Nothing ought to be more weighed
than the nature of books recommended by public authority.
than the nature of books recommended by public authority.
Edmund Burke
The shifting
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 11
tides of fear and hope, the flight and pursuit, the
peril and escape, the alternate famine and feast of the
savage and the thief, after a time, render all course
of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation, and
the prospect only of a limited mediocrity at the end
of long labor, to the last degree tame, languid, and
insipid. Those who have been once intoxicated with
power, and have derived any kind of emolument from
it, even though but for one year, never can willingly
abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of
all their power; but they will never look to anything
but power for their relief. When did distress ever
oblige a prince to abdicate his authority? And what.
effect will it have upon those who are made to believe,
themselves a people of princes?
The more active and stirring part of the lower orders having got government and the distribution of
plunder into their hands, they will use its resources
in each municipality to form a body of adherents.
These rulers and their adherents will be strong enough
to overpower the discontents of those who have not
been able to assert their share of the spoil. The unfortunate adventurers in the cheating lottery of plunder will probably be the least sagacious or the most
inactive and irresolute of the gang. If, on disappointment, they should dare to stir, they will soon be suppressed as rebels and mutineers by their brother rebels. Scantily fed for a while with the offal of plunder, they will drop off by degrees; they will be driven out
of sight and out of thought; and they will be left to
perish obscurely, like rats, in holes and corners.
From the forced repentance of invalid mutineers
and disbanded thieves you can hope for no resource.
Government itself, which ought to constrain the more
? ? ? ? 12 LETTER TO A MEMBER
bold and dexterous of these robbers, is their accomplice. Its arms, its treasures, its all are in their
hands. Judicature, which above all things should
awe them, is their creature and their instrument.
Nothing seems to me to render your internal situation more desperate than this one circumstance of the state of your judicature. Many days are not passed
since we have seen a set of men brought forth by
your rulers for a most critical function. Your rulers
brought forth a set of men, steaming from the sweat
and drudgery, and all black with the smoke and soot,
of the forge of confiscation and robbery,- ardentis
massce fuligine ippos, -- a set of men brought forth
from the trade of hammering arms of proof, offensive
and defensive, in aid of the enterprises, and for the
subsequent protection, of housebreakers, murderers,
traifors, and malefactors, -mell, who had their minds
seasoned with theories perfectly conformable to their
practice, and who had always laughed at possession
and prescription, and defied all the fundamental maxims of jurisprudence. To the horror and stupefaction of all the honest part of this nation, and indeed of all
nations who are spectators, we have seen, on the credit of those very practices and principles, and to carry them further into effect, these very men placed on the
sacred seat of justice in the capital city of your late
kingdom. We see that in fiture you are to be destroyed with more form and regularity. This is not
peace: it is only the introduction of a sort of discipline in their hostility. Their tyranny is complete in
their justice; and their lanterne is not half so dreadful as their court.
One would think, that, out of common decency, they
would have given you men who had not been in the
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 13
habit of trampling upon law and justice in the Assembly, neutral men, or men apparently neutral, for judges, who are to dispose of your lives and fortunes.
Cromwell, when he attempted to legalize his power, and to settle his conquered country in a state of order, did not look for dispensers of justice in the
instruments of his usurpation. Quite the contrary.
He sought out, with great solicitude and selection,
and even from the party most opposite to his designs,
men of weight and decorum of character, - men unstained with the violence of the times, and with hands not fouled with confiscation and sacrilege: for he
chose an Hale for his chief justice, though he absolutely refused to take his civic oaths, or to make any acknowledgment whatsoever of the legality of his
government. Cromwell told this great lawyer, that,
since he did not approve his title, all he required of
him was to administer, in a manner agreeable to his
pure sentiments and unspotted character, that justice
without which human society cannot subsist, -- that
it was not his particular government, but civil order
itself, which, as a judge, he wished him to support.
Cromwell knew how to separate the institutions expedient to his usurpation from the administration of the public justice of his country. For Cromwell was
a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed,
but only suspended, the sentiments of religion, and
the love (as far as it could consist with his designs)
of fair and honorable reputation. Accordingly, we are
indebted to this act of his for the preservation of our
laws, which some senseless assertors of the rights of
men were then on the point of entirely erasing, as
relies of feudality and barbarism. Besides, he gave,
in the appointment of that man, to that age, and to
? ? ? ? 14 LETTER TO A MEMBER
all posterity, the most brilliant example of sincere and
fervent piety, exact justice, and profound jurisprudence. * But these are not the things in which your philosophic usurpers choose to follow Cromwell.
One would think, that, after an honest and necessary
revolution, (if they had a mind that theirs should pass
for such,) your masters would have imitated the virtuous policy of those who have been at the head of revolutions of that glorious character. Burnet tells
us, that nothing tended to reconcile the English
nation to the government of King William so much
as the care he took to fill the vacant bishoprics with
men who had attracted the public esteem by their
learning, eloquence, and piety, and above all, by
their known moderation in the state. With you, in
your purifying revolution, whom have you chosen to
regulate the Church? M. MAirabeau is a fine speaker, and a fine writer, and a fine - a very fine man; but, really, nothing gave more surprise to everybody here than to find him the supreme head of
your ecclesiastical affairs. The rest is of course.
Your Assembly addresses a manifesto to France, in
which they tell the people, with an insulting irony,
that they have brought the Church to its primitive
condition. In one respect their declaration is undoubtedly true: for they have brought it to a state
of poverty and persecution. What can be hoped for
after this? Have not men, (if they deserve the
name,) under this new hope and head of the Church,
been made bishops for no other merit than having
acted as instruments of atheists? for no other merit
than having thrown the children's bread to dogs?
and, in order to gorge the whole gang of usurers,
* See Burnet's Life of Hale.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 15
peddlers, and itinerant Jew discounters at the corners
of streets, starved the poor of their Christian flocks,
and their own brother pastors? Have not such men
been made bishops to administer in temples in which
(if the patriotic donations have not already stripped
them of their vessels) the church-wardens ought to
take security for the altar plate, and not so much as
to trust the chalice in their sacrilegious hands, so
long as Jews have assignats on ecclesiastic plunder,
to exchange for the silver stolen from churches?
I am told that the very sons of such Jew jobbers
have been made bishops: persons not to be suspected of any sort of Christian superstition, fit colleagues to the holy prelate of Autun, and bred at
the feet of that Gamaliel. We know who it was that
drove the money-changers out of the temple. We
see, too, who it is that brings them in again: We
have in London very respectable persons of the Jewish nation, whom we will keep; but we have of the
same tribe others of a very different description,housebreakers, and receivers of stolen goods, and
forgers of paper currency, more than we can conveniently hang. These we can spare to France, to fill
the new episcopal thrones: men well versed in swearing; and who will scruple no oath which the fertile
genius of any of your reformers can devise.
In matters so ridiculous it is hard to be grave.
On a view of their consequences, it is almost inhuman to treat them lightly. To what a state of savage, stupid, servile insensibility must your people be reduced, who can endure such proceedings in their
Church, their state, and their judicature, even for a
moment! But the deluded people of France are like
other madmen, who, to a miracle, bear hunger, and
? ? ? ? 16 LETTER TO A MEMBER
thirst, and cold, and confinement, and the chains and
lash of their keeper, whilst all the while they support
themselves by the imagination that they are generals
of armies, prophets, kings, and emperors. As to a
change of mind in these men, who consider infamy
as honor, degradation as preferment, bondage to low
tyrants as liberty, and the practical scorn and conturmely of their upstart masters as marks of respect and homage, I look upon it as absolutely impracticable. These madmen, to be cured, must first, like other madmen, be subdued. The sound part of the
community, which I believe to be large, but by no
means the largest part, has been taken by surprise,
and is disjointed, terrified, and disarmed. That sound
part of the community must first be put into a better
condition, before it can do anything in the way of
deliberation or persuasion. This must be an act of
power; as well as of wisdom: of power in the hands
of firm, determined patriots, who can distinguish the
misled from traitors, who will regulate the state (if
such should be their fortune) with a discriminating,
manly, and provident mercy; men who are purged
of the surfeit and indigestion of systems, if ever they
have been admitted into the habit of their minds;
men who will lay the foundation of a real reform in
effacing every vestige of that philosophy which pretends to have made discoveries in the Terra Australis of morality; men who will fix the state upon these
bases of morals and politics, which are our old and
immemorial, and, I hope, will be our eternal possession.
