An observation on this
difference
will let us into the
true spirit of their conduct.
true spirit of their conduct.
Edmund Burke
Many parts of Europe are in open disorder.
In many others there is a hollow murmuring under
ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens
a general earthquake in the political world. Already
confederacies and correspondences of the most extraordinary nature are forming in several countries. *
In such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves
upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must
be) the circumstance which will serve m'ost to blunt
the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good
may be in them, is, that they should find us with our
minds tenacious of justice and tender of property.
But it will be argued, that this confiscation in
France ought not to alarm other nations. They say
it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a
great measure of national policy, adopted to remove
an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. - It is
with the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate
policy from justice. Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent depart* See two books entitled, "Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens," --" System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens. " Minchen, 1787.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 439
ure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the
suspicion of being no policy at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain
mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in
that mode as in a lawful occupation, -- when they
have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits
to it, - when the law had long made their adherence
to its rules a ground of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgrace and even of penalty, -I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their
minds and their feelings, forcibly to degrade them
from their state and condition, and to stigmatize with
shame and infamy that character and those customs
which before had been made the measure of their
happiness and honor. If to this be added an expulsion from their habitations and a confiscation of all
their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover
how this despotic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men can be
discriminated from the rankest tyranny.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be
clear, the policy of the measure, that is, the public
benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at least
as evident, and at least as important. To a man who
acts under the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view in his projects but the public good, a
great difference will immediately strike him, between
what policy would dictate on the original introduction of such institutions, and on a question of their
total abolition, where they have cast their roots wide
and deep, and where, by long habit, things more valuable than themselves are so adapted to them, and in
a manner interwoven with them, that the one cannot
? ? ? ? 440 REFLECTIONS ON THE
be destroyed without notably impairing the other.
He might be embarrassed, if the case were really such
as sophisters represent it in their paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions of state,
there is a middle. There is something else than
the mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna.
This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and
ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have
brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon
which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man
full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his
society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a
good patriot, and a true politician, always considers
how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and
an ability to improve, taken together, would be my
standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar
in the conception, perilous in the execution.
There are moments in the fortune of states, when
particular men are called to make improvements by
great mental exertion. In those moments, even when
they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and
country, and to be invested with full authority, they
have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do
great things, looks for a power, what our workmen
call a purchase; and if he finds that power, in politics
as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it.
In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was
found a great power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 441
to public purposes, without any other than public ties
and public principles, - men without the possibility
of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune, - men denied to self-interests, whose
avarice is for some community, - men to whom personal poverty is honor, and implicit obedience stands
in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to
the possibility of making such things when he wants
them. The winds blow as they list. These institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the
instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of Nature or of chance; her
pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularly suited to a man who has long views, -- who meditates designs that require time in fashioning,
and which propose duration when they are accomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even
to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who,
having obtained the command and direction of such
a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and
the habits of such corporations as those which you
have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his couny
try. On the view of this subject, a thousand uses
suggest themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy
any power growing wild from the rank productive
force of the human mind is almost tantamount, in
the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently
active properties of bodies in the material. It would
be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in
nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of
magnetism. These energies always existed in Na
? ? ? ? 442 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ture, and they were always discernible. They seemed,
some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no
better than a sport to children, - until contemplative
ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild
nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at
once the most powerful and the most tractable agents,
in subservience to the great views and designs of men.
Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental and whose
bodily labor you might direct, and so many hundred
thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy
nor superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to
wield? Had you no way of using the men, but by
converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way
of turning the revenue to account, but through the
improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you
were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding
is in its natural course. Your politicians do not
understand their trade; and therefore they sell their
tools.
But the institutions savor of superstition in their
very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent
and standing influence. - This I do not mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for the public advantage. You
derive benefits from many dispositions and many passions of the human mind which are of as doubtful
a color, in the moral eye, as superstition itself. It
was your business to correct and mitigate everything
which was noxious in this passion, as in all the passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In its possible excess I think it becomes
a very great evil. It is, however, a moral subject,
and of course admits of all degrees and all modifica
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 443
tions. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds;
and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it,
in some triflin',_ te. nhli _. shaAe or others
else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found
necessary to the strigest. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will
of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in
His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the
great end, - it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who, as
such, are not admirers, (not admirers at least of the
munera terrce,) are not violently attached to these
things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom
is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are
the rival follies which mutually wage so unrelenting
a war, and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on the one side or the other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the
contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things in their nature not made to
produce such heats, a prudent man were obliged to
make a choice of what errors and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would
think the superstition which builds to be more tolerable than that which demolishes, -- that which
adorns a country, than that which deforms it, - that
which endows, than that which plunders, - that
which disposes to mistaken beneficence, than that
which stimulates to real injustice,- that which leads
a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that
which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of
their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the
state of the question between the' ancient founders
? ? ? ? 444 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of monkish superstition and the superstition of the
pretended philosophers of the hour.
For the present I postpone all consideration of the
supposed public profit of the sale, which, however, I
conceive to be perfectly delusive. I shall here only
consider it as a transfer of property. On the policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few
thoughts.
In every prosperous community something more is
produced than goes to the immediate support of the
producer. This surplus forms the income of the
landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor
who does not labor. But this idleness is itself the
spring of labor, this repose the spur to industry.
The only concern for the state is, that the capital
taken in rent from the land should be returned
again to the industry from whence it came, and
that its expenditure should be with the least possible
detriment to the morals of those who expend it and
to those of the people to whom it is returned.
