But the age of
chivalry
is gone.
Edmund Burke
He became (what I heartily hope none of
his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this
poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentle.
men agree marvellously in their feelings.
* State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 319
his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and
as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all
the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow
and repeat after him in this age, which would assume
to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the
rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of gov
ernments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had
obtained so large a share in the donative, were in
haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge
they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the
church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern,
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved
and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
" Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever
was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This " leading in triumph," a thing in its best
? ? ? ? 320 REFLECTIONS ON THE
form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind.
Several English were the stupefied and indignant
spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have
been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling
a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their
captives overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of
women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it
resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial
nation; -- if a civilized nation, or any men who had
a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph or the actors in it, and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that assembly is found in their situation;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in
us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic:
they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king
nor from their legislative power. There they are
surrounded by an army not raised either by the au
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321
thority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would
instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang
of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the
members; whilst those who held the same moderate
principles, with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and
murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes
real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a
captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand,
the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and
giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is.
beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet,,
and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses,,
they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.
Among these are found persons in comparison of
whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and
Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is
it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the
places of public resort. In these meetings of all
sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring
and violent and perfidious, is taken for then mark of
superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to
the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or' VOL. III. 21
? ? ? ? 322 -REFLECTIONS ON THE
meditated, they are forming plans for the good order
of future society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and promoting their relations
on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of
virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to
subsist by beggary or by crime.
The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the
farce of deliberation with as little decency as liberty.
They act like the comedians of a fair, before a riotous
audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a
mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to
shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes
mix and take their seats amongst them, - domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in the
place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows
kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy
and aspect of a grave legislative body, -nec color imperii, nee frons erat ulla senates. They have a power
given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and destroy, -but none to construct, except such
machines as may be fitted for further subversion and
further destruction.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is
attached to national representative assemblies, but
must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that
sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your
Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny
of which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit. I am sure many of the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 323
members who compose even the majority of that body
must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of
the Revolution Society. Miserable king! miserable
assembly! How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who could call
a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven
"u n beau jour"! * How must they be inwardly
indignant at hearing others who thought fit to declare to them, "' that the vessel of the state would
fly forward in her course towards regeneration with
more speed than ever," from the stiff gale of treason
and murder which preceded our preacher's triumph!
What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience and inward indignation, they heard of the
slaughter of innocent gentlemen in their houses,
that "the blood spilled was not the most pure"!
What must they have felt, when they were besieged
by complaints of disorders which shook their country
to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to tell
the complainants that they were under the protection
of the law, and that they would address the king (the
captive king) to cause the laws to be enforced for
their protection, when the enslaved ministers of that
captive king had formally notified to them that there
were neither law nor authority nor power left to
protect! What must they have felt at being obliged,
as a felicitation on the present new year, to request
their captive king to forget the stormy period of the
last, on account of the great good which he was likely
to produce to hits people, - to the complete attainment
of which good they adjourned the practical demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience when he should no longer possess any authority to command!
* 6th of October, 1789.
? ? ? ? 324 REFLECTIONS ON THE
This address was made with much good-nature and
affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions in
France must be reckoned a considerable revolution in
their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to
learn manners at second-hand from your side of the
water, and that we dress our behavior in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old cut,
and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian
mode of good breeding as to think it quite in the
most refined strain of delicate compliment (whether
in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most
humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that
great public benefits are derived from the murder of
his servants, the attempted assassination of himself
and of his wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and
degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a
topic of consolation which our ordinary of Newgate
would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot
of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and
arms in the Herald's College of the rights of men,
would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of
the sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting
consolation to any of the persons whom the leze-nation
might bring under the administration of his executive
powers.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered.
The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is
well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness,
and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory.
Thus to administer the opiate potion of amnesty,
powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and con.
tempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of " the balm of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 325
hurt minds," the cup of human misery full to the
brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those
which were so delicately urged in the compliment on
the new year, the king of France will probably endeavor to forget these events and that compliment.