This power, to such men, must come from without. It may be given to you in pity: for surely no
nation ever called so pathetically on the compassion
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 17
of all its neighbors. It may be given by those neighbors on motives of safety to themselves. Never shall
I think any country in Europe to be secure, whilst
there is established in the very centre of it a state
(if so it may be called) founded on principles of anarchy, and which is in reality a college of armed
fanatics, for the propagation of the principles of assassination, robbery, rebellion, fraud, faction, oppression,
and impiety. Mahomet, hid, as for a time he was, ill
the bottom of the sands of Arabia, had his spirit and
character been discovered, would have been an object
of precaution to provident minds. What if he had.
erected his fanatic standard for the destruction of
the Christian religion in luce Asice, in the midst
of the then noonday splendor of the then civilized
world? The princes of Europe, ill the beginning of
this century, did well not to suffer the monarchy of
France to swallow up the others. They oughtl not!
now, in my opinion, to suffer all the monarchies and
commonwealths to be swallowed up in the gulf of this
polluted anarchy. They may be tolerably safe at present, because the comparative power of France for the
present is little. But times and occasions make dangers. Intestine troubles may arise in other countries.
There is a power always on the watch, qualified and
disposed to profit of every conjuncture, to establish
its own principles and modes of mischief, wherever
it can hope for success. What mercy would these
usurpers have on other sovereigns, and on other nations, when they treat their own king with such unparalleled indignities, and so cruelly oppress their own countrymen?
The king of Prussia, in concurrence with us, nobly interfered to save Holland from confusion. The
VOL. IV. 2
? ? ? ? 18 LETTER TO A MEMBER
same power, joined with the rescued Holland and
with Great Britain, has put the Emperor in the possession of the Netherlands, and secured, under that
prince, from all arbitrary innovation, the ancient, hereditary Constitution of those provinces. The chamber of Wetzlar has restored the Bishop of Liege, unjust1y dispossessed by the rebellion of his subjects. The king of Prussia was bound by no treaty nor alliance
of blood, nor had any particular reasons for thinking
the Emperor's government would be more mischievous. or more oppressive to human nature than that of
tile Turk; yet, on mere motives of policy, that prince
has interposed, with the threat of all his force, to
snatch even the Turk from the pounces of the Imperial eagle. If this is done in favor of a barbarous
nation, with a barbarous neglect of police, fatal to the
human race, --in favor of a nation by principle in
eternal enmity with the Christian name, a nation
which will not so much as give the salutation of
peace (Salam) to any of us, nor make any pact with
any Christian nation beyond a truce, - if this be done
in favor of the Turk, shall it be thought either impolitic or unjust or uncharitable to employ the same power to rescue from captivity a virtuous monarch, (by
the courtesy of Europe considered as Most Christian,)
who, after an intermission of one hundred and seventy-five years, had called together the'States of his
kingdom to reform abuses, to establish a free government, and to strengthen his throne,- a monarch
who, at the very outset, without force, even without
solicitation, had given to his people such a Magna
Charta of privileges as never was given by any king
to any subjects? Is it to be tamely borne by kings
who love their subjects, or by subjects who love their
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 19
kings, that this monarch, in the midst of these gracious acts, was insolently and cruelly torn from his
palace by a gang of traitors and assassins, and kept
in close prison to this very hour, whilst his royal
name and sacred character were used for the total
ruin of those whom the laws had appointed him to
protect?
The only offence of this unhappy monarch towards
his people was his attempt, under a monarchy, to
give them a free Constitution. For this, by an example hitherto unheard of in the world, he has been
deposed. It might well disgrace sovereigns to take
part with a deposed tyrant. It would suppose in
them a vicious sympathy. But not to make a common cause with a just prince, dethroned by traitors
and rebels, who proscribe, plunder, confiscate, and in
every way cruelly oppress their fellow-citizens, in my
opinion is to forget what is due to the honor and to
the rights of all virtuous and legal government.
I think the king of France to be as much an object
both of policy and compassion as the Grand Seignior
or his states. I do not conceive that the total annihilation of France (if that could be effected) is a
desirable thing to Europe, or even to this its rival
nation. Provident patriots did not think it good for
Rome that even Carthage should be quite destroyed;
and he was a wise Greek, wise for the general Grecian interests, as well as a brave Lacedaemonian enemy and generous conqueror, who did not wish, by the destruction of Athens, to pluck out the other
eye of Greece.
However, Sir, what I have here said of the interference of foreign princes is only the opinion of a private individual, who is neither the representative of
? ? ? ? 20 LETTER TO A MEMBER
ally state nor the organ of any party, but who thinks
himself bound to express his own sentiments with
freedom and energy in a crisis of such importance to
the whole human race.
I am not apprehensive, that, in speaking freely on
the subject of the king and queen of France, I shall
accelerate (as you fear) the execution of traitorous
designs against them. You are of opinion, Sir, that
the usurpers may, and that they will, gladly lay hold
of any pretext to throw off the very name of a king:
assuredly, I do not wish ill to your king; but better
for him not to live (he does not reign) than to live
the passive instrument of tyranny and usurpation.
I certainly meant to show, to the best of my power,
that the existence of such an executive officer in
such a system of republic as theirs is absurd in the
highest degree. But in demonstrating this, to them,
at least, I can have made no discovery. They only
held out the royal name to catch those Frenchmen to
whom the name of king is still venerable. They calculate the duration of that sentiment; and when they find it nearly expiring, they will not trouble
themselves with excuses for extinguishing the name,
as they have the thing. They used it as a sort of
navel-string to nourish their unnatural offspring from
the bowels of royalty itself. Now that the monster
can purvey for its own subsistence, it will only carry
the mark about it, as a token of its having torn the
womb it came from. Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
Fraud is the ready minister of injustice; and whilst
the currency of false pretence and sophistic reasoning
was expedient to their designs, they were under no
necessity of drawing upon me to furnish them with
that coin. But pretexts and sophisms have had their
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 21
day, and have done their work. The usurpation no
longer seeks plausibility: it trusts to power.
Nothing that I can say, or that you can say, will
hasten them, by a single hour, in the execution of a
design which they have long since entertained. In
spite of their solemn declarations, their soothing
addresses, and the multiplied oaths which they have
taken and forced others to take, they will assassinate
the king when his name will no longer be necessary
to their designs, -- but not a moment sooner. They
will probably first assassinate the queen, whenever
the renewed nienace of such an assassination loses its
effect upon the anxious mind of an affectionate husband. At present, the advantage which they derive
from the daily threats against her life is her only security for preserving it. They keep their sovereign
alive for the purpose of exhibiting him, like some
wild beast at a fair, - as if they had a Bajazet in a
cage. They choose to make monarchy contemptible
by exposing it to derision in the person of the most
benevolent of their kings.
In my opinion their insolence appears more odious
even than their crimes. The horrors of the fifth and
sixth of October were less detestable than the festival
of the fourteenth of July. There are situations (God
forbid I should think that of the 5th and 6th of October one of them! ) in which the best men may be confounded with the worst, and in the darkness and conlfusion, in the press and medley of such extremities, it may not be so easy to discriminate the one fiom
the other. The necessities created even by ill designs have their excuse. They may be forgotten by
others, when the guilty themselves do not choose to
cherish their recollection, and, by ruminating their
? ? ? ? 22 LETTER TO A MEMBER
offences, nourish themselves, through the example of
their past, to the perpetration of future crimes. It is
in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of
prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart,
and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that
the real character of men is discerned. If there is
any good in them, it appears then or never. Even
wolves and tigers, when gorged with their prey, are
safe and gentle. It is at such times that noble minds
give all the reins to their good nature. They indulge
their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the
afflicted, in generosity to the conquered, - forbearing
insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full
of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but
they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then,
and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune,
that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell
with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of their native villany and baseness. It is in
that season that no man of sense or honor can be
mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season,
for them of political ease and security, though their
people were but just emerged from actual famine, and
were ready to be plunged into a gulf of penury and
beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an
ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible
number of idle and thoughtless people, collected
with art and pains from all quarters of the world.
