The same policy pervades all the laws which have
since been made for the preservation of our liberties.
since been made for the preservation of our liberties.
Edmund Burke
On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old Constitution through the parts which were not impaired.
They kept these
old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited to them. They acted by the
ancient organized states in the shape of their old
organization, and not by the organic moleculce of a
disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to
that fundamental principle of British constitutional
policy than at the time of the Revolution, when it
deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession.
The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in
which it had before moved; but the new line was
derived from the same stock. It was still a line of
hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the
same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified
with Protestantism. When the legislature altered
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the direction, but kept the principle, they showed
that they held it inviolable.
On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment in the old time, and long
before the era of the Revolution. Some time after
the Conquest great questions arose upon the legal
principles of hereditary descent. It became a matter
of doubt whether the heir per capita or the heir per
stirpes was to succeed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per stirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant was preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort
of immortality through all transmigrations, --
Multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domfis, et avi numerantur avorum.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its
settled course, but in all its revolutions. Whoever
came in, or however he came in, whether he obtained
the _crown by law or by force, the hereditary successiAh was either continued or adopted.
The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see
nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the
Constitution; and they take the deviation from the
principle for the principle. They have little regard
to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though
they may see that it leaves positive authority in very
few of the positive institutions of this country. When
such an unwarrantable maxim is once established,
that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act
of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors, who dragged the bodies
of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of their
tombs? Do they mean to attaint and disable back
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wards all the kings that have reigned before the
Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of
England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into
question, together with the titles of the whole line
of our kings, that great body of our statute law which
passed under. those whom they treat as usurpers? to
annul laws of inestimable value to our liberties, - of
as great value at least as any which have passed at
or since the period of the Revolution? If kings who
did not owe their crown to the choice of their people
had no title to mako laws, what will become of the
statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of
Bight. ? of the act of Habeas Corpus? Do these new
doctors of the rights of men presume to assert that
King James the Second, who came to the crown as
next of blood, according to the rules of a then unqualified succession, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had done any of those acts which were justly construed into
an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much
trouble in Parliament might have been saved at the
period these gentlemen commemorate. But King
James was a bad king with a good title, and not
an usurper. The princes who succeeded according
to the act of Parliament which settled the crown on
the Electress Sophia and on her descendants, being
Protestants, came in as much by a title of inheritance as Kiing James did. He came in according
to the law, as it stood at his accession to the crown;
and the princes of the House of Brunswick came to
the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but by
the law, as it stood at their several accessions, of
Protestant descent and inheritance, as I hope I have
shown sufficiently.
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The law by which this royal family'is specifically
destined to the succession is the act of the 12th and
13th of King William. The terms of this act bind
" us, and our heirs, and our posterity, to them, their
heirs, and their posterity," being Protestants, to the
end of time, in the same words as the Declaration
of Right had bound us to the heirs of King William
and Queen Mary. It therefore secures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On what ground, except the constitutional policy of forming
an establishment to secure that kind of succession
which is to preclude a choice of the people forever,
could the legislature have fastidiously rejected the
fair and abundant choice which our own country
presented to them, and searched in strange lands
for a foreign princess, from whose womb the line of
our future rulers were to derive their title to govern
millions of men through a series of ages?
The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and 13th of King William, for
a stock and root of inheritance to our kings, and not
for her merits as a temporary administratrix of a
power which she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She was adopted for one reason, and for one only, - because, says the act, " the most
excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess
Dowager of Hanover, is daughter of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our late sovereign lord King James the
First, of happy memory, and is hereby declared to be
the next in succession in the Protestant line," &c. ,
&c. ;" and the crown shall continue to the heirs of
her body, being Protestants. " This limitation was
made by Parliament, that through the Princess
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Sophia an inheritable line not only was to be continued in future, but (what they thought very material) that through her it was to be connected with the old stock of inheritance in King James the First;
in order that the monarchy might preserve an uin
broken unity through all ages, and might be preserved
(with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode
by descent, in which, if our liberties had been once
endangered, they had often, through all storms and
struggles of prerogative and privilege, been preserved.
Tlhey did well. No experience has taught us that
in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated
and preserved sacred as our hereditary right. An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to
throw off an irregular, convulsive disease. But the
course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution. Was. it that the legislature wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn through the female descendants of James the First, a due sense of the inconveniences of having two or three, or possibly more, foreigners in succession to the British throne? No!
-they had a due sense of the evils which might
happen from such foreign rule, and more tllan a due
sense of them. But a more decisive proof cannot
be given of the full conviction of the British nation
that the principles of the Revolution did not authorize them to elect kings at their pleasure, and without
any attention to the ancient fundamental principles
of our government, than their continuing to adopt
a plan of hereditary Protestant succession in the old
line, with all the dangers and all the inconveniences
of its being a foreign line full before their eyes,
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and operating with the utmost force upon their
minds.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the
then unnecessary support of any argument; but this
seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly
taught, avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to
revolutions, the signals for which have so often been
given from pulpits, -- the spirit of change that is gone
abroad, -the total contempt which prevails with you,
and may come to prevail with us, of all ancient ilnstitutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination,all these considerations make it not unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our attention to the true principles of our own domestic laws, that you, my French friend, should begin to know, and that we should
continue to cherish them. We ought not, on either
side of the water, to suffer ourselves to be imposed
upon by the counterfeit wares which some persons,
by a double fraud, export to you in illicit bottoms,
as raw commodities of British growth, though wholly
alien to our soil, in order afterwards to smuggle them
back again into this country, manufactured after the
newest Paris fashion of an improved liberty.
The people of England will not ape the fashions
they have never tried, nor go back to those which
they have found mischievous on trial. They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs, - as
a benefit, not as a grievance, -- as a security for their
liberty, not as a badge of servitude. They look on
the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands,
to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 265
undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge
of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our Constitution.
