"- After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations and
turbulent
committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiers and non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge,
or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors?
or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors?
Edmund Burke
- Right:
I understand you. You do, in spite of your grand
theories, to which you would have heaven and earth
to bend, you do know how to conform yourselves to
the nature and circumstances of things. But when
you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end.
That was in your power. For instance, among many
others, it was in your power to leave to your king
the right of peace and war. - What! to leave to the
executive magistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives? - I know none more dangerous; nor any
one more necessary to be so trusted. I do not say
that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king,
unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it,
which he does not now hold. But, if he did possess
them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages
would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensating the risk. There is no other way of keeping
the several potentates of Europe from intriguing distinctly and personally with the members of your Assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most per
? ? ? ? 504 REFLECTIONS ON THE
nicious of all factions,- factions in the interest and
under the direction of foreign powers. From that
worst of evils, thank God, we are still free. Your
skill, if you had any, would be well employed to find
out indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous trust. If you did not like those which in England
we have chosen, your leaders might have exerted
their abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary to exemplify the consequences of such an executive government as yours, in the management of great affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of M. de
Montmorin to the National Assembly, and all the
other proceedings relative to the differences between
Great Britain and Spain. It would be treating your
understanding with disrespect to point them out to
7ou.
jI hear that the persons who are called ministers
have signified an intention of resigning their places.
I am rather astonished that they have not resigned
long since. For the universe I would not have stood
in the situation in which they have been for this last
twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact be as it may,
they could not, placed as they were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be
the first to see collectively, and to feel each in his
own department, the evils which have been produced
by that Revolution. In every step which they took,
or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded
situation of their country, and their utter incapacity
of serving it. They are in a species of subordinate
servitude in which no men before them were ever
seen. Without confidence from their sovereign on
whom they were forced, or from the Assembly who
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 505
forced them upon him, all the noble functions of
their office are executed by committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their personal
or their official authority. They are to execute, without power; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are to deliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns, over neither
of whom they have any influence, they must act in
such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the
other, and always to betray themselves. Such has
been their situation; such must be the situation of
those who succeed them. I have much respect, and
many good wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to
him for attentions. I thought, when his enemies
had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was
a subject of most serious congratulation. Sed multce
urbes et publica vota vicerunt. He is now sitting on
the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of
France.
A great deal more might be observed on the strange
constitution of the executory part of the new government; but fatigue must give bounds to the discussion
of subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits.
As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in
the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly. According to their invariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old government, stood in need
of reform, even though there should be no change
made in the monarchy. They required several more
alterations to adapt them to the system of a free Con
? ? ? ? 506 REFLECTIONS ON THE
stitution. But they had particulars in their constitution, and those not a few, which deserved approbation
from the wise. They possessed one fundamental excellence: they were independent. The most doubtful circumstance attendant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, however, to this independency of character. They held for life. Indeed,
they may be said to have held by inheritance. Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as
nearly out of his power. The most determined exertions of that authority against them only showed
their radical independence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted to resist arbitrary
innovation; and from that corporate constitution,
and from most of their forms, they were well calculated to afford both certainty and stability to the
laws. They had been a safe asylum to secure these
laws, in all the revolutions of humor and opinion.
They had saved that sacred deposit of the country
during the reigns of arbitrary princes and the struggles of arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory and record of the Constitution. They were the great security to private property; which might be
said (when personal liberty had no existence) to be,
in fact, as well guarded in France as in any other
country. Whatever is supreme in a state ought to
have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so
constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but
in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make
its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the
state.
These parliaments had furnished, not the best
certainly, but some considerable corrective to the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 507
excesses and vices of the monarchy. Such an independent judicature was ten times more necessary
when a democracy became the absolute power of the
country. In that Constitution, elective, temporary,
local judges, such as you have contrived, exercising
their dependent functions in a narrow society, must
be the worst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain
to look for any appearance of justice towards strangers, towards the obnoxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards all those who in the election have supported unsuccessful candidates. It
will be impossible to keep the new tribunals clear of
the worst spirit of faction. All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be vain and childish
to prevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they
may the best answer the purposes of concealment,
they answer to produce suspicion, and this is a still
more mischievous cause of partiality.
If tIe. parliaments had been preserved, instead of
being dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation,
they might have served in this new commonwealth,
perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean an
exact parallel,) but near the same purposes as the
court and senate of Areopagus did in Athens: that
is, as one of the balances and correctives to the evils
of a light and unIjust democracy. Every one knows
that this tribunt jalso. . the great stay of tlhat. . stte;
every one knows with what care it was upheld, and
with what a religious awe it was consecrated. The
parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I admit; but this evil was exterior and accidental, and not
so' much the vice of their constitution itself as it must
be in your new contrivance of sexennial elective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of
? ? ? ? 508 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the old tribunals, as supposing that they determined
everything by bribery and corruption. But they have
stood the test of monarchic and republican scrutiny.
The court was well disposed to prove corruption on
those bodies, when they were dissolved in 1771;
those who have again dissolved them would have
done the same, if they could; but both inquisitions
having failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corruption must have been rather rare amongst them.
It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preserve their ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at least upon, all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon those
which passed in the time of the monarchy. It would
be a means of squaring the occasional decrees of a democracy to some principles of general jurisprudence.
The vice of the ancient democracies, and one cause
of their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees, psephismata. This practice soon
broke in upon the tenor and consistency of the laws;
it abated the respect of the people towards them,
and totally destroyed them in the end.
Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which,
in the time of the monarchy, existed in the Parliament of Paris, in your principal executive officer,
whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere in
calling king, is the height of absurdity. You ought
never to suffer remonstrance from him who is to execute. This is to understand neither council nor execution, neither authority nor obedience. The person whom you call king ought not to have this power,
or he ought to have more.
Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating your monarchy, and seating your
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 509
judges on a bench of independence, your object is to
reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you
have changed all things, you have invented new principles of order. You first appoint judges, who, I suppose, are to determine according to law, and then you let them know, that, at some time or other, you intend to give them some law by which they are to
determine. Any studies which they have made (if
any they have made) are to be useless to them. But
to supply these studies, they are to be sworn to obey
all the rules, orders, and instructions which from
time to time they are to receive from the National
Assembly. These if they submit to, they leave no
ground of law to the subject. They become complete
and most dangerous instruments in the hands of the
governing power, which, in the midst of a cause, or
on the prospect of it, may wholly change the rule of
decision. If these orders of the National Assembly
come to be contrary to the will of the people who
locally choose those judges, such confusion must happen as is terrible to think of. For the judges owe
their place to the local authority, and the commailds they are sworn to obey come from those who
have no share in their appointment. In the mean
time they have the example of the court of Chdtelet
to encourage and guide them in the exercise of their
functions. That court is to try criminals sent to it
by the National Assembly, or brought before it by
other courses of delation. They sit under a guard
to save their own lives. They know not by what law
they judge, nor under what authority they act, nor
by what tenure they hold. It is thought that they
are sometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their
lives. This is not perhaps certain, nor can it be as
? ? ? ? 510 REFLECTIONS ON THE
certained; but when they acquit, we know they have
seen the persons whom they discharge, with perfect
impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of their
court.
The Assembly, indeed, promises that they will form
a body of law, which shall be short, simple, clear,
and so forth. That is, by their short laws, they will
leave much to the discretion of the judge, whilst they
have exploded the authority of all the learning which
could make judicial discretion (a thing perilous at
best) deserving the appellation of a sound discretion.
It is curious to observe, that the administrative
bodies are carefully exempted from the jurisdiction
of these new tribunals. That is, those persons are
exempted from the power of the laws who ought to
be the most entirely submitted to them. Those who
execute public pecuniary trusts ought of all men to
be the most strictly held to their duty. One would
have thought that it must have been among your earliest cares, if you did not mean that those administrative bodies should be real, sovereign, independent states, to form an awful tribunal, like your late
parliaments, or like our King's Bench, where all corporate officers might obtain protection in the legal
exercise of their functions, and would find coercion,
if they trespassed against their legal duty. But the
cause of the exemption is plain. These administrative bodies are the great instruments of the present
leaders in their progress through democracy to oligarchy. They must therefore be put above the law.
It will be said that the legal tribunals which you
have made are unfit to coerce them. They are, unIdoubtedly. They are unfit for any rational purpose.
It will be said, too, that the administrative bodies will
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 511
be accountable to the general Assembly. This, I fear,
is talking without much consideration of the nature
of that Assembly or of these corporations. However,
to be subject to the pleasure of that Assembly is not
to be subject to law, either for protection or for constraint.
This establishment of judges as yet wants something to its completion. It is to be crowned by a
new tribunal. This is to be a grand state judicature;
and it is to judge of crimes committed against the
nation, that is, against the power of the Assembly.
It seems as if they had something in their view of the
nature of the high court of justice erected in England
during the time of the great usurpation. As they
have not yet finished this part of the scheme, it is
impossible to form a direct judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken to form it in a spirit
very different from that which has guided them in
their proceedings relative to state offences, this tribunal, subservient to their inquisition, the Committee of
Research, will extinguish the last sparks of liberty in
France, and settle the most dreadful and arbitrary
tyranny ever known in any nation. If they wish to
give to this tribunal any appearance of liberty and
justice, they must not evoke from or send to it the
causes relative to their own members, at their pleasure. They must also remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republic of Paris. * Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your army than what is discoverable in your
plan of judicature? The able arrangement of this
part is the more difficult, and requires the greater
* For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicatures,
and of the Committee of Research, see M. de Calonne's work.
? ? ? ? 512 REFLECTIONS ON THE
skill and attention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is the third cementing principle in the
new body of republics which you call the French nation. Truly, it is not easy to divine what that army
may become at last. You have voted a very large
one, and on good appointments, at least fully equal
to your apparent means of payment. But what is
the principle of its discipline? or whom is it to obey?
You have got the w"lf by the ears, and I wish you
joy of the happy position in which you have chosen
to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstanced for a free deliberation relatively to that
army, or to anything else.
The minister and secretary of state for the War Department is M. de La Tour du Pin. This gentleman,
like his colleagues in administration, is a most zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine admirer of the new Constitution which originated in that event. His statement of facts relative to the military of France is important, not only from his official
and personal authority, but because it displays very
clearly the actual condition of the army in France,
and because it throws light on the principles upon
which the Assembly proceeds in the administration
of this critical object. It may enable us to form
some judgment how far it may be expedient in this
country to imitate the martial policy of France.
M. de La Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June,
comes to give an account of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspices of the National
Assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can
express it better. Addressing himself to the National
Assembly, he says," His Majesty has -this day sent me to apprise you
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 513
of the multiplied disorders of which every day he receives the most distressing intelligence. The army
[le corps militaire] threatens to fall into the most turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate at once the respect due to the laws, to the king, to the order established by your decrees, and to the
oaths which they have taken with the most awful solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you information of these excesses, my lheart bleeds, when I consider who they are that have committed them.
Those against whom it is not in my power to withhold the most grievous complaints are a part of that
very soldiery which to this day have been so full of
honor and loyalty, and with whom for fifty years I
have lived the comrade and the friend.
" What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion has all at once led them astray? Whilst you
are indefatigable in establishing uniformity in the
empire and moulding the whole into one coherent
and consistent body, whilst the French are taught
by you at once the respect which the laws owe to the
rights of man and that which the citizens owe to the
laws, the administration of the army presents nothing
but disturbance and confusion. I see in more than
one corps the bonds of discipline relaxed or broken,the most unheard-of pretensions avowed directly and
without any disguise, -the ordinances without force,
- the chiefs without authority, - the military chest
and the colors carried off,-the authority of the king
himself [risum teneatis] proudly defied, - the officers
despised, degraded, threatened, driven away, and
some of them prisoners in the midst of their corps,
dragging on a precarious life in the bosom of disgust
and humiliation. To fill up the measure of all these
VOL. III. 33
? ? ? ? 514 REFLECTIONS ON THE
horrors, the comlmandants of places have had their
throats cut under the eyes and almost in the arms
of their own soldiers.
" These evils are great; but they are not the worst
consequences which may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they may menace the nation itself. The nature of things requires
that the army should never act but as an instrument.
