They severely and in every part
of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth,
?
of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth,
?
Edmund Burke
We are
probably the only nation who have declined to act
against an enemy when it might have been done in
his own country, and who, having an armed, a powerful, and a long victorious ally in that country,
declined all effectual cooperation, and suffered him
to perish for want of support. On the plan of a war
in France, every advantage that our allies might
? ? ? ? 356 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
obtain would be doubled in its effect. Disasters on
the one side might have a fair chance of being compensated by victories on the other. Had we brought the main of our force to bear upon that quarter, all
the operations of the British and Imperial crowns
would have been combined. The war would have had
system, correspondence, and a certain direction. But
as the war has been pursued, the operations of the
two crowns have not the smallest degree of mutual
bearing or relation.
Had acquisitions in the West Indies been our object, on success in France, everything reasonable in those remote parts might be demanded with decorum
and justice and a sure effect. Well might we- call
for a recompense in America for those services to
which Europe owed its safety. Having abandoned
this obvious policy connected with principle, we have
seen the Regicide power taking the reverse course,
and making real conquests in the West Indies, to
which all our dear-bought advantages (if we could
hold them) are mean and contemptible. The noblest
island within the tropics, worth all that we possess
put together, is by the vassal Spaniard delivered into
her hands. The island of Hispaniola (of which we
have but one poor corner, by a slippery hold) is perhaps equal to England in extent, and in fertility is far superior. The part possessed by Spain of that
great island, made for the seat and centre of a tropical empire, was not improved, to be sure, as the French division had been, before it was systematically destroyed by the Cannibal Republic; but it is
not only the far larger, but the far more salubrious
and more fertile part.
It was delivered into the hands of the barbarians,
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 357
without, as I can find, any public reclamation on our
part, not only in contravention to one of the fundamental treaties that compose the public law of Europe, but in defiance of the fundamental colonial policy of Spain herself. This part of the Treaty of
Utrecht was made for great general ends, unquestionably; but whilst it provided for those general ends,
it was in affirmance of that particular policy. It was
not to injure, but to save Spain, by making a settlement of her estate which prohibited her to alienate
to France. It is her policy not to see the balance of
West Indian power overturned by France or by Great
Britain. Whilst the monarchies subsisted, this unprincipled cession was what the influence of the elder
branch of the House of Bourbon never dared to attempt on the younger: but cannibal terror has been
more powerful than family influence. The Bourbon
monarchy of Spain is united to the Republic of France
by what may be truly called the ties of blood.
By this measure the balance of power in the West
Indies is totally destroyed. It has followed the balance of power in Europe. It is not alone what shall
be left nominally to the Assassins that is theirs.
Theirs is the whole empire of Spain in America.
That stroke finishes all. I should be glad to see our
suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather
to the ear of the Directory, to make it unclench the
fist, and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out
of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition! It does
not require much sagacity to discern that no power
wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that state
of things it can neither keep nor hold. No! It cannot even long make war, if the grand bank and de
? ? ? ? 358 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
posit of its force is at all in the West Indies. But
here a scene opens to my view too important to pass
by, perhaps too critical to touch. Is it possible that
it should not present itself in all its relations to a
mind habituated to consider either war or peace on
a large scale or as one whole?
Unfortunately, other ideas have prevailed. A remote, an expensive, a murderous, and, in the end, an unproductive adventure, carried on upon ideas of
mercantile knight-errantry, without any of the generous wildness of Quixotism, is considered as sound, solid sense; and a war in a wholesome climate, a
war at our door, a war directly on the enemy, a war
in the heart of his country, a war in concert with an
internal ally, and in combination with the external,
is regarded as folly and romance.
My dear friend, I hold it impossible that these considerations should have escaped the statesmen on both sides of the water, and on both sides of the House of
Commons. How a question of peace can be discussed
without having them in view I cannot imagine. If
you or others see a way out of these difficulties, I amn
happy. I see, indeed, a fund from whence equivalents will be proposed. I see it, but I cannot just
now touch it. It is a question of high moment. It
opens another Iliad of woes to Europe.
Such is the time proposed for making a common
political peace to which no one circumstance is propitious. As to the grand principle of the peace, it is left, as if by common consent, wholly out of the question.
Viewing things in this light, I have frequently sunk
into a degree of despondency and dejection hardly to
be described; yet out of the profoundest depths of
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 359
this despair, an impulse which I have in vain endeavored to resist has urged me to raise one feeble cry against this unfortunate coalition which is formed at
home, in order to make a coalition with France, subversive of the whole ancient order of the world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season, could ever
strike me with half the horror which I felt from what
is introduced to us by this junction of parties under
the soothing name of peace. We are apt to speak of
a low and pusillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause
by which dubious wars terminate in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who are able with deliberation to face the perils of Jacobin fraternity.
This fraternity is, indeed, so terrible in its nature,
and in its manifest consequences, that there is no way
of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally
putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through
a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous
quality, and describing such a connection under the
terms of " the usual relations of peace and amity. "
By this means the, proposed fraternity is hustled in
the crowd of those treaties which imply no change in
the public law of Europe, and which do not upon system affect the interior condition of nations. It is confounded with those conventions in which matters
of dispute among sovereign powers are compromised
by the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender of a frontier town or a disputed district on the one side or the other, by pactions in which the pretensions of families are settled, (as by a conveyancer making family substitutions and successions,) with
? ? ? ? 360 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
out any alteration in the laws, manners, religion,
privileges, and customs of the cities or territories
which are the subject of such arrangements.
All this body of old conventions, composing the
vast and voluminous collection called the Corps Diplomatique, forms the code or statute law, as the
methodized reasonings of the great publicists and jurists form the digest and jurisprudence, of the Christian world. In these treasures are to be found the usual relations of peace and amity in civilized Europe; and there the relations of ancient France were
to be found amongst the rest.
The present system in France is not the ancient
France. It is not the ancient France with ordinary ambition and ordinary means. It is not a new
power of an old kind. It is a new power of a new
species. When such a questionable shape is to be
admitted for the first time into the brotherhood of
Christendom, it is not a mere matter of idle curiosity to consider how far it is in its nature alliable with
the rest, or whether " the relations of peace and amity " with this new state are likely to be of the same
nature with the usual relations of the states of Europe.
The Revolution in France had the relation of
France to other nations as one of its- principal objects. The changes made by that Revolution were
not the better to accommodate her to the old and
usual relations, but to produce new ones. The Revolution was made, not to make France free, but to
make her formidable, --not to make her a neighbor, but a mistress, --not to make her more observant of laws, but to put her in a condition to impose them. To make France truly formidable, it was ne
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 361
cessary that France should be new-modelled. They
who have not followed the train of the late proceedings have been led by deceitful representations
(which deceit made a part in the plan) to conceive
that this totally new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a change, was made with a view to its
internal relations only.
In the Revolution of France, two sorts of men
were principally concerned in giving a character
and determination to its pursuits: the philosophers
and the politicians. They took different ways, but
they met in the same end.