I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take
notice of some paltry artifices which the abettors of
election as the only lawful title to the crown are
ready to employ, in order to render the support of
the just principles of our Constitution a task somewhat invidious. These sophisters substitute a fictitious cause, and feigned personages, in whose favor they suppose you engaged, whenever you defend the
inheritable nature of the crown. It is common with
them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with some
of those exploded fanatics of slavery who formerly
maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, " that the crown is held by divine, hereditary,
and indefeasible right. " These old fanatics of single
arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary royalty
was the only lawful government in the world, --just
as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful source
of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, it is
true, did speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously
too, as if monarchy had more of a divine sanction
than any other mode of government, --and as if a
right to govern by inheritance were in strictness indefeasible in every person who should be found in the
succession to a throne, and under every circumstance, which no civil or political right can be. But
all absurd opinion concerning the king's hereditary
right to the crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon solid principles of law anld
policy. If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are con.
? ? ? ? 266 REFLECTIONS ON THE
versant, we should have no law and no religion left
in the world. But an absurd theory on one side of a
question forms no justification for alleging a false fact
or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
The second claim of the Revolution Society is' a
right of cashiering their governors for mnisconduct. "
Perhaps the apprehensions our ancestors entertained
of forming such a precedent as that "' of cashiering
for misconduct" was the cause that the declaration
of the act which implied the abdication of King
James was, if it had any fault, rather too guarded
and too circumstantial. * But all this guard, and all
this accumulation of circumstances, serves to show the
spirit of caution which predominated in the national
councils, in a situation in which men irritated by oppression, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt
to abandon themselves to violent and extreme courses;
it shows the anxiety of the great men who influenced
the conduct of affairs at that great event to make
the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
No government could stand a moment, if it could
be blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of " misconduct. " They who led at
the Revolution grounded their virtual abdication of
King James upon no such light and uncertain principle. They charged him with nothing less than a
design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts,
* (That King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert the
Constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between
king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violatcd the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the government, and the throne is thereby vacant. "
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 267
to subvert the Protestant Church and State, and their
fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they
charged him with having broken the original contract
between king and people. This was more than misconduct. A grave and overruling necessity obliged
them to take the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all
laws. Their trust for the future preservation of the
Constitution was not in future revolutions. The
grand policy of all their regulations was to render it
almost impracticable for any future sovereign to compel the states of the kingdom to have again recourse to those violent remedies. They left the crown,
what in the eye and estimation of law it had ever
been, perfectly irresponsible. In order to lighten the
crown still further, they aggravated responsibility on
ministers of state. By the statute of the first ot
King William, sess. 2d, called "' the act for declaring
the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling
the succession of the crown," they enacted that the
ministers should serve the crown on the terms of
that declaration. They secured soon after the frequent meetings of Parliament, by which the whole government would be under the constant inspection
and active control of the popular representative and
of the magnates of the kingdom. In the next great
constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King
William, for the further limitation of the crown, and
better securing the rights and liberties of the subject,
they provided " that no pardon under the great seal of
England should be pleadable to an impeachment by
the Commons in Parliament. " The rule laid down
for government in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspection of Parliament, the practical claim of
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impeachment, they thought infinitely a better security
not only for their constitutional liberty, but against
the vices of administration, than the reservation of a
right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the
issue, and often so mischievous in the consequences,
as that "' cashiering their governors. "
Dr. Price, in this sermon,* condemns, very properly, the practice of gross adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, he proposes that his
Majesty should be told, on occasions of congratulation, that " he is to consider himself as more properly the servant than the sovereign of his people. " For
a compliment, this new form of address does not
seem to be very soothing. Those who are. servants
in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told
of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.
The slave in the old play tells his master, " Hcee commrnemoratio est quasi exprobratio. " It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome as instruction.
After all, if the king" #ere to bring himself to echo
this new kind of address, to adopt it in terms, and
even to take the appellation of Servant of the People
as his royal style, how either he or we should be
much mended by it I cannot imagine. I have seen
very assuming letters signed, " Your most obedient,
humble servant. " The proudest domination that ever was endured on earth took a title of still greater humility than that which is now proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations
were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "The Servant of Servants "; and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the signet of
" The Fisherman. "
* P. 22, 23, 24.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 269
I should have considered all this as no more than
a sort of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an
unsavory fume, several persons suffer the spirit of
liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support
of the idea, and a part of the scheme, of " cashiering
kings for misconduct. " In that light it is worth
some observation.
Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants
of the people, because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage; but it
is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense, (by
our Constitution, at least,) anything like servants,
the essence of whose situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to be removable at pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this high magistrate, not our servant,
as this humble divine calls him, but " our sovereign
lord the king"; and we, on our parts, have learned
to speak only the primitive language of the law, and
not the confused jargon of their Babylonian pulpits.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law
in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible. Our Constitution knows nothing of a magistrate like the Justicia of Aragon, --nor of any
court legally appointed, nor of any process legally
settled, for submitting the king to the responsibility
belonging to all servants. In this he is not distinguished from the commons and the lords, who, in
their several public capacities, can never be called
to an account for their conduct; although the Revo
? ? ? ? 270 REFLECTIONS ON THE
lution Society chooses to assert, in direct opposition to
one of the wisest and most beautiful parts of our Constitution, that " a king is no more than the first servant of the public, created by it, and responsible to it. " Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have
deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found
no security for their freedom, but in rendering their
government feeble in its operations and precarious in
its tenure, - if they had been able to contrive no
better remedy against arbitrary power than civil confusion. Let these gentlemen state who that representative public is to whom they will affirm the king, as a servant, to be responsible. It will be then time
enough for me to produce to them the positive statute law which affirms that he is not.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these
gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if
ever, be performed without force. It then becomes a
case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues amongst arms; and
tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no
longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688 was
obtained by a just war, in the only case in which any
war, and much more a civil war, can be just. " Justa
bella quibus NECESSARIA. " The question of dethroning, or, if these gentlemen like the phrase better,
" cashiering kings," will always be, as it has always
been, an extraordinary question of state, and wholly
out of the law: a question (like all other questions
of state) of dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences, rather than of positive rights. As
it was not made for common abuses, so it is not to be
agitated by common minds. The speculative line of
demarcation, where obedience ought to end and re.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 271
sistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily
definable. It is not a single act or a single event
which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of;
and the prospect of the future must be as bad as
the experience of the past. When things are in that
lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to
indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of
the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression;
the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at
abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and
bold, from the love of honorable danger in a generous
cause: but, with or without right, a revolution will be
the very last resource of the thinking and the good.