In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal employment, a soberJlegislator would cartltJ compare the pos se -oer. whom he was. . xrec Aed
to expel with the stranger who was proposed to fill
his place. Before the inconveniences are incurred
which must attend all violent revolutions in property through extensive confiscation, we ought to have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the
confiscated property will be in a considerable degree
more laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an unreasonable proportion of the gains of the laborer, or to consume on themselves a
larger share than is fit for the measure of an individual, --or that they should be qualified to dispense the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 445
surplus in a more steady and equal mode, so as to
answer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than
the old possessors, call those possessors bishops, or
canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or what
you please. The monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise employed than by singing in
the choir. They are as usefully employed as those
who neither sing nor say, --as usefully even as those
who sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the
innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly,
and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to which by the social economy so many
wretches are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of
things, and to impede in any degree the great wheel
of circulation which is turned by the strangely directed labor of these unhappy people, I should be infinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miserable industry than violently to disturb the tranquil repose of monastic quietude. Humanity, and
perhaps policy, might better justify me in the one
than in the other. It is a subject on which I have
often reflected, and never reflected without feeling
from it. I am sure that no consideration, except
the necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury
and the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious way will distribute the surplus product of the
soil, can justify the toleration of such trades and
employments in a well-regulated state. But for this
purpose of distribution, it seems to me that the idle
expenses of monks are quite as well directed as the
idle expenses of us lay loiterers.
When the advantages of the possession and of the
? ? ? ? 446 REFLECTIONS ON THE
project are on a par, there is no motive for a change.
But in the present case, perhaps, they are not upon a
par, and the difference is in favor of the possession.
It does not appear to me that the expenses of those
whom you are going to expel do in fact take a
course so directly and so generally leading to vitiate
and degrade and render miserable those through
whom they pass as the expenses of those favorites
whom you are intruding into their houses. Why
should the expenditure of a great landed property,
which is a dispersion of the surplus product of the
soil, appear intolerable to you or to me, when it takes
its course through the accumulation of vast libraries,
which are the history of the force and weakness of
the human mind,- through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which attest and
explain laws and customs, -through paintings and
statues, that, by imitating Nature, seem to extend the
limits of creation, -through grand monuments of the
dead, which continue the regards and connections of
life beyond the grave, - through collections of the
specimens of Nature, which become a representative
assembly of all the classes and families of the world,
that by disposi. tion facilitate, and by exciting curiosity open, the avenues to science? If by great permanent establishments all these objects of expense are better secured from the inconstant sport of personal
caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse
than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously in the
construction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion as in the painted booths and sordid sties of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 447
vice and luxury? as honorably and as profitably in
repairing those sacred works which grow hoary with
innumerable years as on the momentary receptacles
of transient voluptuousness, --in opera-houses, and
brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and
obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus
product of the olive and the vine worse employed in
the frugal sustenance of persons whom the fictions
of a pious imagination raise to dignity by construing
in the service of God than in pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces,
and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit
soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies
in which opulence sports away the burden of its superfluity?
We tolerate even these,- not from love of them,
but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because
property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely, in
every point of view, the more laudable use of estates?
Why, through the violation of all property, through
an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly
carry them from the better to the worse?
This comparison between the new individuals and
the old corps is made upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter. But, in a question
of reformation, I always consider corporate bodies,
whether sole or consisting of many, to be much more
susceptible of a public direction, by the power of the
state, in the use of their property, and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members,
? ? ? ? 448 REFLECTIONS ON THE
than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to
be; and this seems to me a very material consideration for those who undertake anything which merits
the name of a politic enterprise. - So far as to the
estates of monasteries.
With regard to the estates possessed by bishops
and canons and commendatory abbots, I cannot find
out for what reason some landed estates may not be
held otherwise than by inheritance. Can any philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive
or the comparative evil of having a certain, and that,
too, a large, portion of landed property passing in succession through persons whose title to it is, always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety,
morals, and learning; a property which by its destination, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives
to the noblest families renovation and support, to the
lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some duty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon
that duty,) and the character of whose proprietors
demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of
manners, -- who are to exercise a generous, but temperate hospitality, --part of whose income they are to consider as a trust for charity,-and who, even when
they fail in their trust, when they slide from their
character, and degenerate into a mere common secular
nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than
those who may succeed them in their forfeited possessions? Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who have one?
by those whose character and destination point to
virtues than by those who have no rule and direction
in the expenditure of their estates but their own will
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 449
aind appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether
in the character or with the evils supposed inherent
in mortmain. They pass from hand to hand with a
more rapid circulation than any other. No excess is
good, and therefore too great a proportion of landed
property may be held officially for life; but it does
not seem to me of material injury to any common
wealth that there should exist some estates that have
a chance of being acquired by other means than the
previous acquisition of money.
This letter is grown to a great length, though it
is, indeed, short with regard to the infinite extent of
the subject. Various avocations have from time to;,
time called my mind from the subject. I was not
sorry to give myself leisure to observe whether in
the proceedings of the National Assembly I might
not find reasons to change or to qualify some of my
first sentiments. Everything has confirmed me more
strongly in my'first opinions. It was my original
purpose to take a view of the principles of the National Assembly with regard to the great and fundamental establishments, and to compare the whole of what you have substituted in the place of what you
have destroyed with the several members of our British Constitution. But this plan is of greater extent,
than at first I computed, and I find that you have
little desire to take the advantage of any examples.
At present I must content myself with some remarks
upon your establishments, reserving for another time
what I proposed to say concerning the spirit of our
British monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as practically they exist.
I have taken a view of what has been done by the
VOL. III. 29
? ? ? ? 450 REFLECTIONS ON THE
governing power ill France. I have certainly spoke
of it with freedom. Those whose principle it is to
despise the ancient, permanent sense of mankind,
and to set up a scheme of society on new principles,
must naturally expect that such of us who think
better of the judgment of the human race than of
theirs should consider both them and their devices
as men and schemes upon their trial. They must
take it for granted. that we attend much to their reason, but not at all to their authority. They have
not one of the great influencing prejudices of mankind inll their favor. They avow their hostility to
opinion. Of course they must expect no support
from that influence, which, with every other authority, they have deposed from the seat of its jurisdiction. I can never consider this Assembly as anything
else than a voluntary association of men who have
availe' themselves of circumstances to seize upon the
1poer of tile state. They have not'the sanctioe and
authority of the character under which they first
met. They have assumed another of a very different nature, and have completely altered and inverted
all the relations in which they originally stood. They
do not hold the authority they exercise under any
constitutional law of the state. They have departed
from the instructions of the people by whom they
were sent; which instructions, as the Assembly'did
not act in virtue of any ancient usage qr settled law,
were the sole source of their authority. The most
considerable of their acts have not been done by great
majorities; and in this sort of near divisions, which
carry only the constructive authority of the whole,
strangers will consider reasons as well as resolutions.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 451
If they had set up this new, experimental government as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time of prescription, which through long usage mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All those who have affections which lead
them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate,
which has been produced from those principles of
cogent expediency to which all just governments owe
their birth, and on which they justify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in giving
any sort of countenance to the operations of a power
which has derived its birth from no law and no necessity, but which, on the contrary, has had its origin
in those vices and sinister practices by which the social union is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed.