The philosophers had one predominant object, which
they pursued with a fanatical fury, - that is, the utter extirpation of religion. To that every question of
empire was subordinate. They had rather domineer
in a parish of atheists than rule over a Christian
world. Their temporal ambition. was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit, in which they
were not exceeded by Mahomet himself.
They who have made but superficial studies in the
natural history of the human mind have been taught
to look on religious opinions as the only cause of
enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation. But
there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can
warm, that is not capable of the very same effect.
The social nature of man impels him to propagate
his principles, as much as physical impulses urge him
to propagate his kind. The passions give zeal and
vehemence. The understanding bestows design and
system. The whole man moves under the discipline
of his opinions. Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When anything concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it
? ? ? ? 362 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not
love religion hate it. The rebels to God perfectly
abhor the Author of their being. They hate Him
"with all their heart, with all their mind, with all
their soul, and with all their strength. " He never
presents Himself to their thoughts, but to menace
and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out
of heaven, but they are able to raise a smouldering
smoke that obscures him from their own eyes. Not
being able to revenge themselves on God, they have
a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces His image in man. Let no
one judge of them by what he has conceived of them,
when they were not incorporated, and had no lead.
They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then carried along with the general motion of religion in the community, and, without
being aware of it, partook of its influence. In that
situation, at worst, their nature was left free to counterwork their principles. They despaired of giving
any very general currency to their opinions: they
considered them as a reserved privilege for the chosen
few. But when the possibility of dominion, lead, and
propagation presented themselves, and that the ambition which before had so often made them hypocrites might rather gain than lose by a daring avowal of
their sentiments, then the nature of this infernal
spirit, which has " evil for its good," appeared in its
full perfection. Nothing, indeed, but the possession
of some power can with any certainty discover what
at the bottom is the true character of any man.
Without reading the speeches of Vergniaud, Franqais of Nantes, Isnard, and some others of that sort,
it would not be easy to conceive the passion, ran
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 363
cor, and malice of their tongues and hearts. They
worked themselves up to a perfect frenzy against'
religion and all its professors. They tore the reputation of the clergy to pieces by their infuriated
declamations and invectives, before they lacerated
their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical atheism left out, we omit the principal feature in the
French Revolution, and a principal consideration with
regard to the effects to be expected from a peace
with it.
The other sort of men were the politicians. To
them, who had little or not at all reflected on the
subject, religion was in itself no object of love or
hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all.
Neutral with regard to that object, they took the
side which in the present state of things might best
answer their purposes. They soon found that they
could not do without the philosophers; and the philosophers soon made them sensible that the destruction of religion was to supply them with means of conquest, first at home, and then abroad. The philosophllers were the active internal agitators, and supplied the spirit and principles: the second gave the practical direction. Sometimes the one predominated in the composition, sometimes the other. The only difference between them was in the necessity of concealing the general design for a time, and in their
dealing with foreign nations: the fanatics going
straight forward and openly, the politicians by the
surer mode of zigzag. In the course of events, this,
among other causes, produced fierce and bloody contentions between them; but at the bottom they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and substantially in all the means of pro.
moting these ends.
? ? ? ? 364 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
Without question, to bring about the unexampled
event of the French Revolution, the concurrence of a
very great number of views and passions was necessary. In that stupendous work, no one principle by which the human mind may have its faculties at once
invigorated and depraved was left unemployed; but
I can speak it to a certainty, and support it by undoubted proofs, that the ruling principle of those who acted in the Revolution as statesmen had the exterior
aggrandizement of France as their ultimate end in
the most minute part of the internal changes that
were made. We, who of late years have been drawn
from an attention to foreign affairs by the importance
of our domestic discussions, cannot easily form a conception of the general eagerness of the active and energetic part of the French nation, itself the most
active and energetic of all nations, previous to its
Revolution, upon that subject. I am convinced that
the foreign speculators in France, under the old government, were twenty to one of the same description then or now in England; and few of that description
there were who did not emulously set forward the
Revolution. The whole official system, particularly
in the diplomatic part, the regulars, the irregulars,
down to the clerks in office, (a corps without all
comparison more numerous than the same amongst
us,) cooperated in it. All the intriguers in foreign
politics, all the spies, all the intelligencers, actually
or late in function, all the candidates for that sort of
employment, acted solely upon that principle.
On that system of aggrandizement there was but
one mind: but two violent factions arose about the
means. The first wished France, diverted from the
politics of the Continent, to attend solely to her ma
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 365
rine, to feed it by an increase of commerce, and
thereby to overpower England on her own element.
They contended, that, if England were disabled, the
powers on the Continent would fall into their proper
subordination; that it was England which deranged
the whole Continental system of Europe. The others, who were by far the more numerous, though not
the most outwardly prevalent at court, considered
this plan for France as contrary to her genius, her
situation, and her natural means. They agreed as
to the ultimate object, the reduction of the British
power, and, if possible, its naval power; but they
considered an ascendancy on the Continent as a necessary preliminary to that undertaking. They argued, that the proceedings of England herself had
proved the soundness of this policy: that her greatest and ablest statesmen had not considered the support of a Continental balance against France as a
deviation from the principle of her naval power, but
as one of the most effectual modes of carrying it into
effect; that such had been her policy ever since the
Revolution, during which period the naval strength
of Great Britain had gone on increasing in the direct
ratio of her interference in the politics of the Continent. With much stronger reason ought the politics
of France to take the same direction, - as well for
pursuing objects which her situation would dictate to
her, though England had no existence, as for counteracting the politics of that nation: to France Continental politics are primary; they looked on them only of secondary consideration to England, and, however necessary, but as means necessary to anl end. What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those
two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at
? ? ? ? 366 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
once employed, and in the very same transactions, the
one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter
part of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth. Nor was
there one court in which an ambassador resided on
the part of the ministers, in which another, as a spy
on him, did not also reside on the part of the king:
they who pursued the scheme for keeping peace on
the Continent, and particularly with Austria, acting
officially and publicly; the other faction counteracting and opposing them. These private agents were
continually going from their function to the Bastile,
and from the Bastile to employment and favor again.
An inextricable cabal was formed, some of persons of
rank, others of subordinates. But by this means the
corps of politicians was augmented in number, and
the whole formed a body of active, adventuring, ambitious, discontented people, despising the regular
ministry, despising the courts at which they were employed, despising the court which employed them.
The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth* was not the
* It may be right to do justice to Louis the Sixteenth. He did
what he could to destroy the double diplomacy of France. He had
all the secret correspondence burnt, except one piece, which was called
Conjectures raisonnees sur la Situation actuelle de la France dans le Systebne Politique de l'Europe: a work executed by M. Favier, under the
direction of Count Broglie. A single copy of this was said to have
been found in the cabinet of Louis the Sixteenth. It was published
with some subsequent state-papers of Vergennes, Turgot, and others,
as " a new benefit of the Revolution," and the advertisement to the
publication ends with the following words: ( "Il sera facile de se convaincre, QU'Y COMPRIS MEME LA RfVOLUTION, en grande partie, ON TROUVE
DANS CES MEMIOIRES ET CES CONJECTURES LE GERME DE TOUT CE
QUI ARRIVE AUJOURD'HUI, et qu'on ne peut, sans les avoir lus, 9tre bien
au fait des interts, et meme des vues actuelles des diverses puissances de 1'
Europe. " The book is entitled Politique de tons les Cabinets de l'Europe pendant les Rbgnes de Louis XV. et de Louis XVI. It is altogether very curious, and worth reading.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 367
first cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came
to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics
of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark
and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the throne; and even then the Revolution strongly operated in all its causes.