The third head of right asserted by the pulpit of
the Old Jewry, namely, the "right to form a government for ourselves," has, at least, as little countenance from anything done at the Revolution, either
in precedent or principle, as the two first of their
claims. The Revolution was made to preserve our
ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only
security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of
knowing the spirit of our Constitution, and the policy
which predominated in that great period which has
secured it to this hour, pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of Parliament and
journals of Parliament, and not in the sermons of the
Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolu
? ? ? ? 272 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tion Society. In the former you will find other ideas
and another language. Such a claim is as ill-suited
to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any
appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with
disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the
Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess
as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that
body and stock of inheritance we have taken care
not to inoculate any scion alien to the nature of the
original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto
made have proceeded upon the principle of reference
to antiquity; and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that
all those which possibly may be made hereafter will
be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.
Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta.
You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone,* are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavor to prove
that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King
John, was connected with another positive charter
from Henry the First, and that both the one and the
other were nothing more than a reaffirmance of the
still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In
the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors
appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but
if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves
my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish to
* See Blackstone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 27M
influence, have been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most
sacred rights and franchises as an inheritance.
In the famous law of the 3rd of Charles the First,
called the Petition of Right, the Parliament says to
the king, "' Your subjects have inherited this freedom ": claiming their franchises, not on abstract principles, " as the rights of men,' but as the rights
of Englishmen, and as as a patrimony derived from
their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly
learned men who drew this Petition of Right, were
as well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the "rights of men" as any of the
discoursers in our pulpits or on your tribune: full
as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abb6 Sidyes. But, for
reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this
positive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be
dear to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to
be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild,
litigious spirit.
The same policy pervades all the laws which have
since been made for the preservation of our liberties.
In the 1st of William and Mary, in the famous statute called the Declaration of Right, the two Houses
utter not a syllable of " a right to frame a government for themselves. " You will see that their whole
care was to secure the religion, laws, and liberties
that had been long possessed, and had been lately
endangered. " Taking* into their most serious consideration the best means for making such an establishment that their religion, laws, and liberties might * 1 W. and M.
VOL III. 18
? ? ? ? 274 REFLECTTONS ON THE
not be in danger of being again subverted," they auspicate all their proceedings by stating as some of
those best means,'" in the first place," to do " as their
ancestors in like cases have usually done for vindicatilg their ancient rights and liberties, to declare";and then they pray the king and queen " that it may b)e declared and enacted that all and singular the
rights and liberties asserted and declared are the true
ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom. "
You will observe, that, from Magna Charta to the
Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy
of our Constitution to claim and assert our liberties
as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, -as an
estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other
more general or prior right. By this means our Constitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of
its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties from a long line of ancestors.
This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection, - or rather the happy effect of following Nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People
will not look forward to posterity, who never look
backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of
England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure
principle of transmission, without at all excluding a
principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free;
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 275
but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these
maxims are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement, grasped as in a kind of mortmain forever.
By a constitutional policy working after the pattern
of Nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in
which we enjoy and transmit our property and our
lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down to
us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our
political system is placed in a just correspondence
and symmetry with the order of the world, and with
the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body
composed of transitory parts, -- wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the
great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the
whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or
young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy,
moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of Nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new,
in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By
adhering in this manner and on those principles to
our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition
of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to
our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood:
binding up the Constitution of our country with our
dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws
into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their
combined and mutually reflected charities, our state,
our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
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Through the same plan of a conformity to Nature
in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid
of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the
fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we
have derived several other, and those no small benefits, from considering our liberties in the light of an
inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of
canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading
in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an
awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires
us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes
a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic
aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors.
It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has
its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions,
its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon
which Nature teaches us to revere individual men:
on account of their age, and on account of those from
whom they are descended. All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a
rational and manly freedom than the course that
we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather
than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines
of our rights and privileges.
You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a
correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your Consti.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 277
tution, it is true, whilst ypu were out of possession,
suffered waste and dilapidation; but you possessed
in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations,
of a noble and venerable castle. You might have
repaired those walls; you might have built on those
old foundations. Your Constitution was suspenld. ed
before it was perfected; but you had the elements of
a Constitution very nearly as good as could be wished.
In your old states you possessed that variety of parts
corresponding with the various descriptions of which
your community was happily composed; you had all
that combination and all that opposition of interests,
you had that action and counteraction, which, in the
natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the
harmony of the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests, which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present Constitution,
interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They render deliberation a matter, not of
choice, but of necessity; they make all change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they produce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of
harsh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering
all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the
few or in the many, forever impracticable. Through
that diversity of members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were separate views in the several orders; whilst by pressing down the
whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the separate
parts would have been prevented from warping and
starting from their allotted places.