This Assembly has hardly a year's prescription. We
have their own word for it that they have made a
revolution. To make a revolution is a measure
which, primd fronte, requires ail apology. To make
a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of our
country; and no common reasons are called for to
justify so violent a proceeding. The sense of man
kind authorizes us to examine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to criticize on the use that
is made of it, with less awe and reverence than that
which is usually conceded to a settled and recognized
authority.
In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly proceeds upon principles the most opposite from
those which appear to direct them in the use of it.
An observation on this difference will let us into the
true spirit of their conduct. Everything which they
? ? ? ? 452 REFLECTIONS ON THE
have done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and
keep their power, is by the most common arts. They
proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have
done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing
at all that is new'. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader.
They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good the spirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the
whole to the mercy of untried speculations; they
abandon the dearest interests of the public to,those
loose theories to which none of them would choose
to trust the slightest of his private concerns. They
make this difference, because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in
earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The
public interests, because about them they have no
real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance: I
say to chance2 because their schemes have nothing
in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.
We must always see with a pity not unmixed with
respect the errors of those who are timid and doubtftil of themselves with regard to points wherein the
happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these
gentlemen there is nothing of the tender parental
solicitude which fears to cut up the infant for the
sake of an experiment. In the vastness of their
promises and the confidence of their predictions they
far outdo all the boasting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretensions in a manner provokes
and challenges us to an inquiry into their foundation.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 453
I am convinced that there are men of considerable
parts among the popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of them display eloquence in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful and cultivated talents. But eloquence
may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom.
When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish.
What they have done towards the support of their
system bespeaks no ordinary men. In the system
itself, taken as the scheme of a republic constructed for procuring the prosperity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable to find out anything which displays, in a single instance, the
work of a comprehensive and disposing mind, or even
the provisions of a vulgar prudence. Their purpose
everywhere seems to have been to evade and slip
aside from difflculty. This it has been the glory of
the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to
overcome, - and when they had overcome the first
difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficulties: thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science, and even to push
forward, beyond the reach of their original thoughts,
the landmarks of the human understanding itself.
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the
supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud
facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us
strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our
antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with
difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with
our object, and compels us to consider it in all its re
? ? ? ? 454 REFLECTIONS ON THE
lations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is
the want of nerves of understanding for such a task,
it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts
and little fallacious facilities, that has in so many
parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary
monarchy of France. They have created the arbitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the pl! Qe)itude of force.
They get nothing by it. Commencing their labors
on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful men. The difficulties, which they
rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again in
their course; they multiply and thicken on them;
they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused
detail, in an industry without limit and without direction; and in conclusion, the whole of their work
becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which
has obliged the arbitrary Assemnbly of France to commence their schemes of reform with abolition and
total destrnction. * But is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do
* A leading member of the Assembly, M. Rabaut de St. ttienne,
has expressed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as possible; nothing can be more simple: --" Tous les etablissemens en France
couronnent le malheuLr du peuple: pour le rendre heureux, il faut le renouveler, changer ses idees, changer ses loix, changer ses mceurs,. . . . chanqer les hommes, changer les choses, changer les mots,. . . . tout detruire; out, tout detruire; puisqte tout est i recreer. " --This gentleman was
chosen president in an assembly not sitting at Quinze-Vingt or the
Petites Maisons, and composed of persons giving themselves out to be
rational beings; but neither his ideas, language, or conduct differ in
the smallest degree from the discourses, opinions, and actions of those,
within and without the Assembly, who direct the operations of the
machine now at work in France.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 455
this as well at least as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than
equal to that task. Rage and frenzy will pull down
more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation,
and foresight can build up in a hundred years. The
errors and defects of old establishments are visible
and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them
out; and where absolute power is given, it requires
but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together. The same lazy, but restless disposition, which loves sloth and hates quiet, directs these politicians, when they come to work for supplying the
place of what they have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen is quite as
easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has
never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and
eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the
wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little or no opposition.
At once to preserve and to reform is quite another
thing. When the useful parts of an old establishinent are kept, and what is superadded is to be fitted
to what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and
combination, and the resources of an understanding
fruitful in expedients are to be exercised; they are
to be exercised in a continued conflict with the combined force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that
rejects all improvement, and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted with everything of which it is in
possession. But you may object,-"A process of this
kind is slow. It is not fit for an Assembly which
glories in performing in a few months the work of
? ? ? ? 456 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ages. Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might
take up many years. " Without question it might;
and it ought. It is one of the excellences of a method in which time is amongst the assistants, that its
operation is slow, and in some cases almost imperceptible. If circumspection and caution are a part of
wisdom, when we work only upon inanimate matter,
surely they become a part of duty too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick
and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable. But it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart and an undoubting confidence are the
sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his temperament to catch
his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but his
movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to
be only wrought by social means. There mind must
conspire with mind. Time is required to produce
that union of minds which alone can produce all the
good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more
than our force. If I might venture to appeal to what
is so much out of fashion in Paris, - I mean to experience, -- I should tell you, that in my course I have
known, and, according to my measure, have coiperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any
plan which has not been mended by the observations
of those who were much inferior in understanding to
the person who took the lead in the business. By a
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 457
slow, but well-sustained progress, the effect of each
step is watched; the good or ill success of the first
gives light to us in the second; and so, from light
to light, we are conducted with safety through the
whole series. We see that the parts of the system
do not clash. The evils latent in the most promising
contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another.
