No More Learning

In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in any light you please, I do not see a variety of
objects reconciled in one consistent whole, but several
contradictory principles reluctantly and irreconcilably
brought and held together by your philosophers, like
wild beasts shut up in a cage, to claw and bite each
other to their mutual destruction.
I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of
considering the formation of a Constitution. They
have much, but bad, metaphysics, --much, but bad,
geometry, -much, but false, proportionate arithmetic; but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geome
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try, and arithmetic ought to be, and if their schemes
were perfectly consistent in all their parts, it would
make only a more fair and sightly vision. It is re.
markable, that, in a great arrangement of mankind,
not one reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or anything politic, - nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, the passions, the
interests of men. Hominem non sapiunt.
You see I only consider this Constitution as electoral, and leading by steps to the National Assembly.
I do not enter into the internal government of the
departments, and their genealogy through the communes and cantons. These local governments are,
in the original plan, to be as nearly as possible composed in the same manner and on the same principles
with the elective assemblies. They are each of them
bodies perfectly compact and rounded in themselves.
You cannot but perceive in this scheme, that it has
a direct and immediate tendeincvo s ever France into a variety of republics, and to render them totally
independent of each other, without any direct constitutionial means of coherence, connection, or subordination, except what may be derived from their acquiescence in the determinations of the general congress of the ambassadors from each independent republic.
Such in reality is the National Assembly; and such
governments, I admit, do exist in the world, though
in forms infinitely more suitable to the local and habitual circumstances of their people. But such associations, rather than bodies politic, have generally been
the effect of necessity, not choice; and I believe the
present French power is the very first body of citizens who, having obtained full authority to do with
their country what they pleased, have chosen to dissever it in this barbarous manner.
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It is impossible not to observe, that, in the spirit of this geometrical distribution and arithmetical
arrangement, these pretended citizens treat France
exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as conquerors, they have imitated the policy of the harshest
of that harsh race. The policy of such barbarous
victors, who contemn a subdued people, and insult
their feelings, has ever been, as much as in them lay,
to destroy all vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in polity, in laws, and in manners; to confound
all territorial limits; to produce a general poverty;
to put up their properties to auction; to crush their
princes, nobles, and pontiffs; to lay low everything
which had lifted its head above the level, or which
could serve to combine or rally, in their distresses,
the disbanded people, under the standard of old opinion. They have made France free in the manner
in which those sincere friends to the rights of mankind, the Romans, freed Greece, Mlacedon, and other
nations. They destroyed the bonds of their union,
under color of providing for the independence of each
of their cities.
When the members who compose these new bodies of cantons, communes, and departments, arrangements purposely produced through the medium of confusion, begin to act, they will find themselves
in a great measure strangers to one another. The
electors and elected throughout, especially in the
rural cantons, will be frequently without any civil
habitudes or connections, or any of that natural discipline which is the soul of a true republic. Magistrates and collectors of revenue are now no longer acquainted with their districts, bishops with their
dioceses, or curates with their parishes. These new
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colonies of the rights of men bear a strong resemblance to that sort of military colonies which Tacitus
has observed upon in the declining policy of Rome.
In better and wiser days (whatever course they took
with foreign nations) they were careful to make the
elements of a methodical subordination and settlement to be coeval, and even to lay the foundations
of discipline in the military. * But when all the good
arts had fallen into ruin, they proceeded, as your
Assembly does, upon the equality of men, and with
as little judgment, and as little care for those things
which make a republic tolerable or durable. But
in this, as well as almost every instance, your new
commonwealth is born and bred and fed in those
corruptions which mark degenerated and worn-out
republics. Your child comes into the world with the
symptoms of death; the facies Hippocratica forms the
character of its physiognomy and the prognostic of
its fate.
The legislators who framed the ancient republics
knew that their business was too arduous to be accomplished with no better apparatus than the metaphysics of an undergraduate and the mathematics and arithmetic of an exciseman. They had to do with
men, and they were obliged to study human nature.
