Descriptions
of men
of their own race, but better in rank, superior in
property and decorum, of honorable, decent, and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to such a frame as to qualify them so much as to
come into contact with a civilized nation.
of their own race, but better in rank, superior in
property and decorum, of honorable, decent, and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to such a frame as to qualify them so much as to
come into contact with a civilized nation.
Edmund Burke
There is no doubt that Danton and Robespierre, Chaumette and Barere, that Condorcet,
that Thomas Paine, that La Fayette, and the ex-Bishop of Autun, the Abbd Gregoire, with all the gang of
the Siey~ses, the Henriots, and the Santerres, if they
could secure themselves in the fruits of their rebel
? ? ? ? 414 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
lion and robbery, would be perfectly indifferent,
whether the most unhappy of all infants, whom by
the lessons of the shoemaker, his governor and guardian, they are training up studiously and methodically to be an idiot, or, what is worse, the most wicked and base of mankind, continues to receive his civic
education in the Temple or the Tuileries, whilst they,
and such as they, really govern the kingdom.
It cannot be too often and too strongly inculcated,
that monarchy and property must, in France, go together, or neither can exist. To think of the possibility of the existence of a permanent and hereditary royalty, where nothing else is hereditary or permanent
in point either of personal or corporate dignity, is a
ruinous chimera, worthy of the Abbe Sieyes, and
those wicked fools, his associates, who usurped power
by the murders of the 19th of July and the 6th of
October, 1789, and who brought forth the monster
which they called Democratie Royale, or the Constitution.
I believe that most thinking men would prefer
infinitely some sober and sensible form of a republic, in which there was no mention at all of a king,
but which held out some reasonable security to property, life, and personal freedom, to a scheme of things
like this De'mocratie Royale, founded on impiety, immorality, fraudulent currencies, the confiscation of
innocent individuals, and the pretended rights of
man, - and which, in effect, excluding the whole
body of the nobility, clergy, and landed property of
a great nation, threw everything into the hands of
a desperate set of obscure adventurers, who led to
every mischief a blind and bloody band of sans-culottes. At the head, or rather at the tail, of this sys
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 415
temrn was a miserable pageant, as its ostensible instrument, who was to be treated with every species of
indignity, till the moment when he was conveyed
from the palace of contempt to the dungeon of horror, and thence led by a brewer of his capital, through
the applauses of an hired, frantic, drunken multitude,
to lose his head upon a scaffold
This is the, Constitution, or Dedmocratie Royale;
and this is what infallibly would be again set up
in France, to run exactly the same round, if the
predominant power should so far be forced to submit as to receive the name of a king, leaving it to
the Jacobins (that is, to those who have subverted
royalty and destroyed property) to modify the one
and to distribute the other as spoil. By the Jacobins I mean indiscriminately the Brissotins and the
Maratists, knowing no sort of difference between
them. As to any other party, none exists in that
unhappy country. The Royalists (those in Poitou
excepted) are banished and extinguished; and as
to what they call the Constitutionalists, or. Democrates Royaux, they never had an existence of the
smallest degree of power, consideration, or authority, nor, if they differ at all from the rest of the
atheistic banditti, (which from their actions and
principles I have no reason to think,) were they
ever any other than the temporary tools and instruments of the more determined, able, and systematic regicides. Several attempts have been made to support this chimerical De'mocratie Royale: the
first was by La Fayette; the last by Dumouriez:
they tended only to show that this absurd project had no party to support it. The Girondists
under Wimpfen, and at Bordeaux, have made some
? ? ? ? 416 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
struggle. The Constitutionalists never could make
any, and for a very plain reason: they were leaders in rebellion. All their principles and their whole
scheme of government being republican, they could
never excite the smallest degree of enthusiasm in
favor of the unhappy monarch, whom they had rendered contemptible, to make him the executive officer in their new commonwealth. They only appeared as traitors to their own Jacobin cause, not as faithful adherents to the king.
In an address to France, in an attempt to treat
with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is impossible we should mean the geographical, we must always mean the moral and political country. I believe we shall be in a great error,
if we act upon an idea that there exists in that country any organized body of men who might be willing
to treat on equitable terms for the restoration of
their monarchy, but who are nice in balancing those
terms, and who would accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit
to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of some constitution which suited
with their fancies.
I take the state of France to be totally different.
I know of no such body, and of no such party. So
far from a combination of twenty men, (always excepting Poitou,) I never yet heard that a single man
could be named of sufficient force or influence to answer for another man, much less for the smallest district in the country, or for the most incomplete company of soldiers in the army. We see every man that the Jacobins choose to apprehend taken up in
his village or in his house, and conveyed to prison
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 417
without the least shadow of resistance, - and this indifferently, whether he is suspected of Royalism, or
Federalism, Moderantism, Democracy Royal, or any
other of the names of faction which they start by the
hour. What is much more astonishing, (and, if we
did not carefully attend to the genius and circumstances of this Revolution, must indeed appear incredible,) all their most accredited military No individual influence, men, from a generalissimo to a corporal, civilormilimay be arrested, (each in the midst of his tary.
camp, and covered with the laurels of accumulated
victories,) tied neck and heels, thrown into a cart,
and sent to Paris to be disposed of at the pleasure of
the Revolutionary tribunals.
As no individuals have power and' influ- No corpora
tions of jusence, so there are no corporations, whether tice,com-.
merce, or
of lawyers or burghers, existing. The As- police.
sembly called Constituent, destroyed all such institutions very early. The primary and secondary assemblies, by their original constitution, were to be
dissolved when they answered the purpose of electing the magistrates, and were expressly disqualified
from performing any corporate act whatsoever. The
transient magistrates have been almost all removed
before the expiration of their terms, and new have
been lately imposed upon the people without the
form or ceremony of an election. These magistrates
during their existence are put under, as all the executive authorities are from first to last, the popular
societies (called Jacobin clubs) of the several countries, and this by an express order of the National
Convention: it is even made a case of death to oppose or attack those clubs. They, too, have been
lately subjected to an expurgatory scrutiny, to drive.
VOL. IV. 27
? ? ? ? 418 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
out from them everything savoring of what they call
the crime of moderantism, of which offence, however,
few were guilty. But as people began to take refuge
from their persecutions amongst themselves, they
have driven them from that last asylum.
The state of France is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, - the oppressors and
the oppressed.
The first has the whole authority of the state in
their hands, --all the arms, all the revenues of the
public, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower sort from their occupations and have put them into pay, that they
may form them into a body of janizaries to overrule
and awe property. The heads of these wretches they
never suffer to cool. They supply them with a
food for fury varied by the day,-mbesides the sensual state of intoxication, from which they are rarely
free. They have made the priests and people formally abjure the Divinity; they have estranged them
from every civil, moral, and social, or even natural and instinctive sentiment, habit, and practice,
and have rendered them systeniatically savages, to
make it impossible for them to be the instruments
of any sober and virtuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any state of order, under any name whatsoever. The other description -- the oppressed- are people of some property: they are the small relics of
the persecuted landed interest; they are the burghers
and the farmers. By the very circumstance of their
being of some property, though numerous in some
points of view, they cannot be very considerable as
a number. In cities the nature of their occupations
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 419
renders them domestic and feeble; in the country
it confines them to their farm for subsistence. The
national guards are all changed and reformed. Everything suspicious in the description of which they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called
of vigilance and safety, are everywhere formed: a
most severe and scrutinizing inquisition, far more
rigid than anything ever known or imagined. Two
persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to
their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers
scarcely credible have been executed, and their
property confiscated. At Paris, and in most other
towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole, - which
they cannot obtain without a daily ticket delivered
to them by their masters. Multitudes of all ages
and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason
to believe that in France there are not, for various
state crimes, so few as twenty thousand * actually
in jail, -- a large proportion of people of property
in any state. If a father of a family should show
any disposition to resist or to withdraw himself from
their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages that
they keep the troops, which they force by masses
(as they call it) into the field, true to their colors.
Another of their resources is not to be forgotten.
They have lately found a way of giving a sort of
ubiquity to- the supreme sovereign authority, which
no monarch has been able yet to give to any representation of his.
The commissioners of the National Convention,
who are the members of the Convention itself, and
really exercise all its powers, make continual circuits
* Some accounts make them five times as many.
? ? ? ? 420 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
through every province, and visits to every army.