The moment that, erecting itself into a deliberate
body, it shall act according to its own resolutions,
the government, be it what it may, will immediately degenerate into a military democracy: a species of political monster which has always ended by devouring those who have produced it.
"- After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations and turbulent committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiers and non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge,
or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors? -although the presence and concurrence of
those superiors could give no authority to such mQnstrous democratic assemblies [comices]. "
It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture,- finished as far as its canvas admits, but, as I
apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature and
complexity of the disorders of this military democracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely
observes, wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, by whatever formal appellation
it may pass. For, though he informs the Assembly
that the more considerable part of the army have
not cast off their obedience, but are still attached to
their duty, yet those travellers who have seen the
corps whose conduct is the best rather observe in
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 515
them the absence of mutiny than the existence of
discipline.
I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect
upon the expressions of surprise which this minister
has let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To
him the departure of the troops from their ancient
principles of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees
which they have passed, the practices which they
have countenanced. The soldiers remember the sixth
of October. They recollect the French guards. They
have not forgot the taking of the king's castles in
Paris and at Marseilles. That the governors in both
places were murdered with impunity is a fact that
has not passed out of their minds. They do not
abandon the principles, laid down so ostentatiously
and laboriously, of the equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to the degradation of the whole
noblesse of France, and the suppression of the very
idea of a gentleman. The total abolition of titles
and distinctions is not lost upon them. But M. du
Pin is astonished at their disloyalty, when the doctors of the Assembly have taught them at the same
time the respect due to laws. It is easy to judge
which of the two sorts of lessons men with arms in
their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority
of the king, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argument on that head were not quite
superfluous) that it is not of more consideration with
these troops than it is with everybody else. "The
king," says he, "has over and over again repeated
his orders to put a stop to these excesses; but in so
? ? ? ? 516 REFLECTIONS ON THE
terrible a crisis, your [the Assembly's] concurrence is
become indispensably necessary to prevent the evils
which menace the state. You unite to the force of
the legislative power that of opinion, still more important. " To be sure, the army can have no opinion of the power or authority of the king. Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, that the Assembly itself does not enjoy a much greater degree of liberty than
that royal figure.
It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this
exigency, one of the greatest that can happen in a
state. The minister requests the Assembly to array
itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave and severe principles announced by them may give vigor to the king's
proclamation. After this we should have looked for
courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps,
decimating of others, and all the terrible means
which necessity has employed in such cases to arrest the progress of the most terrible of all evils; particularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry
would be made into the murder of commandants in
the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all this,
or of anything like it. After they had been told that
the soldiery trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by the king, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to make new
proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that the regiments had paid no regard to oaths, pretes avec la plus imposante solennite, they propose
-- what? More oaths. They renew decrees and
proclamations as they experience their insufficiency,
and they multiply oaths in proportion as they weaken
in the minds of men the sanctions of religion. I hope
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 517
that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons
of Voltaire, D'Alernbert, Diderot, and Helvdtius, on
the Immortality of the Soul, on a Particular Superintending Providence, and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along with their civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt;
as I understand that a certain description of reading
makes no inconsiderable part of their military exercises, and that they are full as well supplied with the
ammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges.
To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregular consultations, seditious committees,
and monstrous democratic assemblies [comitia, comices] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising
from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe the most astonishing means have been
used that ever occurred to men, even in all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this: --
The king has promulgated in circular letters to all
the regiments his direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps should join themselves
with the clubs and confederations in the several municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and
civic entertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems,
is to soften the ferocity of their minds, to reconcile
them to their bottle companions of other descriptions, and to merge particular conspiracies in more
general associations. * That this remedy would be
pleasing to the soldiers, as they are described by M.
de La Tour du Pin, I canl readily believe, - and that,
* " Comme sa Majeste y a reconnu, non un systbme d'associations
particulibres, mais une r6union de volonte's de tous les Francois pour
la liberte et la prosp6rite communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l'ordre
publique, il a pense qu'il convenoit que chaque r6giment prit part h
? ? ? ? 518 REFLECTIONS ON THE
however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully sub.
mit themselves to these royal proclamations. But I
should question whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting would dispose them, more than at
present they are disposed, to an obedience to their
officers, or teach them better to submit to the austere rules of military discipline. It will make them
admirable citizens after the French mode, but not
quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt
might well arise, whether the conversations at these
good tables would fit them a great deal the better for
the character of mere instruments, which this veteran
officer and statesman justly observes the nature of
things always requires an army to be.
Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in
discipline by the free conversation of the soldiers with
the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially
encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may
judge by the state of the municipalities themselves,
furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech.
He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavors towards restoring order for the present from the
good disposition of certain regiments; but he finds
something cloudy with regard to the future. As to
preventing the return of confusion, " for this the administration" (says he) " cannot be answerable to
you, as long as they see the municipalities arrogate
to themselves an authority over the troops which your
institutions have reserved wholly to the monarch.
You have fixed the limits of the military authority
ces fetes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et resserrer les liens
d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. " - Lest I should not be credited, I insert the words authorizing the troops to feast with the popular confederacies.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 519
and the municipal authority. You have bounded the
action which you have permitted to the latter over
the former to the right of requisition; but never
did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commons in these municipalities to break the
officers, to try them, to give orders to the soldiers, to
drive them from the posts committed to their guard,
to stop them in their marches ordered by the king,
or, in a word, to enslave the troops to the caprice
of each of the cities or even market-towns through
which they are to pass. "
Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring
them back to the true principles of military subordination, and to render them machines in the hands
of the supreme power of the country! Such are the
distempers of the French troops! Such is their cure!
As the army is, so is the navy. The municipalities
supersede the orders of the Assembly, and the seamen
in their turn supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old age to pledge the Assembly in their
civic cups, and to enter with a hoary head into all
the fantastic vagaries of these juvenile politicians.
Such schemes are not like propositions coming from
a man of fifty years' wear and tear amongst mankind.
They seem rather such as ought to be expected from
those grand compounders in politics who shorten the
road to their degrees in the state, and have a certain
inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all
subjects, -upon the credit of which, one of their doctors has thought fit, with great applause, and greater
success, to caution the Assembly not to attend to old
? ? ? ? 520 REFLECTIONS ON THE
men, or to any persons who value themselves upon
their experience. I suppose all the ministers of state
must qualify, and take this test, -wholly abjuring the
errors and heresies of experience and observation.