They had to do with citizens, and they were obliged
to study the effects of those habits which are commu* -Non, ut olim, universe legiones deducebantur, cum tribunis, et
centurionibus, et sui cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam efficerent; sed ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis,
sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio genere mortalium
repente in unum collecti, numerus magis quam colonia. " - Tac. Annal. lib. 14, sect. 27. -All this will be still more applicable to the
unconnected, rotatory, biennial national assemblies, in this absurd
and senseless constitution.
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nicated by the circumstances of civil life. They were
sensible that the operation of this second nature on
the first produced a new combination, --and thence
arose many diversities amongst men, according to
their birth, their education, their professions, the
periods of their lives, their residence in towns or in
the country, their several ways of acquiring and of
fixing property, and according to the quality of the
property itself, all which rendered them, as it were, so
many different species of animals. From hence they
thought themselves obliged to dispose their citizens
into such classes, and to place them in such situations in the state, as their peculiar habits might qualify them to fill, and to allot to them such appropriated privileges as might secure to them what their specific
occasions required, and which might furnish to each
description such force as might protect it in the conflict caused by the diversity of interests that must
exist, and must contend, in all complex society: for
the legislator would have been ashamed that the
coarse husbandman should well know how to assort
and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should
have enough of common sense not to abstract and
equalize them all into animals, without providing for
each kind an appropriate food, care, and employment,
whilst he, the economist, disposer, and shepherd of
his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his flocks
but as men in general. It is for this reason that Montesquieu observed, very justly, that, in their classification of the citizens, the great legislators of antiquity made the greatest display of their powers, and even
soared above themselves. It is here that your modern legislators have gone deep into the negative sc
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ries, and sunk even below their own nothing. As the
first sort of legislators attended to the different kinds
of citizens, and combined them into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical *and alchemistical legislators, have taken the directly contrary course. They have attempted to confound all sorts
of citizens, as well as they could, into one homogeneous mass; and then they divided this their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics. They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the sake of
simple telling, and not to figures, whose power is to
arise from their place in the table. The. elements of
their own metaphysics might have taught them better
lessons. The troll of their categorical table might
have informed them that there was something else
in the intellectual world besides substance and quantity. They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight heads more,* in every complex deliberation, which they have never thought
of; though these, of all the ten, are the subject on
which the skill of man can operate anything at all.
So far from this able disposition of some of the old
republican legislators, which follows with a solicitous
accuracy the moral conditions and propensities of
men, they have levelled and crushed together all the
orders which they found, even under the coarse,
unartificial arrangement of the monarchy, in which
mode of government the classing of the citizens is not
of so much importance as in a republic. It is true,
however, that every such classification, if properly
ordered, is good in all forms of government, and
composes a strong barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as it is the necessary means of giving
* Qualitas, Relatio, Actio, Passio, Ubi, Quando, Situs, Habitus.
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effect and permanence to a republic. For want of
something of this kind, if the present project of a
republic should fail, all securities to a moderated
freedom fail along with it, all the indirect restraints
which mitigate despotism are removed; insomuch
that, if monarchy should ever again obtain an entire
ascendency in France, under this or any other dynasty, it will probably be, if not voluntarily tempered, at setting out, by the wise and virtuous counsels of the
prince, the most completely arbitrary power that has
ever appeared on earth. This is to play a most desperate game.
The confusion which attends on all such proceedings they even declare to be one of their objects, and they hope to secure their Constitution by a terror of
a return of those evils which attended their making
it. "By this," say they, "its destruction will become difficult to authority, which cannot break it up
without the entire disorganization of the whole state. "
They presume, that, if this authority should ever come
to the same degree of power that they have acquired,
it would make a more moderate and chastised use of
it, and would piously tremble entirely to disorganize
the state in the savage manner that they have done.
They expect from the virtues of returning despotism
the security which is to be enjoyed by the offspring
of their popular vices.