There they supersede all the ordinary authorities,
civil and military, and change and alter everything
at their pleasure. So that, in effect, no deliberative
capacity exists in any portion of the inhabitants.
Toulon, republican in principle, having taken its
decision in a moment under the guillotine, and before
the arrival of these commissioners, - Toulon, being a
place regularly fortified, and having in its bosom a
navy in part highly discontented, has escaped, though
by a sort of miracle: and it would not have escaped,
if two powerful fleets had not been at the door, to
give them not only strong, but prompt and immediate
succor, especially as neither this nor any other seaport town in France can be depended on, from the peculiarly savage dispositions, manners, and connections among the lower sort of people in those places. This I take to be the true state of things in France,
so far as it regards any existing bodies, whether of legal or voluntary association, capable of acting or of treating in corps.
As to the oppressed individuals, they are many,
and as discontented as men must be under the monstrous and complicated tyranny of all sorts with which they are crushed. They want no stimulus to throv
off this dreadful yoke; but they do want, not manifestoes, which they have had even to surfeit, but
real protection, force, and succor.
The disputes and questions of men at their ease
do not at all affect their minds, or ever can occupy
the minds of men in their situation. These theories
are long since gone by; they have had their day, and
have done their mischief. The question is not between the rabble of systems, Fayettism, Condorcet.
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 421
ism, Monarchism, or Democratism, or Federalism, on
the one side, and the fundamental laws of France
on the other, - or between all these systems amongst
themselves. It is a controversy (weak, indeed, and
unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor
and the robber, between the prisoner and the jailer,
between the neck and the guillotine. Four fifths of
the French inhabitants would thankfully take protection from the emperor of Morocco, and would never trouble their heads about the abstract principles of
the power by which they were snatched from imprisonment, robbery, and murder. But then these men can do little or nothing for themselves. They have
no arms, nor magazines, nor chiefs, nor union, nor
the possibility of these things within themselves. On
the whole, therefore, I lay it down as a certainty,
that in the Jacobins no change of mind is to be
expected, and that no others in the territory of
France have an independent and deliberative existene.
The truth is, that France is out of itself, -- the
moral France is separated from the geographical.
The master of the house is expelled, and the robbers
are in possession. If we look for the corporate people
of France, existing as corporate in the eye and intention of public law, (that corporate people, I mean, who are free to deliberate and to decide, and who
have a capacity to treat and conclude,) they are in
Flanders, and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain, Italy,
and England. There are all the princes of the blood,
there are all the orders of the state, there are all the
parliaments of the kingdom.
This being, as I conceive, the true state of France,
as it exists territorially, and as it exists morally, the
? ? ? ? 422 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
question will be, with whom we are to concert our
arrangements, and whom we are to use as our in
struments in the reduction, in the pacification, and
in the settlement of France. The work to be done
must indicate the workmen. Supposing us to have
national objects, we have two principal and one secondary. The first two are so intimately connected
as not to be separated even in thought: the reestablishment of royalty, and the reestablishment of property. One would think it requires not a great deal of argument to prove that the most serious endeavors to restore royalty will be made by Royalists.
Property will be most energetically restored by the
ancient proprietors of that kingdom.
When I speak of Royalists, I wish to be understood
of those who were always such from principle. Every
arm lifted up for royalty from the beginning was the
arm of a man so principled. I do not think there
are ten exceptions.
The principled Royalists are certainly not of force
to effect these objects by themselves. If they were,
the operations of the present great combination would
be wholly unnecessary. What I contend for is, that
they should be consulted with, treated with, and em-,
ployed; and that no foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment and local
knowledge so competent to answer all these purposes, as the natural proprietors of the country.
Their number, for an exiled party, is also considerable. Almost the whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and civil, have been steadily devoted to the. monarchy. This body does
not amount to less than seventy thousand, -a very
great number in the composition of the respectable
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 423
classes in any society. I am sure, that, if half that
number of the same description were taken out of
this country, it would leave hardly anything that I
should call the people of England. On the faith of
the Emperor and the king of Prussia, a body of ten
thousand nobility on horseback, with the king's two
brothers at their head, served with the king of Prussia in the campaign of 1792, and equipped themselves
with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and
exhausted credit. * It is not now the question, how
that great force came to be rendered useless and totally dissipated. I state it now, only to remark that
a great part of the same force exists, and would act,
if it were enabled. I am sure everything has shown
us that in this war with France one Frenchman is
worth twenty foreigners. La Vendee is a proof of
this.
If we wish to make an impression on the minds
of any persons in France, or to persuade them to
join our standard, it is impossible that they should
not be more easily led, and more readily formed and
disciplined, (civilly and martially disciplined,) by
those who speak their language, who are acquainted
with their manners, who are conversant with their
usages and habits of thinking, and who have a local
knowledge of their country, and some remains of ancient credit and consideration, than with a body con* Before the Revolution, the French noblesse were so reduced in
numbers that they did not much exceed twenty thousand at least
of full-grown men. As they have been very cruelly formed into entire corps of soldiers, it is estimated, that, by the sword, and distempers in the field, they have not lost less than five thousand men; and if this course is pursued, it is to be feared that the whole body of
the French nobility may be extinguished. Several hundreds have
also perished by famine, and various accidents.
? ? ? ? 424 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
gregated from all tongues and tribes. Where none
of the respectable native interests are seen in the
transaction, it is impossible that any declarations
can convince those that are within; or those that
are without, that anything else than some sort of
hostility in the style of a conqueror is meant. At
best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such
there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice
whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and
picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of
the sky. They may take protection, (and they would,
I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor
zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but
bands of English, Spaniards, Neapolitans, Sardinians,
Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Slavonians, Croatians, acting as principals, it is impossible
they should think we come with a beneficent design. . Many of those fierce and barbarous people have already given proofs how little they regard any French party whatsoever. Some of these nations the people
of France are jealous of: such are the English and
the Spaniards; -- others they despise: such are the
Italians; - others they hate and dread: such are the
German and Danubian powers. At best, such interposition of ancient enemies excites apprehension; but
in this case, how can they suppose that we come to
maintain their legitimate monarchy in a truly paternal French government, to protect their privileges,
their laws, their religion, and their property, when
they see us make use of no one person who has any
interest in them, any knowledge of them, or any the
least zeal for them? On the contrary, they see that
we do not suffer any of those who have shown a zeal
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 425
in that cause which we seem to make our own t9
come freely into any place in which the allies obtain
ally footing.
If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to
see what it is they expect. We have had a proposal
from the Royalists of Poitou. They are well entitled,
after a bloody war maintained for eight months against
all the powers of anarchy, to speak the sentiments of
the Royalists of France. Do they desire us to exclude
their princes, their clergy, their nobility? The direct
contrary. They earnestly solicit that men of every
one of these descriptions should be sent to them.
They do not callfor English, Austrian, or Prussian
officers. They call for French emigrant officers.
They call for the exiled priests. They have demanded the Comte d'Artois to appear at their head.
These are the demands (quite natural demands) of
those who are ready to follow the standard of monarchy.
The great means, therefore, of restoring the monarchy, which we have made the main object of the war, is, to assist the dignity, the religion, and the property
of France to repossess themselves of the means of
their natural influence. This ought to be the primary object of all our politics and all our military operations. Otherwise everything will move in a
preposterous order, and nothing but confusion and
destruction will follow.
I know that misfortune is not made to win respect
from ordinary minds. I know that there is a leaning to prosperity, however obtained, and a prejudice
in its favor. I know there is a disposition to hope
something from the variety and inconstancy of villany, rather than from the tiresome uniformity of fixed
? ? ? ? 426 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
principle. There have been, I admit, situations in
which a guiding person or party might be gained
over, and through him or them the whole body of a
nation. For the hope of such a conversion, and of
deriving advantage from enemies, it might be politic
for a while to throw your friends into the shade.
But examples drawn from history in occasions like
the present will be found dangerously to mislead us.
France has no resemblance to other countries which
have undergone troubles and been purified by them.
If France, Jacobinized as it has been for four full
years, did contain any bodies of authority and disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not,) such is the levity of those who have expelled
everything respectable in their country, such their
ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit, their
habits of defying everything human and divine, that
no engagement would hold with them for three
months; nor, indeed, could they cohere together for
any purpose of civilized society, if left as they now
are. There must be a means, not only of breaking
their strength within themselves, but of civiliziny
them; and these two things must go together, before
we can possibly treat with them, not only as a nation,
but with any division of them.