There was no point on which the discontented diplomatic politicians so bitterly arraigned their cabinet as for the decay of French influence in all others. From quarrelling with the court, they began to complain of monarchy itself, as a system of government
too variable for any regular plan of national aggrandizement. They observed that in that sort of regimen
too much depended on the personal character of the
prince: that the vicissitudes produced by the succession of princes of a different character, and even the
vicissitudes produced in the same man, by the different views and inclinations belonging to youth,
manhood, and age, disturbed and distracted the policy of a country made by Nature for extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, for that sort of general overruling influence which prepared
empire or supplied the place of it. They had continually in their hands the observations of Machiavel on Livy. They had Montegquieu's Grandeur et Dlecadence des Romains as a manual; and they compared, with mortification, the systematic proceedings
of a Roman Senate with the fluctuations of a monarchy. They observed the very small additions of
territory which all the power of France, actuated by
all the ambition of France, had acquired in two centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired more
in a single year.
They severely and in every part
of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth,
? ? ? ? 368 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE, PEACE.
whose irregular and desultory ambition had more
provoked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they
who will be at the pains of seriously considering
the history of that period will see that those French
politicians had some reason. They who will not take
the trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and
all its negotiations will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical merit of which I am unable
to form a judgment.
The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and
who formed by far the majority in that class, made
disadvantageous comparisons even between their more
legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies
of other states, as a system of power and influence.
They observed that France not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce
at naval force which she never could attain without
losing more on one side than she could gain on
the other, three great powers, each of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. . Russia and Prussia had been
created almost within memory; and Austria, though
not a new power, and even curtailed in territory,
was, by the very collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her military discipline and force. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the support of great armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a merely military power, they observed that one war had enriched her
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 369
with as considerable a conquest as France had acquired in centuries. Russia had broken the Turkish
power, by which Austria might be, as formerly she
had been, balanced in favor of France. They felt
it with pain, that the two Northern powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway
of Russia, - or that, at best, France kept up a very
doubtful conflict, with many fluctuations of fortune,
and at an enormous expense, in Sweden. In Holland the French party seemed, if not extinguished,
at least utterly obscured, and kept under by a Stadtholder, leaning for support sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on both, never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon fami --
ly had become merely a family accommodation, and'
had little effect on the national politics. This alli --
ance, they said, extinguished Spain by destroying
all its energy, without adding anything to the real
power of France in the accession of the forces of its
great rival. In Italy the same family accommodation, the same national insignificance, were equally
visible. What cure for the radical weakness of the
French monarchy, to which all the means which wit
could devise, or Nature and fortune could bestow,
towards universal empire, was not of force to give
life or vigor or consistency, but in a republic? Out
the word came: and it never went back.
Whether they reasoned right or wrong, or that
there was some mixture of right and wrong in their
reasoning, I am sure that in this manner they felt
and reasoned. The different effects of a great military and ambitious republic and of a monarchy of
the same description were constantly in their mouths.
The principle was ready to operate, when opportuniVOL. V. 24
? ? ? ? 370 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ties should offer, which few of them, indeed, foresaw
in the extent in which they were afterwards presented; but these opportunities, in some degree or other,
they all ardently wished for.
When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756
between Austria and France was deplored as a national calamity; because it united France in friendship with a power at whose expense alone they could hope any Continental aggrandizement. When the
first partition of Poland was made, in which France
had no share, and which had farther aggrandized
every one of the three powers of which they were
most jealous, I found them in a perfect frenzy of
rage and indignation: not that they were hurt at
the shocking and uncolored violence and injustice
of that partition, but at the debility, improvidence,
and want of activity in their government, in not
preventing it as a means of aggrandizement to their
rivals, or in not contriving, by exchanges of some
kind or other, to obtain their share of advantage
from that robbery.
In that or nearly in that state of things and of
opinions came the Austrian match, which promised
to draw the knot, as afterwards in effect it did, still
more closely between the old rival houses. This
added exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of
their monarchy. It was for this reason that the late
glorious queen, who on all accounts was formed to
produce general love and admiration, and whose life
was as mild and beneficent as her death was beyond
example great and heroic, became so very soon and
so very much the object of an implacable rancor,
never to be extinguished but in her blood. When
I wrote my letter in answer to M. de Menonville, in
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 371
the beginning of January, 1791, I had good reason
for thinking that this description of revolutionists did
not so early nor so steadily point their murderous
designs at the martyr king as at the royal heroine.
It was accident, and the momentary depression of
that part of the faction, that gave to the husband
the happy priority in death.
From this their restless desire of an overruling
influence, they bent a very great part of their designs and efforts to revive the old French party,
which was a democratic party, in Holland, and to
make a revolution there. They were happy at the
troubles which the singular imprudence of Joseph
the Second had stirred up in the Austrian Netherlands. They rejoiced, when they saw him irritate
his subjects, profess philosophy, send away the Dutch
garrisons, and dismantle his fortifications. As to
Holland, they never forgave either the king or the
ministry for suffering that object, which they justly
looked on as principal in their design of reducing
the power of England, to escape out of their hands.
This was the true secret of the commercial treaty,
made, on their part, against all the old rules and
principles of commerce, with a view of diverting the
English nation, by a pursuit of immediate profit,
from an attention to the progress of France in its designs upon that republic. The system of the economists, which led to the general opening of commerce, facilitated that treaty, but did not produce it. They were in despair, when they found, that,
by the vigor of Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by
Mr. Fox and the opposition, the object to which they
had sacrificed their manufactures was lost to their
ambition.
? ? ? ? 372 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
This eager desire of raising France from the con
dition into which she had fallen, as they conceived,
from her monarchical imbecility, had been the main
spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy American quarrel, the bad effects of which to this
nation have not as yet fully disclosed themselves.
These sentiments had been long lurking in their
breasts, though their views were only discovered
now and then in heat and as by escapes, but on
this occasion they exploded suddenly. They were
professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal.
These sentiments were not produced, as some think,
by their American alliance. The American alliance
was produced by their republican principles and republican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did
much. The discourses and cabals that it produced,
the intercourse that it established, and, above all, the
example, which made it seem practicable to establish
a republic in a great extent of country, finished the
work, and gave to that part of the revolutionary faction a degree of strength which required other energies than the late king possessed to resist or even to restrain. It spread everywhere; but it was nowhere
more prevalent than in the heart of the court. The
palace of Versailles, by its language, seemed a forum
of democracy. To have pointed out to most of those'
politicians, from their dispositions and movements,
what has since happened, the fall of their own monarchy, of their own laws, of their own religion, would
have been to furnish a motive the more for pushing forward a system on which they considered all
these things as incumbrances. Such in truth they
were. And we have seen them succeed, not only
in the destruction of their monarchy, but in all the
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 373
objects of ambition that they proposed from that destruction.