I wish, Sir, that you and my readers would give
an attentive perusal to the work of M. de Calonne on
this subject. It is, indeed, not only an eloquent, but
anl able and instructive performance. I confine myself to what he says relative to the Constitution of the new state, and to the condition of the revenue. As
to the disputes of this minister with his rivals, I do
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not wish to pronounce upon them. As little do I
mean to hazard any opinion concerning his ways and
means, financial or political, for taking his country
out of its present disgraceful and deplorable situation
of servitude, anarchy, bankruptcy, and beggary. I
cannot speculate quite so sanguinely as he does: but
he is a Frenchman, and has a closer duty relative to
those objects, and better means of judging of them,
than I can have. I wish that the formal avowal
which he refers to, made by one of the principal leaders in the Assembly, concerning the tendency of their
scheme to bring France not only from a monarchy
to a republic, but from a republic to a mere confederacy, may be very particularly attended to. It adds
new force to my observations: and, indeed, M. de Calonne's work supplies my deficiencies by many new
and striking arguments on most of the subjects of
this letter. *
It is this resolution to break their country into
separate republics which has driven them into the
greatest number of their difficulties and contradictions. If it were not for this, all the questions of
exact equality, and these balances, never to be settled, of individual rights, population, and contribution, would be wholly useless. The representation, though derived from parts, would be a duty which
equally regarded the whole. Each deputy to the
Assembly would be the representative of France, and
of all its descriptions, of the many and of the few, of
the rich and of the poor, of the great districts and of
the small. All these districts would themselves be
subordinate to some standing authority, existing independently of them, - an authority in which their
* See l']ttat de la France, p. 363.
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representation, and everything that belongs to it,
originated, and to which it was pointed. This standing, unalterable, fundamental government would
make, and it is the only thing which could make,
that territory truly and properly a whole. With us,
when we elect popular representatives, we send them
to a council in which each man individually is a subject, and submitted to a government complete in all
its ordinary functions. With you the elective Assembly is the sovereign, and the sole sovereign; all the
members are therefore integral parts of this sole sovereignty. But with us it is totally different. With
us the representative, separated from the other parts,
can have no action and no existence. The government is the point of reference of the several members and districts of our representation. This is the centre of our unity. This government of reference is
a trustee for the whole, and not for the parts. So is
the other branch of our public council: I mean the
House of Lords. With us the King and the Lords
are several and joint securities for the equality of
each district, each province, each city. When did you
hear in Great Britain of any province suffering from
the'inequality of its representation? what district
from having no representation at all? Not only
our monarchy and our peerage secure the equality
on which our unity depends, but it is the spirit of
the Hlouse of Commons itself. The very inequality
of representation, which is so foolishly complained of,
is perhaps the very thing which prevents us from
thinking or acting as members for districts. Cornwall elects as many members as all Scotland. But is
Cornwall better taken care of. than Scotland? Few
trouble their heads about any of your bases, out of
VOL. III. 31
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some giddy clubs. Most of those who wish for any
change, upon any plausible grounds, desire it on different ideas.
Your new Constitution is the very reverse of ours
in its principle; and I am astonished'how any persons could dream of holding out anything done in
it as an example for Great Britain. With you there
is little, or rather no, connection between the last representative and the first constituent. The member
}vho goes to the National Assembly is not chosen by
the people, nor accountable to them. There are
{three elections before he is chosen; two sets of
magistracy intervene between him and the primary
assembly, so as to render him, as I have said, an
ambassador of a state, and not the representative of
the people within a state. By this the whole spirit
of the election is changed; nor can any corrective
your Constitution-mongers have devised render him
anything else than what he is. The very attempt to
do it would inevitably introduce a confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no
way to make a connection between the original
constituent and the representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidate to' apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in order that by their authoritative instructions (and
something more perhaps) these primary electors may
force the two succeeding bodies of electors to make
a choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would
plainly subvert the whole scheme. It would be to
plunge them back into that tumult and confusion
of popular election, which, by their interposed gradation of elections, they mean to avoid, and at length
0to risk the whole fortune of the state with those who
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have the least knowledge of it and the least interest
in it. This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they
are thrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory
principles they have chosen. Unless the people break
up and level this gradation, it is plain that they do
not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed,
they elect as little in appearance as reality.