Every man has his own relish; but I think, if I
could not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but
at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to
be regenerated by them,- nor begin, in my grand
climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to
stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds
of their barbarous metaphysics. * Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!
The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system which they call a Constitution cannot
be laid open without discovering the utter insufficiency and mischief of every other part with which
it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it. You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying the
debility of the Assembly. You cannot deliberate on
the confusion of the army of the state, without dis
closing the worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the
civil betrays the military anarchy. I wish everybody
carefully to peruse the eloquent speech (such it is)
of Mons. de La Tour du Pin. He attributes the salvation of the municipalities to the good behavior of some of the troops. These troops are to preserve
the well-disposed part of the municipalities, which is
* This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned his
office.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 521
confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage of the
worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty, and will command
those troops which are necessary for their protection. Indeed, they must command them or court
them. The municipalities, by the necessity of their
situation, and by the republican powers they have
obtained, must, with relation to the military, be the
masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each
successively, or they must make a jumble of all together, according to circumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but the municipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concord where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the Assembly attempts to cure
the distempers by the distempers themselves; and they
hope to preserve themselves from a purely military
democracy by giving it a debauched interest in the
municipal.
If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in
the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an
elective attraction will draw them to the lowest and
most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. The military conspiracies which are to be remedied by civic confederacies,
the rebellious municipalities which are to be rendered
obedient by furnishing them with the means of seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep them
in order, -- all these chimeras of a monstrous and
portentous policy must aggravate the confusion from
which they have arisen. There must be blood. The
want of common judgment manifested in the construction of all their descriptions of forces, and in
all their kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will
? ? ? ? 522 REFLECTIONS ON THE
make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time
and in one part. They will break out in others; because the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these
schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious
citizens must weaken still more and more the military connection of soldiers with their officers, as well as
add military and mutinous audacity to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real army, the officer should be first and last in the eye of the soldier,first and last in his attention, observance, and esteem. Officers, it seems, there are to be, whose chief qualification must be temper and patience. They are to
manage their troops by electioneering arts. They
must bear themselves as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means power may be occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are
to be nominated becomes of high importance.
What you may do finally does not appear: nor is
it of much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your army and all the parts of
your republic, as well as the puzzled relation of those
parts to each other and to the whole, remain as they
are. You seem to have given the provisional nomination of the officers, in the first instance, to the king,
with a reserve of approbation by the National Assembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious in discovering the true seat of
power. They must soon perceive that those who
can negative indefinitely in reality appoint. The
officers must therefore look to their intrigues in the
Assembly as the sole certain road to promotion.
Still, however, by your new Constitution, they must
begin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation for military rank seems to me a contrivance,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 523
as well adapted as if it were studied for no other
end, to promote faction in the Assembly itself relative
to this vast military patronage, - and then to poison
the corps of officers with factions of a nature still
more dangerous to the safety of government, upon
any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive in the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers who lose the promotions intended
for them by the crown must become of a faction
opposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected
their claims, and must nourish discontents in the
heart of the army against the ruling powers. Those
officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their
point through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at best only second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that of the Assembly, must
slight an authority which would not advance and
could not retard their promotion. If, to avoid these
evils, you will have no other rule for command or
promotion than seniority, you will have an army of
formality; at the same time it will become more independent and more of a military republic. Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is not to be
deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the
command of an army, he is nothing. What is the
effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the
army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or
of fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object of all things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. They must be
constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what
their necessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through such a
? ? ? ? 524 REFLECTIONS ON THE
debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army
will not long look to an Assembly acting through the
organ of false show and palpable imposition. They
-will not seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They
will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious
dilemma in your politics.
It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly
like yours, even supposing that it was in possession
of another sort of organ through which its orders
were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and
discipline of an army. It is known that armies have
hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular authority; and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which is to
have only a continuance of two years. The officers
must totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfect submission and due admiration the dominion of pleaders, - especially when they find that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession of those pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command, (if they should have any,) must be as uncertain as their
duration is transient. In the weakness of one kind
of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers
of an army will remain for some time mutinous and
full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the
eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him
on his personal account. There is no other way of
securing military obedience in this state of things.
But the moment in which that event shall happen,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 525
the person who really commands the army is your
master, - the master (that is little) of your king, the
master of your Assembly, the master of your whole
republic.
How came the Assembly by their present power
over the army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching
the soldiers from their officers. They have begun
by a most terrible operation. They have touched the
central point about which the particles that compose
armies are at repose. They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, critical link
between the officer and the soldier, just where the
chain of military subordination commences, and on
which the whole of that system depends. The soldier
is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and
citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is, to be his
own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom
he delegates that self-government. It is very natural
he should think that he ought most of all to have his
choice where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probability, systematically do what he does at present occasionally: that is, he will exercise at least a negative in the
choice of his officers. At present the officers are
known at best to be only permissive, and on their
good behavior. In fact, there have been many instances in which they have been cashiered by their
corps. Here is a second negative on the choice of the
king: a negative as effectual, at least, as the other
of the Assembly. The soldiers know already that it
has been a question, not ill received in the National
Assembly, whether they ought not to have the direct
choice of their officers, or some proportion of them.
When such matters are in deliberation, it is no ex
? ? ? ? 526 REFLECTIONS ON THE
travagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion most favorable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned king,
whilst another army in the same country, with whom
too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a free Constitution. They
will cast their eyes on the other and more permanent
army: I mean the municipal. That corps, they well
know, does actually elect its own officers. They may
not be able to discern the grounds of distinction on
which they are not to elect a Marquis de La Fayette (or what is his new name? ) of their own. If
this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the
rights of men, why not of theirs? They see elective
justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates,
elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective
commanders of the Parisian army. Why should
they alone be excluded? Are the brave troops of
France the only men in that nation who are not the
fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications
necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid
by the state, and do they therefore lose the rights of
men? They are a part of that nation themselves,
and contribute to that pay. And is not the king, is
not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect
the National Assembly, likewise paid? Instead of
seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving
a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary
is given for the exercise of those rights. All your
resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all
the works of your doctors in religion and politics,
have industriously been put into their hands; and. you expect that they will apply to their own case
just as much of your doctrines and examples as suits
your pleasure.