They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they
raised a species of pillory. * On this pillory they set
their lawful king and queen, with an insulting figure
* The pillory (carcan) in England is generally made very high
like that raised for exposing the king of France.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 23
over their heads. There they exposed these objects
of pity and respect to all good minds to the derision
of an unthinking and unprincipled multitude, degenerated even from the versatile tenderness which
marks the irregular and capricious feelings of the
populace. That their cruel insult might have nothing wanting to complete it, they chose the anniversary of that day in which they exposed the life of their prince to the most imminent dangers and the
vilest indignities, just following the instant when the
assassins, whom they had hired without owning, first
openly took up arms against their king, corrupted his
guards, surprised his castle, butchered some of the
poor invalids of his garrison, murdered his governor,
and, like wild beasts, tore to pieces the chief magistrate of his capital city, on account of his fidelity to
his service.
Till the'justice of the world is awakened, such as
these will go on, without admonition, and without
provocation, to every extremity. Those who have
made the exhibition of the fourteenth of July are capable of every evil. They do not commit crimes for
their designs; but they form designs that they may
commit crimes. It is not their necessity, but their
nature, that impels them. They are modern philosophers, which when you say of them, you express
everything that is ignoble, savage, and hard-hearted.
Besides the sure tokens which are given by the spirit of their particular arrangements, there are some
characteristic lineaments in the general policy of
your tumultuous despotism, which, in my opinion,
indicate, beyond a doubt, that no revolution whatsoever in their disposition is to be expected: I mean
their scheme of educating the rising generation, the
? ? ? ? 24 LETTER TO A MEMBER
principles which they intend to instil and the sympathies which they wish to form in the mind at the
season in which it is the most susceptible. Instead
of forming their young minds to that docility, to that
modesty, which are the grace and charm of youth, to
an admiration of famous examples, and to an averseness to anything which approaches to pride, petulance,
and self-conceit, (distempers to which that time of
life is of itself sufficiently liable,) they artificially foment these evil dispositions, and even form them into
springs of action.
Nothing ought to be more weighed
than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, limited indeed is the extent, of a virtuous institution.
But if education takes in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt but that it will operate with
abundant energy, and to an extent indefinite. The
magistrate, who in favor of freedom thinks himself
obliged to suffer all sorts of publications, is under a
stricter duty than any other well to consider what
sort of writers he shall authorize, and shall recommend by the strongest of all sanctions, that is, by public honors and rewards. He ought to be cautious how he recommends authors of mixed or ambiguous
morality. He ought to be fearful of putting into the
hands of youth writers indulgent to the peculiarities
of their own complexion, lest they should teach the
humors of the professor, rather than the principles of
the science. He ought, above all, to be cautious in
recommending any writer who has carried marks of a
deranged understanding: for where there is no sound
reason, there can be no real virtue; and madness is
ever vicious and malignant.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 25
The Assembly proceeds on maxims the very reverse
of these. The Assembly recommends to its youth a
study of the bold experimenters in morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their leaders, which of them is the best resemblance
of Rousseau. In truth, they all resemble him. His
blood they transfuse into their minds and into their
manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him
they turn over in all the time they can spare from the
laborious mischief of the day or the debauches of the
night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his
life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard
figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as
a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries
of Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles
of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an
author had written like a great genius on geometry,
though his practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear that in voting the statue they honored only the geometrician. But
Rousseau is a moralist or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design in choosing the author with
whom they have begun to recommend a course of
studies.
Their great problem is, to -find a substitute for all
the principles which hitherto have been employed
to regulate the human will and action. They find
dispositions in the mind of such force and quality
as may fit men, far better than the old morality, for
the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may go
much further in supporting their power and destroying their enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the
? ? ? ? 26 LETTER TO A MEMBER
place of plain duty. True humility, the basis of
the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm
foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have totally discarded. Their object is to merge all natural and all social sentiment in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and conversant in
little things, vanity is of little moment. When fullgrown, it is the worst of vices, and the occasional
mimic of them all. It makes the whole man false.
It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him.
His best qualities are poisoned and perverted by it,
and operate exactly as the worst. When your lords
had many writers as immoral as the object of their
statue (such as Voltaire and others) they chose
Rousseau, because in him that peculiar vice which
they wished to erect into ruling virtue was by far
the most conspicuous.
We have had the great professor and founder of
the philosophy of vanity in England. As I had good
opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from
day to day, he left no doubt on my mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his heart
or to guide his understanding, but vanity. With this
vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness. It is from the same deranged, eccentric vanity,
that this, the insane Socrates of the National Assembly, was impelled to publish a mad confession of his
mad faults, and to attempt a new sort of glory from
bringing hardily to light the obscure and vulgar vices
which we know may sometimes be blended with eminent talents. He has not observed on the nature of
vanity who does not know that it is omnivorous,that it has no choice in its food,- that it is fond to
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 27
talk even of its own faults and vices, as what will excite surprise and draw attention, and what will pass at worst for openness and candor.
It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity
makes even of hypocrisy, which has driven Rousseau
to record a life not so much as checkered or spotted
here and there with virtues, or even distinguished by
a single good action. It is such a life he chooses to
offer to the attention of mankind. It is such a life
that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the face of his
Creator, whom he acknowledges only to brave. Your
Assembly, knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model.
To him they erect their first statue. From him they
comlmence their series of honors and distinctions.
It is that new-invented virtue which your masters
canonize that led their moral hero constantly to
exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the
expression of universal benevolence, whilst his heart
was incapable of harboring one spark of common parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom
the professors come in contact, form the character of
the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just prioe of common labor, as well as the tribute which
opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honors the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts
with tenderness for those only who touch him by the
remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang,
casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the
spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his chil
? ? ? ? 28 LETTER TO A MEMBER
dren to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves,
licks, and forms her young: but bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.
Under this philosophic instructor in the ethics of
vanity, they have attempted in France a regeneration
of the moral constitution of man. Statesmen like
your present rulers exist by everything which is spurious, fictitious, and false, --by everything which takes
the man from his house, and sets him on a stage, --
which makes him up an artificial creature, with
painted, theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the
glare of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated
at a due distance. Vanity is too apt to prevail in all
of us, and in all countries. To the improvement of
Frenchmen, it seems not absolutely necessary that it
should be taught upon system. But it is plain that
the present rebellion was its legitimate offspring, and
it is piously fed by that rebellion with a daily dole.
If the system of institution recommended by the
Assembly is false and theatric, it is because their
system of government is of the same character. To
that, and to that alone, it is strictly conformable. To
understand either, we must connect the morals with
the politics of the legislators. Your practical philosophers, systematic in everything, have wisely began
at the source. As the relation between parents and
children is the first among the elements of vulgar, natural morality,* they erect statues to a wild,
* "Filiola tua te delectari lketor, et probari tibi VO-LK)v esse -jr,
rpov 7Ta TEKva: etenim, si hbec non est, nulla potest homini esse ad
hominem naturae adjunctio: qua sublata, vitao societas tollitur. Va
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 29
ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of fine general feelings,- a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred. Your masters reject the duties of this
vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty, as not founded
in the social compact, and not binding according to
the rights of men; because the relation is not, of
course, the result of free election, -never so on the
side of the children, not always on the part of the
parents.
The next relation which they regenerate by their
statues to Rousseau is that which is next in sanctity
to that of a father. They differ from those old-fashioned thinkers who considered pedagogues as sober and venerable characters, and allied to the parental.
The moralists of the dark times prceceptorem sancti
voluere parentis esse loco. In this age of light they
teach the people that preceptors ought to be in the
place of gallants. They systematically corrupt a very
corruptible race, (for some time a growing nuisance
amongst you,)- a set of pert, petulant literators, to
whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unostentatious duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of gay, young, military sparks, and
danglers at toilets. They call on the rising generation in France to take a sympathy in the adventures and fortunes, and they endeavor to engage their
sensibility on the side, of pedagogues who betray the
most awful family trusts and vitiate their female
pupils. They teach the people that the debauchers
of virgins, almost in the arms of their parents, may
be safe inmates in their house, and even fit guardians of the honor of those husbands who succeed lete, Patron [Rousseau] et tui condiscipuli [L'Assemblde Nationalel! "- Cic. Ep. ad Atticum.