What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the
means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then
you must retain some hold upon him by personal
obligation or dependence. For what end are these
primary electors complimented, or rather mocked,
with a choice? They can never know anything of
the qualities of him that is. to serve them, nor has he
any obligation whatsoever to them. Of all the powers unfit to be delegated by those who have any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is what
relates to a personal choice. In case of abuse, that
body of primary electors never can call the representative to an account for his conduct. He is too far removed from them in the chain of representation.
If he acts improperly at the end of his two years'
lease, it does not concern him for two years more.
By the new French Constitution the best and the
wisest representatives go equally with the worst into
this Limbus Patrum. Their bottoms are supposed
foul, and they must go into dock to be refitted.
Every mall who has served in an Assembly is ineligible for two years after. Just as these magistrates begin to learn their trade, like chimney-sweepers,
they are disqualified for exercising it. Superficial,
new, petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish,
broken, ill recollection, is to be the destined charac
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ter of all your future governors. Your Constitution
has too much of jealousy to have much of sense in it.
You consider the breach of trust in the representative
so principally that you do not at all regard the question of his fitness to execute it.
This purgatory interval is not unfavorable to a
faithless representative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a bad governor. In this time he
may cabal himself into a superiority over the wisest
and most virtuous. As, in the end, all the members
of this elective Constitution are equally fugitive, and
exist only for the election, they may be no longer the
same persons who had chosen him, to whom he is
to be responsible when he solicits for a renewal of
his trust. To call all the secondary electors of the
conmmune to account is ridiculous, impracticable, and
unlljust: they may themselves have been deceived in
their choice, as the third set of electors, those of
the department, may be in theirs. In your elections
responsibility cannot exist.
Finding no sort of principle of coherence with each
other in the nature and constitution of the several
new republics of France, I considered what cement
the legislators had provided for them from any extraneous materials. Their confederations, their spectacles, their civic feasts, and their enthusiasm I take no notice of; they are nothing but mere tricks; but
tracing their policy through their actions, I think I
can distinguish the arrangements by which they propose to hold these republics together. The first is
the confiscation, with the compulsory paper currency
annexed to it; the second is the supreme power of
the city of Paris; the third is the general army of
the state. Of this last I shall reserve what I have
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to say, until I come to consider the army as an head
by itself.
As to the operation of the first (the confiscation
and paper currency) merely as a cement, I cannot
deny that these, the one depending on the other, may
for some time compose some sort of cement, if their
madness and folly in the management, and in the
tempering of the parts together, does not produce a
repulsion in the very outset. But allowing to the
scheme some coherence and some duration, it appears to me, that, if, after a while, the confiscation
should not be found sufficient to support the paper
coinage, (as I am morally certain it will not,) then,
instead of cementing, it will add infinitely to the dissociation, distraction, and confusion of these confederate republics, both with relation to each other and to the several parts within themselves. But if the
confiscation should so far succeed as to sink the paper currency, the cement is gone with the circulation. In the mean time its binding force will be very uncertain, and it will straiten or relax with every variation in the credit of the paper.
One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is
an effect seemingly collateral, but direct, I have no
doubt, in the minds of those who conduct this business: that is, its effect in producing an oligarchy in
every one of the republics. A paper circulation, not
founded on any real money deposited or engaged for,
amounting already to four-and-forty millions of English money, and this currency by force substituted'in
the place of the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby the substance of its revenue, as well as the medium of all its commercial and civil intercourse, must put the whole of what power, authority, and influ
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ence is left, in any form whatsoever it may assume,
into the hands of the managers and conductors of
this circulation.
In England we feel the influence of the Bank,
though it is only the centre of a voluntary dealing.