But History, who keeps a durable record of all our
acts, and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget
either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind. History will
record, that, on the morning of the sixth of October,
1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down,
under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge
nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who
cried out to her to save herself by flight, - that this
was the last proof of fidelity he could give, -- that
they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he
was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of
the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of
bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and huisband not secure of his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen,
and their infant children, (who once would have
been the pride and hope of a great and generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left
? ? ? ? 326 REFLECTIONS ON THE
swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed
with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence
they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made
of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed
the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with
all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly
and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in
the great court of the palace. Their heads were
stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the
royal captives who followed in the train were slowly
moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling
screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
After they had been made to taste, drop by drop,
more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture
of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours,
they were, under a guard composed of those very
soldiers who had thus conducted them through this
famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of
Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be
commemorated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with fervent prayer
and enthusiastic ejaculation? -- TheSe Theban and
Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only
ill the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom: although a saint and apostle, who may
have revelations of his own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 327
compare it with the entrance into the world of the
Prince of Peace, proclaimed in an holy temple by a
venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of
unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the suf-f
ferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to some
sort of palates. There were reflections which might
serve to keep this appetite within some bounds of
temperance. But when I took one circumstance into
my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much
allowance ought to be made for the society, and that
the temptation was too strong for common discretion:
I mean, the circumstance of the Io Pwean of the triumph, the animating cry which called for " all the
BISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts," * might
well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on the
foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to
so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into
hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which
appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and
the projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of
all Church establishments. There was, however, (as
in all human affairs there is,) in the midst of this
joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their
faith. The actual murder of the king and queen,
and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious
circumstances of this " beautiful day. " The actual
murder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. A group of
*a Tons les ]ve'ques a la lanterne! "
? ? ? ? 3328 REFLECTIONS ON THE
regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily
was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the
massacre of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great
master, from the school of the rights of men, will
finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not
yet the complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined superstition and error;
and the king of France wants another object or two
to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the
good which is to arise from his own sufferings, and
the patriotic crimes of an enlightened age. *
* It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject by
an eyewitness. That eyewitness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of the most active and zealous reformers of the state. He was obliged to
secede from the Assembly; and he afterwards became a voluntary
exile, on account of the horrors of this pious triumph, and the dispositions of men, who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead in public affairs.
Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend.
" Parlons du parti que j'ai pris; il est bien justifie dans ma conscience. - Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assembl6e plus coupable
encore, ne meritoient que je me justifie; mais j'ai'a coeur que vous, et
les personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me condamnent pas. -
Ma santd, je vous jure, me rendoit mes fonctions impossibles; mais
meme en les mettant de c6te il a e'te au-dessus de mes forces de supporter plus longtems l'horreur que me causoit ce sang, - ces tetes, - cette reine presque egorgee,- ce roi, amend esclave, entrant ia Paris
au milieu de ses assassins, et prce'de' des tetes de ses malheureux
gardes, - ces perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales,
-ce cri de TOUS LES EVEQUES X LA LANTERNE, dans le moment
oh le roi entre sa capitale avec deux e'vques de son conseil dans sa
voiture, - un coup de fusil, que j'ai vu tirer dans un des carrosses de la
reine, - M. Bailly appellant cela un beau jour, - l'assemblde ayant ddclare froidement le matin, qu'il n'dtoit pas de sa dignit6 d'aller toute entiere environner le roi, --M. Mirabeau disant impunement dans
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 329
Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go to the length that in all probability
it was intended it should be carried, yet I must think
that such treatment of any human creatures must be
shocking to any but those who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, and not cette assenmblee, que le vaisseau de l'etat, loin d'etre arrete dans sa
course, s'dlanceroit avec plus de rapiditd que jamais vers sa regeneration, - M. Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang couloient
altour de nous, --le vertueux Mounier * echappant par miracle k
vingt assassins, qui avoien~ voulu faire de sa tete un trophe'e de plus:
Voilk ce qui me fit jurer de ne plus mettre le pied dans cette caverne
d'Antropophages [the National Assembly], oh je n'avois plus de force
d'dlever la voix, oh depuis six semaines je l'avois dlevde en vain.
"' Moi, Mounier, et tous les hounntes gens, ont pensd que le dernier
effort a faire pour le bien etoit d'en sortir. Aucune idde de crainte ne
s'est approched de moi. Je rougirois de m'en d6fendre. J'avois encore recfi sur la route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que
ceux qui l'ont enivre' de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissements, dont d'autres auroient dte flattds, et qui m'ont fait fremir.
C'est k l'indignation, c'est a l'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques, que le seul aspect du sang me fait 6prouver que j'ai cede'. On
brave une seule mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut 8tre
utile. Mais aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou privee n'ont le droit de me condamner a souffrir inutilement
mille supplices par minute, et k pdrir de desespoir, de rage, au milieu
des trliomphes, du crime que je n'ai pu arreter. Ils me proscriront, ils
confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai
plus. Voila ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier; tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera
alors moi qui auroit eu tort de la leur donner. "
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen of the Old Jewry. - See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these
transactions: a man also of honor and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive.
* N. B. M. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He has since
been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertors of liberty.
? ? ? ? 330 REFLECTIONS ON THE
being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung
modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted
rank of the persons suffering, and particularly the
sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of the descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender age of royal infants, insensible only through
infancy and innocence of the cruel outrages to which
their parents were exposed, instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that most melancholy occasion.
I hear that the august person who was the principal object of our preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his person that were massacred in cold blood about him;
as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange and
frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and
to be more grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. I am
very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such
personages are in a situation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues of the great.