You had all these advantages in your ancient
states; but you chose to act as if you had nevei
? ? ? ? 278 REFLECTIONS ON THE
been moulded into civil society, and had everything
to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by
despising everything that belonged to you. You set
up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre
in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and
derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar
practice of the hour; and you would have risen with
the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecti-ng your forefathers, you would have been taught to
respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to
consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a
nation of low-born, servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the
expense of your honor, an excuse to your apologists
here for several enormities of yours, you would not
have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of
bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse
of the liberty to which you were not accustomed, and
were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have
been wiser to have you thought, what I for. one always thought you, a generous and gallant nation,
long misled to your disadvantage by your high and
romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty;
that events had been unfavorable to you, but that
you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile
disposition; that, in your most devoted submission,
you were actuated by a principle of public spirit; and
that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be under
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 279
stood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you
had gone further than your wise ancestors, --that you
were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst
you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient
principles and models of the old common law of Eu.
rope, meliorated and adapted to its present state, --
by following wise examples you would have given
new examples of wisdom to the world. You would
have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the
eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You
would have shamed despotism from the earth, by
showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but,
as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You
would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce
to feed it. You would have had a free Constitution,
a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed
and venerated clergy, - a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and
to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found
by virtue in all conditions,-in which consists the true
moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous
fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter
that real inequality which it never can remove, anc
which the order of civil life establishes as much foi
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the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state as those whorf it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open
to you, beyond anything recorded in the history of
the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good
for man.
Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have
taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors,
and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became
truly despicable. By following those false lights,
France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed her virtue to her
interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that
she might prostitute her. virtue. All other nations
have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or
by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or
other of religion. All other people have laid the
foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and
a system of a more austere and masculine morality.
France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness
in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions
and practices, - and has extended through all ranks
of life, as if she were communicating some privilege,
or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy
corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth
and power. This is one of the new principles of
equality in France.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 281
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly
disgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets
of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics.
She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at
(what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider
those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones,as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading
their easy good-nature, under specious pretences, to
admit combinations of bold and faithless men into
a participation of their power. This alone (if there
were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you
and to mankind. Remember that your Parliament
of Paris told your king, that, in calling the states
together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal
excess of their zeal in providing for the support of
the throne. It is right that these men should hide
their heads. It is right that they should bear their
part in the ruin which their counsel has brought on
their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine
declarations tend to lull authority asleep, - to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy, - to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from
imbecility, and without which no man can answer for
the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government
or of freedom. ' For want of these, they have seen
the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.
They have seen the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult
than ever any people has been known to rise against
the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary ty
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rant. Their resistance was made to concession; their
revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at
a hand holding out graces, favors, and immunities.
This was unnatural. The'rest is in order. They
have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without
vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet
the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a
state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made
the constitution of the kingdom; everything human
and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and
national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown
all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering
power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting,
conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared
and hid themselves in the earth from whence they
came, when the principle of property, whose creatures
and representatives they are, was systematically subverted.
Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were
they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle
of determined patriots, compelled to wade through
blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil
and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The
fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation
of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and irresistible
authority. The persons who have thus squandered
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 283
away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of
public evils, (the last stake reserved for the ultimate
ransom of the state,) have met in their progress with
little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their
whole march was more like a triumphal procession
than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have
gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood
have they shed in the cause of the country they have
ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles,
whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering
their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men
and worthy families. Their cruelty has. not even been
the base result of fear. It has been the effect of their
sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning.
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil,
would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not
consider the composition of the National Assembly:
I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it
now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is composed,
which is of ten thousand times greater consequence
than all the formalities in the world. If we were to
know nothing of this assembly but by its. title and
function, no colors could paint to the imagination
anything more venerable. In that light, the mind of
an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that
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of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected
into one focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead
of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But
n10 name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and Nature, and education, and their habits of life
have made them. Capacities beyond these the people
have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the
objects of their choice; but their choice confers
neither the one nor the other on those upon whom
they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the
engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of
Revelation for any such powers.
After I had read over the list of the persons and
descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing
which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank,
some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not one man was to be found. The
best were only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and
mass of the body which constitutes its character, and
must finally determine its direction. In all bodies,
those who will lead must also, in a considerable
degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition of those
whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great
part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of
virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for
that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 285
becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, what is the more likely event, instead of
that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious
glory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom
at first they conform, becomes, in its turn, the dupe
and instrument of their designs. In this political
traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become
subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.
To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions
made by the leaders in any public assembly, they
ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear,
those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise
than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not
for actors, at least for judges; they must also be
judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing
can secure a steady and moderate conduct in such
assemblies, but that the body of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition in life, of
permanent property, of education, and of such habits
as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.
In the calling of the States-General of France, the
first thing that struck me was a great departure
from the ancient course. I found the representation
for the third estate composed of six hundred persons.
They were equal in number to the representatives of
both the other orders. If the orders were to-act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But when it became apparent that the three orders were
to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary
effect of this numerous representation became obvious A very small desertion from either of the
? ? ? ? 286 REFLECTIONS ON THE
other two orders must throw the power of both into
the hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of
the state was soon resolved into that body. Its due
composition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater
importance.
Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a
very great proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I
believe, of the members who attended) was composed
of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of
distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to
their country of their science, prudence, and integrity,- not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar, -
not of renowned professors in universities,- but for
the far greater part, as it must in such a number,
of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of
petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries,
and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war
of village vexation. From the moment I read the
list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happelled, all that was to follow.
The degree of estimation in which any profession
is held becomes the standard of the estimation in
which the professors hold themselves. Whatever the
personal merits of many individual lawyers might
have been, (and in many it was undoubtedly very
considerable,) in that military kingdom no part of the
profession had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their professional offices
great family splendor, and were invested witb great
power and authority. These certainly were highly
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 287
respected, and even with no small degree of awe.
The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a
body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the hands
of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,who had no previous fortune in character at stake,who could not be expected to bear with moderation
or to conduct with discretion a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised
to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself
that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active,
of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would
easily fall back into their old condition of obscure
contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane?
old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited to them. They acted by the
ancient organized states in the shape of their old
organization, and not by the organic moleculce of a
disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to
that fundamental principle of British constitutional
policy than at the time of the Revolution, when it
deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession.