We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are
enabled to unite into a conet whole the various
anomalies and contending principles that are found
in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises,
not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior,
an excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are
so deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the
work itself requires the aid of more minds than one
age can furnish. It is from this view of things that
the best legislators have been often satisfied with the
establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government, - a power like that which some
of the philosophers have called a plastic Nature; and
having fixed the principle, they have left it afterwards
to its own operation.
To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with
a presiding principle and a prolific energy, is with
me the criterion of profound wisdom. What your
politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius
are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By
their violent haste, and their defiance of the process
of Nature, they are delivered over blindly to every
projector and adventurer, to every alchemist and em
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piric. They despair of turning to account anything
that is common. Diet is nothing in their system of
remedy. The worst of it is, that this their despair
of curing common distempers by regular methods
arises not only from defect of comprehension, but, I
fear, from some malignity of disposition. Your legislators seem to have taken their opinions of all professions, ranks, and offices from the declamations and buffooneries of satirists, -- who would themselves be
astonished, if they were held to the letter of their own
descriptions. By listening only to these, your leaders regard all things only on the side of their vices
and faults, and view those vices and faults under
every color of exaggeration. It is undoubtedly true,
though it may seem paradoxical, -- but, in general,
those who are habitually employed in finding and
displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation; because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they come to take no delight in the contemplation of
those things. By hating vices too much, they come
to love men too little. It is therefore not wonderful
that they should be indisposed and unable to serve
them. From hence arises the complexional disposition of some of your guides to pull everything in
pieces. At this malicious game they display the
whole of their quadrimanous activity. As to the
rest, the paradoxes of eloquent writers, brought forth
purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents, to
rouse attention, and excite surprise, are taken up by
these gentlemen, not in the spirit of the original authors, as means of cultivating their taste and improving their style: these paradoxes become with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 459
regulating the most important concerns of the state.
Cicero ludicrously describes Cato as endeavoring to
act in the commonwealth upon the school paradoxes
which exercised the wits of the junior students in the
Stoic philosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the manner of some persons
who lived about his time, -pede nudo Catonem. Mr.
flume told me that he had from Rousseau himself
the secret of his principles of composition. That
acute, though eccenltric observer, had perceived, that,
to strike and interest the public, the marvellous must
be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effects; that giants,
magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance, which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which
belonged to their age; that now nothing was left to
a writer but that species of the marvellous, which
might still be produced, and with as great an effect
as ever, though in another way, -that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. I believe, that, were
Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he
would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars, who in their paradoxes are servile imitators, and
even in their incredulity discover an implicit faith.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a
regular way, ought to give us ground to presume
ability. But the physician of the state, who, not satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to
regenerate constitutions, ought to show uncommon
powers. Some very unusual appearances of wisdom
ought to display themselves on the face of the designs
of those who appeal to no practice and who copy
? ? ? ? 460 REFLECTIONS ON THE
after no model. Has any such been manifested? I
shall take a view (it shall for the subject be a very
short one) of what the Assembly has done, with regard, first, to the constitution of the legislature; in
the neyt place, to that of the executive power; then
to that of the judicature; afterwards to the model of
the army; and conclude with the system of finance:
to see whether we can discover in any part of their
schemes the portentous ability which may justify
these bold undertakers in the superiority which they
assume over mankind.
It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding
part of this new republic that we should expect their
grand display. Here they were to prove their title to
their proud demands. For the plan itself at large,
and for the reasons on which it is grounded, I refer to
the journals of the Assembly of the 29th of September, 1789, and to the subsequent proceedings which have made any alterations in the plan. So far as in
a matter somewhat confused I can see light, the system remains substantially as it has been originally framed. My few remarks will be such as regard its
spirit, its tendency, and its fitness for framing a popular commonwealth, which they profess theirs to be, suited to the ends for which any commonwealth, and
particularly such a commonwealth, is made. At the
same time I mean to consider its consistency with
itself and its own principles.
Old establishments are tried by their effects. If
the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful,
we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good
from whence good is derived. In old establishments
various correctives have been found for their aberrations from theory. Indeed, they are the results of va
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 461
rious necessities and expediences. They are not often constructed after any theory: theories are rather
drawn from them. In them we often see the end
best obtained, where the means seem not perfectly
reconcilable to what we may fancy was the original
scheme. The means taught by experience may be
better suited to political ends than those contrived
in the original project. They again react upon the
primitive constitution, and sometimes improve the design itself, from which they seem to have departed.
I think all this might be curiously exemplified in the
British Constitution. At worst, the errors and deviations of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, and the ship proceeds in her course. This
is the case of old establishments; but in a new and
merely theoretic system, it is expected that every
contrivance shall appear, on the face of it, to answer
its ends, especially where the projectors are no way
embarrassed with an endeavor to accommodate the
new building to an old one, either in the walls or
on the foundations.
The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbish whatever they found, and, like their ornamental
gardeners, forming everything into an exact level,
propose to rest the whole local and general legislature on three bases of three different kinds, - one geometrical, one arithmetical, and the third financial; the first of which they call the basis of territory; the
second, the basis of population; and the third, the
basis of contribution. For the accomplishment of the
first of these purposes, they divide the area of their
country into eighty-three pieces, regularly square, of
eighteen leagues by eighteen. These large divisions
are called Departments. These they portion, proceed
? ? ? ? 462 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ing by square measurement, into seventeen hundred
and twenty districts, called Communes. These again
they subdivide, still proceeding by square measurement, into smaller districts, called Cantons, making in all 6,400.
At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not much to admire or to blame. It calls for
no great legislative talents. Nothing more than -an
accurate land-surveyor, with his chain, sight, and
theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In
the old divisions of the country, various accidents
at times, and the ebb and flow of various properties
and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These bounds
were not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly.
They were subject to some inconveniences; but they
were inconveniences for which use had found remedies. and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. In this new pavement of square within
square, and this organization and semi-organization,
made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and
not upon any politic principle, it is impossible that
innumerable local inconveniences, to which men are
not habituated, must not arise. But these I pass
over, because it requires an accurate knowledge of
the country, which I do not possess, to specify them.