I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady,
the other object of the triumph, has borne that day,
(one is interested that beings made for suffering
should suffer well,) and that she bears all the succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her
friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and
the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with
a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank
and race, and becoming the offspring of a sovereign
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 331
distinguished for her piety and her courage; that,
like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with
the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble
hand.
tit is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw
the queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.
I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and
cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move
in, - glittering like the morning-star, full of life and
splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what
an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion
that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream,
when she added titles of veiieration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against
disgrace concealed in that bosom! little did I dream
that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen
upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of
men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters,
economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the
glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never,
never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to
rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified
obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept
alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence' of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and
? ? ? ? 332 REFLECTIONS ON THE
heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility
of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain
like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing
all its grossness! i
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had
its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle,
though varied in its appearance by the varying state
of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a
long succession of generations, even to the time we
live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the
loss, I fear, will be great. It is this which has given
its character to modern Europe. It is this which has
distinguished it under all its forms of government,
and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states
of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had
produced a noble equality, and handed it down
through all the gradations of social life. It was this
opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and
raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to
the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing
illusions which made power gentle and obedience
liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life,
and which by a bland assimilation incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new con
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 333
quering empire of light and reason. All the decent
drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the
understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded.
as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a
queen is but a woman, a woman is but an animal,
and an animal not of the highest order. All homage
paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, are but fictions
of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide,
- and if the people are by any chance or in any way
gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which
is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be
supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them
from his own private interests. In the groves of
their academy, at the end of every visto, you see
nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our
institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the
? ? ? ? '~4 REFLECTIONS ON THE
expression, in persons,- so as to create in us love,
veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that
sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections,
combined with manners, are required sometimes as
supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids
to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as
a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:- " Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto. " There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind
would be disposed to relish. To make us love our
country, our country ought to be lovely.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the
shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it
will find other and worse means for its support.
The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancient
institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will
hold power by arts similar to those by which it has
acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous
spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear,
freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of
tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots
and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive
murder and preventive confiscation, and that long
roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings
will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels
from principle.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken
away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From
that moment we have no compass to govern us, nor
can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Eu
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION TN FRANCE. 335
rope, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your Revolution
was completed. How much of that prosperous state
was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be
indifferent in their operation, we must presume, that,
on the whole, their operation was beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state
in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting
to the causes by which they have been produced, and
possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain
than that our manners, our civilization, and all the
good things which are connected with manners and
with civilization, have, in this European world of
ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and
were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the
spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The
nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, and the
other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even
in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed.
Learning paid back what it received to nobility and
to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging
their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy,
if they had all continued to know their indissoluble
union, and their proper place! Happy, if learning,
not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians,
learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down
under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. *
* See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution of the former with this prediction.
? ? ? ? 336 REFLECTIONS ON THE
If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they
are always willing to own to ancient manners, so do
other interests which we value full as much as they
are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, are themselves
but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They, too, may decay with
their natural protecting principles. With you, for
the present at least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion
remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the arts
should be lost in an experiment to try how well a
state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for
nothing hereafter?
I wish you may not be going fast, and by the
shortest cut, tq! that horrible and disgustful situation.
Already there appears a poverty of conception, a
coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of
the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.
It is not clear whether in England we learned
those grand and decorous principles and manners,
of which considerable traces yet remain, from you,
or whether you took them from us. But to you, I
think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 337
gentis incunabula nostrce. France has always more or
less influenced manners in England; and when your
fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will
not run long or not run clear with us, or perhaps
with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what
is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have
dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the sixth
of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to
the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which
may be dated from that day: I mean a revolution iin
sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things
now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every
principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize
for harboring the common feelings of men.
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend
Dr. Price, and those of his lay flock who will choose
to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? - For this
plain reason: Because it is natural I should; because
we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles
with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because,
when kings are hurled from their thrones by the
Supreme Director of this great drama, and become
the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the
good, we behold such disasters in the moral as we
should behold a miracle in the physical order of
things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds
VOL. III. 22
? ? ? ? 338 REFLECTIONS ON THE
(as it has long since been observed) are purified by
terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom.
Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly
ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric
sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it
in real life. With such a perverted mind, I could
never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People
would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that
Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were
the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be
the tears of folly.
Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the
rights of men, and who must apply themselves to the
moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to
produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation.
There, where men follow their natural impulses, they
would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian
policy, whether applied to the attainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny. They would reject them
on the modern, as they-once did on the ancient stage,
where they could not bear even the hypothetical
proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he
sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would
bear what has been borne in the midst of the real
tragedy of this triumphal day: a principal actor
weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of
horrors, so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage, - and after putting in and out
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 339
weights, declaring that the balance was on the side
of the advantages. They would not bear to see the
crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger against
the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers
of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no
means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In
the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any
elaborate process of reasoning, would show that this
method of political computation would justify every
extent of crime. They would see, that, on these principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and blood. They would soon see that
criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred.