Descriptions of men
of their own race, but better in rank, superior in
property and decorum, of honorable, decent, and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to such a frame as to qualify them so much as to
come into contact with a civilized nation. A set of
those ferocious savages with arms in their hands, left
to themselves in one part of the country whilst you
proceed to another, would break forth into outrages
at least as bad as their former. They must, as fast
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 427
as gained, (if ever they are gained,) be put under the
guide, direction, and government of better Frenchmen than themselves, or they will instantly relapse
into a fever of aggravated Jacobinism.
We must not judge of other parts of France by the
temporary submission of Toulon, with two vast fleets
in its harbor, and a garrison far more numerous than
all the inhabitants able to bear arms. If they were
left to themselves, I am quite sure they would not retain their attachment to monarchy of any name for
a single week.
To administer the only cure for the unheard-of disorders of that undone country, I think it infinitely
happy for us that God has given into our hands
more effectual remedies than human contrivance
could point out. We have in our bosom, and in
the bosom of other civilized states, nearer forty than
thirty thousand persons, providentially preserved, not
only from the crueltv and violence, but from the contagion of the horrid practices, sentiments, and language of the Jacobins, and even sacredly guarded from the view of such abominable scenes. If we
should obtain, in any considerable district, a footing
in France, we possess an immense body of physicians
and magistrates of the mind, whom we now know to
be the most discreet, gentle, well-tempered, conciliatory, virtuous, and pious persons who in any order
probably existed in the world. You will have a missioner of peace and order in every parish. Never
was a wiser national economy than in the charity
of the English and of other countries. Never was
money better expended than in the maintenance of
this body of civil troops for reestablishing order in
France, and for thus securing its civilization to Eu
? ? ? ? 428 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
rope. This means, if properly used, is of value inestimable.
Nor is this corps of instruments of civilization confined to the first order of that state, -- I mean the clergy. The allied powers possess also an exceedingly numerous, well-informed, sensible, ingenious, high-principled, and spirited body of cavaliers in the
expatriated landed interest of France, as well qualified, at least, as I (who have been taught by time and experience to moderate my calculation of the expectancy of human abilities) ever expected to see in the body of any landed gentlemen and soldiers by their
birth. France is well winnowed and sifted. Its virtuous men are, I believe, amongst the most virtuous,
as its wicked are amongst the most abandoned upon
earth. Whatever in the territory of France may be
found to be in the middle between these must be attracted to the better part. This will be compassed, when every gentleman, everywhere being restored to
his landed estate, each on his patrimonial ground,
may join the clergy in reanimating the loyalty, fidelity, and religion of the people, - that these gentlemen proprietors of land may sort that people according to
the trust they severally merit, that they may arm the
honest and well-affected, and disarm and disable the
factious and ill-disposed. No foreigner can make
this discrimination nor these arrangements. The
ancient corporations of burghers according to their
several modes should be restored, and placed (as
they ought to be) in the hands of men of gravity
and property in the cities or bailliages, according to
the proper constitutions of the commons or third estate of France. They will restrain and regulate the seditious rabble there, as the gentlemen will on their
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 429
own estates. In this way, and in this way alone, the
country (once broken in upon by foreign force well
directed) may be gained and settled. It must be
gained and settled by itself, anild through the medium
of its own native dignity and property. It is not
honest, it is not decent, still less is it politic, for
foreign powers themselves to attempt anything in
this minute, internal, local detail, in which they could
show nothing but ignorance, imbecility, confusion,
and oppression. As to the prince who has a just
claim to exercise the regency of France, like other
men he is not without his faults and his defects.
But faults or defects (always supposing them faults
of common human infirmity) are not what in anly
country destroy a legal title to government. These
princes are kept in a poor, obscure, country town of
the king of Prussia's. Their reputation is entirely
at the mercy of every calumniator. They cannot
show themselves, they cannot explain themselves,
as princes ought to do. After being well informed
as any man here can be, I do not find that these
blemishes in this eminent person are at all considerable, or that they at all affect a character which is full of probity, honor, generosity, and real goodness.
In some points he has but too much resemblance
to his unfortunate brother, who, with all his weaknesses, had a good understanding, and many parts of an excellent man and a good king. But Monsieur, without supposing the other deficient, (as he
was not,) excels him in general knowledge, and in
a sharp and keen observation, with somnething of
a better address, and an happier mode of speaking
and of writing. His conversation is open, agreeable,
and informed; his manners gracious and princely.
? ? ? ? 130 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
His brother, the Comte d'Artois, sustains still better the representation of his place. He is eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a decided
character, full of energy and activity. In a word,
he is a brave, honorable, and accomplished cavalier.
Their brethren of royalty, if they were true to their
own cause and interest, instead of relegating these
illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring
them forward in their courts and camps, and exhibit
them to (what they would speedily obtain) the esteem,
respect, and affection of mankind.
Objection As to their knocking at every door, (which
made to the
regent's en- seems to give offence,) can anything be more
deavor to go
to Spain. natural? Abandoned, despised, rendered in
a manner outlaws by all the powers of Europe, who
have treated their unfortunate brethren with all the
giddy pride and improvident insolence of blind, unfeeling prosperity, who did not even send them a compliment of condolence on the murder of their
brother and sister, in such a state is it to be wondered at, or blamed, that they tried every way, likely or unlikely, well or ill chosen, to get out of the horrible pit into which they are fallen, and that in particular they tried whether the princes of their
own blood might at length be brought to think the
cause of kings, and of kings of their race, wounded
in the murder and exile of the branch of France, of
as much importance as the killing of a brace of partridges? If they were absolutely idle, and only eat in sloth their bread of sorrow and dependence, they
would be forgotten, or at best thought of as wretches
unworthy of their pretensions, which they had done
nothing to support. If they err from our interests,
what care has been taken to keep them in those in
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 431
terests? or what desire has ever been shown to employ them in any other way than as instruments of their own degradation, shame, and ruin?
The Parliament of Paris, by whom the title of the
regent is to be recognized, (not made,) according to
the laws of the kingdom, is ready to recognize it, and
to register it, if a place of meeting was given to them,
which might be within their own jurisdiction, supposing that only locality was required for the exercise of their functions: for it is one of the advantages of
monarchy to have no local seat. It may maintain
its rights out of the sphere of its territorial jurisdiction, if other powers will suffer it.
I am well apprised that the little intriguers, and
whisperers, and self-conceited, thoughtless babblers,
worse than either, run about to depreciate the fallen
virtue of a great nation. But whilst they talk, we
must make our choice, - they or the Jacobins. We
have no other option. As to those who in the pride
of a prosperity not obtained by their wisdom, valor,
or industry, think so well of themselves, and of their
own abilities and virtues, and so ill of other men,
truth obliges me to say that they are not founded
in their presumption concerning themselves, nor in
their contempt of the French princes, magistrates,
nobility, and clergy. Instead of inspiring me with
dislike and distrust of the unfortuLnate, engaged with
us in a common cause against our Jacobin enemy,
they take away all my esteem for their own characters, and all my deference to their judgment.
There are some few French gentlemen, indeed, who
talk a language not wholly different from this jargon.
Those whom I have in my eye I respect as gallant
soldiers, as much as any one can do; but on their
? ? ? ? 432 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
political judgment and prudence I have not the
Slightest reliance, nor on their knowledge of their
own country, or of its laws and Constitution. They
are, if not enemies, at least not friends, to the orders
of their own state, - not to the princes, the clergy, or
the nobility; they possess only an attachment to the
monarchy, or rather to the persons of the late king
and queen. In all other respects their conversation
is Jacobin. I am afraid they, or some of them, go
into the closets of ministers, and tell them that the
affairs of France will be better arranged by the allied
powers than by the landed proprietors of the kingdom, or by the princes who have a right to govern; and that, if any French are at all to be employed in
the settlement of their country, it ought to be only
those who have never declared any decided opinion,
or taken any active part in the Revolution. *
I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere
soldiers of fortune, who, though men of integrity and
honor, would as gladly receive military rank from
Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the regent of
France. Perhaps their not having as much importance at his court as they could wish may incline themn to this strange imagination. Perhaps, having
no property in old France, they are more indifferent
about its restoration. Their language is certainly
flattering to all ministers in all courts. We all are
meln; we all love to be told of the extent of our own
power and our own faculties. If we love glory, we
are jealous of partners, and afraid even of our own
instruments. It is of all modes of flattery the most
effectual, to be told that you can regulate the affairs
of another kingdom better than its hereditary proprie3 This was the language of the Ministerialists.