? ? ? ? 30 LETTER TO A MEMBER
legally to the office which the young literators had
preoccupied without asking leave of law or conscience.
Thus they dispose of all the family relations of parents and children, husbands and wives. Through this same instructor, by whom they corrupt the morals, they corrupt the taste. Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller
and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance
in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of
force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends
virtue with something like the blandishments of
pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.
Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is
totally destitute of taste in ally sense of the word.
Your masters, who are his scholars, conceive that all
refinement has an aristocratic character. The last
age had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace
and nobleness to our natural appetites, and in raising them into a higher class and order than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your
masters are resolved to destroy these aristocratic
prejudices. The passion called love has so general
and powerful an influence, it makes so much of the
entertainment, and indeed so much the occupation, of
that part of life which decides the character forever,
that the mode and the principles on which it engages
the sympathy and strikes the imagination become of
the utmost importance to the morals and manners
of every society. Your rulers were well aware of
this; and in their system of changing your manners
to accommodate them to their politics, they found
nothing so convenient as Rousseau. Through him
they teach men to love after the fashion of philoso
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 31
phers: that is, they teach to men, to Frenchmen, a
love without gallantry,- a love without anything of
that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility which
places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally
allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their
youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness, - of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry, the Nouvelle Eloise.
When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors
is broken down, and your families are no longer
protected by decent pride and salutary domestic
prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The rulers in the National Assembly are
in good hopes that the females of the first families
in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets-dechambre, and other active citizens of that description,
who, having the entry into your houses, and being
half domesticated by their situation, may be blended
with you by regular and irregular relations. By a
law they have made these people their equals. By
adopting the sentiments of Rousseau they have made
them your rivals. In this manner these great legislators complete their plan of levelling, and establish
their rights of men on a sure foundation.
I am certain that the writings of Rousseau lead
directly to this kind of shameful evil. ' I have often
wondered how he comes to be so much more admired
and followed on the Continent than he is here. Per
? ? ? ? 32 LETTER TO A MEMBER
haps a secret charm in the language may have its
share in this extraordinary difference. We certainly
perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this writer, a
style glowing, animated, enthusiastic, at the same
time that we find it lax, diffuse, and not in the best
taste of composition, -- all the members of the piece
being pretty equally labored and expanded, without
any due selection or subordination of parts. He is
generally too much on the stretch, and his manner
has little variety. We cannot rest upon any of his
works, though they contain observations which occasionally discover a considerable insight into human nature. But his doctrines, on the whole, are so inapplicable to real life and manners, that we never dream of drawing from them any rule for laws or conduct,
or for fortifying or illustrating anything by a reference to his opinions. They have with us the fate of
older paradoxes -
CuTn ventum ad verum est, senses moresque repugnant,
Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et mequi.
Perhaps bold speculations are more acceptable because more new to you than to us, who have been long since satiated with them. We continue, as in
the two last ages, to read, more generally than I believe is now done on the Continent, the authors of sound antiquity. These occupy our minds; they
give us another taste and turn; and will not suffer
us to be more than transiently amused with paradoxical morality. It is not that I consider this writer as wholly destitute of just notions. Amongst his irregularities, it must be reckoned that he is sometimes moral, and moral in a very sublime strain. But the
general spirit and tendency of his works is mischievous,- and the more mischievous for this mixture:
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 33
for perfect depravity of sentiment is not reconcilable
with eloquence; and the mind (though corruptible,
not complexionally vicious) would reject and throw
off with disgust a lesson of pure and unmixed evil.
These writers make even virtue a pander to vice.
However, I less consider the author than the system of the Assembly in perverting morality through
his means. This I confess makes me nearly despair
of any attempt upon the minds of their followers,
through reason, honor, or conscience. The great object of your tyrants is to destroy the gentlemen of
France; and for that purpose they destroy, to the best
of their power, all the effect of those relations which.
may render considerable'men powerful or even safe.
To destroy that order, they vitiate the whole com-munity. That no means may exist of confederating
against their tyranny, by the false sympathies of this
Nouvelle Eloise they endeavor to subvert those principles of domestic trust and fidelity which form the
discipline of social life. They propagate principles
by which every servant may think it, if not his duty,
at least his privilege, to betray his master. By these
principles, every considerable father of a family loses
the sanctuary of his house. Debet sua cuique domus
esse peyfugium tutissimum, says the law, which your
legislators have taken so much pains first to decry,
then to repeal. They destroy all the tranquillity and
security of domestic life: turning the asylum of the
house into a gloomy prison, where the father of the
family must drag out a miserable existence, endangered in proportion to the apparent means of his safety, --where he is worse than solitary in a crowd of domestics, and more apprehensive from his servants
and inmates than from the hired, bloodthirsty mob.
VOL. IV. 3
? ? ? ? 34 LETTER TO A MEMBER
without doors who are ready to pull him to the lanterne.
It is thus, and for the same end, that they endeavor to destroy that tribunal of conscience which exists independently of edicts and decrees. Your despots
govern by terror. They know that he who fears God
fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from
the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and
the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear
which generates true courage. Their object is, that
their fellow-citizens may be under the dominion of no
awe but that of their Committee of Research and of
their lanterne.
Having found the advantage of assassination in the
formation of their tyranny, it is the grand resource
in which they trust for the support of it. Whoever
opposes any of their proceedings, or is suspected of a
design to oppose them, is to answer it with his life,
or the lives of his wife and children. This infamous,
cruel, and cowardly practice of assassination they
have the impudence to call merciful. They boast that
they operated their usurpation rather by terror than
by force, and that a few seasonable murders have
prevented the bloodshed of many battles. There is
no doubt they will extend these acts of mercy when~ever they see an occasion. Dreadful, however, will be the consequences of their attempt to avoid the
evils of war by the merciful policy of murder. If, by
effectual punishment of the guilty, they do not wholly
disavow that practice, and the threat of it too, as any
part of their policy, if ever a foreign prince enters
into France, he must enter it as into a country of
assassins. The mode of civilized war will not be
practised: nor are the French who act on the present
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 35
system entitled to expect it. They whose known policy it is to assassinate every citizen whom they suspect to be discontented by their tyranny, and to corrupt the soldiery of every open enemy, must look for no modified hostility. All war, which is not battle,
will be military execution. This will beget acts of
retaliation from you; and every retaliation will beget
a new revenge. The hell-hounds of war, on all sides,
will be uncoupled and unmuzzled. The new school
of murder and barbarism set up in Paris, having destroyed (so far as in it lies) all the other manners
and principles which have hitherto civilized Europe,
will destroy also the mode of civilized war, which,
more than anything else, has distinguished the Christian world. Such is the approaching golden age
which the Virgil * of your Assembly has sung to his
Pollios!
In such a situation of your political, your civil,
and your social morals and manners, how can you be
hurt by the freedom of any discussion? Caution is
for those who have something to lose. What I have
said, to justify myself in not apprehending any ill
consequence from a free discussion of the absurd consequences which flow from the relation of the lawful
king to the usurped Constitution, will apply to my
vindication with regard to the exposure I have made
of the state of the army under the same sophistic
usurpation. The present tyrants want no arguments
to prove, what they must daily feel, that no good
army can exist on their principles. They are in no
want of a monitor to suggest to them the policy of
getting rid of the army, as well as of the king, whenever they are in a condition to effect that measure.
* Mirabeau's speech concerning universal peace.
? ? ? ? 36 LETTER TO A MEMBER
What hopes may be entertained of your army for the
restoration of your liberties I know not. At present,
yielding obedience to the pretended orders of a king
who, they are perfectly apprised,-has no will, and
who never can issue a mandate which is not intended, in the first operation, or in its certain consequences, for his own destruction, your army seems to make one of the principal links in the chain of that
servitude of anarchy by which a cruel usurpation
holds an undone people at once in bondage and confusion.
You ask me what I think of the conduct of General Monk. How this affects your case I cannot tell.