He knows little, indeed, of the influence of money upon mankind, who does not see the force of the man
agement of a moneyed concern which is so much
more extensive, and in its nature so much more depending on the managers, than any of ours. But this
is not merely a money concern. There is another
member inll the system inseparably connected with
this money management. It consists in the means
of drawing out at discretion portions of the confiscated lands for sale, and carrying on a process
of continual transmutation of paper into land and
land into paper. When we follow this process in its
effects, we may conceive something of the intensity
of the force with which this system must operate.
By this means the spirit of money-jobbing and speculation goes into the mass of land itself, and incorporates with it. By this kind of operation, that species of property becomes, as it were, volatilized; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous activity, and
thereby throws into the hands of the several managers, principal and subordinate, Parisian and provincial, all the representative of money, and perhaps a
full tenth part of all the land in France, which has
now acquired the worst and most pernicious part of
thl evil of a paper circulation, the greatest possible
uncertainty in its value. They have reversed the
Latonian kindness to the landed property of Delos.
They have sent theirs to be blown about, like the
light fragments of a wreck, oras, et littora eircum.
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The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers,
and without any fixed habits or local predilections, will
purchase to job out again, as the market of paper or
of money or of land shall present an advantage. For
though a holy bishop thinks that agriculture will derive great advantages from the " enlightened" usurers who are to purchase the Church confiscations, I, who
am not a good, but aln old farmer, with great humility
beg leave to tell his late Lordship that usury is not a
tutor of agriculture; and if the word " enlightened"
be understood according to the new dictionary, as it
always is in your new schools, I cannot conceive how
a man's not believing in God can teach him to cultivate the earth with the least of any additional skill
or encouragement. "Diis immortalibus sero," said
an old Roman, when he held one handle of the
plough, whilst Death held the other. Though you
were to join in the commission all the directors of
the two Academies to the directors of the Caisse
d'Escompte, an old experienced peasant is worth
them all. I have got more information upon a curious and interesting branch of husbandry, in one short conversation with an old Carthusian monk, than I have
derived from all the bank directors that I have ever
conversed with. However, there is no cause for apprehension from the meddling of money-dealers with rural economy. These gentlemen are too wise in
their generation. At first, perhaps, their tender and
susceptible imaginations may be captivated with the
innocent and unprofitable delights of a pastoral life;
but in a little time they will find that agriculture is
a trade much more laborious and much less lucrative than that which they had left. After making its panegyric, they will turn their backs on it, like their
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great precursor and prototype. They may, like him,
begin by singing, "Beatus ille," -- but what will be
the end?
Haec ubi locutus fcenerator Alphius,
Jam jam futurus rusticus,
Omnem relegit Idibus pecuniam,
Quaerit Calendis ponere.
They will cultivate the Caisse d'Eglise, under the sacred auspices of this prelate, with much more profit
than its vineyards and its corn-fields. They will enmploy their talents according to their habits and their
interests. They will not follow the plough, whilst
they can direct treasuries and govern provinces.
Your legislators, in everything new, are the very
first who have founded a commonwealth upon gaming, and infused this spirit into it as its vital breath.
h-e great object in these politics is to metamorphose
France from a great kingdom into one great playtable, - to turn its inhabitants into a nation of gamesters, - to make speculation as extensive as life, - to mix it with all its concerns, -- and to divert the whole
of the hopes and fears of the people from their usual
channels into the impulses, passions, and superstitions of those who live on chances. They loudly proclaim their opinion, that this their present system of a republic cannot possibly exist without this kind of
gaming fund, and that the very thread of its life is
spun out of the staple of these speculations. The old
gaming in funds was mischievous enough, undoubtedly; but it was so only to individuals. Even when
it had its greatest extent, in the Mississippi and
South Sea, it affected but few, comparatively; where
it extends further, as in lotteries, the spirit has but a
single object. But where the law, which in most cir
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cumstances forbids, and in none countenances gaming, is itself debauched, so as to reverse its nature Mond policy, and expressly to force the subject to this
destructive table, by bringing the spirit and symbols
of gaming into the minutest matters, and engaging
everybody in it, and in everything, a more dreadful
epidemic distemper of that kind is spread than yet
has appeared in the world. With you a man can
neither earn nor buy his dinner without a speculation. What he receives in the morning will not have
the same value at night. What he is compelled to
take as pay for an old debt will not be received as the
same, when he comes to pay a debt contracted by
himself; nor will it be the same, when by prompt
payment he would avoid contracting any debt at all.