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 433
tors. It is formed to flatter the principle of conquest
so natural to all men. It is this principle which is
now making the partition of Poland. The powers
concerned have been told by some perfidious Poles,
and perhaps they believe, that their usurpation is a
great benefit to the people, especially to the common
people. However this may turn out with regard to
Poland, I am quite sure that France could not be so
well under a foreign direction as under that of the
representatives of its own king and its own ancient
estates.
I think I have myself studied France as much as
most of those whom the allied courts are likely to
employ in such a work. I have likewise of myself
as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly
have of themselves. But if I could command the
whole military arm of Europe, I am sure that a
bribe of the best province in that kingdom would not
tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except in
perfect concurrence and concert with the natural,
legal interests of the country, composed of the ecclesiastical, the military, the several corporate bodies of justice and of burghership, making under a monarch (I repeat it again and again) the _French nation according to its fundamental Constitution. No considerate statesman would undertake to meddle with it upon any other condition.
The government of that kingdom is fundamentally
monarchical. The public law of Europe has never
recognized in it-any other form of government. The
potentates of Europe have, by that law, a right, an
interest, and a duty to know with what government
they are to treat, and what they are to admit into the
federative society, - or, in other words, into the diploVOL. IV. 28
? ? ? ? 434 ON THIE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
matic republic of Europe. This right is clear and
indisputable.
What other and further interference they have a
right to in the interior of the concerns of another people is a matter on which, as on every political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid
down. Our neighbors are men; and who will attempt to dictate the laws under which it is allowable
or forbidden to take a part in the concerns of men,
whether they are considered individually or in a collective capacity, whenever charity to them, or a care
of my own safety, calls forth my activity? Circumstances perpetually variable, directing a moral prudence and discretion, the general principles of which
never vary, must alone prescribe a conduct fitting on
such occasions. The latest casuists of public law are
rather of a republican cast, and, in my mind, by no
means so averse as they ought to be to a right in the
people (a word which, ill defined, is of the most
dangerous use) to make changes at their pleasure in
the fundamental laws of their country. These writers, however, when a country is divided, leave abundant liberty for a neighbor to support any of the parties according to his choice. * This interference must, indeed, always be a right, whilst the privilege of doing good to others, and of averting from them every
sort of evil, I. s a right: circumstances may render
that right a duty. It depends wholly on this, whether it be a bona fide charity to a party, and a prudent
precaution with regard to yourself, or whether, under
the pretence of aiding one of the parties in a nation,
you act in such a manner as to aggravate its calami.
ties and accomplish its final destruction. In truth,
* Vattel.
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 435
It is not the interfering or keeping aloof, but iniquitous intermeddling, or treacherous inaction, which is praised or blamed by the decision of an equitable
judge.
It will be a just and irresistible presumption against
the fairness of the interposing power, that he takes
with him no party or description of men in the divided state. It is not probable that these parties should all, and all alike, be more adverse to the true interests of their country, and less capable of forming a judgment upon them, than those who are absolute
strangers to their affairs, and to the character of the
actors in them, and have but a remote, feeble, and
secondary sympathy with their interest. Sormetimes
a calm and healing arbiter may be necessary; but he
is to compose differences, not to give laws. It is impossible that any one should not feel the full force of that presumption. Even people, whose politics for
the supposed good of their own country lead them to
take advantage of the dissensions of a neighboring
nation in order to ruin it, will not directly propose to
exclude the natives, but they will take that mode of
consulting and employing them which most nearly
approaches to an exclusion. In some particulars they
propose what amounts to that exclusion, in others
they do much worse. They recommend to ministry,
"that no Frenchman who has given a decided opinion or acted a decided part in this great Revolution, for or against it, should be countenanced, brought
forward, trusted, or employed, even in the strictest
subordination to the ministers of the allied powers. "
Although one would think that this advice would
stand condemned on the first proposition, yet, as it
has been made popular, and has been proceeded upon
? ? ? ? 436 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
practically, I think it right to give it - full consideration.
And first, I have asked myself who these Frenchmen are, that, in the state their own country has been in for these last five years, of all the people of Europe, have alone not been able to form a decided opinion, or have been unwilling to act a decided
part?
Looking over all the names I have heard of in this
great revolution in all human affairs, I find no man
of any distinction who has remained in that more
than Stoical apathy, but the Prince de Conti. This
mean, stupid, selfish, swinish, and cowardly animal,
universally known and despised as such, has indeed,
except in one abortive attempt to elope, been perfectly neutral. However, his neutrality, which it seems would qualify him for trust, and on a competition must set aside the Prince de Conde, can
be of no sort of service. His moderation has not
been able to keep him from a jail. The allied powers must draw him from that jail, before they can have the full advantage of the exertions of this great
neutralist.
Except him, I do not recollect a man of rank or
talents, who by his speeches or his votes, by his pen
or by his sword, has not been active on this scene.
The time, indeed, could admit no neutrality in any
person worthy of the name of man. There were
originally two great divisions in France: the one is
that which overturned the whole of the government
in Church and State, and erected a republic on the
basis of atheism. Their grand engine was the Jacobin Club, a sort of secession from which, but exactly on the same principles, begat another short-lived one,
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 437
called the Club of Eighty-Nine,* which was chiefly
guided by the court rebels, who, in addition to the
crimes of which they were guilty in common with the
others, had the merit of betraying a gracious master
and a kind benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction,
which since we have seen, do not in the least differ
from each other in their principles, their dispositions,
or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel has been about power: in that quarrel, like wave
succeeding wave, one faction has got the better and
expelled the other. Thus, La Fayette for a while got
the better of Orleans; and Orleans afterwards prevailed over La Fayette. Brissot overpowered OrlMans; Barere and Robespierre, and their faction,
mastered them both, and cut off their heads. All
who were not Royalists have been listed in some or
other of these divisions. If it were of any use to settle a precedence, the elder ought to have his rank.
The first authors, plotters, and contrivers of this monstrous scheme seem to me entitled to the first place in
our distrust and abhorrence. I have seen some of
those who are thought the best amongst the original
rebels, and I have not neglected the means of being
informed concerning the others. I can very truly
say, that I have not found, by observation, or inquiry,
that any sense of the evils produced by their projects
has produced in them, or any one of them, the smallest degree of repentance. Disappointment and mortification undoubtedly they feel; but to them repentance is a thing impossible. They are atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed even
to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude
* The first object of this club was the propagation of Jacobin
principles.
? ? ? ? 438 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
from their ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the physical, the moral, and the political world engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances to
fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious
repose or honorable action or wise speculation in
the lurking-holes of a foreign land, into which (in a
common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads
amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they
are at this very hour as busy in the confection of the
dirt-pies of their imaginary constitutions as if they
had not been quite fresh from destroying, by their
impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country
upon earth.
It is, however, out of these, or of such as these,
guilty and impenitent, despising the experience of
others, and their own, that some people talk of
choosing their negotiators with those Jacobins who
they suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind.
They flatter themselves, it seems, that the friendly
habits formed during their original partnership of
iniquity, a similarity of character, and a conformity
in the groundwork of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and gain them over to some recognition of royalty. But surely this is to read
human nature very ill. The several sectaries in
this schism of the Jacobins are the very last men
in the world to trust each other. Fellowship in
treason is a bad ground of confidence. The last
quarrels are the sorest; and the injuries received
or offered by your own associates are ever the most
bitterly resented. The people of France, of every
name and description, would a thousand times sooner
listen to the Prince de Cond6, or to the Archbishop
of Aix, or the Bishop of St. Pol, or to Monsieur de
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 439
Cazales, than to La Fayette, or Dumouriez, or the
Vicomte de Noailles, or the Bishop of Auturi, or
Necker, or his disciple Lally Tollendal. Against
the first description they have not the smallest animosity, beyond that of a merely political dissension. The others they regard as traitors.