I doubt whether you possess in France any persons
of a capacity to serve the French monarchy in the
same manner in which Monk served the monarchy of
England.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 11
tides of fear and hope, the flight and pursuit, the
peril and escape, the alternate famine and feast of the
savage and the thief, after a time, render all course
of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation, and
the prospect only of a limited mediocrity at the end
of long labor, to the last degree tame, languid, and
insipid. Those who have been once intoxicated with
power, and have derived any kind of emolument from
it, even though but for one year, never can willingly
abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of
all their power; but they will never look to anything
but power for their relief. When did distress ever
oblige a prince to abdicate his authority? And what.
effect will it have upon those who are made to believe,
themselves a people of princes?
The more active and stirring part of the lower orders having got government and the distribution of
plunder into their hands, they will use its resources
in each municipality to form a body of adherents.
These rulers and their adherents will be strong enough
to overpower the discontents of those who have not
been able to assert their share of the spoil. The unfortunate adventurers in the cheating lottery of plunder will probably be the least sagacious or the most
inactive and irresolute of the gang. If, on disappointment, they should dare to stir, they will soon be suppressed as rebels and mutineers by their brother rebels. Scantily fed for a while with the offal of plunder, they will drop off by degrees; they will be driven out
of sight and out of thought; and they will be left to
perish obscurely, like rats, in holes and corners.
From the forced repentance of invalid mutineers
and disbanded thieves you can hope for no resource.
Government itself, which ought to constrain the more
? ? ? ? 12 LETTER TO A MEMBER
bold and dexterous of these robbers, is their accomplice. Its arms, its treasures, its all are in their
hands. Judicature, which above all things should
awe them, is their creature and their instrument.
Nothing seems to me to render your internal situation more desperate than this one circumstance of the state of your judicature. Many days are not passed
since we have seen a set of men brought forth by
your rulers for a most critical function. Your rulers
brought forth a set of men, steaming from the sweat
and drudgery, and all black with the smoke and soot,
of the forge of confiscation and robbery,- ardentis
massce fuligine ippos, -- a set of men brought forth
from the trade of hammering arms of proof, offensive
and defensive, in aid of the enterprises, and for the
subsequent protection, of housebreakers, murderers,
traifors, and malefactors, -mell, who had their minds
seasoned with theories perfectly conformable to their
practice, and who had always laughed at possession
and prescription, and defied all the fundamental maxims of jurisprudence. To the horror and stupefaction of all the honest part of this nation, and indeed of all
nations who are spectators, we have seen, on the credit of those very practices and principles, and to carry them further into effect, these very men placed on the
sacred seat of justice in the capital city of your late
kingdom. We see that in fiture you are to be destroyed with more form and regularity. This is not
peace: it is only the introduction of a sort of discipline in their hostility. Their tyranny is complete in
their justice; and their lanterne is not half so dreadful as their court.
One would think, that, out of common decency, they
would have given you men who had not been in the
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 13
habit of trampling upon law and justice in the Assembly, neutral men, or men apparently neutral, for judges, who are to dispose of your lives and fortunes.
Cromwell, when he attempted to legalize his power, and to settle his conquered country in a state of order, did not look for dispensers of justice in the
instruments of his usurpation. Quite the contrary.
He sought out, with great solicitude and selection,
and even from the party most opposite to his designs,
men of weight and decorum of character, - men unstained with the violence of the times, and with hands not fouled with confiscation and sacrilege: for he
chose an Hale for his chief justice, though he absolutely refused to take his civic oaths, or to make any acknowledgment whatsoever of the legality of his
government. Cromwell told this great lawyer, that,
since he did not approve his title, all he required of
him was to administer, in a manner agreeable to his
pure sentiments and unspotted character, that justice
without which human society cannot subsist, -- that
it was not his particular government, but civil order
itself, which, as a judge, he wished him to support.
Cromwell knew how to separate the institutions expedient to his usurpation from the administration of the public justice of his country. For Cromwell was
a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed,
but only suspended, the sentiments of religion, and
the love (as far as it could consist with his designs)
of fair and honorable reputation. Accordingly, we are
indebted to this act of his for the preservation of our
laws, which some senseless assertors of the rights of
men were then on the point of entirely erasing, as
relies of feudality and barbarism. Besides, he gave,
in the appointment of that man, to that age, and to
? ? ? ? 14 LETTER TO A MEMBER
all posterity, the most brilliant example of sincere and
fervent piety, exact justice, and profound jurisprudence. * But these are not the things in which your philosophic usurpers choose to follow Cromwell.
One would think, that, after an honest and necessary
revolution, (if they had a mind that theirs should pass
for such,) your masters would have imitated the virtuous policy of those who have been at the head of revolutions of that glorious character. Burnet tells
us, that nothing tended to reconcile the English
nation to the government of King William so much
as the care he took to fill the vacant bishoprics with
men who had attracted the public esteem by their
learning, eloquence, and piety, and above all, by
their known moderation in the state. With you, in
your purifying revolution, whom have you chosen to
regulate the Church? M. MAirabeau is a fine speaker, and a fine writer, and a fine - a very fine man; but, really, nothing gave more surprise to everybody here than to find him the supreme head of
your ecclesiastical affairs. The rest is of course.
Your Assembly addresses a manifesto to France, in
which they tell the people, with an insulting irony,
that they have brought the Church to its primitive
condition. In one respect their declaration is undoubtedly true: for they have brought it to a state
of poverty and persecution. What can be hoped for
after this? Have not men, (if they deserve the
name,) under this new hope and head of the Church,
been made bishops for no other merit than having
acted as instruments of atheists? for no other merit
than having thrown the children's bread to dogs?
and, in order to gorge the whole gang of usurers,
* See Burnet's Life of Hale.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 15
peddlers, and itinerant Jew discounters at the corners
of streets, starved the poor of their Christian flocks,
and their own brother pastors? Have not such men
been made bishops to administer in temples in which
(if the patriotic donations have not already stripped
them of their vessels) the church-wardens ought to
take security for the altar plate, and not so much as
to trust the chalice in their sacrilegious hands, so
long as Jews have assignats on ecclesiastic plunder,
to exchange for the silver stolen from churches?
I am told that the very sons of such Jew jobbers
have been made bishops: persons not to be suspected of any sort of Christian superstition, fit colleagues to the holy prelate of Autun, and bred at
the feet of that Gamaliel. We know who it was that
drove the money-changers out of the temple. We
see, too, who it is that brings them in again: We
have in London very respectable persons of the Jewish nation, whom we will keep; but we have of the
same tribe others of a very different description,housebreakers, and receivers of stolen goods, and
forgers of paper currency, more than we can conveniently hang. These we can spare to France, to fill
the new episcopal thrones: men well versed in swearing; and who will scruple no oath which the fertile
genius of any of your reformers can devise.
In matters so ridiculous it is hard to be grave.
On a view of their consequences, it is almost inhuman to treat them lightly. To what a state of savage, stupid, servile insensibility must your people be reduced, who can endure such proceedings in their
Church, their state, and their judicature, even for a
moment! But the deluded people of France are like
other madmen, who, to a miracle, bear hunger, and
? ? ? ? 16 LETTER TO A MEMBER
thirst, and cold, and confinement, and the chains and
lash of their keeper, whilst all the while they support
themselves by the imagination that they are generals
of armies, prophets, kings, and emperors. As to a
change of mind in these men, who consider infamy
as honor, degradation as preferment, bondage to low
tyrants as liberty, and the practical scorn and conturmely of their upstart masters as marks of respect and homage, I look upon it as absolutely impracticable. These madmen, to be cured, must first, like other madmen, be subdued. The sound part of the
community, which I believe to be large, but by no
means the largest part, has been taken by surprise,
and is disjointed, terrified, and disarmed. That sound
part of the community must first be put into a better
condition, before it can do anything in the way of
deliberation or persuasion. This must be an act of
power; as well as of wisdom: of power in the hands
of firm, determined patriots, who can distinguish the
misled from traitors, who will regulate the state (if
such should be their fortune) with a discriminating,
manly, and provident mercy; men who are purged
of the surfeit and indigestion of systems, if ever they
have been admitted into the habit of their minds;
men who will lay the foundation of a real reform in
effacing every vestige of that philosophy which pretends to have made discoveries in the Terra Australis of morality; men who will fix the state upon these
bases of morals and politics, which are our old and
immemorial, and, I hope, will be our eternal possession.
