measure back again the very same joyless, hopeless,
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 385
and inglorious track. Backward and forward, - oscillation, not progression, - much going in a scanty
space, -- the travels of a postilion, miles enough to
circle the globe in one short stage, -we have been,
and we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the
loose, misplaced stones and the treacherous hollows
of this rough, ill-kept, broken-up, treacherous French
causeway!
The Declaration which brings up the rear of the
papers laid before Parliament contains a review and
a reasoned summary of all our attempts and all our
failures, -- a concise, but correct narrative of the
painful steps taken to bring on the essay of a treaty
at Paris, - a clear exposure of all the rebuffs we re --
ceived in the progress of that experiment, - an honest confession of our departure from all the rules and,
all the principles of political negotiation, and of common prudence in the conduct of it, -- and to crown
the whole, a fair account of the atrocious manner in
which the Regicide enemies had broken up what had
been so inauspiciously begun and so feebly carried
on, by finally, and with all scorn, driving our suppliant ambassador out of the limits of their usurpation.
Even after all that I have lately seen, I was a little surprised at this exposure. A minute display of
hopes formed without foundation and of labors pursued without fruit is a thing not very flattering to
self-estimation. But truth has its rights, and it, will
assert them. The Declaration, after doing all this
with a mortifying candor, concludes the whole recapitulation. with an engagement still more extraordinary than all the unusual matter it contains. It says that "' His Majesty, who had entered into the
negotiation with good faith, who had suffered no imVOL. V. 25
? ? ? ? 386 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
pediment to prevent his prosecuting it with earnestness and sincerity, has now only to lament its abrupt
termination, and to renew in the face of all Europe
the solemn declaration, that, whenever his enemies
shall be disposed to enter on the work of general pacification in a spirit of conciliation and equity, nothing
shall be wanting on his part to contribute to the accomplishlment of that great object. "
If' the disrgusting detail of the accumulated insults
we have received, in what we have very properly
called our " solicitation" to a gang of felons and
murderers, had been produced as a proof of the utter
inefficacy of that mode of proceeding with that description of persons, I should have nothing at all to object
to it. It might furnish matter conclusive in argument and instructive in policy; but, with all due submission to high authority, and with all decent deference to superior lights, it does not seem quite clear to a discernment no better than mine that the premises
in that piece conduct irresistibly to the conclusion.
A labored display of the ill consequences which have
attended an uniform course of submission to every
mode of contumelious insult, with which the despotism of a proud, capricious, insulting, and implacable
foe has chosen to buffet our patience, does not appear
to my poor thoughts to be properly brought forth as
a preliminary to justify a resolution of persevering in
the very same kind of conduct, towards the very same
sort of person, and on the very same principles. We
state our experience, and then we come to the manly
resolution of acting in contradiction to it. All that
has passed at Paris, to the moment of our being
shamefully hissed off that stage, has been nothing
but a more solemn representation on the theatre of
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 387
the nation of what had been before in rehearsal at
Basle. As it is not only confessed by us, but made
a matter of charge on the enemy, that he had given
us no encouragement to believe there was a change in
his disposition or in his policy at any time subsequent
to the period of his rejecting our first overtures, there
seems to have been no assignable motive for sending
Lord Malmesbury to Paris, except to expose his hum.
bled country to the worst indignities, and the first of
the kind, as the Declaration very truly observes, that
have been known in the world of negotiation.
An honest neighbor of mine is not altogether unhappy in the application of an old common story to a present occasion. It may be said of my friend, what
Horace says of a neighbor of his, "' Garrit aniles ex re
fabellas. " Conversing on this strange subject, he told
me a current story of a simple English country squire,
who was persuaded by certain dilettanti of his acquaintance to see the world, and to become knowing in men and manners. Among other celebrated places,
it was recommended to him to visit Constantinople.
He took their advice. After various adventures, not
to our purpose to dwell upon, he happily arrived
at that famous city. As soon as he had a little
reposed himself from his fatigue, he took a walk
into the streets; but he had not gone far, before
" a malignant and a turbaned Turk" had his choler
roused by the careless and assured air with which
this infidel strutted about in the metropolis of true
believers. In this temper he lost no time in doing
to our traveller the honors of the place. The Turk
crossed over the way, and with perfect good-will gave
him two or three lusty kicks on the seat of honor.
To resent or to return the compliment in Turkey was
? ? ? ? 388 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
quite out of the question. Our traveller, since he
could not otherwise acknowledge this kind of favor,
received it with the best grace in the world: he
made one of his most ceremonious bows, and begged
the kicking Mussulman " to accept his perfect assurances of high consideration. " Our countryman was too wise to imitate Othello in the use of the dagger.
He thought it better, as better it was, to assuage his
bruised dignity with half a yard square of balmy diplomatic diachylon. In the disasters of their friends, people are seldom wanting in a laudable patience.