Industry must wither away. Economy must be driven from your country. Careful provision will have
no existence. Who will labor without knowing the
amount of his pay? Who will study to increase
what none can estimate? Who will accumulate,
when he does not know the value of what he saves?
If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw.
The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a -nation of gamesters is this, --
that, though all are forced to play, few can understand
the game, and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of that knowledge. The many must be
the dupes of the few who conduct the machine of
these speculations. What effect it must have on the
country-people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day to day; not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first brings his corn to
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market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to
take the assignat at par; when he goes to the shop
with this money, he finds it seven per cent the
worse for crossing the way. This market he will not
readily resort to again. The towns-people will be
inflamed; they will force the country-people to bring
their corn. Resistance will begin, and the murders
of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all
France.
What signifies the empty compliment paid to the
country, by giving it, perhaps, more than its share in
the theory of your representation? Where have you
placed the real power over moneyed and landed circulation? Where have you placed the means of raising and falling the value of every man's freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add ten
per cent to the possessions of every man in France
must be the masters of every man in France. The
whole of the power obtained by this Revolution will
settle in the towns among the burghers, and the
moneyed directors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant have, none of
them, habits or inclinations or experience which can
lead them to any share in this the sole source of
power and influence now left in France. The very
nature of a country life, the very nature of landed
property, in all the occupations and all the pleasures
they afford, render combination and arrangement
(the sole way of procuring and exerting influence)
in a manner impossible amongst country-people.
Combine them by all the art you can, and all the
industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm,
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jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business
and dies in a day, all these things, which are the reins
and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds
of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all,
amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm,
they act, with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed systematically. If the country-gentlemen attempt an
influence through the mere income of their property,
what is it to that of those who have ten times their
income to sell, and who can ruin their property by
bringing their plunder to meet it at market? If the
landed man wishes to mortgage, he falls the value of
his land and raises the value of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he
must take to contend with him. The country-gentleman, therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man
of liberal views and habits, attached to no profession,
will be as completely excluded from the government
of his country as if he were legislatively proscribed.
It is obvious, that, in the towns, all the things which
conspire against the country-gentleman combine in
favor of the money manager and director. In towns
combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their
occupations, their diversion, their business, th6ir idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact.
Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are
always in garrison; and they come embodied and
half-disciplined into the hands of those who mean to
form them for civil or military action.
All these considerations leave no doubt on my
mind, that, if this monster of a Constitution can continue, France will be wholly governed by the agita
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tors in corporations, by societies in the towns, formed
of directors in assignats, and trustees for the sale of
Churchl lands, attorneys, agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown, the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all
the deceitful dreams and visions of the equality and
rights of men. In " the Serbonian bog" of this base
oligarchy they are all absorbed, sunk, and lost forever.
Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would
be tempted to think some great offences in France
must cry to Heaven, which has thought fit to punish
it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious domination, in which no comfort or compensation is to be
found in any even of those false splendors which,
playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind from
feeling themselves dishonored even whilst they are
oppressed. I must confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed with some indignation, at the conduct of
a few men, once of great rank, and still of great character, who, deluded with specious names, have engaged in a business too deep for the line of their understanding to fathom, --who have lent their fair
reputation and the authority of their high-sounding
names to the designs of men with whom they could
not be acquainted, and have thereby made their very
virtues operate to the ruin of their country.
So far as to the first cementing principle.
The second material of cement for their new repub
lie is the superiority of the city of Paris; and this,
I admit, is strongly connected with the other cementing principle of paper circulation and confiscation.