This power, to such men, must come from without. It may be given to you in pity: for surely no
nation ever called so pathetically on the compassion
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 17
of all its neighbors. It may be given by those neighbors on motives of safety to themselves. Never shall
I think any country in Europe to be secure, whilst
there is established in the very centre of it a state
(if so it may be called) founded on principles of anarchy, and which is in reality a college of armed
fanatics, for the propagation of the principles of assassination, robbery, rebellion, fraud, faction, oppression,
and impiety. Mahomet, hid, as for a time he was, ill
the bottom of the sands of Arabia, had his spirit and
character been discovered, would have been an object
of precaution to provident minds. What if he had.
erected his fanatic standard for the destruction of
the Christian religion in luce Asice, in the midst
of the then noonday splendor of the then civilized
world? The princes of Europe, ill the beginning of
this century, did well not to suffer the monarchy of
France to swallow up the others. They oughtl not!
now, in my opinion, to suffer all the monarchies and
commonwealths to be swallowed up in the gulf of this
polluted anarchy. They may be tolerably safe at present, because the comparative power of France for the
present is little. But times and occasions make dangers. Intestine troubles may arise in other countries.
There is a power always on the watch, qualified and
disposed to profit of every conjuncture, to establish
its own principles and modes of mischief, wherever
it can hope for success. What mercy would these
usurpers have on other sovereigns, and on other nations, when they treat their own king with such unparalleled indignities, and so cruelly oppress their own countrymen?
The king of Prussia, in concurrence with us, nobly interfered to save Holland from confusion. The
VOL. IV. 2
? ? ? ? 18 LETTER TO A MEMBER
same power, joined with the rescued Holland and
with Great Britain, has put the Emperor in the possession of the Netherlands, and secured, under that
prince, from all arbitrary innovation, the ancient, hereditary Constitution of those provinces. The chamber of Wetzlar has restored the Bishop of Liege, unjust1y dispossessed by the rebellion of his subjects. The king of Prussia was bound by no treaty nor alliance
of blood, nor had any particular reasons for thinking
the Emperor's government would be more mischievous. or more oppressive to human nature than that of
tile Turk; yet, on mere motives of policy, that prince
has interposed, with the threat of all his force, to
snatch even the Turk from the pounces of the Imperial eagle. If this is done in favor of a barbarous
nation, with a barbarous neglect of police, fatal to the
human race, --in favor of a nation by principle in
eternal enmity with the Christian name, a nation
which will not so much as give the salutation of
peace (Salam) to any of us, nor make any pact with
any Christian nation beyond a truce, - if this be done
in favor of the Turk, shall it be thought either impolitic or unjust or uncharitable to employ the same power to rescue from captivity a virtuous monarch, (by
the courtesy of Europe considered as Most Christian,)
who, after an intermission of one hundred and seventy-five years, had called together the'States of his
kingdom to reform abuses, to establish a free government, and to strengthen his throne,- a monarch
who, at the very outset, without force, even without
solicitation, had given to his people such a Magna
Charta of privileges as never was given by any king
to any subjects? Is it to be tamely borne by kings
who love their subjects, or by subjects who love their
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 19
kings, that this monarch, in the midst of these gracious acts, was insolently and cruelly torn from his
palace by a gang of traitors and assassins, and kept
in close prison to this very hour, whilst his royal
name and sacred character were used for the total
ruin of those whom the laws had appointed him to
protect?
The only offence of this unhappy monarch towards
his people was his attempt, under a monarchy, to
give them a free Constitution. For this, by an example hitherto unheard of in the world, he has been
deposed. It might well disgrace sovereigns to take
part with a deposed tyrant. It would suppose in
them a vicious sympathy. But not to make a common cause with a just prince, dethroned by traitors
and rebels, who proscribe, plunder, confiscate, and in
every way cruelly oppress their fellow-citizens, in my
opinion is to forget what is due to the honor and to
the rights of all virtuous and legal government.
I think the king of France to be as much an object
both of policy and compassion as the Grand Seignior
or his states. I do not conceive that the total annihilation of France (if that could be effected) is a
desirable thing to Europe, or even to this its rival
nation. Provident patriots did not think it good for
Rome that even Carthage should be quite destroyed;
and he was a wise Greek, wise for the general Grecian interests, as well as a brave Lacedaemonian enemy and generous conqueror, who did not wish, by the destruction of Athens, to pluck out the other
eye of Greece.
However, Sir, what I have here said of the interference of foreign princes is only the opinion of a private individual, who is neither the representative of
? ? ? ? 20 LETTER TO A MEMBER
ally state nor the organ of any party, but who thinks
himself bound to express his own sentiments with
freedom and energy in a crisis of such importance to
the whole human race.
I am not apprehensive, that, in speaking freely on
the subject of the king and queen of France, I shall
accelerate (as you fear) the execution of traitorous
designs against them. You are of opinion, Sir, that
the usurpers may, and that they will, gladly lay hold
of any pretext to throw off the very name of a king:
assuredly, I do not wish ill to your king; but better
for him not to live (he does not reign) than to live
the passive instrument of tyranny and usurpation.
I certainly meant to show, to the best of my power,
that the existence of such an executive officer in
such a system of republic as theirs is absurd in the
highest degree. But in demonstrating this, to them,
at least, I can have made no discovery. They only
held out the royal name to catch those Frenchmen to
whom the name of king is still venerable. They calculate the duration of that sentiment; and when they find it nearly expiring, they will not trouble
themselves with excuses for extinguishing the name,
as they have the thing. They used it as a sort of
navel-string to nourish their unnatural offspring from
the bowels of royalty itself. Now that the monster
can purvey for its own subsistence, it will only carry
the mark about it, as a token of its having torn the
womb it came from. Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
Fraud is the ready minister of injustice; and whilst
the currency of false pretence and sophistic reasoning
was expedient to their designs, they were under no
necessity of drawing upon me to furnish them with
that coin. But pretexts and sophisms have had their
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 21
day, and have done their work. The usurpation no
longer seeks plausibility: it trusts to power.
Nothing that I can say, or that you can say, will
hasten them, by a single hour, in the execution of a
design which they have long since entertained. In
spite of their solemn declarations, their soothing
addresses, and the multiplied oaths which they have
taken and forced others to take, they will assassinate
the king when his name will no longer be necessary
to their designs, -- but not a moment sooner. They
will probably first assassinate the queen, whenever
the renewed nienace of such an assassination loses its
effect upon the anxious mind of an affectionate husband. At present, the advantage which they derive
from the daily threats against her life is her only security for preserving it. They keep their sovereign
alive for the purpose of exhibiting him, like some
wild beast at a fair, - as if they had a Bajazet in a
cage. They choose to make monarchy contemptible
by exposing it to derision in the person of the most
benevolent of their kings.
In my opinion their insolence appears more odious
even than their crimes. The horrors of the fifth and
sixth of October were less detestable than the festival
of the fourteenth of July. There are situations (God
forbid I should think that of the 5th and 6th of October one of them! ) in which the best men may be confounded with the worst, and in the darkness and conlfusion, in the press and medley of such extremities, it may not be so easy to discriminate the one fiom
the other. The necessities created even by ill designs have their excuse. They may be forgotten by
others, when the guilty themselves do not choose to
cherish their recollection, and, by ruminating their
? ? ? ? 22 LETTER TO A MEMBER
offences, nourish themselves, through the example of
their past, to the perpetration of future crimes. It is
in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of
prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart,
and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that
the real character of men is discerned. If there is
any good in them, it appears then or never. Even
wolves and tigers, when gorged with their prey, are
safe and gentle. It is at such times that noble minds
give all the reins to their good nature. They indulge
their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the
afflicted, in generosity to the conquered, - forbearing
insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full
of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but
they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then,
and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune,
that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell
with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of their native villany and baseness. It is in
that season that no man of sense or honor can be
mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season,
for them of political ease and security, though their
people were but just emerged from actual famine, and
were ready to be plunged into a gulf of penury and
beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an
ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible
number of idle and thoughtless people, collected
with art and pains from all quarters of the world.