When they are such as do not threaten to end fatally,
they become even matter of pleasantry. The English
fellow-travellers of our sufferer, finding him a little
out of spirits, entreated him not to take so slight a
business so very seriously. They told him it was the
custom of the country; that every country had its
customs; that the Turkish manners were a little
rough, but that in the main the Turks were a goodnatured people; that what would have been a deadly affront anywhere else was only a little freedom there:
in short, they told him to think no more of the matter, and to try his fortune in another promenade. But the squire, though a little clownish, had some
home-bred sense. ' What! have I come, at all this
expense and trouble, all the way to Constantinople
only to be kicked? Without going beyond my own
stable, my groom, for half a crown, would have kicked
me to my heart's content. I don't mean to stay in
Constantinople eight-and-forty hours, nor ever to return to this rough, good-natured people, that have their own customs. "
In my opinion the squire was in the right. He was
satisfied with his first ramble and his first injuries.
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 389
But reason of state and common sense are two things.
If it were not for this difference, it might not appear
of absolute necessity, after having received a certain
quantity of buffetings by advance, that we should
send a peer of the realm to the scum of the earth to
collect the debt to the last farthing, and to receive,
with infinite aggravation, the same scorns which had
been paid to our supplication through a commoner:
but it was proper, I suppose, that the whole of our
country, in all its orders, should have a share of the
indignity, and, as in reason, that the higher orders
should touch the larger proportion.
This business was not ended because our dignity
was wounded, or because our patience was worn out
with contumely and scorn. . We had not disgorged
one particle of the nauseous doses with which we
were so liberally crammed by the mountebanks of
Paris in order to drug and diet us into perfect tameness. No, -we waited till the morbid strength of
our boulimia for their physic had exhausted the wellstored dispensary of their empiricism. It is impossible to guess at the term to which our forbearance would have extended. The Regicides were more
fatigued with giving blows than the callous cheek of
British diplomacy was hurt in receiving them. They
had no way left for getting rid of this mendicant
perseverance, but by sending for the beadle, and forcibly driving our embassy " of shreds and patches,"
with all its mumping cant, from the inhospitable door
of Cannibal Castle," Wlhere the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,
Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat. "
I think we might have found, before the rude hand
of insolent office was on our shoulder, and the staff
? ? ? ? 390 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
of usurped authority brandished over our heads, that
contempt of the suppliant is not the best forwarder of
a suit, - that national disgrace is not the high-road to
security, much less to power and greatness. Patience,
indeed, strongly indicates the love of peace; but mere
love does not always lead to enrjoyment. It is the
power of winning that palm which insures our wearing it. Virtues have their place; and out of. their place they hardly deserve the name, -they pass into
the neighboring vice. The patience of fortitude and
the endurance of pusillanimity are things very different, as in their principle, so in their effects.
In truth, this Declaration, containing a narrative
of the first transaction of the kind (and I hope it will
be the last) in the intercourse of nations, as a composition, is ably drawn. It does credit to our official style. The report of the speech of the minister in a
great assembly, which I have read, is a comment upon the Declaration. Without inquiry how far that report is exact, (inferior I believe it may be to what
it would represent,) yet still it reads as a most eloquent and finished performance. Hardly one galling circumstance of the indignities offered by the Directory of Regicide to the supplications made to that junto in his Majesty's name has been spared. Every
one of the aggravations attendant on these acts of
outrage is, with wonderful perspicuity and order,
brought forward in its place, and in the manner most
fitted to produce its effect. They are turned to every
point of view in which they can be seen to the best
advantage. All the parts are so arranged as to point
out their relation, and to furnish a true idea of the
spirit of the whole transaction.
This speech may stand for a model. Never, for
? ? ? ? LETTER III. 391
the triumphal decoration of any theatre, not for the
decoration of those of Athens and Rome, or even of
this theatre of Paris, from the embroideries of Babylon or from the loom of the Gobelins, has there been sent any historic tissue so truly drawn, so closely and
so finely wrought, or in which the forms are brought
out in the rich purple of such glowing and blushing
colors. It puts me in mind of the piece of tapestry
with which Virgil proposed to adorn the theatre he
was to erect to Augustus upon the banks of the Mincio, who now hides his head in his reeds, and leads his slow and melancholy windings through banks
wasted by the barbarians of Gaul. He supposes that
the artifice is such, that the figures of the conquered
nations in his tapestry are made to play their part,
and are confounded in the machine,utque
Purpurea intexti tollant aulxea Britanni;
or, as Dryden translates it, somewhat paraphrastically, but not less in the spirit of the prophet than of the poet, --
" Where the proud theatres disclose the scene,
Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,
And show the triumph which their shame displays. "
It is something wonderful, that the sagacity shown
in the Declaration and the speech (and, so far as it
goes, greater was never shown) should have failed to
discover to the writer and to the speaker the inseparable relation between the parties to this transaction, and that nothing can be said to display the imperious
arrogance of a base enemy which does not describe
with equal force and equal truth the contemptible figure of an abject embassy to that imperious power. It is no less striking, that the same obvious re
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