They present a shorter cut to the object than through
the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy
and murder for public benefit, public benefit would
soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the
end, - until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more
dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable
appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing,
in the splendor of these triumphs of the rights of
men, all natural sense of wrong and right.
But the reverend pastor exults in this "'leading
in triumph," because, truly, Louis the Sixteenth was
"an arbitrary monarch": that is, in other words,
neither more nor less than because he was Louis the
Sixteenth, and because he had the misfortune to be
born king of France, with the prerogatives of which
a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of
the people, without any act of his, had put him in
possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out
to him, that he was born king of France. But mis
? ? ? ? 340 REFLECTIONS ON THE
fortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the
greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the
acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions
to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his people to a
share of freedom not known, perhaps not desired, by
their ancestors, -such a prince, though he should
be subject to the common frailties attached to men
and to princes, though he should have once thought
it necessary to provide force against the desperate
designs manifestly carrying on against his person
and the remnants of his authority, -- though all this
should be taken into consideration, I shall be led
with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel
and insulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I
tremble for the cause of liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause of humanity,
in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of
mankind. But there are some people of that low
and degenerate fashion of mind that they look up
with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to
kings who know to keep firm in their seat, to hold
a strict hand over their subjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard against the very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters from principle,
listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me that the
king and queen of France (those, I mean, who were
such before the triumph) were inexorable and cruel
tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for
massacring the National Assembly, (I think I have
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 341
seen something like the latter insinuated in certain
publications,) I should think their captivity just. If
this be true, much more ought to have been done,
but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The
punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act
of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and decorous,
and in its punishments rather seems to submit to
a necessity than to make a choice. Had Nero, or
Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or Charles the
Ninth been the subject, -- if Charles the Twelfth of
Sweden, after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor, Christina, after the murder of Monaldeschi, had
fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, I am sure
our conduct would have been different.
If the French king, or king of the French, (or by
whatever name he is known in the new vocabulary
of your Constitution,) has in his own person and
that of his queen really deserved these unavowed,
but unavenged, murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel than murder, such a
person would ill deserve even that subordinate ex
ecutory trust which I understand is to be placed in
him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which
he has outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for
such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a
deposed tyrant could not possibly be made. But to
degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals,
and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns,
as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe
in practice. Those who could make such an appoint
? ? ? ? 342 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ment must be guilty of a more flagrant breach of
trust than any they have yet committed against the
people. As this is the only crime in which your
leading politicians could have acted inconsistently, I
conclude that there is no sort of ground for these
horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the
other calumnies.
In England, we give no credit to them. We are
generous enemies; we are faithful allies. We spurn
from us with disgust and indignation the slanders
of those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation of the flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast in Newgate; and neither his being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor. his having, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all
sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term,
it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have preserved to him a liberty of which he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous use of it.
We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the mansion.
We have prisons almost as strong as the Bastile, for
those who dare to libel the queens of France. In this
spiritual retreat let the noble libeller remain. Let
him there meditate on his Talmud, until he learns a
conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and not so
disgraceful to the ancient religion to which he has become a proselyte, - or until some persons from your side of the water, to please your new Hebrew brethreln, shall ransom him. He may then be enabled
to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue,
and a very small poundage on the long compound
interest of the thirty pieces of silver, (Dr. Price has
shown us what miracles compound interest will perform in 1790 years,) the lands which are lately dis
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 343
covered to have been usurped by the Gallican Church.
Send us your Popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will
send you our Protestant Rabbin. We shall treat the
person you send us in exchange like a gentleman and
an honest man, as he is: but pray let him bring with
him the fund of his hospitality, bounty, and charity;
and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling of that honorable and pious fund, nor think of
enriching the Treasury with the spoils of the poorbox.
To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the
honor of our nation to be somewhat concerned ill
the disclaimer of the proceedings of this society of
the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no
man's proxy. I speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all conmmunion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from obselvation, not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and'
mixed communication with the inhabitants of this
kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after a
course of attentive observation, begun in early life,
and continued for near forty years. I have often
been astonished, considering that we are divided
from you but by a slender dike of about twentyfour miles, and that the mutual intercourse between
the two countries has lately been very great, to find
how little you seem to know of us. I suspect that
this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in England. The
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vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue
of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half
a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field
ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands
of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the
British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not
imagine that those who make the noise are the only
inhabitants of the field, -- that, of course, they are
many in number, - or that, after all, they are other
than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though
loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred amongst us participates in the'"triumph " of
the Revolution Society. If the king and queen of
France and their children were to fall into our hands
by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious of all
hostilities, (I deprecate such an event, I deprecate such
hostility,) they would be treated with another sort of
triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had
a king of France in that situation: you have read
how he was treated by the victor in the field, and in
what manner he was afterwards received in England.
Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe
we are not materially changed since that period.
Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks
to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we
still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not
(as I conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of
thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 345
we subtilized ourselves into savages.
his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this
poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentle.
men agree marvellously in their feelings.