?
I understand you. You do, in spite of your grand
theories, to which you would have heaven and earth
to bend, you do know how to conform yourselves to
the nature and circumstances of things. But when
you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end.
That was in your power. For instance, among many
others, it was in your power to leave to your king
the right of peace and war. - What! to leave to the
executive magistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives? - I know none more dangerous; nor any
one more necessary to be so trusted. I do not say
that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king,
unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it,
which he does not now hold. But, if he did possess
them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages
would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensating the risk. There is no other way of keeping
the several potentates of Europe from intriguing distinctly and personally with the members of your Assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most per
? ? ? ? 504 REFLECTIONS ON THE
nicious of all factions,- factions in the interest and
under the direction of foreign powers. From that
worst of evils, thank God, we are still free. Your
skill, if you had any, would be well employed to find
out indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous trust. If you did not like those which in England
we have chosen, your leaders might have exerted
their abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary to exemplify the consequences of such an executive government as yours, in the management of great affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of M. de
Montmorin to the National Assembly, and all the
other proceedings relative to the differences between
Great Britain and Spain. It would be treating your
understanding with disrespect to point them out to
7ou.
jI hear that the persons who are called ministers
have signified an intention of resigning their places.
I am rather astonished that they have not resigned
long since. For the universe I would not have stood
in the situation in which they have been for this last
twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact be as it may,
they could not, placed as they were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be
the first to see collectively, and to feel each in his
own department, the evils which have been produced
by that Revolution. In every step which they took,
or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded
situation of their country, and their utter incapacity
of serving it. They are in a species of subordinate
servitude in which no men before them were ever
seen. Without confidence from their sovereign on
whom they were forced, or from the Assembly who
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 505
forced them upon him, all the noble functions of
their office are executed by committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their personal
or their official authority. They are to execute, without power; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are to deliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns, over neither
of whom they have any influence, they must act in
such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the
other, and always to betray themselves. Such has
been their situation; such must be the situation of
those who succeed them. I have much respect, and
many good wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to
him for attentions. I thought, when his enemies
had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was
a subject of most serious congratulation. Sed multce
urbes et publica vota vicerunt. He is now sitting on
the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of
France.
A great deal more might be observed on the strange
constitution of the executory part of the new government; but fatigue must give bounds to the discussion
of subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits.
As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in
the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly. According to their invariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old government, stood in need
of reform, even though there should be no change
made in the monarchy. They required several more
alterations to adapt them to the system of a free Con
? ? ? ? 506 REFLECTIONS ON THE
stitution. But they had particulars in their constitution, and those not a few, which deserved approbation
from the wise. They possessed one fundamental excellence: they were independent. The most doubtful circumstance attendant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, however, to this independency of character. They held for life. Indeed,
they may be said to have held by inheritance. Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as
nearly out of his power. The most determined exertions of that authority against them only showed
their radical independence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted to resist arbitrary
innovation; and from that corporate constitution,
and from most of their forms, they were well calculated to afford both certainty and stability to the
laws. They had been a safe asylum to secure these
laws, in all the revolutions of humor and opinion.
They had saved that sacred deposit of the country
during the reigns of arbitrary princes and the struggles of arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory and record of the Constitution. They were the great security to private property; which might be
said (when personal liberty had no existence) to be,
in fact, as well guarded in France as in any other
country. Whatever is supreme in a state ought to
have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so
constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but
in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make
its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the
state.
These parliaments had furnished, not the best
certainly, but some considerable corrective to the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 507
excesses and vices of the monarchy. Such an independent judicature was ten times more necessary
when a democracy became the absolute power of the
country. In that Constitution, elective, temporary,
local judges, such as you have contrived, exercising
their dependent functions in a narrow society, must
be the worst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain
to look for any appearance of justice towards strangers, towards the obnoxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards all those who in the election have supported unsuccessful candidates. It
will be impossible to keep the new tribunals clear of
the worst spirit of faction. All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be vain and childish
to prevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they
may the best answer the purposes of concealment,
they answer to produce suspicion, and this is a still
more mischievous cause of partiality.
If tIe. parliaments had been preserved, instead of
being dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation,
they might have served in this new commonwealth,
perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean an
exact parallel,) but near the same purposes as the
court and senate of Areopagus did in Athens: that
is, as one of the balances and correctives to the evils
of a light and unIjust democracy. Every one knows
that this tribunt jalso. . the great stay of tlhat. . stte;
every one knows with what care it was upheld, and
with what a religious awe it was consecrated. The
parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I admit; but this evil was exterior and accidental, and not
so' much the vice of their constitution itself as it must
be in your new contrivance of sexennial elective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of
? ? ? ? 508 REFLECTIONS ON THE
the old tribunals, as supposing that they determined
everything by bribery and corruption. But they have
stood the test of monarchic and republican scrutiny.
The court was well disposed to prove corruption on
those bodies, when they were dissolved in 1771;
those who have again dissolved them would have
done the same, if they could; but both inquisitions
having failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corruption must have been rather rare amongst them.
It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preserve their ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at least upon, all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon those
which passed in the time of the monarchy. It would
be a means of squaring the occasional decrees of a democracy to some principles of general jurisprudence.
The vice of the ancient democracies, and one cause
of their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees, psephismata. This practice soon
broke in upon the tenor and consistency of the laws;
it abated the respect of the people towards them,
and totally destroyed them in the end.
Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which,
in the time of the monarchy, existed in the Parliament of Paris, in your principal executive officer,
whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere in
calling king, is the height of absurdity. You ought
never to suffer remonstrance from him who is to execute. This is to understand neither council nor execution, neither authority nor obedience. The person whom you call king ought not to have this power,
or he ought to have more.
Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating your monarchy, and seating your
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 509
judges on a bench of independence, your object is to
reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you
have changed all things, you have invented new principles of order. You first appoint judges, who, I suppose, are to determine according to law, and then you let them know, that, at some time or other, you intend to give them some law by which they are to
determine. Any studies which they have made (if
any they have made) are to be useless to them. But
to supply these studies, they are to be sworn to obey
all the rules, orders, and instructions which from
time to time they are to receive from the National
Assembly. These if they submit to, they leave no
ground of law to the subject. They become complete
and most dangerous instruments in the hands of the
governing power, which, in the midst of a cause, or
on the prospect of it, may wholly change the rule of
decision. If these orders of the National Assembly
come to be contrary to the will of the people who
locally choose those judges, such confusion must happen as is terrible to think of. For the judges owe
their place to the local authority, and the commailds they are sworn to obey come from those who
have no share in their appointment. In the mean
time they have the example of the court of Chdtelet
to encourage and guide them in the exercise of their
functions. That court is to try criminals sent to it
by the National Assembly, or brought before it by
other courses of delation. They sit under a guard
to save their own lives. They know not by what law
they judge, nor under what authority they act, nor
by what tenure they hold. It is thought that they
are sometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their
lives. This is not perhaps certain, nor can it be as
? ? ? ? 510 REFLECTIONS ON THE
certained; but when they acquit, we know they have
seen the persons whom they discharge, with perfect
impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of their
court.
The Assembly, indeed, promises that they will form
a body of law, which shall be short, simple, clear,
and so forth. That is, by their short laws, they will
leave much to the discretion of the judge, whilst they
have exploded the authority of all the learning which
could make judicial discretion (a thing perilous at
best) deserving the appellation of a sound discretion.
It is curious to observe, that the administrative
bodies are carefully exempted from the jurisdiction
of these new tribunals. That is, those persons are
exempted from the power of the laws who ought to
be the most entirely submitted to them. Those who
execute public pecuniary trusts ought of all men to
be the most strictly held to their duty. One would
have thought that it must have been among your earliest cares, if you did not mean that those administrative bodies should be real, sovereign, independent states, to form an awful tribunal, like your late
parliaments, or like our King's Bench, where all corporate officers might obtain protection in the legal
exercise of their functions, and would find coercion,
if they trespassed against their legal duty. But the
cause of the exemption is plain. These administrative bodies are the great instruments of the present
leaders in their progress through democracy to oligarchy. They must therefore be put above the law.
It will be said that the legal tribunals which you
have made are unfit to coerce them. They are, unIdoubtedly. They are unfit for any rational purpose.
It will be said, too, that the administrative bodies will
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 511
be accountable to the general Assembly. This, I fear,
is talking without much consideration of the nature
of that Assembly or of these corporations. However,
to be subject to the pleasure of that Assembly is not
to be subject to law, either for protection or for constraint.
This establishment of judges as yet wants something to its completion. It is to be crowned by a
new tribunal. This is to be a grand state judicature;
and it is to judge of crimes committed against the
nation, that is, against the power of the Assembly.
It seems as if they had something in their view of the
nature of the high court of justice erected in England
during the time of the great usurpation. As they
have not yet finished this part of the scheme, it is
impossible to form a direct judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken to form it in a spirit
very different from that which has guided them in
their proceedings relative to state offences, this tribunal, subservient to their inquisition, the Committee of
Research, will extinguish the last sparks of liberty in
France, and settle the most dreadful and arbitrary
tyranny ever known in any nation. If they wish to
give to this tribunal any appearance of liberty and
justice, they must not evoke from or send to it the
causes relative to their own members, at their pleasure. They must also remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republic of Paris. * Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your army than what is discoverable in your
plan of judicature? The able arrangement of this
part is the more difficult, and requires the greater
* For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicatures,
and of the Committee of Research, see M. de Calonne's work.
? ? ? ? 512 REFLECTIONS ON THE
skill and attention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is the third cementing principle in the
new body of republics which you call the French nation. Truly, it is not easy to divine what that army
may become at last. You have voted a very large
one, and on good appointments, at least fully equal
to your apparent means of payment. But what is
the principle of its discipline? or whom is it to obey?
You have got the w"lf by the ears, and I wish you
joy of the happy position in which you have chosen
to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstanced for a free deliberation relatively to that
army, or to anything else.
The minister and secretary of state for the War Department is M. de La Tour du Pin. This gentleman,
like his colleagues in administration, is a most zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine admirer of the new Constitution which originated in that event. His statement of facts relative to the military of France is important, not only from his official
and personal authority, but because it displays very
clearly the actual condition of the army in France,
and because it throws light on the principles upon
which the Assembly proceeds in the administration
of this critical object. It may enable us to form
some judgment how far it may be expedient in this
country to imitate the martial policy of France.
M. de La Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June,
comes to give an account of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspices of the National
Assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can
express it better. Addressing himself to the National
Assembly, he says," His Majesty has -this day sent me to apprise you
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 513
of the multiplied disorders of which every day he receives the most distressing intelligence. The army
[le corps militaire] threatens to fall into the most turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate at once the respect due to the laws, to the king, to the order established by your decrees, and to the
oaths which they have taken with the most awful solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you information of these excesses, my lheart bleeds, when I consider who they are that have committed them.
Those against whom it is not in my power to withhold the most grievous complaints are a part of that
very soldiery which to this day have been so full of
honor and loyalty, and with whom for fifty years I
have lived the comrade and the friend.
" What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion has all at once led them astray? Whilst you
are indefatigable in establishing uniformity in the
empire and moulding the whole into one coherent
and consistent body, whilst the French are taught
by you at once the respect which the laws owe to the
rights of man and that which the citizens owe to the
laws, the administration of the army presents nothing
but disturbance and confusion. I see in more than
one corps the bonds of discipline relaxed or broken,the most unheard-of pretensions avowed directly and
without any disguise, -the ordinances without force,
- the chiefs without authority, - the military chest
and the colors carried off,-the authority of the king
himself [risum teneatis] proudly defied, - the officers
despised, degraded, threatened, driven away, and
some of them prisoners in the midst of their corps,
dragging on a precarious life in the bosom of disgust
and humiliation. To fill up the measure of all these
VOL. III. 33
? ? ? ? 514 REFLECTIONS ON THE
horrors, the comlmandants of places have had their
throats cut under the eyes and almost in the arms
of their own soldiers.
" These evils are great; but they are not the worst
consequences which may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they may menace the nation itself. The nature of things requires
that the army should never act but as an instrument.