It is in this part of the project we must look for the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 493
cause of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions, ecclesiastical and secular, and
the dissolution of all ancient combinations of things,
as well as the formation of so many small unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one great spring of all their politics. . It is
through the power of Paris, now become the centre
and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of this faction
direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and
the whole executive government. Everything, therefore, must be done which can confirm the authority
of that city over the other republics. Paris is compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the force of any of the square republics;
and this strength is collected and condensed within
a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connection of its parts, which will not be affected by
any scheme of a geometrical constitution; nor does
it much signify whether its proportion of representation be more or less, since it has the whole draught
of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the
kingdom, being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual means and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate members, but weakness, disconnection,
and confusion. To confirm this part of the plan,
the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that
no two of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the
strength of Paris, thus formed, will appear a system
of general weakness. It is boasted that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas
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should be sunk, and that the people should be no
longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans,-but
Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one
Assembly. But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the
greater likelihood is that the inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever was
attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement. He
never will glory in belonging to the chequer No. 71,
or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public
affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighborhoods, and
our habitual provincial connections. These are inns
and resting-places. Shich divisions of our country as
have been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk
of authority, were so many little images of the great
country, in which the heart found something which it
could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished
by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort
of elemental training to those higher and more large
regards by which alone men come to be affected, as
with their own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general
territory itself, as in the old name of Provinces, the
citizens are interested from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the geometric
properties of its figure. The power and preeminence of Paris does certainly press down and hold
these republics together as long as it lasts: but, for
the reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot last very long.
Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing principles of this Constitution to the National Assembly, which is to appear and act as sovereign,
? ? ? ? RFVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 495
we see a body in its constitution with every possible
power and no possible external control. We see a
body without findamental laws, without established
maxims, without respected rules of proceeding, which
nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever.
Their idea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of legislative competency, and their examples for common cases from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in most
respects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode
of the new elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of the small degree of
internal control existing in a minority chosen originally from various interests, and preserving something
of their spirit. If possible, the next Assembly must
be worse than the present. The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to their successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will
be roused by emulation and example to enterprises
the boldest and the most absurd. To suppose such
an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Y6our all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do
everything at once, have forgot one thing that seems
essential, and which, I believe, never has been before,
in the theory or the practice, omitted by any projector of a republic. They have fotr tlo -c s9, tietp. , a
senate, or something of that nature and character. 'e;er', ]before this time, was heard of a body politic
composed of one legislative and active assembly, and
its'executive officers, without such a council: without something to which foreign states might connect
themselves, -- something to which, in the ordinary
detail of government, the people could look up,something which might give a bias and steadiness,
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? ? ? ? 496 REFLECTIONS ON THE
and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally have
as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but
it seems to be in the very essence of a republican
government. It holds a sort of mddle place between
the supreme power exercised by the people, or immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive.
Of this there are no traces in your Constitution; and
in providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and
Numas have, as much as in anything else, discovered
a sovereign incapacity.
Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done
towards the formation of an executive power. For
this they have chosen a degraded king. This their
first executive officer is to be a machine, without any
sort of deliberative discretion in any one act of his
function. At best, he is but a channel to convey to
the National Assembly such matter as may import
that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, the power would not have been without its importance, though infinitely perilous to those who would choose to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts may pass to the Assembly with equal authenticity through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a
direction to measures by the statement of an authorized reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing.
To consider the French scheme of an executive
officer, in its two natural divisions of civil and political. - In the first it must be observed, that, according
to the new Constitution, the higher parts of judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The
king of France is not the fountain of justice. The
judges, neither the original nor the appellate, are of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 497
his nomination. He neither proposes the candidates
nor has a negative on the choice. HIe is not even
the public prosecutor. He serves only as a notary,
to authenticate the choice made of the judges in the
several districts. By his officers he is to execute
their sentence. When we look into the true nature
of his authority, he. appears to be nothing more than
a chief of bumbailiffs, sergeants-at-mace, catchpoles,
jailers, and hangmen. It is impossible to place anything called royalty in a more degrading point of
view.