When I contemplate the scheme on which France
is formed, and when I compare it with these systems
with which it is and ever must be in conflict, those
things which seem as. defects in her polity are the very
things which make me tremble. The states of the
Christian world have grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time and by a great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them with greater or less degrees of felicity
and skill. Not one of them has been formed upon
a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their
constitutions are not systematical, they have not been
directed to any peculiar end, eminently distinguished,
and superseding every other. The objects which they
embrace are of the greatest possible variety, and have
become in a manner infinite. In all these old countries, the state has been made to the people, and not
the people conformed to the state. Every state has
pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but
it has cultivated the welfare of every individual.
His wants, his wishes, even his tastes, have been
consulted. This comprehensive scheme virtually produced a degree of personal liberty in forms the most
adverse to it. That liberty was found, under monarchies styled absolute, in a degree unknown to the
ancient commonwealths. From hence the powers of
all our modern states meet, in all their movements,
with some obstruction. It is therefore no wonder,
that when these states are to be considered as machines to operate for some one great end, that this
dissipated and balanced force is not easily concentred, or made to bear with the whole force of the
nation upon one point.
? ? ? ? 374 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
The British state is, without question, that which
pursues the greatest variety of ends, and is the least
disposed to sacrifice any one of them to another or
to the whole. It aims at taking in the entire circle
of human desires, and securing for them their fair
enjoyment. Our legislature has been ever closely
connected, in its most efficient part, with individual
feeling and individual interest. Personal liberty, the
most lively of these feelings and the most important
of these interests, which in other European countries
has rather arisen from the system of manners and
the habitudes of life than from the laws of the state,
(in which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) in England has been a direct object of government.
On this principle, England would be the weakest
power in the whole system. Fortunately, however,
the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as great to spend as to accumulate, has
easily afforded a disposable surplus that gives a
mighty momentum to the state. This difficulty,
with these advantages to overcome it, has called
forth the talents of the English financiers, who, by
the surplus of industry poured out by prodigality,
have outdone everything which has been accomplished in other nations. The present minister has outdone his predecessors, and, as a minister of reve
nue, is far above my power of praise. But still there
are cases in which England feels more than several
others (though they all feel) the perplexity of an
immense body of balanced advantages and of individual demands, and of some irregularity in the whole mass.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 375
France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits.
What now stands as government in France is struck
out at a heat. The design is wicked, immoral, impious, oppressive: but it is spirited and daring; it
is systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has
unity and consistency in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of
money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of
agriculture, even to burn a city or to lay waste a
province of their own, does not cost them a moment's anxiety. To them the will, the wish, the
want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals, is
as nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme
of government. The state is all in all. Everything
is referred to the production of force; afterwards,
everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military
in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in
all its movements. The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects, - dominion over minds by
proselytism, over bodies by arms.
Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural means, which are lessened in their amount only
to be increased in their effect, France has, since the
accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity
in its direction. It has destroyed every resource of
the state which depends upon opinion and the goodwill of individuals. The riches of convention disappear. The advantages of Nature in some measure remain; even these, I admit, are astonishingly lessened; the command over what remains is complete and ab
? ? ? ? 376 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
solute. We go about asking when assignats will expire, and we laugh at the last price of them. But
what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism?
The despotism will find despotic means of supply.
They have found the short cut to the productions
of Nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are
obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit
of the labor; they seize upon the laborer himself.
Were France but half of what it is in population,
in compactness, in applicability of its force, situated
as it is, and being what it is, it would be too strong
for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they
are, and proceeding as they proceed. Would it be
wise to estimate what the world of Europe, as well
as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz
Khan, upon a contemplation of the resources of the
cold and barren spot in the remotest Tartary from
whence first issued that scourge of the human race?
Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties
of the rocks, or from the paper circulation of the
sands of Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and
his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful empires of the world, beat one of them totally
to the ground, broke to pieces the other, and, in not
much longer space of time than I have lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees? Material resources never have supplied, nor ever
can supply, the want of unity in design and constancy in pursuit. But unity in design and perseverance and boldness in pursuit have never wanted resources, and never will. We have not considered
as we ought the dreadful energy of a state in which
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 377
the property has nothing to do with the government.
Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again, on
a government in which the property is in complete
subjection, and where nothing rules but the mind of
desperate men. The condition of a commonwealth
not governed by its property was a combination of
things which the learned and ingenious speculator,
Harrington, who has tossed about society into all
forms, never could imagine to be possible. We have
seen it; the world has felt it; and if the world will
shut their eyes to this state of things, they will feel it
more. The rulers there have found their resources
in crimes. The discovery is dreadful, the mine exhaustless. They have everything to gain, and they
have nothing to lose. They have a boundless inheritance in hope, and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest elevation and death with infamy. Never can they, wrlo, from the miserable servitude of
the desk, have been raised to empire, again submit
to the bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of
copying music, or writing plaidoyers by the sheet.
It has made me often smile in bitterness, when I
have heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they returned to their allegiance.
From all this what is my inference? It is, that
this new system of robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it must be destroyed, or
that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to
it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system
exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its
vulnerable parts. These are my inferences. In one
word, with this republic nothing independent can
? ? ? ? 378 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
coexist. The errors of Louis the Sixteenth were
more pardonable to prudence than any of those of
the same kind into which the allied courts may fall.
They have the benefit of his dreadful example.
The unhappy Louis the Sixteenth was a man of
the best intentions that probably ever reigned. He
was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading,
and even by the acquisition of elemental knowledge,
an education in all points originally defective; but
nobody told him (and it was no wonder he should
not himself divine it) that the world of which he
read and the world in which he lived were no longer
the same. Desirous of doing everything for the best,
fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment, he
sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the discernment of the prince. But an accurate and
penetrating discernment is what in a young prince
could not be looked for.
His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but,
like most other of his well-meant designs, it failed in
his hands. It failed partly from mere ill fortune, to
which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that
very large share to which she is justly entitled in
all human affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part, was
owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and
disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly
speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or
indeed under any form of government. However,
with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In
? ? ? ? LETTER II. r 379
other things he thought that he might be a king on
the terms of his predecessors. He was conscious of
the purity of his heart and the general good tendency
of his government. He flattered himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his
ease without danger to his safety. It is not at all
wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way
abundantly in other respects to innovation, should
take up in policy with the tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of republics. First, the Swiss republics
grew under the guardianship of the French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under the influence of
France, established in the Empire, against the pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of
France, by a series of wars and negotiations, and
lastly by the Treaties of Westphalia, had obtained
the establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a
law of the Empire, the same monarchy under Louis
the Thirteenth had force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at home.
Louis the Sixteenth was a diligent reader of history. But the very lamp of prudence blinded him.