The moment that, erecting itself into a deliberate
body, it shall act according to its own resolutions,
the government, be it what it may, will immediately degenerate into a military democracy: a species of political monster which has always ended by devouring those who have produced it.
"- After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations and turbulent committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiers and non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge,
or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors? -although the presence and concurrence of
those superiors could give no authority to such mQnstrous democratic assemblies [comices]. "
It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture,- finished as far as its canvas admits, but, as I
apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature and
complexity of the disorders of this military democracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely
observes, wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, by whatever formal appellation
it may pass. For, though he informs the Assembly
that the more considerable part of the army have
not cast off their obedience, but are still attached to
their duty, yet those travellers who have seen the
corps whose conduct is the best rather observe in
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 515
them the absence of mutiny than the existence of
discipline.
I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect
upon the expressions of surprise which this minister
has let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To
him the departure of the troops from their ancient
principles of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees
which they have passed, the practices which they
have countenanced. The soldiers remember the sixth
of October. They recollect the French guards. They
have not forgot the taking of the king's castles in
Paris and at Marseilles. That the governors in both
places were murdered with impunity is a fact that
has not passed out of their minds. They do not
abandon the principles, laid down so ostentatiously
and laboriously, of the equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to the degradation of the whole
noblesse of France, and the suppression of the very
idea of a gentleman. The total abolition of titles
and distinctions is not lost upon them. But M. du
Pin is astonished at their disloyalty, when the doctors of the Assembly have taught them at the same
time the respect due to laws. It is easy to judge
which of the two sorts of lessons men with arms in
their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority
of the king, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argument on that head were not quite
superfluous) that it is not of more consideration with
these troops than it is with everybody else. "The
king," says he, "has over and over again repeated
his orders to put a stop to these excesses; but in so
? ? ? ? 516 REFLECTIONS ON THE
terrible a crisis, your [the Assembly's] concurrence is
become indispensably necessary to prevent the evils
which menace the state. You unite to the force of
the legislative power that of opinion, still more important. " To be sure, the army can have no opinion of the power or authority of the king. Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, that the Assembly itself does not enjoy a much greater degree of liberty than
that royal figure.
It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this
exigency, one of the greatest that can happen in a
state. The minister requests the Assembly to array
itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave and severe principles announced by them may give vigor to the king's
proclamation. After this we should have looked for
courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps,
decimating of others, and all the terrible means
which necessity has employed in such cases to arrest the progress of the most terrible of all evils; particularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry
would be made into the murder of commandants in
the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all this,
or of anything like it. After they had been told that
the soldiery trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by the king, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to make new
proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that the regiments had paid no regard to oaths, pretes avec la plus imposante solennite, they propose
-- what? More oaths. They renew decrees and
proclamations as they experience their insufficiency,
and they multiply oaths in proportion as they weaken
in the minds of men the sanctions of religion. I hope
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 517
that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons
of Voltaire, D'Alernbert, Diderot, and Helvdtius, on
the Immortality of the Soul, on a Particular Superintending Providence, and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along with their civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt;
as I understand that a certain description of reading
makes no inconsiderable part of their military exercises, and that they are full as well supplied with the
ammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges.
To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregular consultations, seditious committees,
and monstrous democratic assemblies [comitia, comices] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising
from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe the most astonishing means have been
used that ever occurred to men, even in all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this: --
The king has promulgated in circular letters to all
the regiments his direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps should join themselves
with the clubs and confederations in the several municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and
civic entertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems,
is to soften the ferocity of their minds, to reconcile
them to their bottle companions of other descriptions, and to merge particular conspiracies in more
general associations. * That this remedy would be
pleasing to the soldiers, as they are described by M.
de La Tour du Pin, I canl readily believe, - and that,
* " Comme sa Majeste y a reconnu, non un systbme d'associations
particulibres, mais une r6union de volonte's de tous les Francois pour
la liberte et la prosp6rite communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l'ordre
publique, il a pense qu'il convenoit que chaque r6giment prit part h
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however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully sub.
mit themselves to these royal proclamations. But I
should question whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting would dispose them, more than at
present they are disposed, to an obedience to their
officers, or teach them better to submit to the austere rules of military discipline. It will make them
admirable citizens after the French mode, but not
quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt
might well arise, whether the conversations at these
good tables would fit them a great deal the better for
the character of mere instruments, which this veteran
officer and statesman justly observes the nature of
things always requires an army to be.
Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in
discipline by the free conversation of the soldiers with
the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially
encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may
judge by the state of the municipalities themselves,
furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech.
He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavors towards restoring order for the present from the
good disposition of certain regiments; but he finds
something cloudy with regard to the future. As to
preventing the return of confusion, " for this the administration" (says he) " cannot be answerable to
you, as long as they see the municipalities arrogate
to themselves an authority over the troops which your
institutions have reserved wholly to the monarch.
You have fixed the limits of the military authority
ces fetes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et resserrer les liens
d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. " - Lest I should not be credited, I insert the words authorizing the troops to feast with the popular confederacies.
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and the municipal authority. You have bounded the
action which you have permitted to the latter over
the former to the right of requisition; but never
did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commons in these municipalities to break the
officers, to try them, to give orders to the soldiers, to
drive them from the posts committed to their guard,
to stop them in their marches ordered by the king,
or, in a word, to enslave the troops to the caprice
of each of the cities or even market-towns through
which they are to pass. "
Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring
them back to the true principles of military subordination, and to render them machines in the hands
of the supreme power of the country! Such are the
distempers of the French troops! Such is their cure!
As the army is, so is the navy. The municipalities
supersede the orders of the Assembly, and the seamen
in their turn supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old age to pledge the Assembly in their
civic cups, and to enter with a hoary head into all
the fantastic vagaries of these juvenile politicians.
Such schemes are not like propositions coming from
a man of fifty years' wear and tear amongst mankind.
They seem rather such as ought to be expected from
those grand compounders in politics who shorten the
road to their degrees in the state, and have a certain
inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all
subjects, -upon the credit of which, one of their doctors has thought fit, with great applause, and greater
success, to caution the Assembly not to attend to old
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men, or to any persons who value themselves upon
their experience. I suppose all the ministers of state
must qualify, and take this test, -wholly abjuring the
errors and heresies of experience and observation.