The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in
which it had before moved; but the new line was
derived from the same stock. It was still a line of
hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the
same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified
with Protestantism. When the legislature altered
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the direction, but kept the principle, they showed
that they held it inviolable.
On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment in the old time, and long
before the era of the Revolution. Some time after
the Conquest great questions arose upon the legal
principles of hereditary descent. It became a matter
of doubt whether the heir per capita or the heir per
stirpes was to succeed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per stirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant was preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort
of immortality through all transmigrations, --
Multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domfis, et avi numerantur avorum.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its
settled course, but in all its revolutions. Whoever
came in, or however he came in, whether he obtained
the _crown by law or by force, the hereditary successiAh was either continued or adopted.
The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see
nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the
Constitution; and they take the deviation from the
principle for the principle. They have little regard
to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though
they may see that it leaves positive authority in very
few of the positive institutions of this country. When
such an unwarrantable maxim is once established,
that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act
of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors, who dragged the bodies
of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of their
tombs? Do they mean to attaint and disable back
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 261
wards all the kings that have reigned before the
Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of
England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into
question, together with the titles of the whole line
of our kings, that great body of our statute law which
passed under. those whom they treat as usurpers? to
annul laws of inestimable value to our liberties, - of
as great value at least as any which have passed at
or since the period of the Revolution? If kings who
did not owe their crown to the choice of their people
had no title to mako laws, what will become of the
statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of
Bight. ? of the act of Habeas Corpus? Do these new
doctors of the rights of men presume to assert that
King James the Second, who came to the crown as
next of blood, according to the rules of a then unqualified succession, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had done any of those acts which were justly construed into
an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much
trouble in Parliament might have been saved at the
period these gentlemen commemorate. But King
James was a bad king with a good title, and not
an usurper. The princes who succeeded according
to the act of Parliament which settled the crown on
the Electress Sophia and on her descendants, being
Protestants, came in as much by a title of inheritance as Kiing James did. He came in according
to the law, as it stood at his accession to the crown;
and the princes of the House of Brunswick came to
the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but by
the law, as it stood at their several accessions, of
Protestant descent and inheritance, as I hope I have
shown sufficiently.
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The law by which this royal family'is specifically
destined to the succession is the act of the 12th and
13th of King William. The terms of this act bind
" us, and our heirs, and our posterity, to them, their
heirs, and their posterity," being Protestants, to the
end of time, in the same words as the Declaration
of Right had bound us to the heirs of King William
and Queen Mary. It therefore secures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On what ground, except the constitutional policy of forming
an establishment to secure that kind of succession
which is to preclude a choice of the people forever,
could the legislature have fastidiously rejected the
fair and abundant choice which our own country
presented to them, and searched in strange lands
for a foreign princess, from whose womb the line of
our future rulers were to derive their title to govern
millions of men through a series of ages?
The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and 13th of King William, for
a stock and root of inheritance to our kings, and not
for her merits as a temporary administratrix of a
power which she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She was adopted for one reason, and for one only, - because, says the act, " the most
excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess
Dowager of Hanover, is daughter of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our late sovereign lord King James the
First, of happy memory, and is hereby declared to be
the next in succession in the Protestant line," &c. ,
&c. ;" and the crown shall continue to the heirs of
her body, being Protestants. " This limitation was
made by Parliament, that through the Princess
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 263
Sophia an inheritable line not only was to be continued in future, but (what they thought very material) that through her it was to be connected with the old stock of inheritance in King James the First;
in order that the monarchy might preserve an uin
broken unity through all ages, and might be preserved
(with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode
by descent, in which, if our liberties had been once
endangered, they had often, through all storms and
struggles of prerogative and privilege, been preserved.
Tlhey did well. No experience has taught us that
in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated
and preserved sacred as our hereditary right. An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to
throw off an irregular, convulsive disease. But the
course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution. Was. it that the legislature wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn through the female descendants of James the First, a due sense of the inconveniences of having two or three, or possibly more, foreigners in succession to the British throne? No!
-they had a due sense of the evils which might
happen from such foreign rule, and more tllan a due
sense of them. But a more decisive proof cannot
be given of the full conviction of the British nation
that the principles of the Revolution did not authorize them to elect kings at their pleasure, and without
any attention to the ancient fundamental principles
of our government, than their continuing to adopt
a plan of hereditary Protestant succession in the old
line, with all the dangers and all the inconveniences
of its being a foreign line full before their eyes,
? ? ? ? 264 REFLECTIONS ON THE
and operating with the utmost force upon their
minds.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the
then unnecessary support of any argument; but this
seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly
taught, avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to
revolutions, the signals for which have so often been
given from pulpits, -- the spirit of change that is gone
abroad, -the total contempt which prevails with you,
and may come to prevail with us, of all ancient ilnstitutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination,all these considerations make it not unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our attention to the true principles of our own domestic laws, that you, my French friend, should begin to know, and that we should
continue to cherish them. We ought not, on either
side of the water, to suffer ourselves to be imposed
upon by the counterfeit wares which some persons,
by a double fraud, export to you in illicit bottoms,
as raw commodities of British growth, though wholly
alien to our soil, in order afterwards to smuggle them
back again into this country, manufactured after the
newest Paris fashion of an improved liberty.
The people of England will not ape the fashions
they have never tried, nor go back to those which
they have found mischievous on trial. They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs, - as
a benefit, not as a grievance, -- as a security for their
liberty, not as a badge of servitude. They look on
the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands,
to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 265
undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge
of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our Constitution.