The first description is that of the Christian Royalists, men who as earnestly wished for reformation
as they opposed innovation in the fundamental parts
of their Church and State. Their part has been very
decided. Accordingly, they are to be set aside in the
restoration of Church and State. It is an odd kind
of disqualification, where the restoration of religion
and monarchy is the question. If England should
(God forbid it should! ) fall into the same misfortune
with France, and that the court.
that Thomas Paine, that La Fayette, and the ex-Bishop of Autun, the Abbd Gregoire, with all the gang of
the Siey~ses, the Henriots, and the Santerres, if they
could secure themselves in the fruits of their rebel
? ? ? ? 414 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
lion and robbery, would be perfectly indifferent,
whether the most unhappy of all infants, whom by
the lessons of the shoemaker, his governor and guardian, they are training up studiously and methodically to be an idiot, or, what is worse, the most wicked and base of mankind, continues to receive his civic
education in the Temple or the Tuileries, whilst they,
and such as they, really govern the kingdom.
It cannot be too often and too strongly inculcated,
that monarchy and property must, in France, go together, or neither can exist. To think of the possibility of the existence of a permanent and hereditary royalty, where nothing else is hereditary or permanent
in point either of personal or corporate dignity, is a
ruinous chimera, worthy of the Abbe Sieyes, and
those wicked fools, his associates, who usurped power
by the murders of the 19th of July and the 6th of
October, 1789, and who brought forth the monster
which they called Democratie Royale, or the Constitution.
I believe that most thinking men would prefer
infinitely some sober and sensible form of a republic, in which there was no mention at all of a king,
but which held out some reasonable security to property, life, and personal freedom, to a scheme of things
like this De'mocratie Royale, founded on impiety, immorality, fraudulent currencies, the confiscation of
innocent individuals, and the pretended rights of
man, - and which, in effect, excluding the whole
body of the nobility, clergy, and landed property of
a great nation, threw everything into the hands of
a desperate set of obscure adventurers, who led to
every mischief a blind and bloody band of sans-culottes. At the head, or rather at the tail, of this sys
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 415
temrn was a miserable pageant, as its ostensible instrument, who was to be treated with every species of
indignity, till the moment when he was conveyed
from the palace of contempt to the dungeon of horror, and thence led by a brewer of his capital, through
the applauses of an hired, frantic, drunken multitude,
to lose his head upon a scaffold
This is the, Constitution, or Dedmocratie Royale;
and this is what infallibly would be again set up
in France, to run exactly the same round, if the
predominant power should so far be forced to submit as to receive the name of a king, leaving it to
the Jacobins (that is, to those who have subverted
royalty and destroyed property) to modify the one
and to distribute the other as spoil. By the Jacobins I mean indiscriminately the Brissotins and the
Maratists, knowing no sort of difference between
them. As to any other party, none exists in that
unhappy country. The Royalists (those in Poitou
excepted) are banished and extinguished; and as
to what they call the Constitutionalists, or. Democrates Royaux, they never had an existence of the
smallest degree of power, consideration, or authority, nor, if they differ at all from the rest of the
atheistic banditti, (which from their actions and
principles I have no reason to think,) were they
ever any other than the temporary tools and instruments of the more determined, able, and systematic regicides. Several attempts have been made to support this chimerical De'mocratie Royale: the
first was by La Fayette; the last by Dumouriez:
they tended only to show that this absurd project had no party to support it. The Girondists
under Wimpfen, and at Bordeaux, have made some
? ? ? ? 416 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
struggle. The Constitutionalists never could make
any, and for a very plain reason: they were leaders in rebellion. All their principles and their whole
scheme of government being republican, they could
never excite the smallest degree of enthusiasm in
favor of the unhappy monarch, whom they had rendered contemptible, to make him the executive officer in their new commonwealth. They only appeared as traitors to their own Jacobin cause, not as faithful adherents to the king.
In an address to France, in an attempt to treat
with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is impossible we should mean the geographical, we must always mean the moral and political country. I believe we shall be in a great error,
if we act upon an idea that there exists in that country any organized body of men who might be willing
to treat on equitable terms for the restoration of
their monarchy, but who are nice in balancing those
terms, and who would accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit
to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of some constitution which suited
with their fancies.
I take the state of France to be totally different.
I know of no such body, and of no such party. So
far from a combination of twenty men, (always excepting Poitou,) I never yet heard that a single man
could be named of sufficient force or influence to answer for another man, much less for the smallest district in the country, or for the most incomplete company of soldiers in the army. We see every man that the Jacobins choose to apprehend taken up in
his village or in his house, and conveyed to prison
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 417
without the least shadow of resistance, - and this indifferently, whether he is suspected of Royalism, or
Federalism, Moderantism, Democracy Royal, or any
other of the names of faction which they start by the
hour. What is much more astonishing, (and, if we
did not carefully attend to the genius and circumstances of this Revolution, must indeed appear incredible,) all their most accredited military No individual influence, men, from a generalissimo to a corporal, civilormilimay be arrested, (each in the midst of his tary.
camp, and covered with the laurels of accumulated
victories,) tied neck and heels, thrown into a cart,
and sent to Paris to be disposed of at the pleasure of
the Revolutionary tribunals.
As no individuals have power and' influ- No corpora
tions of jusence, so there are no corporations, whether tice,com-.
merce, or
of lawyers or burghers, existing. The As- police.
sembly called Constituent, destroyed all such institutions very early. The primary and secondary assemblies, by their original constitution, were to be
dissolved when they answered the purpose of electing the magistrates, and were expressly disqualified
from performing any corporate act whatsoever. The
transient magistrates have been almost all removed
before the expiration of their terms, and new have
been lately imposed upon the people without the
form or ceremony of an election. These magistrates
during their existence are put under, as all the executive authorities are from first to last, the popular
societies (called Jacobin clubs) of the several countries, and this by an express order of the National
Convention: it is even made a case of death to oppose or attack those clubs. They, too, have been
lately subjected to an expurgatory scrutiny, to drive.
VOL. IV. 27
? ? ? ? 418 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
out from them everything savoring of what they call
the crime of moderantism, of which offence, however,
few were guilty. But as people began to take refuge
from their persecutions amongst themselves, they
have driven them from that last asylum.
The state of France is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, - the oppressors and
the oppressed.
The first has the whole authority of the state in
their hands, --all the arms, all the revenues of the
public, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower sort from their occupations and have put them into pay, that they
may form them into a body of janizaries to overrule
and awe property. The heads of these wretches they
never suffer to cool. They supply them with a
food for fury varied by the day,-mbesides the sensual state of intoxication, from which they are rarely
free. They have made the priests and people formally abjure the Divinity; they have estranged them
from every civil, moral, and social, or even natural and instinctive sentiment, habit, and practice,
and have rendered them systeniatically savages, to
make it impossible for them to be the instruments
of any sober and virtuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any state of order, under any name whatsoever. The other description -- the oppressed- are people of some property: they are the small relics of
the persecuted landed interest; they are the burghers
and the farmers. By the very circumstance of their
being of some property, though numerous in some
points of view, they cannot be very considerable as
a number. In cities the nature of their occupations
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 419
renders them domestic and feeble; in the country
it confines them to their farm for subsistence. The
national guards are all changed and reformed. Everything suspicious in the description of which they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called
of vigilance and safety, are everywhere formed: a
most severe and scrutinizing inquisition, far more
rigid than anything ever known or imagined. Two
persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to
their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers
scarcely credible have been executed, and their
property confiscated. At Paris, and in most other
towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole, - which
they cannot obtain without a daily ticket delivered
to them by their masters. Multitudes of all ages
and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason
to believe that in France there are not, for various
state crimes, so few as twenty thousand * actually
in jail, -- a large proportion of people of property
in any state. If a father of a family should show
any disposition to resist or to withdraw himself from
their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages that
they keep the troops, which they force by masses
(as they call it) into the field, true to their colors.
Another of their resources is not to be forgotten.
They have lately found a way of giving a sort of
ubiquity to- the supreme sovereign authority, which
no monarch has been able yet to give to any representation of his.
The commissioners of the National Convention,
who are the members of the Convention itself, and
really exercise all its powers, make continual circuits
* Some accounts make them five times as many.
? ? ? ? 420 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
through every province, and visits to every army.
There they supersede all the ordinary authorities,
civil and military, and change and alter everything
at their pleasure. So that, in effect, no deliberative
capacity exists in any portion of the inhabitants.