* State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 319
his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and
as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all
the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow
and repeat after him in this age, which would assume
to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the
rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of gov
ernments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had
obtained so large a share in the donative, were in
haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge
they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the
church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern,
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved
and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
" Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever
was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This " leading in triumph," a thing in its best
? ? ? ? 320 REFLECTIONS ON THE
form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind.
Several English were the stupefied and indignant
spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have
been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling
a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps their
captives overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of
women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it
resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial
nation; -- if a civilized nation, or any men who had
a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph or the actors in it, and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that assembly is found in their situation;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in
us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic:
they have their residence in a city whose constitution
has emanated neither from the charter of their king
nor from their legislative power. There they are
surrounded by an army not raised either by the au
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321
thority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would
instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang
of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the
members; whilst those who held the same moderate
principles, with more patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and
murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes
real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a
captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand,
the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and
giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their
measures are decided before they are debated. It is.
beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet,,
and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses,,
they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations.
Among these are found persons in comparison of
whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and
Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is
it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the
places of public resort. In these meetings of all
sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring
and violent and perfidious, is taken for then mark of
superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to
the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or' VOL. III. 21
? ? ? ? 322 -REFLECTIONS ON THE
meditated, they are forming plans for the good order
of future society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and promoting their relations
on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of
virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to
subsist by beggary or by crime.
The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the
farce of deliberation with as little decency as liberty.
They act like the comedians of a fair, before a riotous
audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a
mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to
shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes
mix and take their seats amongst them, - domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in the
place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows
kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy
and aspect of a grave legislative body, -nec color imperii, nee frons erat ulla senates. They have a power
given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and destroy, -but none to construct, except such
machines as may be fitted for further subversion and
further destruction.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is
attached to national representative assemblies, but
must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that
sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your
Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny
of which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit. I am sure many of the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 323
members who compose even the majority of that body
must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of
the Revolution Society. Miserable king! miserable
assembly! How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who could call
a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven
"u n beau jour"! * How must they be inwardly
indignant at hearing others who thought fit to declare to them, "' that the vessel of the state would
fly forward in her course towards regeneration with
more speed than ever," from the stiff gale of treason
and murder which preceded our preacher's triumph!
What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience and inward indignation, they heard of the
slaughter of innocent gentlemen in their houses,
that "the blood spilled was not the most pure"!
What must they have felt, when they were besieged
by complaints of disorders which shook their country
to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to tell
the complainants that they were under the protection
of the law, and that they would address the king (the
captive king) to cause the laws to be enforced for
their protection, when the enslaved ministers of that
captive king had formally notified to them that there
were neither law nor authority nor power left to
protect! What must they have felt at being obliged,
as a felicitation on the present new year, to request
their captive king to forget the stormy period of the
last, on account of the great good which he was likely
to produce to hits people, - to the complete attainment
of which good they adjourned the practical demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience when he should no longer possess any authority to command!
* 6th of October, 1789.
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This address was made with much good-nature and
affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions in
France must be reckoned a considerable revolution in
their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to
learn manners at second-hand from your side of the
water, and that we dress our behavior in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old cut,
and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian
mode of good breeding as to think it quite in the
most refined strain of delicate compliment (whether
in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most
humiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that
great public benefits are derived from the murder of
his servants, the attempted assassination of himself
and of his wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and
degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a
topic of consolation which our ordinary of Newgate
would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot
of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and
arms in the Herald's College of the rights of men,
would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of
the sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting
consolation to any of the persons whom the leze-nation
might bring under the administration of his executive
powers.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered.
The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is
well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness,
and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory.
Thus to administer the opiate potion of amnesty,
powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and con.
tempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of " the balm of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 325
hurt minds," the cup of human misery full to the
brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those
which were so delicately urged in the compliment on
the new year, the king of France will probably endeavor to forget these events and that compliment.