I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take
notice of some paltry artifices which the abettors of
election as the only lawful title to the crown are
ready to employ, in order to render the support of
the just principles of our Constitution a task somewhat invidious. These sophisters substitute a fictitious cause, and feigned personages, in whose favor they suppose you engaged, whenever you defend the
inheritable nature of the crown. It is common with
them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with some
of those exploded fanatics of slavery who formerly
maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, " that the crown is held by divine, hereditary,
and indefeasible right. " These old fanatics of single
arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary royalty
was the only lawful government in the world, --just
as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful source
of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, it is
true, did speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously
too, as if monarchy had more of a divine sanction
than any other mode of government, --and as if a
right to govern by inheritance were in strictness indefeasible in every person who should be found in the
succession to a throne, and under every circumstance, which no civil or political right can be. But
all absurd opinion concerning the king's hereditary
right to the crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon solid principles of law anld
policy. If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are con.
? ? ? ? 266 REFLECTIONS ON THE
versant, we should have no law and no religion left
in the world. But an absurd theory on one side of a
question forms no justification for alleging a false fact
or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
The second claim of the Revolution Society is' a
right of cashiering their governors for mnisconduct. "
Perhaps the apprehensions our ancestors entertained
of forming such a precedent as that "' of cashiering
for misconduct" was the cause that the declaration
of the act which implied the abdication of King
James was, if it had any fault, rather too guarded
and too circumstantial. * But all this guard, and all
this accumulation of circumstances, serves to show the
spirit of caution which predominated in the national
councils, in a situation in which men irritated by oppression, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt
to abandon themselves to violent and extreme courses;
it shows the anxiety of the great men who influenced
the conduct of affairs at that great event to make
the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
No government could stand a moment, if it could
be blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of " misconduct. " They who led at
the Revolution grounded their virtual abdication of
King James upon no such light and uncertain principle. They charged him with nothing less than a
design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts,
* (That King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert the
Constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between
king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violatcd the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the government, and the throne is thereby vacant. "
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 267
to subvert the Protestant Church and State, and their
fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they
charged him with having broken the original contract
between king and people. This was more than misconduct. A grave and overruling necessity obliged
them to take the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all
laws. Their trust for the future preservation of the
Constitution was not in future revolutions. The
grand policy of all their regulations was to render it
almost impracticable for any future sovereign to compel the states of the kingdom to have again recourse to those violent remedies. They left the crown,
what in the eye and estimation of law it had ever
been, perfectly irresponsible. In order to lighten the
crown still further, they aggravated responsibility on
ministers of state. By the statute of the first ot
King William, sess. 2d, called "' the act for declaring
the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling
the succession of the crown," they enacted that the
ministers should serve the crown on the terms of
that declaration. They secured soon after the frequent meetings of Parliament, by which the whole government would be under the constant inspection
and active control of the popular representative and
of the magnates of the kingdom. In the next great
constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King
William, for the further limitation of the crown, and
better securing the rights and liberties of the subject,
they provided " that no pardon under the great seal of
England should be pleadable to an impeachment by
the Commons in Parliament. " The rule laid down
for government in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspection of Parliament, the practical claim of
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impeachment, they thought infinitely a better security
not only for their constitutional liberty, but against
the vices of administration, than the reservation of a
right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the
issue, and often so mischievous in the consequences,
as that "' cashiering their governors. "
Dr. Price, in this sermon,* condemns, very properly, the practice of gross adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, he proposes that his
Majesty should be told, on occasions of congratulation, that " he is to consider himself as more properly the servant than the sovereign of his people. " For
a compliment, this new form of address does not
seem to be very soothing. Those who are. servants
in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told
of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.
The slave in the old play tells his master, " Hcee commrnemoratio est quasi exprobratio. " It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome as instruction.
After all, if the king" #ere to bring himself to echo
this new kind of address, to adopt it in terms, and
even to take the appellation of Servant of the People
as his royal style, how either he or we should be
much mended by it I cannot imagine. I have seen
very assuming letters signed, " Your most obedient,
humble servant. " The proudest domination that ever was endured on earth took a title of still greater humility than that which is now proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations
were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "The Servant of Servants "; and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the signet of
" The Fisherman. "
* P. 22, 23, 24.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 269
I should have considered all this as no more than
a sort of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an
unsavory fume, several persons suffer the spirit of
liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support
of the idea, and a part of the scheme, of " cashiering
kings for misconduct. " In that light it is worth
some observation.
Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants
of the people, because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage; but it
is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense, (by
our Constitution, at least,) anything like servants,
the essence of whose situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to be removable at pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this high magistrate, not our servant,
as this humble divine calls him, but " our sovereign
lord the king"; and we, on our parts, have learned
to speak only the primitive language of the law, and
not the confused jargon of their Babylonian pulpits.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law
in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible. Our Constitution knows nothing of a magistrate like the Justicia of Aragon, --nor of any
court legally appointed, nor of any process legally
settled, for submitting the king to the responsibility
belonging to all servants. In this he is not distinguished from the commons and the lords, who, in
their several public capacities, can never be called
to an account for their conduct; although the Revo
? ? ? ? 270 REFLECTIONS ON THE
lution Society chooses to assert, in direct opposition to
one of the wisest and most beautiful parts of our Constitution, that " a king is no more than the first servant of the public, created by it, and responsible to it. " Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have
deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found
no security for their freedom, but in rendering their
government feeble in its operations and precarious in
its tenure, - if they had been able to contrive no
better remedy against arbitrary power than civil confusion. Let these gentlemen state who that representative public is to whom they will affirm the king, as a servant, to be responsible. It will be then time
enough for me to produce to them the positive statute law which affirms that he is not.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these
gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if
ever, be performed without force. It then becomes a
case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues amongst arms; and
tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no
longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688 was
obtained by a just war, in the only case in which any
war, and much more a civil war, can be just. " Justa
bella quibus NECESSARIA. " The question of dethroning, or, if these gentlemen like the phrase better,
" cashiering kings," will always be, as it has always
been, an extraordinary question of state, and wholly
out of the law: a question (like all other questions
of state) of dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences, rather than of positive rights. As
it was not made for common abuses, so it is not to be
agitated by common minds. The speculative line of
demarcation, where obedience ought to end and re.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 271
sistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily
definable. It is not a single act or a single event
which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of;
and the prospect of the future must be as bad as
the experience of the past. When things are in that
lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to
indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of
the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression;
the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at
abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and
bold, from the love of honorable danger in a generous
cause: but, with or without right, a revolution will be
the very last resource of the thinking and the good.