Toulon, republican in principle, having taken its
decision in a moment under the guillotine, and before
the arrival of these commissioners, - Toulon, being a
place regularly fortified, and having in its bosom a
navy in part highly discontented, has escaped, though
by a sort of miracle: and it would not have escaped,
if two powerful fleets had not been at the door, to
give them not only strong, but prompt and immediate
succor, especially as neither this nor any other seaport town in France can be depended on, from the peculiarly savage dispositions, manners, and connections among the lower sort of people in those places. This I take to be the true state of things in France,
so far as it regards any existing bodies, whether of legal or voluntary association, capable of acting or of treating in corps.
As to the oppressed individuals, they are many,
and as discontented as men must be under the monstrous and complicated tyranny of all sorts with which they are crushed. They want no stimulus to throv
off this dreadful yoke; but they do want, not manifestoes, which they have had even to surfeit, but
real protection, force, and succor.
The disputes and questions of men at their ease
do not at all affect their minds, or ever can occupy
the minds of men in their situation. These theories
are long since gone by; they have had their day, and
have done their mischief. The question is not between the rabble of systems, Fayettism, Condorcet.
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 421
ism, Monarchism, or Democratism, or Federalism, on
the one side, and the fundamental laws of France
on the other, - or between all these systems amongst
themselves. It is a controversy (weak, indeed, and
unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor
and the robber, between the prisoner and the jailer,
between the neck and the guillotine. Four fifths of
the French inhabitants would thankfully take protection from the emperor of Morocco, and would never trouble their heads about the abstract principles of
the power by which they were snatched from imprisonment, robbery, and murder. But then these men can do little or nothing for themselves. They have
no arms, nor magazines, nor chiefs, nor union, nor
the possibility of these things within themselves. On
the whole, therefore, I lay it down as a certainty,
that in the Jacobins no change of mind is to be
expected, and that no others in the territory of
France have an independent and deliberative existene.
The truth is, that France is out of itself, -- the
moral France is separated from the geographical.
The master of the house is expelled, and the robbers
are in possession. If we look for the corporate people
of France, existing as corporate in the eye and intention of public law, (that corporate people, I mean, who are free to deliberate and to decide, and who
have a capacity to treat and conclude,) they are in
Flanders, and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain, Italy,
and England. There are all the princes of the blood,
there are all the orders of the state, there are all the
parliaments of the kingdom.
This being, as I conceive, the true state of France,
as it exists territorially, and as it exists morally, the
? ? ? ? 422 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
question will be, with whom we are to concert our
arrangements, and whom we are to use as our in
struments in the reduction, in the pacification, and
in the settlement of France. The work to be done
must indicate the workmen. Supposing us to have
national objects, we have two principal and one secondary. The first two are so intimately connected
as not to be separated even in thought: the reestablishment of royalty, and the reestablishment of property. One would think it requires not a great deal of argument to prove that the most serious endeavors to restore royalty will be made by Royalists.
Property will be most energetically restored by the
ancient proprietors of that kingdom.
When I speak of Royalists, I wish to be understood
of those who were always such from principle. Every
arm lifted up for royalty from the beginning was the
arm of a man so principled. I do not think there
are ten exceptions.
The principled Royalists are certainly not of force
to effect these objects by themselves. If they were,
the operations of the present great combination would
be wholly unnecessary. What I contend for is, that
they should be consulted with, treated with, and em-,
ployed; and that no foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment and local
knowledge so competent to answer all these purposes, as the natural proprietors of the country.
Their number, for an exiled party, is also considerable. Almost the whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and civil, have been steadily devoted to the. monarchy. This body does
not amount to less than seventy thousand, -a very
great number in the composition of the respectable
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 423
classes in any society. I am sure, that, if half that
number of the same description were taken out of
this country, it would leave hardly anything that I
should call the people of England. On the faith of
the Emperor and the king of Prussia, a body of ten
thousand nobility on horseback, with the king's two
brothers at their head, served with the king of Prussia in the campaign of 1792, and equipped themselves
with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and
exhausted credit. * It is not now the question, how
that great force came to be rendered useless and totally dissipated. I state it now, only to remark that
a great part of the same force exists, and would act,
if it were enabled. I am sure everything has shown
us that in this war with France one Frenchman is
worth twenty foreigners. La Vendee is a proof of
this.
If we wish to make an impression on the minds
of any persons in France, or to persuade them to
join our standard, it is impossible that they should
not be more easily led, and more readily formed and
disciplined, (civilly and martially disciplined,) by
those who speak their language, who are acquainted
with their manners, who are conversant with their
usages and habits of thinking, and who have a local
knowledge of their country, and some remains of ancient credit and consideration, than with a body con* Before the Revolution, the French noblesse were so reduced in
numbers that they did not much exceed twenty thousand at least
of full-grown men. As they have been very cruelly formed into entire corps of soldiers, it is estimated, that, by the sword, and distempers in the field, they have not lost less than five thousand men; and if this course is pursued, it is to be feared that the whole body of
the French nobility may be extinguished. Several hundreds have
also perished by famine, and various accidents.
? ? ? ? 424 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
gregated from all tongues and tribes. Where none
of the respectable native interests are seen in the
transaction, it is impossible that any declarations
can convince those that are within; or those that
are without, that anything else than some sort of
hostility in the style of a conqueror is meant. At
best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such
there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice
whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and
picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of
the sky. They may take protection, (and they would,
I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor
zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but
bands of English, Spaniards, Neapolitans, Sardinians,
Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Slavonians, Croatians, acting as principals, it is impossible
they should think we come with a beneficent design. . Many of those fierce and barbarous people have already given proofs how little they regard any French party whatsoever. Some of these nations the people
of France are jealous of: such are the English and
the Spaniards; -- others they despise: such are the
Italians; - others they hate and dread: such are the
German and Danubian powers. At best, such interposition of ancient enemies excites apprehension; but
in this case, how can they suppose that we come to
maintain their legitimate monarchy in a truly paternal French government, to protect their privileges,
their laws, their religion, and their property, when
they see us make use of no one person who has any
interest in them, any knowledge of them, or any the
least zeal for them? On the contrary, they see that
we do not suffer any of those who have shown a zeal
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 425
in that cause which we seem to make our own t9
come freely into any place in which the allies obtain
ally footing.
If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to
see what it is they expect. We have had a proposal
from the Royalists of Poitou. They are well entitled,
after a bloody war maintained for eight months against
all the powers of anarchy, to speak the sentiments of
the Royalists of France. Do they desire us to exclude
their princes, their clergy, their nobility? The direct
contrary. They earnestly solicit that men of every
one of these descriptions should be sent to them.
They do not callfor English, Austrian, or Prussian
officers. They call for French emigrant officers.
They call for the exiled priests. They have demanded the Comte d'Artois to appear at their head.
These are the demands (quite natural demands) of
those who are ready to follow the standard of monarchy.
The great means, therefore, of restoring the monarchy, which we have made the main object of the war, is, to assist the dignity, the religion, and the property
of France to repossess themselves of the means of
their natural influence. This ought to be the primary object of all our politics and all our military operations. Otherwise everything will move in a
preposterous order, and nothing but confusion and
destruction will follow.
I know that misfortune is not made to win respect
from ordinary minds. I know that there is a leaning to prosperity, however obtained, and a prejudice
in its favor. I know there is a disposition to hope
something from the variety and inconstancy of villany, rather than from the tiresome uniformity of fixed
? ? ? ? 426 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
principle. There have been, I admit, situations in
which a guiding person or party might be gained
over, and through him or them the whole body of a
nation. For the hope of such a conversion, and of
deriving advantage from enemies, it might be politic
for a while to throw your friends into the shade.
But examples drawn from history in occasions like
the present will be found dangerously to mislead us.
France has no resemblance to other countries which
have undergone troubles and been purified by them.
If France, Jacobinized as it has been for four full
years, did contain any bodies of authority and disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not,) such is the levity of those who have expelled
everything respectable in their country, such their
ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit, their
habits of defying everything human and divine, that
no engagement would hold with them for three
months; nor, indeed, could they cohere together for
any purpose of civilized society, if left as they now
are. There must be a means, not only of breaking
their strength within themselves, but of civiliziny
them; and these two things must go together, before
we can possibly treat with them, not only as a nation,
but with any division of them.
Descriptions of men
of their own race, but better in rank, superior in
property and decorum, of honorable, decent, and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to such a frame as to qualify them so much as to
come into contact with a civilized nation. A set of
those ferocious savages with arms in their hands, left
to themselves in one part of the country whilst you
proceed to another, would break forth into outrages
at least as bad as their former. They must, as fast
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 427
as gained, (if ever they are gained,) be put under the
guide, direction, and government of better Frenchmen than themselves, or they will instantly relapse
into a fever of aggravated Jacobinism.