But History, who keeps a durable record of all our
acts, and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget
either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind. History will
record, that, on the morning of the sixth of October,
1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down,
under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge
nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who
cried out to her to save herself by flight, - that this
was the last proof of fidelity he could give, -- that
they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he
was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of
the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of
bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and huisband not secure of his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen,
and their infant children, (who once would have
been the pride and hope of a great and generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left
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swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed
with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence
they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made
of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed
the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with
all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly
and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in
the great court of the palace. Their heads were
stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the
royal captives who followed in the train were slowly
moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling
screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
After they had been made to taste, drop by drop,
more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture
of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours,
they were, under a guard composed of those very
soldiers who had thus conducted them through this
famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of
Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be
commemorated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with fervent prayer
and enthusiastic ejaculation? -- TheSe Theban and
Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only
ill the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom: although a saint and apostle, who may
have revelations of his own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 327
compare it with the entrance into the world of the
Prince of Peace, proclaimed in an holy temple by a
venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of
unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the suf-f
ferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to some
sort of palates. There were reflections which might
serve to keep this appetite within some bounds of
temperance. But when I took one circumstance into
my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much
allowance ought to be made for the society, and that
the temptation was too strong for common discretion:
I mean, the circumstance of the Io Pwean of the triumph, the animating cry which called for " all the
BISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts," * might
well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on the
foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to
so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into
hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which
appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and
the projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of
all Church establishments. There was, however, (as
in all human affairs there is,) in the midst of this
joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their
faith. The actual murder of the king and queen,
and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious
circumstances of this " beautiful day. " The actual
murder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. A group of
*a Tons les ]ve'ques a la lanterne! "
? ? ? ? 3328 REFLECTIONS ON THE
regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily
was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the
massacre of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great
master, from the school of the rights of men, will
finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not
yet the complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined superstition and error;
and the king of France wants another object or two
to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the
good which is to arise from his own sufferings, and
the patriotic crimes of an enlightened age. *
* It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject by
an eyewitness. That eyewitness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of the most active and zealous reformers of the state. He was obliged to
secede from the Assembly; and he afterwards became a voluntary
exile, on account of the horrors of this pious triumph, and the dispositions of men, who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead in public affairs.
Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend.
" Parlons du parti que j'ai pris; il est bien justifie dans ma conscience. - Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assembl6e plus coupable
encore, ne meritoient que je me justifie; mais j'ai'a coeur que vous, et
les personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me condamnent pas. -
Ma santd, je vous jure, me rendoit mes fonctions impossibles; mais
meme en les mettant de c6te il a e'te au-dessus de mes forces de supporter plus longtems l'horreur que me causoit ce sang, - ces tetes, - cette reine presque egorgee,- ce roi, amend esclave, entrant ia Paris
au milieu de ses assassins, et prce'de' des tetes de ses malheureux
gardes, - ces perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales,
-ce cri de TOUS LES EVEQUES X LA LANTERNE, dans le moment
oh le roi entre sa capitale avec deux e'vques de son conseil dans sa
voiture, - un coup de fusil, que j'ai vu tirer dans un des carrosses de la
reine, - M. Bailly appellant cela un beau jour, - l'assemblde ayant ddclare froidement le matin, qu'il n'dtoit pas de sa dignit6 d'aller toute entiere environner le roi, --M. Mirabeau disant impunement dans
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 329
Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go to the length that in all probability
it was intended it should be carried, yet I must think
that such treatment of any human creatures must be
shocking to any but those who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, and not cette assenmblee, que le vaisseau de l'etat, loin d'etre arrete dans sa
course, s'dlanceroit avec plus de rapiditd que jamais vers sa regeneration, - M. Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang couloient
altour de nous, --le vertueux Mounier * echappant par miracle k
vingt assassins, qui avoien~ voulu faire de sa tete un trophe'e de plus:
Voilk ce qui me fit jurer de ne plus mettre le pied dans cette caverne
d'Antropophages [the National Assembly], oh je n'avois plus de force
d'dlever la voix, oh depuis six semaines je l'avois dlevde en vain.
"' Moi, Mounier, et tous les hounntes gens, ont pensd que le dernier
effort a faire pour le bien etoit d'en sortir. Aucune idde de crainte ne
s'est approched de moi. Je rougirois de m'en d6fendre. J'avois encore recfi sur la route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que
ceux qui l'ont enivre' de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissements, dont d'autres auroient dte flattds, et qui m'ont fait fremir.
C'est k l'indignation, c'est a l'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques, que le seul aspect du sang me fait 6prouver que j'ai cede'. On
brave une seule mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut 8tre
utile. Mais aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou privee n'ont le droit de me condamner a souffrir inutilement
mille supplices par minute, et k pdrir de desespoir, de rage, au milieu
des trliomphes, du crime que je n'ai pu arreter. Ils me proscriront, ils
confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai
plus. Voila ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier; tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera
alors moi qui auroit eu tort de la leur donner. "
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen of the Old Jewry. - See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these
transactions: a man also of honor and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive.
* N. B. M. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He has since
been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertors of liberty.
? ? ? ? 330 REFLECTIONS ON THE
being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung
modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted
rank of the persons suffering, and particularly the
sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of the descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender age of royal infants, insensible only through
infancy and innocence of the cruel outrages to which
their parents were exposed, instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that most melancholy occasion.
I hear that the august person who was the principal object of our preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his person that were massacred in cold blood about him;
as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange and
frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and
to be more grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. I am
very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such
personages are in a situation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues of the great.
I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady,
the other object of the triumph, has borne that day,
(one is interested that beings made for suffering
should suffer well,) and that she bears all the succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her
friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and
the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with
a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank
and race, and becoming the offspring of a sovereign
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 331
distinguished for her piety and her courage; that,
like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with
the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble
hand.
tit is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw
the queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.