When these state surveyors came to take a view of
their work of measurement, they soon found that in
politics the most fallacious of all things was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse to another basis (or rather buttress) to support the
building, which tottered on that false foundation. It
was evident that the goodness of the soil, the number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their contribution, made such infinite variations be
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
In many others there is a hollow murmuring under
ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens
a general earthquake in the political world. Already
confederacies and correspondences of the most extraordinary nature are forming in several countries. *
In such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves
upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must
be) the circumstance which will serve m'ost to blunt
the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good
may be in them, is, that they should find us with our
minds tenacious of justice and tender of property.
But it will be argued, that this confiscation in
France ought not to alarm other nations. They say
it is not made from wanton rapacity; that it is a
great measure of national policy, adopted to remove
an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. - It is
with the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate
policy from justice. Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent depart* See two books entitled, "Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens," --" System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens. " Minchen, 1787.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 439
ure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the
suspicion of being no policy at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain
mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in
that mode as in a lawful occupation, -- when they
have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits
to it, - when the law had long made their adherence
to its rules a ground of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgrace and even of penalty, -I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their
minds and their feelings, forcibly to degrade them
from their state and condition, and to stigmatize with
shame and infamy that character and those customs
which before had been made the measure of their
happiness and honor. If to this be added an expulsion from their habitations and a confiscation of all
their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover
how this despotic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men can be
discriminated from the rankest tyranny.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be
clear, the policy of the measure, that is, the public
benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at least
as evident, and at least as important. To a man who
acts under the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view in his projects but the public good, a
great difference will immediately strike him, between
what policy would dictate on the original introduction of such institutions, and on a question of their
total abolition, where they have cast their roots wide
and deep, and where, by long habit, things more valuable than themselves are so adapted to them, and in
a manner interwoven with them, that the one cannot
? ? ? ? 440 REFLECTIONS ON THE
be destroyed without notably impairing the other.
He might be embarrassed, if the case were really such
as sophisters represent it in their paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions of state,
there is a middle. There is something else than
the mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna.
This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and
ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have
brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon
which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man
full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his
society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a
good patriot, and a true politician, always considers
how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and
an ability to improve, taken together, would be my
standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar
in the conception, perilous in the execution.
There are moments in the fortune of states, when
particular men are called to make improvements by
great mental exertion. In those moments, even when
they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and
country, and to be invested with full authority, they
have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do
great things, looks for a power, what our workmen
call a purchase; and if he finds that power, in politics
as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it.
In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was
found a great power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 441
to public purposes, without any other than public ties
and public principles, - men without the possibility
of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune, - men denied to self-interests, whose
avarice is for some community, - men to whom personal poverty is honor, and implicit obedience stands
in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to
the possibility of making such things when he wants
them. The winds blow as they list. These institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the
instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of Nature or of chance; her
pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularly suited to a man who has long views, -- who meditates designs that require time in fashioning,
and which propose duration when they are accomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even
to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who,
having obtained the command and direction of such
a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and
the habits of such corporations as those which you
have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his couny
try. On the view of this subject, a thousand uses
suggest themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy
any power growing wild from the rank productive
force of the human mind is almost tantamount, in
the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently
active properties of bodies in the material. It would
be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in
nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of
magnetism. These energies always existed in Na
? ? ? ? 442 REFLECTIONS ON THE
ture, and they were always discernible. They seemed,
some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no
better than a sport to children, - until contemplative
ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild
nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at
once the most powerful and the most tractable agents,
in subservience to the great views and designs of men.
Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental and whose
bodily labor you might direct, and so many hundred
thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy
nor superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to
wield? Had you no way of using the men, but by
converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way
of turning the revenue to account, but through the
improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you
were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding
is in its natural course. Your politicians do not
understand their trade; and therefore they sell their
tools.
But the institutions savor of superstition in their
very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent
and standing influence. - This I do not mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for the public advantage. You
derive benefits from many dispositions and many passions of the human mind which are of as doubtful
a color, in the moral eye, as superstition itself. It
was your business to correct and mitigate everything
which was noxious in this passion, as in all the passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In its possible excess I think it becomes
a very great evil. It is, however, a moral subject,
and of course admits of all degrees and all modifica
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 443
tions. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds;
and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it,
in some triflin',_ te. nhli _. shaAe or others
else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found
necessary to the strigest. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will
of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in
His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the
great end, - it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who, as
such, are not admirers, (not admirers at least of the
munera terrce,) are not violently attached to these
things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom
is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are
the rival follies which mutually wage so unrelenting
a war, and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on the one side or the other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the
contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things in their nature not made to
produce such heats, a prudent man were obliged to
make a choice of what errors and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would
think the superstition which builds to be more tolerable than that which demolishes, -- that which
adorns a country, than that which deforms it, - that
which endows, than that which plunders, - that
which disposes to mistaken beneficence, than that
which stimulates to real injustice,- that which leads
a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that
which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of
their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the
state of the question between the' ancient founders
? ? ? ? 444 REFLECTIONS ON THE
of monkish superstition and the superstition of the
pretended philosophers of the hour.
For the present I postpone all consideration of the
supposed public profit of the sale, which, however, I
conceive to be perfectly delusive. I shall here only
consider it as a transfer of property. On the policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few
thoughts.
In every prosperous community something more is
produced than goes to the immediate support of the
producer. This surplus forms the income of the
landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor
who does not labor. But this idleness is itself the
spring of labor, this repose the spur to industry.
The only concern for the state is, that the capital
taken in rent from the land should be returned
again to the industry from whence it came, and
that its expenditure should be with the least possible
detriment to the morals of those who expend it and
to those of the people to whom it is returned.