They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they
raised a species of pillory. * On this pillory they set
their lawful king and queen, with an insulting figure
* The pillory (carcan) in England is generally made very high
like that raised for exposing the king of France.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 23
over their heads. There they exposed these objects
of pity and respect to all good minds to the derision
of an unthinking and unprincipled multitude, degenerated even from the versatile tenderness which
marks the irregular and capricious feelings of the
populace. That their cruel insult might have nothing wanting to complete it, they chose the anniversary of that day in which they exposed the life of their prince to the most imminent dangers and the
vilest indignities, just following the instant when the
assassins, whom they had hired without owning, first
openly took up arms against their king, corrupted his
guards, surprised his castle, butchered some of the
poor invalids of his garrison, murdered his governor,
and, like wild beasts, tore to pieces the chief magistrate of his capital city, on account of his fidelity to
his service.
Till the'justice of the world is awakened, such as
these will go on, without admonition, and without
provocation, to every extremity. Those who have
made the exhibition of the fourteenth of July are capable of every evil. They do not commit crimes for
their designs; but they form designs that they may
commit crimes. It is not their necessity, but their
nature, that impels them. They are modern philosophers, which when you say of them, you express
everything that is ignoble, savage, and hard-hearted.
Besides the sure tokens which are given by the spirit of their particular arrangements, there are some
characteristic lineaments in the general policy of
your tumultuous despotism, which, in my opinion,
indicate, beyond a doubt, that no revolution whatsoever in their disposition is to be expected: I mean
their scheme of educating the rising generation, the
? ? ? ? 24 LETTER TO A MEMBER
principles which they intend to instil and the sympathies which they wish to form in the mind at the
season in which it is the most susceptible. Instead
of forming their young minds to that docility, to that
modesty, which are the grace and charm of youth, to
an admiration of famous examples, and to an averseness to anything which approaches to pride, petulance,
and self-conceit, (distempers to which that time of
life is of itself sufficiently liable,) they artificially foment these evil dispositions, and even form them into
springs of action.
Nothing ought to be more weighed
than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, limited indeed is the extent, of a virtuous institution.
But if education takes in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt but that it will operate with
abundant energy, and to an extent indefinite. The
magistrate, who in favor of freedom thinks himself
obliged to suffer all sorts of publications, is under a
stricter duty than any other well to consider what
sort of writers he shall authorize, and shall recommend by the strongest of all sanctions, that is, by public honors and rewards. He ought to be cautious how he recommends authors of mixed or ambiguous
morality. He ought to be fearful of putting into the
hands of youth writers indulgent to the peculiarities
of their own complexion, lest they should teach the
humors of the professor, rather than the principles of
the science. He ought, above all, to be cautious in
recommending any writer who has carried marks of a
deranged understanding: for where there is no sound
reason, there can be no real virtue; and madness is
ever vicious and malignant.
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 25
The Assembly proceeds on maxims the very reverse
of these. The Assembly recommends to its youth a
study of the bold experimenters in morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their leaders, which of them is the best resemblance
of Rousseau. In truth, they all resemble him. His
blood they transfuse into their minds and into their
manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him
they turn over in all the time they can spare from the
laborious mischief of the day or the debauches of the
night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his
life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard
figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as
a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries
of Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles
of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an
author had written like a great genius on geometry,
though his practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear that in voting the statue they honored only the geometrician. But
Rousseau is a moralist or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design in choosing the author with
whom they have begun to recommend a course of
studies.
Their great problem is, to -find a substitute for all
the principles which hitherto have been employed
to regulate the human will and action. They find
dispositions in the mind of such force and quality
as may fit men, far better than the old morality, for
the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may go
much further in supporting their power and destroying their enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the
? ? ? ? 26 LETTER TO A MEMBER
place of plain duty. True humility, the basis of
the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm
foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have totally discarded. Their object is to merge all natural and all social sentiment in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and conversant in
little things, vanity is of little moment. When fullgrown, it is the worst of vices, and the occasional
mimic of them all. It makes the whole man false.
It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him.
His best qualities are poisoned and perverted by it,
and operate exactly as the worst. When your lords
had many writers as immoral as the object of their
statue (such as Voltaire and others) they chose
Rousseau, because in him that peculiar vice which
they wished to erect into ruling virtue was by far
the most conspicuous.
We have had the great professor and founder of
the philosophy of vanity in England. As I had good
opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from
day to day, he left no doubt on my mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his heart
or to guide his understanding, but vanity. With this
vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness. It is from the same deranged, eccentric vanity,
that this, the insane Socrates of the National Assembly, was impelled to publish a mad confession of his
mad faults, and to attempt a new sort of glory from
bringing hardily to light the obscure and vulgar vices
which we know may sometimes be blended with eminent talents. He has not observed on the nature of
vanity who does not know that it is omnivorous,that it has no choice in its food,- that it is fond to
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 27
talk even of its own faults and vices, as what will excite surprise and draw attention, and what will pass at worst for openness and candor.
It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity
makes even of hypocrisy, which has driven Rousseau
to record a life not so much as checkered or spotted
here and there with virtues, or even distinguished by
a single good action. It is such a life he chooses to
offer to the attention of mankind. It is such a life
that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the face of his
Creator, whom he acknowledges only to brave. Your
Assembly, knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model.
To him they erect their first statue. From him they
comlmence their series of honors and distinctions.
It is that new-invented virtue which your masters
canonize that led their moral hero constantly to
exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the
expression of universal benevolence, whilst his heart
was incapable of harboring one spark of common parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom
the professors come in contact, form the character of
the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just prioe of common labor, as well as the tribute which
opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honors the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts
with tenderness for those only who touch him by the
remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang,
casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the
spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his chil
? ? ? ? 28 LETTER TO A MEMBER
dren to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves,
licks, and forms her young: but bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.
Under this philosophic instructor in the ethics of
vanity, they have attempted in France a regeneration
of the moral constitution of man. Statesmen like
your present rulers exist by everything which is spurious, fictitious, and false, --by everything which takes
the man from his house, and sets him on a stage, --
which makes him up an artificial creature, with
painted, theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the
glare of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated
at a due distance. Vanity is too apt to prevail in all
of us, and in all countries. To the improvement of
Frenchmen, it seems not absolutely necessary that it
should be taught upon system. But it is plain that
the present rebellion was its legitimate offspring, and
it is piously fed by that rebellion with a daily dole.
If the system of institution recommended by the
Assembly is false and theatric, it is because their
system of government is of the same character. To
that, and to that alone, it is strictly conformable. To
understand either, we must connect the morals with
the politics of the legislators. Your practical philosophers, systematic in everything, have wisely began
at the source. As the relation between parents and
children is the first among the elements of vulgar, natural morality,* they erect statues to a wild,
* "Filiola tua te delectari lketor, et probari tibi VO-LK)v esse -jr,
rpov 7Ta TEKva: etenim, si hbec non est, nulla potest homini esse ad
hominem naturae adjunctio: qua sublata, vitao societas tollitur. Va
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 29
ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of fine general feelings,- a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred. Your masters reject the duties of this
vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty, as not founded
in the social compact, and not binding according to
the rights of men; because the relation is not, of
course, the result of free election, -never so on the
side of the children, not always on the part of the
parents.
The next relation which they regenerate by their
statues to Rousseau is that which is next in sanctity
to that of a father. They differ from those old-fashioned thinkers who considered pedagogues as sober and venerable characters, and allied to the parental.
The moralists of the dark times prceceptorem sancti
voluere parentis esse loco. In this age of light they
teach the people that preceptors ought to be in the
place of gallants. They systematically corrupt a very
corruptible race, (for some time a growing nuisance
amongst you,)- a set of pert, petulant literators, to
whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unostentatious duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of gay, young, military sparks, and
danglers at toilets. They call on the rising generation in France to take a sympathy in the adventures and fortunes, and they endeavor to engage their
sensibility on the side, of pedagogues who betray the
most awful family trusts and vitiate their female
pupils. They teach the people that the debauchers
of virgins, almost in the arms of their parents, may
be safe inmates in their house, and even fit guardians of the honor of those husbands who succeed lete, Patron [Rousseau] et tui condiscipuli [L'Assemblde Nationalel! "- Cic. Ep. ad Atticum.