The guide of human life led him astray. A silent
revolution in the moral world preceded the political,
and prepared it. It became of more importance than
ever what examples were given, and what measures
were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in the
recesses of cabinets or in the private conspiracies of
the factious.
probably the only nation who have declined to act
against an enemy when it might have been done in
his own country, and who, having an armed, a powerful, and a long victorious ally in that country,
declined all effectual cooperation, and suffered him
to perish for want of support. On the plan of a war
in France, every advantage that our allies might
? ? ? ? 356 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
obtain would be doubled in its effect. Disasters on
the one side might have a fair chance of being compensated by victories on the other. Had we brought the main of our force to bear upon that quarter, all
the operations of the British and Imperial crowns
would have been combined. The war would have had
system, correspondence, and a certain direction. But
as the war has been pursued, the operations of the
two crowns have not the smallest degree of mutual
bearing or relation.
Had acquisitions in the West Indies been our object, on success in France, everything reasonable in those remote parts might be demanded with decorum
and justice and a sure effect. Well might we- call
for a recompense in America for those services to
which Europe owed its safety. Having abandoned
this obvious policy connected with principle, we have
seen the Regicide power taking the reverse course,
and making real conquests in the West Indies, to
which all our dear-bought advantages (if we could
hold them) are mean and contemptible. The noblest
island within the tropics, worth all that we possess
put together, is by the vassal Spaniard delivered into
her hands. The island of Hispaniola (of which we
have but one poor corner, by a slippery hold) is perhaps equal to England in extent, and in fertility is far superior. The part possessed by Spain of that
great island, made for the seat and centre of a tropical empire, was not improved, to be sure, as the French division had been, before it was systematically destroyed by the Cannibal Republic; but it is
not only the far larger, but the far more salubrious
and more fertile part.
It was delivered into the hands of the barbarians,
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 357
without, as I can find, any public reclamation on our
part, not only in contravention to one of the fundamental treaties that compose the public law of Europe, but in defiance of the fundamental colonial policy of Spain herself. This part of the Treaty of
Utrecht was made for great general ends, unquestionably; but whilst it provided for those general ends,
it was in affirmance of that particular policy. It was
not to injure, but to save Spain, by making a settlement of her estate which prohibited her to alienate
to France. It is her policy not to see the balance of
West Indian power overturned by France or by Great
Britain. Whilst the monarchies subsisted, this unprincipled cession was what the influence of the elder
branch of the House of Bourbon never dared to attempt on the younger: but cannibal terror has been
more powerful than family influence. The Bourbon
monarchy of Spain is united to the Republic of France
by what may be truly called the ties of blood.
By this measure the balance of power in the West
Indies is totally destroyed. It has followed the balance of power in Europe. It is not alone what shall
be left nominally to the Assassins that is theirs.
Theirs is the whole empire of Spain in America.
That stroke finishes all. I should be glad to see our
suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather
to the ear of the Directory, to make it unclench the
fist, and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out
of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition! It does
not require much sagacity to discern that no power
wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that state
of things it can neither keep nor hold. No! It cannot even long make war, if the grand bank and de
? ? ? ? 358 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
posit of its force is at all in the West Indies. But
here a scene opens to my view too important to pass
by, perhaps too critical to touch. Is it possible that
it should not present itself in all its relations to a
mind habituated to consider either war or peace on
a large scale or as one whole?
Unfortunately, other ideas have prevailed. A remote, an expensive, a murderous, and, in the end, an unproductive adventure, carried on upon ideas of
mercantile knight-errantry, without any of the generous wildness of Quixotism, is considered as sound, solid sense; and a war in a wholesome climate, a
war at our door, a war directly on the enemy, a war
in the heart of his country, a war in concert with an
internal ally, and in combination with the external,
is regarded as folly and romance.
My dear friend, I hold it impossible that these considerations should have escaped the statesmen on both sides of the water, and on both sides of the House of
Commons. How a question of peace can be discussed
without having them in view I cannot imagine. If
you or others see a way out of these difficulties, I amn
happy. I see, indeed, a fund from whence equivalents will be proposed. I see it, but I cannot just
now touch it. It is a question of high moment. It
opens another Iliad of woes to Europe.
Such is the time proposed for making a common
political peace to which no one circumstance is propitious. As to the grand principle of the peace, it is left, as if by common consent, wholly out of the question.
Viewing things in this light, I have frequently sunk
into a degree of despondency and dejection hardly to
be described; yet out of the profoundest depths of
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 359
this despair, an impulse which I have in vain endeavored to resist has urged me to raise one feeble cry against this unfortunate coalition which is formed at
home, in order to make a coalition with France, subversive of the whole ancient order of the world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season, could ever
strike me with half the horror which I felt from what
is introduced to us by this junction of parties under
the soothing name of peace. We are apt to speak of
a low and pusillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause
by which dubious wars terminate in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who are able with deliberation to face the perils of Jacobin fraternity.
This fraternity is, indeed, so terrible in its nature,
and in its manifest consequences, that there is no way
of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally
putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through
a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous
quality, and describing such a connection under the
terms of " the usual relations of peace and amity. "
By this means the, proposed fraternity is hustled in
the crowd of those treaties which imply no change in
the public law of Europe, and which do not upon system affect the interior condition of nations. It is confounded with those conventions in which matters
of dispute among sovereign powers are compromised
by the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender of a frontier town or a disputed district on the one side or the other, by pactions in which the pretensions of families are settled, (as by a conveyancer making family substitutions and successions,) with
? ? ? ? 360 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
out any alteration in the laws, manners, religion,
privileges, and customs of the cities or territories
which are the subject of such arrangements.
All this body of old conventions, composing the
vast and voluminous collection called the Corps Diplomatique, forms the code or statute law, as the
methodized reasonings of the great publicists and jurists form the digest and jurisprudence, of the Christian world. In these treasures are to be found the usual relations of peace and amity in civilized Europe; and there the relations of ancient France were
to be found amongst the rest.
The present system in France is not the ancient
France. It is not the ancient France with ordinary ambition and ordinary means. It is not a new
power of an old kind. It is a new power of a new
species. When such a questionable shape is to be
admitted for the first time into the brotherhood of
Christendom, it is not a mere matter of idle curiosity to consider how far it is in its nature alliable with
the rest, or whether " the relations of peace and amity " with this new state are likely to be of the same
nature with the usual relations of the states of Europe.
The Revolution in France had the relation of
France to other nations as one of its- principal objects. The changes made by that Revolution were
not the better to accommodate her to the old and
usual relations, but to produce new ones. The Revolution was made, not to make France free, but to
make her formidable, --not to make her a neighbor, but a mistress, --not to make her more observant of laws, but to put her in a condition to impose them. To make France truly formidable, it was ne
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 361
cessary that France should be new-modelled. They
who have not followed the train of the late proceedings have been led by deceitful representations
(which deceit made a part in the plan) to conceive
that this totally new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a change, was made with a view to its
internal relations only.
In the Revolution of France, two sorts of men
were principally concerned in giving a character
and determination to its pursuits: the philosophers
and the politicians. They took different ways, but
they met in the same end.
The philosophers had one predominant object, which
they pursued with a fanatical fury, - that is, the utter extirpation of religion. To that every question of
empire was subordinate. They had rather domineer
in a parish of atheists than rule over a Christian
world. Their temporal ambition. was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit, in which they
were not exceeded by Mahomet himself.