In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal employment, a soberJlegislator would cartltJ compare the pos se -oer. whom he was. . xrec Aed
to expel with the stranger who was proposed to fill
his place. Before the inconveniences are incurred
which must attend all violent revolutions in property through extensive confiscation, we ought to have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the
confiscated property will be in a considerable degree
more laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an unreasonable proportion of the gains of the laborer, or to consume on themselves a
larger share than is fit for the measure of an individual, --or that they should be qualified to dispense the
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 445
surplus in a more steady and equal mode, so as to
answer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than
the old possessors, call those possessors bishops, or
canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or what
you please. The monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise employed than by singing in
the choir. They are as usefully employed as those
who neither sing nor say, --as usefully even as those
who sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the
innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly,
and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to which by the social economy so many
wretches are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of
things, and to impede in any degree the great wheel
of circulation which is turned by the strangely directed labor of these unhappy people, I should be infinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miserable industry than violently to disturb the tranquil repose of monastic quietude. Humanity, and
perhaps policy, might better justify me in the one
than in the other. It is a subject on which I have
often reflected, and never reflected without feeling
from it. I am sure that no consideration, except
the necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury
and the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious way will distribute the surplus product of the
soil, can justify the toleration of such trades and
employments in a well-regulated state. But for this
purpose of distribution, it seems to me that the idle
expenses of monks are quite as well directed as the
idle expenses of us lay loiterers.
When the advantages of the possession and of the
? ? ? ? 446 REFLECTIONS ON THE
project are on a par, there is no motive for a change.
But in the present case, perhaps, they are not upon a
par, and the difference is in favor of the possession.
It does not appear to me that the expenses of those
whom you are going to expel do in fact take a
course so directly and so generally leading to vitiate
and degrade and render miserable those through
whom they pass as the expenses of those favorites
whom you are intruding into their houses. Why
should the expenditure of a great landed property,
which is a dispersion of the surplus product of the
soil, appear intolerable to you or to me, when it takes
its course through the accumulation of vast libraries,
which are the history of the force and weakness of
the human mind,- through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which attest and
explain laws and customs, -through paintings and
statues, that, by imitating Nature, seem to extend the
limits of creation, -through grand monuments of the
dead, which continue the regards and connections of
life beyond the grave, - through collections of the
specimens of Nature, which become a representative
assembly of all the classes and families of the world,
that by disposi. tion facilitate, and by exciting curiosity open, the avenues to science? If by great permanent establishments all these objects of expense are better secured from the inconstant sport of personal
caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse
than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously in the
construction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion as in the painted booths and sordid sties of
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 447
vice and luxury? as honorably and as profitably in
repairing those sacred works which grow hoary with
innumerable years as on the momentary receptacles
of transient voluptuousness, --in opera-houses, and
brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and
obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus
product of the olive and the vine worse employed in
the frugal sustenance of persons whom the fictions
of a pious imagination raise to dignity by construing
in the service of God than in pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces,
and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit
soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies
in which opulence sports away the burden of its superfluity?
We tolerate even these,- not from love of them,
but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because
property and liberty, to a degree, require that toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely, in
every point of view, the more laudable use of estates?
Why, through the violation of all property, through
an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly
carry them from the better to the worse?
This comparison between the new individuals and
the old corps is made upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter. But, in a question
of reformation, I always consider corporate bodies,
whether sole or consisting of many, to be much more
susceptible of a public direction, by the power of the
state, in the use of their property, and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members,
? ? ? ? 448 REFLECTIONS ON THE
than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to
be; and this seems to me a very material consideration for those who undertake anything which merits
the name of a politic enterprise. - So far as to the
estates of monasteries.
With regard to the estates possessed by bishops
and canons and commendatory abbots, I cannot find
out for what reason some landed estates may not be
held otherwise than by inheritance. Can any philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive
or the comparative evil of having a certain, and that,
too, a large, portion of landed property passing in succession through persons whose title to it is, always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety,
morals, and learning; a property which by its destination, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives
to the noblest families renovation and support, to the
lowest the means of dignity and elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some duty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon
that duty,) and the character of whose proprietors
demands at least an exterior decorum and gravity of
manners, -- who are to exercise a generous, but temperate hospitality, --part of whose income they are to consider as a trust for charity,-and who, even when
they fail in their trust, when they slide from their
character, and degenerate into a mere common secular
nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than
those who may succeed them in their forfeited possessions? Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who have one?
by those whose character and destination point to
virtues than by those who have no rule and direction
in the expenditure of their estates but their own will
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 449
aind appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether
in the character or with the evils supposed inherent
in mortmain. They pass from hand to hand with a
more rapid circulation than any other. No excess is
good, and therefore too great a proportion of landed
property may be held officially for life; but it does
not seem to me of material injury to any common
wealth that there should exist some estates that have
a chance of being acquired by other means than the
previous acquisition of money.
This letter is grown to a great length, though it
is, indeed, short with regard to the infinite extent of
the subject. Various avocations have from time to;,
time called my mind from the subject. I was not
sorry to give myself leisure to observe whether in
the proceedings of the National Assembly I might
not find reasons to change or to qualify some of my
first sentiments. Everything has confirmed me more
strongly in my'first opinions. It was my original
purpose to take a view of the principles of the National Assembly with regard to the great and fundamental establishments, and to compare the whole of what you have substituted in the place of what you
have destroyed with the several members of our British Constitution. But this plan is of greater extent,
than at first I computed, and I find that you have
little desire to take the advantage of any examples.
At present I must content myself with some remarks
upon your establishments, reserving for another time
what I proposed to say concerning the spirit of our
British monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as practically they exist.
I have taken a view of what has been done by the
VOL. III. 29
? ? ? ? 450 REFLECTIONS ON THE
governing power ill France. I have certainly spoke
of it with freedom. Those whose principle it is to
despise the ancient, permanent sense of mankind,
and to set up a scheme of society on new principles,
must naturally expect that such of us who think
better of the judgment of the human race than of
theirs should consider both them and their devices
as men and schemes upon their trial. They must
take it for granted. that we attend much to their reason, but not at all to their authority. They have
not one of the great influencing prejudices of mankind inll their favor. They avow their hostility to
opinion. Of course they must expect no support
from that influence, which, with every other authority, they have deposed from the seat of its jurisdiction. I can never consider this Assembly as anything
else than a voluntary association of men who have
availe' themselves of circumstances to seize upon the
1poer of tile state. They have not'the sanctioe and
authority of the character under which they first
met. They have assumed another of a very different nature, and have completely altered and inverted
all the relations in which they originally stood. They
do not hold the authority they exercise under any
constitutional law of the state. They have departed
from the instructions of the people by whom they
were sent; which instructions, as the Assembly'did
not act in virtue of any ancient usage qr settled law,
were the sole source of their authority. The most
considerable of their acts have not been done by great
majorities; and in this sort of near divisions, which
carry only the constructive authority of the whole,
strangers will consider reasons as well as resolutions.
? ? ? ? REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 451
If they had set up this new, experimental government as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time of prescription, which through long usage mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All those who have affections which lead
them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate,
which has been produced from those principles of
cogent expediency to which all just governments owe
their birth, and on which they justify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in giving
any sort of countenance to the operations of a power
which has derived its birth from no law and no necessity, but which, on the contrary, has had its origin
in those vices and sinister practices by which the social union is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed.
This Assembly has hardly a year's prescription. We
have their own word for it that they have made a
revolution. To make a revolution is a measure
which, primd fronte, requires ail apology. To make
a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of our
country; and no common reasons are called for to
justify so violent a proceeding. The sense of man
kind authorizes us to examine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to criticize on the use that
is made of it, with less awe and reverence than that
which is usually conceded to a settled and recognized
authority.
In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly proceeds upon principles the most opposite from
those which appear to direct them in the use of it.
An observation on this difference will let us into the
true spirit of their conduct. Everything which they
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have done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and
keep their power, is by the most common arts. They
proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have
done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing
at all that is new'. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader.
They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good the spirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the
whole to the mercy of untried speculations; they
abandon the dearest interests of the public to,those
loose theories to which none of them would choose
to trust the slightest of his private concerns. They
make this difference, because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in
earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The
public interests, because about them they have no
real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance: I
say to chance2 because their schemes have nothing
in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.
We must always see with a pity not unmixed with
respect the errors of those who are timid and doubtftil of themselves with regard to points wherein the
happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these
gentlemen there is nothing of the tender parental
solicitude which fears to cut up the infant for the
sake of an experiment. In the vastness of their
promises and the confidence of their predictions they
far outdo all the boasting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretensions in a manner provokes
and challenges us to an inquiry into their foundation.
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I am convinced that there are men of considerable
parts among the popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of them display eloquence in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful and cultivated talents. But eloquence
may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom.
When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish.
What they have done towards the support of their
system bespeaks no ordinary men. In the system
itself, taken as the scheme of a republic constructed for procuring the prosperity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable to find out anything which displays, in a single instance, the
work of a comprehensive and disposing mind, or even
the provisions of a vulgar prudence. Their purpose
everywhere seems to have been to evade and slip
aside from difflculty. This it has been the glory of
the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to
overcome, - and when they had overcome the first
difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficulties: thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science, and even to push
forward, beyond the reach of their original thoughts,
the landmarks of the human understanding itself.
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the
supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud
facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us
strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our
antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with
difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with
our object, and compels us to consider it in all its re
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lations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is
the want of nerves of understanding for such a task,
it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts
and little fallacious facilities, that has in so many
parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary
monarchy of France. They have created the arbitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the pl! Qe)itude of force.
They get nothing by it. Commencing their labors
on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful men. The difficulties, which they
rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again in
their course; they multiply and thicken on them;
they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused
detail, in an industry without limit and without direction; and in conclusion, the whole of their work
becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which
has obliged the arbitrary Assemnbly of France to commence their schemes of reform with abolition and
total destrnction. * But is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do
* A leading member of the Assembly, M. Rabaut de St. ttienne,
has expressed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as possible; nothing can be more simple: --" Tous les etablissemens en France
couronnent le malheuLr du peuple: pour le rendre heureux, il faut le renouveler, changer ses idees, changer ses loix, changer ses mceurs,. . . . chanqer les hommes, changer les choses, changer les mots,. . . . tout detruire; out, tout detruire; puisqte tout est i recreer. " --This gentleman was
chosen president in an assembly not sitting at Quinze-Vingt or the
Petites Maisons, and composed of persons giving themselves out to be
rational beings; but neither his ideas, language, or conduct differ in
the smallest degree from the discourses, opinions, and actions of those,
within and without the Assembly, who direct the operations of the
machine now at work in France.
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this as well at least as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than
equal to that task. Rage and frenzy will pull down
more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation,
and foresight can build up in a hundred years. The
errors and defects of old establishments are visible
and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them
out; and where absolute power is given, it requires
but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together. The same lazy, but restless disposition, which loves sloth and hates quiet, directs these politicians, when they come to work for supplying the
place of what they have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen is quite as
easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has
never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and
eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the
wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little or no opposition.
At once to preserve and to reform is quite another
thing. When the useful parts of an old establishinent are kept, and what is superadded is to be fitted
to what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and
combination, and the resources of an understanding
fruitful in expedients are to be exercised; they are
to be exercised in a continued conflict with the combined force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that
rejects all improvement, and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted with everything of which it is in
possession. But you may object,-"A process of this
kind is slow. It is not fit for an Assembly which
glories in performing in a few months the work of
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ages. Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might
take up many years. " Without question it might;
and it ought. It is one of the excellences of a method in which time is amongst the assistants, that its
operation is slow, and in some cases almost imperceptible. If circumspection and caution are a part of
wisdom, when we work only upon inanimate matter,
surely they become a part of duty too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick
and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable. But it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart and an undoubting confidence are the
sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his temperament to catch
his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but his
movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to
be only wrought by social means. There mind must
conspire with mind. Time is required to produce
that union of minds which alone can produce all the
good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more
than our force. If I might venture to appeal to what
is so much out of fashion in Paris, - I mean to experience, -- I should tell you, that in my course I have
known, and, according to my measure, have coiperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any
plan which has not been mended by the observations
of those who were much inferior in understanding to
the person who took the lead in the business. By a
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slow, but well-sustained progress, the effect of each
step is watched; the good or ill success of the first
gives light to us in the second; and so, from light
to light, we are conducted with safety through the
whole series. We see that the parts of the system
do not clash. The evils latent in the most promising
contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another.