Every man has his own relish; but I think, if I
could not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but
at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to
be regenerated by them,- nor begin, in my grand
climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to
stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds
of their barbarous metaphysics. * Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!
The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system which they call a Constitution cannot
be laid open without discovering the utter insufficiency and mischief of every other part with which
it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it. You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying the
debility of the Assembly. You cannot deliberate on
the confusion of the army of the state, without dis
closing the worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the
civil betrays the military anarchy. I wish everybody
carefully to peruse the eloquent speech (such it is)
of Mons. de La Tour du Pin. He attributes the salvation of the municipalities to the good behavior of some of the troops. These troops are to preserve
the well-disposed part of the municipalities, which is
* This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned his
office.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 521
confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage of the
worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty, and will command
those troops which are necessary for their protection. Indeed, they must command them or court
them. The municipalities, by the necessity of their
situation, and by the republican powers they have
obtained, must, with relation to the military, be the
masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each
successively, or they must make a jumble of all together, according to circumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but the municipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concord where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the Assembly attempts to cure
the distempers by the distempers themselves; and they
hope to preserve themselves from a purely military
democracy by giving it a debauched interest in the
municipal.
If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in
the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an
elective attraction will draw them to the lowest and
most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. The military conspiracies which are to be remedied by civic confederacies,
the rebellious municipalities which are to be rendered
obedient by furnishing them with the means of seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep them
in order, -- all these chimeras of a monstrous and
portentous policy must aggravate the confusion from
which they have arisen. There must be blood. The
want of common judgment manifested in the construction of all their descriptions of forces, and in
all their kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will
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make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time
and in one part. They will break out in others; because the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these
schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious
citizens must weaken still more and more the military connection of soldiers with their officers, as well as
add military and mutinous audacity to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real army, the officer should be first and last in the eye of the soldier,first and last in his attention, observance, and esteem. Officers, it seems, there are to be, whose chief qualification must be temper and patience. They are to
manage their troops by electioneering arts. They
must bear themselves as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means power may be occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are
to be nominated becomes of high importance.
What you may do finally does not appear: nor is
it of much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your army and all the parts of
your republic, as well as the puzzled relation of those
parts to each other and to the whole, remain as they
are. You seem to have given the provisional nomination of the officers, in the first instance, to the king,
with a reserve of approbation by the National Assembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious in discovering the true seat of
power. They must soon perceive that those who
can negative indefinitely in reality appoint. The
officers must therefore look to their intrigues in the
Assembly as the sole certain road to promotion.
Still, however, by your new Constitution, they must
begin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation for military rank seems to me a contrivance,
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 523
as well adapted as if it were studied for no other
end, to promote faction in the Assembly itself relative
to this vast military patronage, - and then to poison
the corps of officers with factions of a nature still
more dangerous to the safety of government, upon
any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive in the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers who lose the promotions intended
for them by the crown must become of a faction
opposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected
their claims, and must nourish discontents in the
heart of the army against the ruling powers. Those
officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their
point through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at best only second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that of the Assembly, must
slight an authority which would not advance and
could not retard their promotion. If, to avoid these
evils, you will have no other rule for command or
promotion than seniority, you will have an army of
formality; at the same time it will become more independent and more of a military republic. Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is not to be
deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the
command of an army, he is nothing. What is the
effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the
army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or
of fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object of all things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. They must be
constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what
their necessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through such a
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debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army
will not long look to an Assembly acting through the
organ of false show and palpable imposition. They
-will not seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They
will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious
dilemma in your politics.
It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly
like yours, even supposing that it was in possession
of another sort of organ through which its orders
were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and
discipline of an army. It is known that armies have
hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular authority; and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which is to
have only a continuance of two years. The officers
must totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfect submission and due admiration the dominion of pleaders, - especially when they find that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession of those pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command, (if they should have any,) must be as uncertain as their
duration is transient. In the weakness of one kind
of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers
of an army will remain for some time mutinous and
full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the
eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him
on his personal account. There is no other way of
securing military obedience in this state of things.
But the moment in which that event shall happen,
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the person who really commands the army is your
master, - the master (that is little) of your king, the
master of your Assembly, the master of your whole
republic.
How came the Assembly by their present power
over the army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching
the soldiers from their officers. They have begun
by a most terrible operation. They have touched the
central point about which the particles that compose
armies are at repose. They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, critical link
between the officer and the soldier, just where the
chain of military subordination commences, and on
which the whole of that system depends. The soldier
is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and
citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is, to be his
own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom
he delegates that self-government. It is very natural
he should think that he ought most of all to have his
choice where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probability, systematically do what he does at present occasionally: that is, he will exercise at least a negative in the
choice of his officers. At present the officers are
known at best to be only permissive, and on their
good behavior. In fact, there have been many instances in which they have been cashiered by their
corps. Here is a second negative on the choice of the
king: a negative as effectual, at least, as the other
of the Assembly. The soldiers know already that it
has been a question, not ill received in the National
Assembly, whether they ought not to have the direct
choice of their officers, or some proportion of them.
When such matters are in deliberation, it is no ex
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travagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion most favorable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned king,
whilst another army in the same country, with whom
too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a free Constitution. They
will cast their eyes on the other and more permanent
army: I mean the municipal. That corps, they well
know, does actually elect its own officers. They may
not be able to discern the grounds of distinction on
which they are not to elect a Marquis de La Fayette (or what is his new name? ) of their own. If
this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the
rights of men, why not of theirs? They see elective
justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates,
elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective
commanders of the Parisian army. Why should
they alone be excluded? Are the brave troops of
France the only men in that nation who are not the
fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications
necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid
by the state, and do they therefore lose the rights of
men? They are a part of that nation themselves,
and contribute to that pay. And is not the king, is
not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect
the National Assembly, likewise paid? Instead of
seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving
a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary
is given for the exercise of those rights. All your
resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all
the works of your doctors in religion and politics,
have industriously been put into their hands; and. you expect that they will apply to their own case
just as much of your doctrines and examples as suits
your pleasure.
?