They who have made but superficial studies in the
natural history of the human mind have been taught
to look on religious opinions as the only cause of
enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation. But
there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can
warm, that is not capable of the very same effect.
The social nature of man impels him to propagate
his principles, as much as physical impulses urge him
to propagate his kind. The passions give zeal and
vehemence. The understanding bestows design and
system. The whole man moves under the discipline
of his opinions. Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When anything concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it
? ? ? ? 362 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not
love religion hate it. The rebels to God perfectly
abhor the Author of their being. They hate Him
"with all their heart, with all their mind, with all
their soul, and with all their strength. " He never
presents Himself to their thoughts, but to menace
and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out
of heaven, but they are able to raise a smouldering
smoke that obscures him from their own eyes. Not
being able to revenge themselves on God, they have
a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces His image in man. Let no
one judge of them by what he has conceived of them,
when they were not incorporated, and had no lead.
They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then carried along with the general motion of religion in the community, and, without
being aware of it, partook of its influence. In that
situation, at worst, their nature was left free to counterwork their principles. They despaired of giving
any very general currency to their opinions: they
considered them as a reserved privilege for the chosen
few. But when the possibility of dominion, lead, and
propagation presented themselves, and that the ambition which before had so often made them hypocrites might rather gain than lose by a daring avowal of
their sentiments, then the nature of this infernal
spirit, which has " evil for its good," appeared in its
full perfection. Nothing, indeed, but the possession
of some power can with any certainty discover what
at the bottom is the true character of any man.
Without reading the speeches of Vergniaud, Franqais of Nantes, Isnard, and some others of that sort,
it would not be easy to conceive the passion, ran
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 363
cor, and malice of their tongues and hearts. They
worked themselves up to a perfect frenzy against'
religion and all its professors. They tore the reputation of the clergy to pieces by their infuriated
declamations and invectives, before they lacerated
their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical atheism left out, we omit the principal feature in the
French Revolution, and a principal consideration with
regard to the effects to be expected from a peace
with it.
The other sort of men were the politicians. To
them, who had little or not at all reflected on the
subject, religion was in itself no object of love or
hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all.
Neutral with regard to that object, they took the
side which in the present state of things might best
answer their purposes. They soon found that they
could not do without the philosophers; and the philosophers soon made them sensible that the destruction of religion was to supply them with means of conquest, first at home, and then abroad. The philosophllers were the active internal agitators, and supplied the spirit and principles: the second gave the practical direction. Sometimes the one predominated in the composition, sometimes the other. The only difference between them was in the necessity of concealing the general design for a time, and in their
dealing with foreign nations: the fanatics going
straight forward and openly, the politicians by the
surer mode of zigzag. In the course of events, this,
among other causes, produced fierce and bloody contentions between them; but at the bottom they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and substantially in all the means of pro.
moting these ends.
? ? ? ? 364 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
Without question, to bring about the unexampled
event of the French Revolution, the concurrence of a
very great number of views and passions was necessary. In that stupendous work, no one principle by which the human mind may have its faculties at once
invigorated and depraved was left unemployed; but
I can speak it to a certainty, and support it by undoubted proofs, that the ruling principle of those who acted in the Revolution as statesmen had the exterior
aggrandizement of France as their ultimate end in
the most minute part of the internal changes that
were made. We, who of late years have been drawn
from an attention to foreign affairs by the importance
of our domestic discussions, cannot easily form a conception of the general eagerness of the active and energetic part of the French nation, itself the most
active and energetic of all nations, previous to its
Revolution, upon that subject. I am convinced that
the foreign speculators in France, under the old government, were twenty to one of the same description then or now in England; and few of that description
there were who did not emulously set forward the
Revolution. The whole official system, particularly
in the diplomatic part, the regulars, the irregulars,
down to the clerks in office, (a corps without all
comparison more numerous than the same amongst
us,) cooperated in it. All the intriguers in foreign
politics, all the spies, all the intelligencers, actually
or late in function, all the candidates for that sort of
employment, acted solely upon that principle.
On that system of aggrandizement there was but
one mind: but two violent factions arose about the
means. The first wished France, diverted from the
politics of the Continent, to attend solely to her ma
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 365
rine, to feed it by an increase of commerce, and
thereby to overpower England on her own element.
They contended, that, if England were disabled, the
powers on the Continent would fall into their proper
subordination; that it was England which deranged
the whole Continental system of Europe. The others, who were by far the more numerous, though not
the most outwardly prevalent at court, considered
this plan for France as contrary to her genius, her
situation, and her natural means. They agreed as
to the ultimate object, the reduction of the British
power, and, if possible, its naval power; but they
considered an ascendancy on the Continent as a necessary preliminary to that undertaking. They argued, that the proceedings of England herself had
proved the soundness of this policy: that her greatest and ablest statesmen had not considered the support of a Continental balance against France as a
deviation from the principle of her naval power, but
as one of the most effectual modes of carrying it into
effect; that such had been her policy ever since the
Revolution, during which period the naval strength
of Great Britain had gone on increasing in the direct
ratio of her interference in the politics of the Continent. With much stronger reason ought the politics
of France to take the same direction, - as well for
pursuing objects which her situation would dictate to
her, though England had no existence, as for counteracting the politics of that nation: to France Continental politics are primary; they looked on them only of secondary consideration to England, and, however necessary, but as means necessary to anl end. What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those
two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at
? ? ? ? 366 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
once employed, and in the very same transactions, the
one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter
part of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth. Nor was
there one court in which an ambassador resided on
the part of the ministers, in which another, as a spy
on him, did not also reside on the part of the king:
they who pursued the scheme for keeping peace on
the Continent, and particularly with Austria, acting
officially and publicly; the other faction counteracting and opposing them. These private agents were
continually going from their function to the Bastile,
and from the Bastile to employment and favor again.
An inextricable cabal was formed, some of persons of
rank, others of subordinates. But by this means the
corps of politicians was augmented in number, and
the whole formed a body of active, adventuring, ambitious, discontented people, despising the regular
ministry, despising the courts at which they were employed, despising the court which employed them.
The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth* was not the
* It may be right to do justice to Louis the Sixteenth. He did
what he could to destroy the double diplomacy of France. He had
all the secret correspondence burnt, except one piece, which was called
Conjectures raisonnees sur la Situation actuelle de la France dans le Systebne Politique de l'Europe: a work executed by M. Favier, under the
direction of Count Broglie. A single copy of this was said to have
been found in the cabinet of Louis the Sixteenth. It was published
with some subsequent state-papers of Vergennes, Turgot, and others,
as " a new benefit of the Revolution," and the advertisement to the
publication ends with the following words: ( "Il sera facile de se convaincre, QU'Y COMPRIS MEME LA RfVOLUTION, en grande partie, ON TROUVE
DANS CES MEMIOIRES ET CES CONJECTURES LE GERME DE TOUT CE
QUI ARRIVE AUJOURD'HUI, et qu'on ne peut, sans les avoir lus, 9tre bien
au fait des interts, et meme des vues actuelles des diverses puissances de 1'
Europe. " The book is entitled Politique de tons les Cabinets de l'Europe pendant les Rbgnes de Louis XV. et de Louis XVI. It is altogether very curious, and worth reading.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 367
first cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came
to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics
of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark
and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the throne; and even then the Revolution strongly operated in all its causes.