We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are
enabled to unite into a conet whole the various
anomalies and contending principles that are found
in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises,
not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior,
an excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are
so deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the
work itself requires the aid of more minds than one
age can furnish. It is from this view of things that
the best legislators have been often satisfied with the
establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government, - a power like that which some
of the philosophers have called a plastic Nature; and
having fixed the principle, they have left it afterwards
to its own operation.
To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with
a presiding principle and a prolific energy, is with
me the criterion of profound wisdom. What your
politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius
are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By
their violent haste, and their defiance of the process
of Nature, they are delivered over blindly to every
projector and adventurer, to every alchemist and em
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piric. They despair of turning to account anything
that is common. Diet is nothing in their system of
remedy. The worst of it is, that this their despair
of curing common distempers by regular methods
arises not only from defect of comprehension, but, I
fear, from some malignity of disposition. Your legislators seem to have taken their opinions of all professions, ranks, and offices from the declamations and buffooneries of satirists, -- who would themselves be
astonished, if they were held to the letter of their own
descriptions. By listening only to these, your leaders regard all things only on the side of their vices
and faults, and view those vices and faults under
every color of exaggeration. It is undoubtedly true,
though it may seem paradoxical, -- but, in general,
those who are habitually employed in finding and
displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation; because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they come to take no delight in the contemplation of
those things. By hating vices too much, they come
to love men too little. It is therefore not wonderful
that they should be indisposed and unable to serve
them. From hence arises the complexional disposition of some of your guides to pull everything in
pieces. At this malicious game they display the
whole of their quadrimanous activity. As to the
rest, the paradoxes of eloquent writers, brought forth
purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents, to
rouse attention, and excite surprise, are taken up by
these gentlemen, not in the spirit of the original authors, as means of cultivating their taste and improving their style: these paradoxes become with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in
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regulating the most important concerns of the state.
Cicero ludicrously describes Cato as endeavoring to
act in the commonwealth upon the school paradoxes
which exercised the wits of the junior students in the
Stoic philosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the manner of some persons
who lived about his time, -pede nudo Catonem. Mr.
flume told me that he had from Rousseau himself
the secret of his principles of composition. That
acute, though eccenltric observer, had perceived, that,
to strike and interest the public, the marvellous must
be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effects; that giants,
magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance, which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which
belonged to their age; that now nothing was left to
a writer but that species of the marvellous, which
might still be produced, and with as great an effect
as ever, though in another way, -that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. I believe, that, were
Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he
would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars, who in their paradoxes are servile imitators, and
even in their incredulity discover an implicit faith.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a
regular way, ought to give us ground to presume
ability. But the physician of the state, who, not satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to
regenerate constitutions, ought to show uncommon
powers. Some very unusual appearances of wisdom
ought to display themselves on the face of the designs
of those who appeal to no practice and who copy
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after no model. Has any such been manifested? I
shall take a view (it shall for the subject be a very
short one) of what the Assembly has done, with regard, first, to the constitution of the legislature; in
the neyt place, to that of the executive power; then
to that of the judicature; afterwards to the model of
the army; and conclude with the system of finance:
to see whether we can discover in any part of their
schemes the portentous ability which may justify
these bold undertakers in the superiority which they
assume over mankind.
It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding
part of this new republic that we should expect their
grand display. Here they were to prove their title to
their proud demands. For the plan itself at large,
and for the reasons on which it is grounded, I refer to
the journals of the Assembly of the 29th of September, 1789, and to the subsequent proceedings which have made any alterations in the plan. So far as in
a matter somewhat confused I can see light, the system remains substantially as it has been originally framed. My few remarks will be such as regard its
spirit, its tendency, and its fitness for framing a popular commonwealth, which they profess theirs to be, suited to the ends for which any commonwealth, and
particularly such a commonwealth, is made. At the
same time I mean to consider its consistency with
itself and its own principles.
Old establishments are tried by their effects. If
the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful,
we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good
from whence good is derived. In old establishments
various correctives have been found for their aberrations from theory. Indeed, they are the results of va
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rious necessities and expediences. They are not often constructed after any theory: theories are rather
drawn from them. In them we often see the end
best obtained, where the means seem not perfectly
reconcilable to what we may fancy was the original
scheme. The means taught by experience may be
better suited to political ends than those contrived
in the original project. They again react upon the
primitive constitution, and sometimes improve the design itself, from which they seem to have departed.
I think all this might be curiously exemplified in the
British Constitution. At worst, the errors and deviations of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, and the ship proceeds in her course. This
is the case of old establishments; but in a new and
merely theoretic system, it is expected that every
contrivance shall appear, on the face of it, to answer
its ends, especially where the projectors are no way
embarrassed with an endeavor to accommodate the
new building to an old one, either in the walls or
on the foundations.
The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbish whatever they found, and, like their ornamental
gardeners, forming everything into an exact level,
propose to rest the whole local and general legislature on three bases of three different kinds, - one geometrical, one arithmetical, and the third financial; the first of which they call the basis of territory; the
second, the basis of population; and the third, the
basis of contribution. For the accomplishment of the
first of these purposes, they divide the area of their
country into eighty-three pieces, regularly square, of
eighteen leagues by eighteen. These large divisions
are called Departments. These they portion, proceed
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ing by square measurement, into seventeen hundred
and twenty districts, called Communes. These again
they subdivide, still proceeding by square measurement, into smaller districts, called Cantons, making in all 6,400.
At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not much to admire or to blame. It calls for
no great legislative talents. Nothing more than -an
accurate land-surveyor, with his chain, sight, and
theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In
the old divisions of the country, various accidents
at times, and the ebb and flow of various properties
and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These bounds
were not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly.
They were subject to some inconveniences; but they
were inconveniences for which use had found remedies. and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. In this new pavement of square within
square, and this organization and semi-organization,
made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and
not upon any politic principle, it is impossible that
innumerable local inconveniences, to which men are
not habituated, must not arise. But these I pass
over, because it requires an accurate knowledge of
the country, which I do not possess, to specify them.
When these state surveyors came to take a view of
their work of measurement, they soon found that in
politics the most fallacious of all things was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse to another basis (or rather buttress) to support the
building, which tottered on that false foundation. It
was evident that the goodness of the soil, the number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their contribution, made such infinite variations be
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