I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and
cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move
in, - glittering like the morning-star, full of life and
splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what
an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion
that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream,
when she added titles of veiieration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against
disgrace concealed in that bosom! little did I dream
that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen
upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of
men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters,
economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the
glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never,
never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to
rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified
obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept
alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence' of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and
? ? ? ? 332 REFLECTIONS ON THE
heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility
of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain
like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing
all its grossness! i
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had
its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle,
though varied in its appearance by the varying state
of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a
long succession of generations, even to the time we
live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the
loss, I fear, will be great. It is this which has given
its character to modern Europe. It is this which has
distinguished it under all its forms of government,
and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states
of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had
produced a noble equality, and handed it down
through all the gradations of social life. It was this
opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and
raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to
the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing
illusions which made power gentle and obedience
liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life,
and which by a bland assimilation incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new con
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 333
quering empire of light and reason. All the decent
drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the
understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded.
as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a
queen is but a woman, a woman is but an animal,
and an animal not of the highest order. All homage
paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, are but fictions
of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide,
- and if the people are by any chance or in any way
gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which
is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be
supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them
from his own private interests. In the groves of
their academy, at the end of every visto, you see
nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our
institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the
? ? ? ? '~4 REFLECTIONS ON THE
expression, in persons,- so as to create in us love,
veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that
sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections,
combined with manners, are required sometimes as
supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids
to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as
a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:- " Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto. " There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind
would be disposed to relish. To make us love our
country, our country ought to be lovely.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the
shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it
will find other and worse means for its support.
The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancient
institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will
hold power by arts similar to those by which it has
acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous
spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear,
freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of
tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots
and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive
murder and preventive confiscation, and that long
roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings
will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels
from principle.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken
away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From
that moment we have no compass to govern us, nor
can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Eu
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION TN FRANCE. 335
rope, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your Revolution
was completed. How much of that prosperous state
was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be
indifferent in their operation, we must presume, that,
on the whole, their operation was beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state
in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting
to the causes by which they have been produced, and
possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain
than that our manners, our civilization, and all the
good things which are connected with manners and
with civilization, have, in this European world of
ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and
were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the
spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The
nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, and the
other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even
in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed.
Learning paid back what it received to nobility and
to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging
their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy,
if they had all continued to know their indissoluble
union, and their proper place! Happy, if learning,
not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians,
learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down
under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. *
* See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution of the former with this prediction.
? ? ? ? 336 REFLECTIONS ON THE
If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they
are always willing to own to ancient manners, so do
other interests which we value full as much as they
are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, are themselves
but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They, too, may decay with
their natural protecting principles. With you, for
the present at least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion
remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the arts
should be lost in an experiment to try how well a
state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for
nothing hereafter?
I wish you may not be going fast, and by the
shortest cut, tq! that horrible and disgustful situation.
Already there appears a poverty of conception, a
coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of
the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.
It is not clear whether in England we learned
those grand and decorous principles and manners,
of which considerable traces yet remain, from you,
or whether you took them from us. But to you, I
think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 337
gentis incunabula nostrce. France has always more or
less influenced manners in England; and when your
fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will
not run long or not run clear with us, or perhaps
with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what
is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have
dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the sixth
of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to
the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which
may be dated from that day: I mean a revolution iin
sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things
now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every
principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize
for harboring the common feelings of men.
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend
Dr. Price, and those of his lay flock who will choose
to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? - For this
plain reason: Because it is natural I should; because
we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles
with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because,
when kings are hurled from their thrones by the
Supreme Director of this great drama, and become
the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the
good, we behold such disasters in the moral as we
should behold a miracle in the physical order of
things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds
VOL. III. 22
? ? ? ? 338 REFLECTIONS ON THE
(as it has long since been observed) are purified by
terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom.
Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly
ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric
sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it
in real life. With such a perverted mind, I could
never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People
would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that
Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were
the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be
the tears of folly.
Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the
rights of men, and who must apply themselves to the
moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to
produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation.
There, where men follow their natural impulses, they
would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian
policy, whether applied to the attainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny. They would reject them
on the modern, as they-once did on the ancient stage,
where they could not bear even the hypothetical
proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he
sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would
bear what has been borne in the midst of the real
tragedy of this triumphal day: a principal actor
weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of
horrors, so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage, - and after putting in and out
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 339
weights, declaring that the balance was on the side
of the advantages. They would not bear to see the
crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger against
the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers
of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no
means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In
the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any
elaborate process of reasoning, would show that this
method of political computation would justify every
extent of crime. They would see, that, on these principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and blood. They would soon see that
criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred.