There was no point on which the discontented diplomatic politicians so bitterly arraigned their cabinet as for the decay of French influence in all others. From quarrelling with the court, they began to complain of monarchy itself, as a system of government
too variable for any regular plan of national aggrandizement. They observed that in that sort of regimen
too much depended on the personal character of the
prince: that the vicissitudes produced by the succession of princes of a different character, and even the
vicissitudes produced in the same man, by the different views and inclinations belonging to youth,
manhood, and age, disturbed and distracted the policy of a country made by Nature for extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, for that sort of general overruling influence which prepared
empire or supplied the place of it. They had continually in their hands the observations of Machiavel on Livy. They had Montegquieu's Grandeur et Dlecadence des Romains as a manual; and they compared, with mortification, the systematic proceedings
of a Roman Senate with the fluctuations of a monarchy. They observed the very small additions of
territory which all the power of France, actuated by
all the ambition of France, had acquired in two centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired more
in a single year.
They severely and in every part
of it criticized the reign of Louis the Fourteenth,
? ? ? ? 368 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE, PEACE.
whose irregular and desultory ambition had more
provoked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they
who will be at the pains of seriously considering
the history of that period will see that those French
politicians had some reason. They who will not take
the trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and
all its negotiations will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical merit of which I am unable
to form a judgment.
The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and
who formed by far the majority in that class, made
disadvantageous comparisons even between their more
legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies
of other states, as a system of power and influence.
They observed that France not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce
at naval force which she never could attain without
losing more on one side than she could gain on
the other, three great powers, each of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. . Russia and Prussia had been
created almost within memory; and Austria, though
not a new power, and even curtailed in territory,
was, by the very collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her military discipline and force. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the support of great armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a merely military power, they observed that one war had enriched her
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 369
with as considerable a conquest as France had acquired in centuries. Russia had broken the Turkish
power, by which Austria might be, as formerly she
had been, balanced in favor of France. They felt
it with pain, that the two Northern powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway
of Russia, - or that, at best, France kept up a very
doubtful conflict, with many fluctuations of fortune,
and at an enormous expense, in Sweden. In Holland the French party seemed, if not extinguished,
at least utterly obscured, and kept under by a Stadtholder, leaning for support sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on both, never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon fami --
ly had become merely a family accommodation, and'
had little effect on the national politics. This alli --
ance, they said, extinguished Spain by destroying
all its energy, without adding anything to the real
power of France in the accession of the forces of its
great rival. In Italy the same family accommodation, the same national insignificance, were equally
visible. What cure for the radical weakness of the
French monarchy, to which all the means which wit
could devise, or Nature and fortune could bestow,
towards universal empire, was not of force to give
life or vigor or consistency, but in a republic? Out
the word came: and it never went back.
Whether they reasoned right or wrong, or that
there was some mixture of right and wrong in their
reasoning, I am sure that in this manner they felt
and reasoned. The different effects of a great military and ambitious republic and of a monarchy of
the same description were constantly in their mouths.
The principle was ready to operate, when opportuniVOL. V. 24
? ? ? ? 370 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ties should offer, which few of them, indeed, foresaw
in the extent in which they were afterwards presented; but these opportunities, in some degree or other,
they all ardently wished for.
When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756
between Austria and France was deplored as a national calamity; because it united France in friendship with a power at whose expense alone they could hope any Continental aggrandizement. When the
first partition of Poland was made, in which France
had no share, and which had farther aggrandized
every one of the three powers of which they were
most jealous, I found them in a perfect frenzy of
rage and indignation: not that they were hurt at
the shocking and uncolored violence and injustice
of that partition, but at the debility, improvidence,
and want of activity in their government, in not
preventing it as a means of aggrandizement to their
rivals, or in not contriving, by exchanges of some
kind or other, to obtain their share of advantage
from that robbery.
In that or nearly in that state of things and of
opinions came the Austrian match, which promised
to draw the knot, as afterwards in effect it did, still
more closely between the old rival houses. This
added exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of
their monarchy. It was for this reason that the late
glorious queen, who on all accounts was formed to
produce general love and admiration, and whose life
was as mild and beneficent as her death was beyond
example great and heroic, became so very soon and
so very much the object of an implacable rancor,
never to be extinguished but in her blood. When
I wrote my letter in answer to M. de Menonville, in
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 371
the beginning of January, 1791, I had good reason
for thinking that this description of revolutionists did
not so early nor so steadily point their murderous
designs at the martyr king as at the royal heroine.
It was accident, and the momentary depression of
that part of the faction, that gave to the husband
the happy priority in death.
From this their restless desire of an overruling
influence, they bent a very great part of their designs and efforts to revive the old French party,
which was a democratic party, in Holland, and to
make a revolution there. They were happy at the
troubles which the singular imprudence of Joseph
the Second had stirred up in the Austrian Netherlands. They rejoiced, when they saw him irritate
his subjects, profess philosophy, send away the Dutch
garrisons, and dismantle his fortifications. As to
Holland, they never forgave either the king or the
ministry for suffering that object, which they justly
looked on as principal in their design of reducing
the power of England, to escape out of their hands.
This was the true secret of the commercial treaty,
made, on their part, against all the old rules and
principles of commerce, with a view of diverting the
English nation, by a pursuit of immediate profit,
from an attention to the progress of France in its designs upon that republic. The system of the economists, which led to the general opening of commerce, facilitated that treaty, but did not produce it. They were in despair, when they found, that,
by the vigor of Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by
Mr. Fox and the opposition, the object to which they
had sacrificed their manufactures was lost to their
ambition.
? ? ? ? 372 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
This eager desire of raising France from the con
dition into which she had fallen, as they conceived,
from her monarchical imbecility, had been the main
spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy American quarrel, the bad effects of which to this
nation have not as yet fully disclosed themselves.
These sentiments had been long lurking in their
breasts, though their views were only discovered
now and then in heat and as by escapes, but on
this occasion they exploded suddenly. They were
professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal.
These sentiments were not produced, as some think,
by their American alliance. The American alliance
was produced by their republican principles and republican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did
much. The discourses and cabals that it produced,
the intercourse that it established, and, above all, the
example, which made it seem practicable to establish
a republic in a great extent of country, finished the
work, and gave to that part of the revolutionary faction a degree of strength which required other energies than the late king possessed to resist or even to restrain. It spread everywhere; but it was nowhere
more prevalent than in the heart of the court. The
palace of Versailles, by its language, seemed a forum
of democracy. To have pointed out to most of those'
politicians, from their dispositions and movements,
what has since happened, the fall of their own monarchy, of their own laws, of their own religion, would
have been to furnish a motive the more for pushing forward a system on which they considered all
these things as incumbrances. Such in truth they
were. And we have seen them succeed, not only
in the destruction of their monarchy, but in all the
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 373
objects of ambition that they proposed from that destruction.