We must not judge of other parts of France by the
temporary submission of Toulon, with two vast fleets
in its harbor, and a garrison far more numerous than
all the inhabitants able to bear arms. If they were
left to themselves, I am quite sure they would not retain their attachment to monarchy of any name for
a single week.
To administer the only cure for the unheard-of disorders of that undone country, I think it infinitely
happy for us that God has given into our hands
more effectual remedies than human contrivance
could point out. We have in our bosom, and in
the bosom of other civilized states, nearer forty than
thirty thousand persons, providentially preserved, not
only from the crueltv and violence, but from the contagion of the horrid practices, sentiments, and language of the Jacobins, and even sacredly guarded from the view of such abominable scenes. If we
should obtain, in any considerable district, a footing
in France, we possess an immense body of physicians
and magistrates of the mind, whom we now know to
be the most discreet, gentle, well-tempered, conciliatory, virtuous, and pious persons who in any order
probably existed in the world. You will have a missioner of peace and order in every parish. Never
was a wiser national economy than in the charity
of the English and of other countries. Never was
money better expended than in the maintenance of
this body of civil troops for reestablishing order in
France, and for thus securing its civilization to Eu
? ? ? ? 428 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
rope. This means, if properly used, is of value inestimable.
Nor is this corps of instruments of civilization confined to the first order of that state, -- I mean the clergy. The allied powers possess also an exceedingly numerous, well-informed, sensible, ingenious, high-principled, and spirited body of cavaliers in the
expatriated landed interest of France, as well qualified, at least, as I (who have been taught by time and experience to moderate my calculation of the expectancy of human abilities) ever expected to see in the body of any landed gentlemen and soldiers by their
birth. France is well winnowed and sifted. Its virtuous men are, I believe, amongst the most virtuous,
as its wicked are amongst the most abandoned upon
earth. Whatever in the territory of France may be
found to be in the middle between these must be attracted to the better part. This will be compassed, when every gentleman, everywhere being restored to
his landed estate, each on his patrimonial ground,
may join the clergy in reanimating the loyalty, fidelity, and religion of the people, - that these gentlemen proprietors of land may sort that people according to
the trust they severally merit, that they may arm the
honest and well-affected, and disarm and disable the
factious and ill-disposed. No foreigner can make
this discrimination nor these arrangements. The
ancient corporations of burghers according to their
several modes should be restored, and placed (as
they ought to be) in the hands of men of gravity
and property in the cities or bailliages, according to
the proper constitutions of the commons or third estate of France. They will restrain and regulate the seditious rabble there, as the gentlemen will on their
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 429
own estates. In this way, and in this way alone, the
country (once broken in upon by foreign force well
directed) may be gained and settled. It must be
gained and settled by itself, anild through the medium
of its own native dignity and property. It is not
honest, it is not decent, still less is it politic, for
foreign powers themselves to attempt anything in
this minute, internal, local detail, in which they could
show nothing but ignorance, imbecility, confusion,
and oppression. As to the prince who has a just
claim to exercise the regency of France, like other
men he is not without his faults and his defects.
But faults or defects (always supposing them faults
of common human infirmity) are not what in anly
country destroy a legal title to government. These
princes are kept in a poor, obscure, country town of
the king of Prussia's. Their reputation is entirely
at the mercy of every calumniator. They cannot
show themselves, they cannot explain themselves,
as princes ought to do. After being well informed
as any man here can be, I do not find that these
blemishes in this eminent person are at all considerable, or that they at all affect a character which is full of probity, honor, generosity, and real goodness.
In some points he has but too much resemblance
to his unfortunate brother, who, with all his weaknesses, had a good understanding, and many parts of an excellent man and a good king. But Monsieur, without supposing the other deficient, (as he
was not,) excels him in general knowledge, and in
a sharp and keen observation, with somnething of
a better address, and an happier mode of speaking
and of writing. His conversation is open, agreeable,
and informed; his manners gracious and princely.
? ? ? ? 130 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
His brother, the Comte d'Artois, sustains still better the representation of his place. He is eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a decided
character, full of energy and activity. In a word,
he is a brave, honorable, and accomplished cavalier.
Their brethren of royalty, if they were true to their
own cause and interest, instead of relegating these
illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring
them forward in their courts and camps, and exhibit
them to (what they would speedily obtain) the esteem,
respect, and affection of mankind.
Objection As to their knocking at every door, (which
made to the
regent's en- seems to give offence,) can anything be more
deavor to go
to Spain. natural? Abandoned, despised, rendered in
a manner outlaws by all the powers of Europe, who
have treated their unfortunate brethren with all the
giddy pride and improvident insolence of blind, unfeeling prosperity, who did not even send them a compliment of condolence on the murder of their
brother and sister, in such a state is it to be wondered at, or blamed, that they tried every way, likely or unlikely, well or ill chosen, to get out of the horrible pit into which they are fallen, and that in particular they tried whether the princes of their
own blood might at length be brought to think the
cause of kings, and of kings of their race, wounded
in the murder and exile of the branch of France, of
as much importance as the killing of a brace of partridges? If they were absolutely idle, and only eat in sloth their bread of sorrow and dependence, they
would be forgotten, or at best thought of as wretches
unworthy of their pretensions, which they had done
nothing to support. If they err from our interests,
what care has been taken to keep them in those in
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 431
terests? or what desire has ever been shown to employ them in any other way than as instruments of their own degradation, shame, and ruin?
The Parliament of Paris, by whom the title of the
regent is to be recognized, (not made,) according to
the laws of the kingdom, is ready to recognize it, and
to register it, if a place of meeting was given to them,
which might be within their own jurisdiction, supposing that only locality was required for the exercise of their functions: for it is one of the advantages of
monarchy to have no local seat. It may maintain
its rights out of the sphere of its territorial jurisdiction, if other powers will suffer it.
I am well apprised that the little intriguers, and
whisperers, and self-conceited, thoughtless babblers,
worse than either, run about to depreciate the fallen
virtue of a great nation. But whilst they talk, we
must make our choice, - they or the Jacobins. We
have no other option. As to those who in the pride
of a prosperity not obtained by their wisdom, valor,
or industry, think so well of themselves, and of their
own abilities and virtues, and so ill of other men,
truth obliges me to say that they are not founded
in their presumption concerning themselves, nor in
their contempt of the French princes, magistrates,
nobility, and clergy. Instead of inspiring me with
dislike and distrust of the unfortuLnate, engaged with
us in a common cause against our Jacobin enemy,
they take away all my esteem for their own characters, and all my deference to their judgment.
There are some few French gentlemen, indeed, who
talk a language not wholly different from this jargon.
Those whom I have in my eye I respect as gallant
soldiers, as much as any one can do; but on their
? ? ? ? 432 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
political judgment and prudence I have not the
Slightest reliance, nor on their knowledge of their
own country, or of its laws and Constitution. They
are, if not enemies, at least not friends, to the orders
of their own state, - not to the princes, the clergy, or
the nobility; they possess only an attachment to the
monarchy, or rather to the persons of the late king
and queen. In all other respects their conversation
is Jacobin. I am afraid they, or some of them, go
into the closets of ministers, and tell them that the
affairs of France will be better arranged by the allied
powers than by the landed proprietors of the kingdom, or by the princes who have a right to govern; and that, if any French are at all to be employed in
the settlement of their country, it ought to be only
those who have never declared any decided opinion,
or taken any active part in the Revolution. *
I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere
soldiers of fortune, who, though men of integrity and
honor, would as gladly receive military rank from
Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the regent of
France. Perhaps their not having as much importance at his court as they could wish may incline themn to this strange imagination. Perhaps, having
no property in old France, they are more indifferent
about its restoration. Their language is certainly
flattering to all ministers in all courts. We all are
meln; we all love to be told of the extent of our own
power and our own faculties. If we love glory, we
are jealous of partners, and afraid even of our own
instruments. It is of all modes of flattery the most
effectual, to be told that you can regulate the affairs
of another kingdom better than its hereditary proprie3 This was the language of the Ministerialists.