? ? ? ? 30 LETTER TO A MEMBER
legally to the office which the young literators had
preoccupied without asking leave of law or conscience.
Thus they dispose of all the family relations of parents and children, husbands and wives. Through this same instructor, by whom they corrupt the morals, they corrupt the taste. Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller
and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance
in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of
force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends
virtue with something like the blandishments of
pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.
Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is
totally destitute of taste in ally sense of the word.
Your masters, who are his scholars, conceive that all
refinement has an aristocratic character. The last
age had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace
and nobleness to our natural appetites, and in raising them into a higher class and order than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your
masters are resolved to destroy these aristocratic
prejudices. The passion called love has so general
and powerful an influence, it makes so much of the
entertainment, and indeed so much the occupation, of
that part of life which decides the character forever,
that the mode and the principles on which it engages
the sympathy and strikes the imagination become of
the utmost importance to the morals and manners
of every society. Your rulers were well aware of
this; and in their system of changing your manners
to accommodate them to their politics, they found
nothing so convenient as Rousseau. Through him
they teach men to love after the fashion of philoso
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 31
phers: that is, they teach to men, to Frenchmen, a
love without gallantry,- a love without anything of
that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility which
places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally
allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their
youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness, - of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry, the Nouvelle Eloise.
When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors
is broken down, and your families are no longer
protected by decent pride and salutary domestic
prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The rulers in the National Assembly are
in good hopes that the females of the first families
in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets-dechambre, and other active citizens of that description,
who, having the entry into your houses, and being
half domesticated by their situation, may be blended
with you by regular and irregular relations. By a
law they have made these people their equals. By
adopting the sentiments of Rousseau they have made
them your rivals. In this manner these great legislators complete their plan of levelling, and establish
their rights of men on a sure foundation.
I am certain that the writings of Rousseau lead
directly to this kind of shameful evil. ' I have often
wondered how he comes to be so much more admired
and followed on the Continent than he is here. Per
? ? ? ? 32 LETTER TO A MEMBER
haps a secret charm in the language may have its
share in this extraordinary difference. We certainly
perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this writer, a
style glowing, animated, enthusiastic, at the same
time that we find it lax, diffuse, and not in the best
taste of composition, -- all the members of the piece
being pretty equally labored and expanded, without
any due selection or subordination of parts. He is
generally too much on the stretch, and his manner
has little variety. We cannot rest upon any of his
works, though they contain observations which occasionally discover a considerable insight into human nature. But his doctrines, on the whole, are so inapplicable to real life and manners, that we never dream of drawing from them any rule for laws or conduct,
or for fortifying or illustrating anything by a reference to his opinions. They have with us the fate of
older paradoxes -
CuTn ventum ad verum est, senses moresque repugnant,
Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et mequi.
Perhaps bold speculations are more acceptable because more new to you than to us, who have been long since satiated with them. We continue, as in
the two last ages, to read, more generally than I believe is now done on the Continent, the authors of sound antiquity. These occupy our minds; they
give us another taste and turn; and will not suffer
us to be more than transiently amused with paradoxical morality. It is not that I consider this writer as wholly destitute of just notions. Amongst his irregularities, it must be reckoned that he is sometimes moral, and moral in a very sublime strain. But the
general spirit and tendency of his works is mischievous,- and the more mischievous for this mixture:
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 33
for perfect depravity of sentiment is not reconcilable
with eloquence; and the mind (though corruptible,
not complexionally vicious) would reject and throw
off with disgust a lesson of pure and unmixed evil.
These writers make even virtue a pander to vice.
However, I less consider the author than the system of the Assembly in perverting morality through
his means. This I confess makes me nearly despair
of any attempt upon the minds of their followers,
through reason, honor, or conscience. The great object of your tyrants is to destroy the gentlemen of
France; and for that purpose they destroy, to the best
of their power, all the effect of those relations which.
may render considerable'men powerful or even safe.
To destroy that order, they vitiate the whole com-munity. That no means may exist of confederating
against their tyranny, by the false sympathies of this
Nouvelle Eloise they endeavor to subvert those principles of domestic trust and fidelity which form the
discipline of social life. They propagate principles
by which every servant may think it, if not his duty,
at least his privilege, to betray his master. By these
principles, every considerable father of a family loses
the sanctuary of his house. Debet sua cuique domus
esse peyfugium tutissimum, says the law, which your
legislators have taken so much pains first to decry,
then to repeal. They destroy all the tranquillity and
security of domestic life: turning the asylum of the
house into a gloomy prison, where the father of the
family must drag out a miserable existence, endangered in proportion to the apparent means of his safety, --where he is worse than solitary in a crowd of domestics, and more apprehensive from his servants
and inmates than from the hired, bloodthirsty mob.
VOL. IV. 3
? ? ? ? 34 LETTER TO A MEMBER
without doors who are ready to pull him to the lanterne.
It is thus, and for the same end, that they endeavor to destroy that tribunal of conscience which exists independently of edicts and decrees. Your despots
govern by terror. They know that he who fears God
fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from
the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and
the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear
which generates true courage. Their object is, that
their fellow-citizens may be under the dominion of no
awe but that of their Committee of Research and of
their lanterne.
Having found the advantage of assassination in the
formation of their tyranny, it is the grand resource
in which they trust for the support of it. Whoever
opposes any of their proceedings, or is suspected of a
design to oppose them, is to answer it with his life,
or the lives of his wife and children. This infamous,
cruel, and cowardly practice of assassination they
have the impudence to call merciful. They boast that
they operated their usurpation rather by terror than
by force, and that a few seasonable murders have
prevented the bloodshed of many battles. There is
no doubt they will extend these acts of mercy when~ever they see an occasion. Dreadful, however, will be the consequences of their attempt to avoid the
evils of war by the merciful policy of murder. If, by
effectual punishment of the guilty, they do not wholly
disavow that practice, and the threat of it too, as any
part of their policy, if ever a foreign prince enters
into France, he must enter it as into a country of
assassins. The mode of civilized war will not be
practised: nor are the French who act on the present
? ? ? ? OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 35
system entitled to expect it. They whose known policy it is to assassinate every citizen whom they suspect to be discontented by their tyranny, and to corrupt the soldiery of every open enemy, must look for no modified hostility. All war, which is not battle,
will be military execution. This will beget acts of
retaliation from you; and every retaliation will beget
a new revenge. The hell-hounds of war, on all sides,
will be uncoupled and unmuzzled. The new school
of murder and barbarism set up in Paris, having destroyed (so far as in it lies) all the other manners
and principles which have hitherto civilized Europe,
will destroy also the mode of civilized war, which,
more than anything else, has distinguished the Christian world. Such is the approaching golden age
which the Virgil * of your Assembly has sung to his
Pollios!
In such a situation of your political, your civil,
and your social morals and manners, how can you be
hurt by the freedom of any discussion? Caution is
for those who have something to lose. What I have
said, to justify myself in not apprehending any ill
consequence from a free discussion of the absurd consequences which flow from the relation of the lawful
king to the usurped Constitution, will apply to my
vindication with regard to the exposure I have made
of the state of the army under the same sophistic
usurpation. The present tyrants want no arguments
to prove, what they must daily feel, that no good
army can exist on their principles. They are in no
want of a monitor to suggest to them the policy of
getting rid of the army, as well as of the king, whenever they are in a condition to effect that measure.
* Mirabeau's speech concerning universal peace.
? ? ? ? 36 LETTER TO A MEMBER
What hopes may be entertained of your army for the
restoration of your liberties I know not. At present,
yielding obedience to the pretended orders of a king
who, they are perfectly apprised,-has no will, and
who never can issue a mandate which is not intended, in the first operation, or in its certain consequences, for his own destruction, your army seems to make one of the principal links in the chain of that
servitude of anarchy by which a cruel usurpation
holds an undone people at once in bondage and confusion.
You ask me what I think of the conduct of General Monk. How this affects your case I cannot tell.
I doubt whether you possess in France any persons
of a capacity to serve the French monarchy in the
same manner in which Monk served the monarchy of
England.