The third head of right asserted by the pulpit of
the Old Jewry, namely, the "right to form a government for ourselves," has, at least, as little countenance from anything done at the Revolution, either
in precedent or principle, as the two first of their
claims. The Revolution was made to preserve our
ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only
security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of
knowing the spirit of our Constitution, and the policy
which predominated in that great period which has
secured it to this hour, pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of Parliament and
journals of Parliament, and not in the sermons of the
Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolu
? ? ? ? 272 REFLECTIONS ON THE
tion Society. In the former you will find other ideas
and another language. Such a claim is as ill-suited
to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any
appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with
disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the
Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess
as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that
body and stock of inheritance we have taken care
not to inoculate any scion alien to the nature of the
original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto
made have proceeded upon the principle of reference
to antiquity; and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that
all those which possibly may be made hereafter will
be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.
Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta.
You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone,* are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavor to prove
that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King
John, was connected with another positive charter
from Henry the First, and that both the one and the
other were nothing more than a reaffirmance of the
still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In
the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors
appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but
if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves
my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish to
* See Blackstone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 27M
influence, have been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most
sacred rights and franchises as an inheritance.
In the famous law of the 3rd of Charles the First,
called the Petition of Right, the Parliament says to
the king, "' Your subjects have inherited this freedom ": claiming their franchises, not on abstract principles, " as the rights of men,' but as the rights
of Englishmen, and as as a patrimony derived from
their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly
learned men who drew this Petition of Right, were
as well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the "rights of men" as any of the
discoursers in our pulpits or on your tribune: full
as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abb6 Sidyes. But, for
reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this
positive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be
dear to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to
be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild,
litigious spirit.
The same policy pervades all the laws which have
since been made for the preservation of our liberties.
In the 1st of William and Mary, in the famous statute called the Declaration of Right, the two Houses
utter not a syllable of " a right to frame a government for themselves. " You will see that their whole
care was to secure the religion, laws, and liberties
that had been long possessed, and had been lately
endangered. " Taking* into their most serious consideration the best means for making such an establishment that their religion, laws, and liberties might * 1 W. and M.
VOL III. 18
? ? ? ? 274 REFLECTTONS ON THE
not be in danger of being again subverted," they auspicate all their proceedings by stating as some of
those best means,'" in the first place," to do " as their
ancestors in like cases have usually done for vindicatilg their ancient rights and liberties, to declare";and then they pray the king and queen " that it may b)e declared and enacted that all and singular the
rights and liberties asserted and declared are the true
ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom. "
You will observe, that, from Magna Charta to the
Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy
of our Constitution to claim and assert our liberties
as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, -as an
estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other
more general or prior right. By this means our Constitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of
its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties from a long line of ancestors.
This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection, - or rather the happy effect of following Nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People
will not look forward to posterity, who never look
backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of
England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure
principle of transmission, without at all excluding a
principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free;
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 275
but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these
maxims are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement, grasped as in a kind of mortmain forever.
By a constitutional policy working after the pattern
of Nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in
which we enjoy and transmit our property and our
lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down to
us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our
political system is placed in a just correspondence
and symmetry with the order of the world, and with
the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body
composed of transitory parts, -- wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the
great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the
whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or
young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy,
moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of Nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new,
in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By
adhering in this manner and on those principles to
our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition
of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to
our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood:
binding up the Constitution of our country with our
dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws
into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their
combined and mutually reflected charities, our state,
our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
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Through the same plan of a conformity to Nature
in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid
of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the
fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we
have derived several other, and those no small benefits, from considering our liberties in the light of an
inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of
canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading
in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an
awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires
us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes
a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic
aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors.
It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has
its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions,
its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon
which Nature teaches us to revere individual men:
on account of their age, and on account of those from
whom they are descended. All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a
rational and manly freedom than the course that
we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather
than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines
of our rights and privileges.
You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a
correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your Consti.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 277
tution, it is true, whilst ypu were out of possession,
suffered waste and dilapidation; but you possessed
in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations,
of a noble and venerable castle. You might have
repaired those walls; you might have built on those
old foundations. Your Constitution was suspenld. ed
before it was perfected; but you had the elements of
a Constitution very nearly as good as could be wished.
In your old states you possessed that variety of parts
corresponding with the various descriptions of which
your community was happily composed; you had all
that combination and all that opposition of interests,
you had that action and counteraction, which, in the
natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the
harmony of the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests, which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present Constitution,
interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They render deliberation a matter, not of
choice, but of necessity; they make all change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they produce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of
harsh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering
all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the
few or in the many, forever impracticable. Through
that diversity of members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were separate views in the several orders; whilst by pressing down the
whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the separate
parts would have been prevented from warping and
starting from their allotted places.