When I contemplate the scheme on which France
is formed, and when I compare it with these systems
with which it is and ever must be in conflict, those
things which seem as. defects in her polity are the very
things which make me tremble. The states of the
Christian world have grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time and by a great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them with greater or less degrees of felicity
and skill. Not one of them has been formed upon
a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their
constitutions are not systematical, they have not been
directed to any peculiar end, eminently distinguished,
and superseding every other. The objects which they
embrace are of the greatest possible variety, and have
become in a manner infinite. In all these old countries, the state has been made to the people, and not
the people conformed to the state. Every state has
pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but
it has cultivated the welfare of every individual.
His wants, his wishes, even his tastes, have been
consulted. This comprehensive scheme virtually produced a degree of personal liberty in forms the most
adverse to it. That liberty was found, under monarchies styled absolute, in a degree unknown to the
ancient commonwealths. From hence the powers of
all our modern states meet, in all their movements,
with some obstruction. It is therefore no wonder,
that when these states are to be considered as machines to operate for some one great end, that this
dissipated and balanced force is not easily concentred, or made to bear with the whole force of the
nation upon one point.
? ? ? ? 374 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
The British state is, without question, that which
pursues the greatest variety of ends, and is the least
disposed to sacrifice any one of them to another or
to the whole. It aims at taking in the entire circle
of human desires, and securing for them their fair
enjoyment. Our legislature has been ever closely
connected, in its most efficient part, with individual
feeling and individual interest. Personal liberty, the
most lively of these feelings and the most important
of these interests, which in other European countries
has rather arisen from the system of manners and
the habitudes of life than from the laws of the state,
(in which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) in England has been a direct object of government.
On this principle, England would be the weakest
power in the whole system. Fortunately, however,
the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as great to spend as to accumulate, has
easily afforded a disposable surplus that gives a
mighty momentum to the state. This difficulty,
with these advantages to overcome it, has called
forth the talents of the English financiers, who, by
the surplus of industry poured out by prodigality,
have outdone everything which has been accomplished in other nations. The present minister has outdone his predecessors, and, as a minister of reve
nue, is far above my power of praise. But still there
are cases in which England feels more than several
others (though they all feel) the perplexity of an
immense body of balanced advantages and of individual demands, and of some irregularity in the whole mass.
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 375
France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits.
What now stands as government in France is struck
out at a heat. The design is wicked, immoral, impious, oppressive: but it is spirited and daring; it
is systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has
unity and consistency in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of
money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of
agriculture, even to burn a city or to lay waste a
province of their own, does not cost them a moment's anxiety. To them the will, the wish, the
want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals, is
as nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme
of government. The state is all in all. Everything
is referred to the production of force; afterwards,
everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military
in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in
all its movements. The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects, - dominion over minds by
proselytism, over bodies by arms.
Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural means, which are lessened in their amount only
to be increased in their effect, France has, since the
accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity
in its direction. It has destroyed every resource of
the state which depends upon opinion and the goodwill of individuals. The riches of convention disappear. The advantages of Nature in some measure remain; even these, I admit, are astonishingly lessened; the command over what remains is complete and ab
? ? ? ? 376 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
solute. We go about asking when assignats will expire, and we laugh at the last price of them. But
what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism?
The despotism will find despotic means of supply.
They have found the short cut to the productions
of Nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are
obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit
of the labor; they seize upon the laborer himself.
Were France but half of what it is in population,
in compactness, in applicability of its force, situated
as it is, and being what it is, it would be too strong
for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they
are, and proceeding as they proceed. Would it be
wise to estimate what the world of Europe, as well
as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz
Khan, upon a contemplation of the resources of the
cold and barren spot in the remotest Tartary from
whence first issued that scourge of the human race?
Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties
of the rocks, or from the paper circulation of the
sands of Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and
his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful empires of the world, beat one of them totally
to the ground, broke to pieces the other, and, in not
much longer space of time than I have lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees? Material resources never have supplied, nor ever
can supply, the want of unity in design and constancy in pursuit. But unity in design and perseverance and boldness in pursuit have never wanted resources, and never will. We have not considered
as we ought the dreadful energy of a state in which
? ? ? ? LETTER II. 377
the property has nothing to do with the government.
Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again, on
a government in which the property is in complete
subjection, and where nothing rules but the mind of
desperate men. The condition of a commonwealth
not governed by its property was a combination of
things which the learned and ingenious speculator,
Harrington, who has tossed about society into all
forms, never could imagine to be possible. We have
seen it; the world has felt it; and if the world will
shut their eyes to this state of things, they will feel it
more. The rulers there have found their resources
in crimes. The discovery is dreadful, the mine exhaustless. They have everything to gain, and they
have nothing to lose. They have a boundless inheritance in hope, and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest elevation and death with infamy. Never can they, wrlo, from the miserable servitude of
the desk, have been raised to empire, again submit
to the bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of
copying music, or writing plaidoyers by the sheet.
It has made me often smile in bitterness, when I
have heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they returned to their allegiance.
From all this what is my inference? It is, that
this new system of robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it must be destroyed, or
that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to
it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system
exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its
vulnerable parts. These are my inferences. In one
word, with this republic nothing independent can
? ? ? ? 378 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
coexist. The errors of Louis the Sixteenth were
more pardonable to prudence than any of those of
the same kind into which the allied courts may fall.
They have the benefit of his dreadful example.
The unhappy Louis the Sixteenth was a man of
the best intentions that probably ever reigned. He
was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading,
and even by the acquisition of elemental knowledge,
an education in all points originally defective; but
nobody told him (and it was no wonder he should
not himself divine it) that the world of which he
read and the world in which he lived were no longer
the same. Desirous of doing everything for the best,
fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment, he
sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the discernment of the prince. But an accurate and
penetrating discernment is what in a young prince
could not be looked for.
His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but,
like most other of his well-meant designs, it failed in
his hands. It failed partly from mere ill fortune, to
which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that
very large share to which she is justly entitled in
all human affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part, was
owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and
disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly
speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or
indeed under any form of government. However,
with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In
? ? ? ? LETTER II. r 379
other things he thought that he might be a king on
the terms of his predecessors. He was conscious of
the purity of his heart and the general good tendency
of his government. He flattered himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his
ease without danger to his safety. It is not at all
wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way
abundantly in other respects to innovation, should
take up in policy with the tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of republics. First, the Swiss republics
grew under the guardianship of the French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under the influence of
France, established in the Empire, against the pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of
France, by a series of wars and negotiations, and
lastly by the Treaties of Westphalia, had obtained
the establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a
law of the Empire, the same monarchy under Louis
the Thirteenth had force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at home.
Louis the Sixteenth was a diligent reader of history. But the very lamp of prudence blinded him.
The guide of human life led him astray. A silent
revolution in the moral world preceded the political,
and prepared it. It became of more importance than
ever what examples were given, and what measures
were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in the
recesses of cabinets or in the private conspiracies of
the factious.