They present a shorter cut to the object than through
the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy
and murder for public benefit, public benefit would
soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the
end, - until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more
dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable
appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing,
in the splendor of these triumphs of the rights of
men, all natural sense of wrong and right.
But the reverend pastor exults in this "'leading
in triumph," because, truly, Louis the Sixteenth was
"an arbitrary monarch": that is, in other words,
neither more nor less than because he was Louis the
Sixteenth, and because he had the misfortune to be
born king of France, with the prerogatives of which
a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of
the people, without any act of his, had put him in
possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out
to him, that he was born king of France. But mis
? ? ? ? 340 REFLECTIONS ON THE
fortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the
greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the
acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions
to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his people to a
share of freedom not known, perhaps not desired, by
their ancestors, -such a prince, though he should
be subject to the common frailties attached to men
and to princes, though he should have once thought
it necessary to provide force against the desperate
designs manifestly carrying on against his person
and the remnants of his authority, -- though all this
should be taken into consideration, I shall be led
with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel
and insulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I
tremble for the cause of liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause of humanity,
in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of
mankind. But there are some people of that low
and degenerate fashion of mind that they look up
with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to
kings who know to keep firm in their seat, to hold
a strict hand over their subjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard against the very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters from principle,
listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me that the
king and queen of France (those, I mean, who were
such before the triumph) were inexorable and cruel
tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for
massacring the National Assembly, (I think I have
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 341
seen something like the latter insinuated in certain
publications,) I should think their captivity just. If
this be true, much more ought to have been done,
but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The
punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act
of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and decorous,
and in its punishments rather seems to submit to
a necessity than to make a choice. Had Nero, or
Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or Charles the
Ninth been the subject, -- if Charles the Twelfth of
Sweden, after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor, Christina, after the murder of Monaldeschi, had
fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, I am sure
our conduct would have been different.
If the French king, or king of the French, (or by
whatever name he is known in the new vocabulary
of your Constitution,) has in his own person and
that of his queen really deserved these unavowed,
but unavenged, murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel than murder, such a
person would ill deserve even that subordinate ex
ecutory trust which I understand is to be placed in
him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which
he has outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for
such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a
deposed tyrant could not possibly be made. But to
degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals,
and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns,
as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe
in practice. Those who could make such an appoint
? ? ? ? 342 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ment must be guilty of a more flagrant breach of
trust than any they have yet committed against the
people. As this is the only crime in which your
leading politicians could have acted inconsistently, I
conclude that there is no sort of ground for these
horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the
other calumnies.
In England, we give no credit to them. We are
generous enemies; we are faithful allies. We spurn
from us with disgust and indignation the slanders
of those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation of the flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast in Newgate; and neither his being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor. his having, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all
sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term,
it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have preserved to him a liberty of which he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous use of it.
We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the mansion.
We have prisons almost as strong as the Bastile, for
those who dare to libel the queens of France. In this
spiritual retreat let the noble libeller remain. Let
him there meditate on his Talmud, until he learns a
conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and not so
disgraceful to the ancient religion to which he has become a proselyte, - or until some persons from your side of the water, to please your new Hebrew brethreln, shall ransom him. He may then be enabled
to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue,
and a very small poundage on the long compound
interest of the thirty pieces of silver, (Dr. Price has
shown us what miracles compound interest will perform in 1790 years,) the lands which are lately dis
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 343
covered to have been usurped by the Gallican Church.
Send us your Popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will
send you our Protestant Rabbin. We shall treat the
person you send us in exchange like a gentleman and
an honest man, as he is: but pray let him bring with
him the fund of his hospitality, bounty, and charity;
and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling of that honorable and pious fund, nor think of
enriching the Treasury with the spoils of the poorbox.
To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the
honor of our nation to be somewhat concerned ill
the disclaimer of the proceedings of this society of
the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no
man's proxy. I speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all conmmunion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from obselvation, not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and'
mixed communication with the inhabitants of this
kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after a
course of attentive observation, begun in early life,
and continued for near forty years. I have often
been astonished, considering that we are divided
from you but by a slender dike of about twentyfour miles, and that the mutual intercourse between
the two countries has lately been very great, to find
how little you seem to know of us. I suspect that
this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in England. The
? ? ? ? 344 REFLECTIONS ON THE
vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue
of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half
a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field
ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands
of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the
British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not
imagine that those who make the noise are the only
inhabitants of the field, -- that, of course, they are
many in number, - or that, after all, they are other
than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though
loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred amongst us participates in the'"triumph " of
the Revolution Society. If the king and queen of
France and their children were to fall into our hands
by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious of all
hostilities, (I deprecate such an event, I deprecate such
hostility,) they would be treated with another sort of
triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had
a king of France in that situation: you have read
how he was treated by the victor in the field, and in
what manner he was afterwards received in England.
Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe
we are not materially changed since that period.
Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks
to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we
still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not
(as I conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of
thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 345
we subtilized ourselves into savages.