You had all these advantages in your ancient
states; but you chose to act as if you had nevei
? ? ? ? 278 REFLECTIONS ON THE
been moulded into civil society, and had everything
to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by
despising everything that belonged to you. You set
up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre
in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and
derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar
practice of the hour; and you would have risen with
the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecti-ng your forefathers, you would have been taught to
respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to
consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a
nation of low-born, servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the
expense of your honor, an excuse to your apologists
here for several enormities of yours, you would not
have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of
bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse
of the liberty to which you were not accustomed, and
were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have
been wiser to have you thought, what I for. one always thought you, a generous and gallant nation,
long misled to your disadvantage by your high and
romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty;
that events had been unfavorable to you, but that
you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile
disposition; that, in your most devoted submission,
you were actuated by a principle of public spirit; and
that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be under
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 279
stood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you
had gone further than your wise ancestors, --that you
were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst
you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient
principles and models of the old common law of Eu.
rope, meliorated and adapted to its present state, --
by following wise examples you would have given
new examples of wisdom to the world. You would
have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the
eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You
would have shamed despotism from the earth, by
showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but,
as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You
would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce
to feed it. You would have had a free Constitution,
a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed
and venerated clergy, - a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and
to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found
by virtue in all conditions,-in which consists the true
moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous
fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter
that real inequality which it never can remove, anc
which the order of civil life establishes as much foi
? ? ? ? 280 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state as those whorf it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open
to you, beyond anything recorded in the history of
the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good
for man.
Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have
taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors,
and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became
truly despicable. By following those false lights,
France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed her virtue to her
interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that
she might prostitute her. virtue. All other nations
have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or
by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or
other of religion. All other people have laid the
foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and
a system of a more austere and masculine morality.
France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness
in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions
and practices, - and has extended through all ranks
of life, as if she were communicating some privilege,
or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy
corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth
and power. This is one of the new principles of
equality in France.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 281
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly
disgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets
of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics.
She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at
(what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider
those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones,as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading
their easy good-nature, under specious pretences, to
admit combinations of bold and faithless men into
a participation of their power. This alone (if there
were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you
and to mankind. Remember that your Parliament
of Paris told your king, that, in calling the states
together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal
excess of their zeal in providing for the support of
the throne. It is right that these men should hide
their heads. It is right that they should bear their
part in the ruin which their counsel has brought on
their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine
declarations tend to lull authority asleep, - to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy, - to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from
imbecility, and without which no man can answer for
the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government
or of freedom. ' For want of these, they have seen
the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.
They have seen the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult
than ever any people has been known to rise against
the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary ty
? ? ? ? 282 REFLECTIONS ON THE
rant. Their resistance was made to concession; their
revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at
a hand holding out graces, favors, and immunities.
This was unnatural. The'rest is in order. They
have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without
vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet
the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a
state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made
the constitution of the kingdom; everything human
and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and
national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown
all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering
power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting,
conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared
and hid themselves in the earth from whence they
came, when the principle of property, whose creatures
and representatives they are, was systematically subverted.
Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were
they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle
of determined patriots, compelled to wade through
blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil
and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The
fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation
of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and irresistible
authority. The persons who have thus squandered
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 283
away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of
public evils, (the last stake reserved for the ultimate
ransom of the state,) have met in their progress with
little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their
whole march was more like a triumphal procession
than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have
gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood
have they shed in the cause of the country they have
ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles,
whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering
their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men
and worthy families. Their cruelty has. not even been
the base result of fear. It has been the effect of their
sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning.
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil,
would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not
consider the composition of the National Assembly:
I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it
now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is composed,
which is of ten thousand times greater consequence
than all the formalities in the world. If we were to
know nothing of this assembly but by its. title and
function, no colors could paint to the imagination
anything more venerable. In that light, the mind of
an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that
? ? ? ? 284 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected
into one focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead
of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But
n10 name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and Nature, and education, and their habits of life
have made them. Capacities beyond these the people
have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the
objects of their choice; but their choice confers
neither the one nor the other on those upon whom
they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the
engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of
Revelation for any such powers.
After I had read over the list of the persons and
descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing
which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank,
some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not one man was to be found. The
best were only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and
mass of the body which constitutes its character, and
must finally determine its direction. In all bodies,
those who will lead must also, in a considerable
degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition of those
whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great
part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of
virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for
that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it from
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 285
becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, what is the more likely event, instead of
that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious
glory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom
at first they conform, becomes, in its turn, the dupe
and instrument of their designs. In this political
traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become
subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.
To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions
made by the leaders in any public assembly, they
ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear,
those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise
than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not
for actors, at least for judges; they must also be
judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing
can secure a steady and moderate conduct in such
assemblies, but that the body of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition in life, of
permanent property, of education, and of such habits
as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.
In the calling of the States-General of France, the
first thing that struck me was a great departure
from the ancient course. I found the representation
for the third estate composed of six hundred persons.
They were equal in number to the representatives of
both the other orders. If the orders were to-act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But when it became apparent that the three orders were
to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary
effect of this numerous representation became obvious A very small desertion from either of the
? ? ? ? 286 REFLECTIONS ON THE
other two orders must throw the power of both into
the hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of
the state was soon resolved into that body. Its due
composition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater
importance.
Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a
very great proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I
believe, of the members who attended) was composed
of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of
distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to
their country of their science, prudence, and integrity,- not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar, -
not of renowned professors in universities,- but for
the far greater part, as it must in such a number,
of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of
petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries,
and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war
of village vexation. From the moment I read the
list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happelled, all that was to follow.
The degree of estimation in which any profession
is held becomes the standard of the estimation in
which the professors hold themselves. Whatever the
personal merits of many individual lawyers might
have been, (and in many it was undoubtedly very
considerable,) in that military kingdom no part of the
profession had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their professional offices
great family splendor, and were invested witb great
power and authority. These certainly were highly
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 287
respected, and even with no small degree of awe.
The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a
body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the hands
of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,who had no previous fortune in character at stake,who could not be expected to bear with moderation
or to conduct with discretion a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised
to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself
that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active,
of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would
easily fall back into their old condition of obscure
contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane?