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 433
tors. It is formed to flatter the principle of conquest
so natural to all men. It is this principle which is
now making the partition of Poland. The powers
concerned have been told by some perfidious Poles,
and perhaps they believe, that their usurpation is a
great benefit to the people, especially to the common
people. However this may turn out with regard to
Poland, I am quite sure that France could not be so
well under a foreign direction as under that of the
representatives of its own king and its own ancient
estates.
I think I have myself studied France as much as
most of those whom the allied courts are likely to
employ in such a work. I have likewise of myself
as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly
have of themselves. But if I could command the
whole military arm of Europe, I am sure that a
bribe of the best province in that kingdom would not
tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except in
perfect concurrence and concert with the natural,
legal interests of the country, composed of the ecclesiastical, the military, the several corporate bodies of justice and of burghership, making under a monarch (I repeat it again and again) the _French nation according to its fundamental Constitution. No considerate statesman would undertake to meddle with it upon any other condition.
The government of that kingdom is fundamentally
monarchical. The public law of Europe has never
recognized in it-any other form of government. The
potentates of Europe have, by that law, a right, an
interest, and a duty to know with what government
they are to treat, and what they are to admit into the
federative society, - or, in other words, into the diploVOL. IV. 28
? ? ? ? 434 ON THIE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
matic republic of Europe. This right is clear and
indisputable.
What other and further interference they have a
right to in the interior of the concerns of another people is a matter on which, as on every political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid
down. Our neighbors are men; and who will attempt to dictate the laws under which it is allowable
or forbidden to take a part in the concerns of men,
whether they are considered individually or in a collective capacity, whenever charity to them, or a care
of my own safety, calls forth my activity? Circumstances perpetually variable, directing a moral prudence and discretion, the general principles of which
never vary, must alone prescribe a conduct fitting on
such occasions. The latest casuists of public law are
rather of a republican cast, and, in my mind, by no
means so averse as they ought to be to a right in the
people (a word which, ill defined, is of the most
dangerous use) to make changes at their pleasure in
the fundamental laws of their country. These writers, however, when a country is divided, leave abundant liberty for a neighbor to support any of the parties according to his choice. * This interference must, indeed, always be a right, whilst the privilege of doing good to others, and of averting from them every
sort of evil, I. s a right: circumstances may render
that right a duty. It depends wholly on this, whether it be a bona fide charity to a party, and a prudent
precaution with regard to yourself, or whether, under
the pretence of aiding one of the parties in a nation,
you act in such a manner as to aggravate its calami.
ties and accomplish its final destruction. In truth,
* Vattel.
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 435
It is not the interfering or keeping aloof, but iniquitous intermeddling, or treacherous inaction, which is praised or blamed by the decision of an equitable
judge.
It will be a just and irresistible presumption against
the fairness of the interposing power, that he takes
with him no party or description of men in the divided state. It is not probable that these parties should all, and all alike, be more adverse to the true interests of their country, and less capable of forming a judgment upon them, than those who are absolute
strangers to their affairs, and to the character of the
actors in them, and have but a remote, feeble, and
secondary sympathy with their interest. Sormetimes
a calm and healing arbiter may be necessary; but he
is to compose differences, not to give laws. It is impossible that any one should not feel the full force of that presumption. Even people, whose politics for
the supposed good of their own country lead them to
take advantage of the dissensions of a neighboring
nation in order to ruin it, will not directly propose to
exclude the natives, but they will take that mode of
consulting and employing them which most nearly
approaches to an exclusion. In some particulars they
propose what amounts to that exclusion, in others
they do much worse. They recommend to ministry,
"that no Frenchman who has given a decided opinion or acted a decided part in this great Revolution, for or against it, should be countenanced, brought
forward, trusted, or employed, even in the strictest
subordination to the ministers of the allied powers. "
Although one would think that this advice would
stand condemned on the first proposition, yet, as it
has been made popular, and has been proceeded upon
? ? ? ? 436 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
practically, I think it right to give it - full consideration.
And first, I have asked myself who these Frenchmen are, that, in the state their own country has been in for these last five years, of all the people of Europe, have alone not been able to form a decided opinion, or have been unwilling to act a decided
part?
Looking over all the names I have heard of in this
great revolution in all human affairs, I find no man
of any distinction who has remained in that more
than Stoical apathy, but the Prince de Conti. This
mean, stupid, selfish, swinish, and cowardly animal,
universally known and despised as such, has indeed,
except in one abortive attempt to elope, been perfectly neutral. However, his neutrality, which it seems would qualify him for trust, and on a competition must set aside the Prince de Conde, can
be of no sort of service. His moderation has not
been able to keep him from a jail. The allied powers must draw him from that jail, before they can have the full advantage of the exertions of this great
neutralist.
Except him, I do not recollect a man of rank or
talents, who by his speeches or his votes, by his pen
or by his sword, has not been active on this scene.
The time, indeed, could admit no neutrality in any
person worthy of the name of man. There were
originally two great divisions in France: the one is
that which overturned the whole of the government
in Church and State, and erected a republic on the
basis of atheism. Their grand engine was the Jacobin Club, a sort of secession from which, but exactly on the same principles, begat another short-lived one,
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 437
called the Club of Eighty-Nine,* which was chiefly
guided by the court rebels, who, in addition to the
crimes of which they were guilty in common with the
others, had the merit of betraying a gracious master
and a kind benefactor. Subdivisions of this faction,
which since we have seen, do not in the least differ
from each other in their principles, their dispositions,
or the means they have employed. Their only quarrel has been about power: in that quarrel, like wave
succeeding wave, one faction has got the better and
expelled the other. Thus, La Fayette for a while got
the better of Orleans; and Orleans afterwards prevailed over La Fayette. Brissot overpowered OrlMans; Barere and Robespierre, and their faction,
mastered them both, and cut off their heads. All
who were not Royalists have been listed in some or
other of these divisions. If it were of any use to settle a precedence, the elder ought to have his rank.
The first authors, plotters, and contrivers of this monstrous scheme seem to me entitled to the first place in
our distrust and abhorrence. I have seen some of
those who are thought the best amongst the original
rebels, and I have not neglected the means of being
informed concerning the others. I can very truly
say, that I have not found, by observation, or inquiry,
that any sense of the evils produced by their projects
has produced in them, or any one of them, the smallest degree of repentance. Disappointment and mortification undoubtedly they feel; but to them repentance is a thing impossible. They are atheists. This wretched opinion, by which they are possessed even
to the height of fanaticism, leading them to exclude
* The first object of this club was the propagation of Jacobin
principles.
? ? ? ? 438 ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES.
from their ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the physical, the moral, and the political world engages them in a thousand absurd contrivances to
fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious
repose or honorable action or wise speculation in
the lurking-holes of a foreign land, into which (in a
common ruin) they are driven to hide their heads
amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they
are at this very hour as busy in the confection of the
dirt-pies of their imaginary constitutions as if they
had not been quite fresh from destroying, by their
impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country
upon earth.
It is, however, out of these, or of such as these,
guilty and impenitent, despising the experience of
others, and their own, that some people talk of
choosing their negotiators with those Jacobins who
they suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind.
They flatter themselves, it seems, that the friendly
habits formed during their original partnership of
iniquity, a similarity of character, and a conformity
in the groundwork of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and gain them over to some recognition of royalty. But surely this is to read
human nature very ill. The several sectaries in
this schism of the Jacobins are the very last men
in the world to trust each other. Fellowship in
treason is a bad ground of confidence. The last
quarrels are the sorest; and the injuries received
or offered by your own associates are ever the most
bitterly resented. The people of France, of every
name and description, would a thousand times sooner
listen to the Prince de Cond6, or to the Archbishop
of Aix, or the Bishop of St. Pol, or to Monsieur de
? ? ? ? ON THE POLICY OF THE ALLIES. 439
Cazales, than to La Fayette, or Dumouriez, or the
Vicomte de Noailles, or the Bishop of Auturi, or
Necker, or his disciple Lally Tollendal. Against
the first description they have not the smallest animosity, beyond that of a merely political dissension. The others they regard as traitors.
The first description is that of the Christian Royalists, men who as earnestly wished for reformation
as they opposed innovation in the fundamental parts
of their Church and State. Their part has been very
decided. Accordingly, they are to be set aside in the
restoration of Church and State. It is an odd kind
of disqualification, where the restoration of religion
and monarchy is the question. If England should
(God forbid it should! ) fall into the same misfortune
with France, and that the court.
