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1792
THE RIGHTS OF MAN
by Thomas Paine
1792
PART THE FIRST
BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK
ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
George Washington
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
SIR,
I present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of
freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to
establish. That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your
benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing
the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of
SIR,
Your much obliged, and
Obedient humble Servant,
THOMAS PAINE
The Author's Preface to the English Edition
From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was
natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our
acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would have been more
agreeable to me to have had cause to continue in that opinion than
to change it.
At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the
English Parliament against the French Revolution and the National
Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time
before to inform him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon
after this I saw his advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to
publish: As the attack was to be made in a language but little
studied, and less understood in France, and as everything suffers by
translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution in
that country that whenever Mr. Burke's Pamphlet came forth, I would
answer it. This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I
saw the flagrant misrepresentations which Mr. Burke's Pamphlet
contains; and that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French
Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an imposition on
the rest of the world.
I am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr.
Burke, as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had
formed other expectations.
I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never
more have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be
found out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise
in the neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if
Courts were disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were
enlightened enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of
America had been bred up in the same prejudices against France,
which at that time characterised the people of England; but experience
and an acquaintance with the French Nation have most effectually shown
to the Americans the falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not
believe that a more cordial and confidential intercourse exists
between any two countries than between America and France.
When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of
Thoulouse was then Minister, and at that time highly esteemed. I
became much acquainted with the private Secretary of that Minister,
a man of an enlarged benevolent heart; and found that his sentiments
and my own perfectly agreed with respect to the madness of war, and
the wretched impolicy of two nations, like England and France,
continually worrying each other, to no other end than that of a mutual
increase of burdens and taxes. That I might be assured I had not
misunderstood him, nor he me, I put the substance of our opinions into
writing and sent it to him; subjoining a request, that if I should see
among the people of England, any disposition to cultivate a better
understanding between the two nations than had hitherto prevailed, how
far I might be authorised to say that the same disposition prevailed
on the part of France? He answered me by letter in the most unreserved
manner, and that not for himself only, but for the Minister, with
whose knowledge the letter was declared to be written.
I put this letter into the, hands of Mr. Burke almost three years
ago, and left it with him, where it still remains; hoping, and at
the same time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of
him, that he would find some opportunity of making good use of it, for
the purpose of removing those errors and prejudices which two
neighbouring nations, from the want of knowing each other, had
entertained, to the injury of both.
When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr.
Burke an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it;
instead of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing
away, than he immediately began sowing the seeds of a new
inveteracy, as if he were afraid that England and France would cease
to be enemies. That there are men in all countries who get their
living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as
shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the
government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and
cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more
unpardonable.
With respect to a paragraph in this work alluding to Mr. Burke's
having a pension, the report has been some time in circulation, at
least two months; and as a person is often the last to hear what
concerns him the most to know, I have mentioned it, that Mr. Burke may
have an opportunity of contradicting the rumour, if he thinks proper.
THOMAS PAINE
FRENCH EDITION
The Author's Preface to the French Edition
The astonishment which the French Revolution has caused throughout
Europe should be considered from two different points of view: first
as it affects foreign peoples, secondly as it affects their
governments.
The cause of the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of
the whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by
no means favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose
sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with
their governments; especially not the English people with its
government.
The government of England is no friend of the revolution of
France. Of this we have sufficient proofs in the thanks given by
that weak and witless person, the Elector of Hanover, sometimes called
the King of England, to Mr. Burke for the insults heaped on it in
his book, and in the malevolent comments of the English Minister,
Pitt, in his speeches in Parliament.
In spite of the professions of sincerest friendship found in the
official correspondence of the English government with that of France,
its conduct gives the lie to all its declarations, and shows us
clearly that it is not a court to be trusted, but an insane court,
plunging in all the quarrels and intrigues of Europe, in quest of a
war to satisfy its folly and countenance its extravagance.
The English nation, on the contrary, is very favorably disposed
towards the French Revolution, and to the progress of liberty in the
whole world; and this feeling will become more general in England as
the intrigues and artifices of its government are better known, and
the principles of the revolution better understood. The French
should know that most English newspapers are directly in the pay of
government, or, if indirectly connected with it, always under its
orders; and that those papers constantly distort and attack the
revolution in France in order to deceive the nation. But, as it is
impossible long to prevent the prevalence of truth, the daily
falsehoods of those papers no longer have the desired effect.
To be convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England,
the world needs only to be told that the government regards and
prosecutes as a libel that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage
on morality is called law, and judges are found wicked enough to
inflict penalties on truth.
The English government presents, just now, a curious phenomenon.
Seeing that the French and English nations are getting rid of the
prejudices and false notions formerly entertained against each
other, and which have cost them so much money, that government seems
to be placarding its need of a foe; for unless it finds one somewhere,
no pretext exists for the enormous revenue and taxation now deemed
necessary.
Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and
appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will
be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor
armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war
enabled me to double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the
Nootka humbug gave me a pretext for raising three millions sterling
more; but unless I can make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars
will end. I was the first to incite Turk against Russian, and now I
hope to reap a fresh crop of taxes."
If the miseries of war, and the flood of evils it spreads over a
country, did not check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter
into grief, the frantic conduct of the government of England would
only excite ridicule. But it is impossible to banish from one's mind
the images of suffering which the contemplation of such vicious policy
presents. To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages,
is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that
reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist any doubt that
the peoples of France, England, and America, enlightened and
enlightening each other, shall henceforth be able, not merely to
give the world an example of good government, but by their united
influence enforce its practice.
(Translated from the French)
Rights of Man
Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and
irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution
is an extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the
National Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of
England, or the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence
an unprovoked attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a
conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified
on that of policy.
There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English
language, with which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French Nation and
the National Assembly. Everything which rancour, prejudice,
ignorance or knowledge could suggest, is poured forth in the copious
fury of near four hundred pages. In the strain and on the plan Mr.
Burke was writing, he might have written on to as many thousands. When
the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the
man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.
Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the
opinions he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the
ingenuity of his hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it
furnishes him with new pretences to go on. There was a time when it
was impossible to make Mr. Burke believe there would be any Revolution
in France. His opinion then was, that the French had neither spirit to
undertake it nor fortitude to support it; and now that there is one,
he seeks an escape by condemning it.
Not sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great
part of his work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the
best-hearted men that lives) and the two societies in England known by
the name of the Revolution Society and the Society for
Constitutional Information.
Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789,
being the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution,
which took place 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says:
"The political Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the
principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired
three fundamental rights:
1. To choose our own governors.
2. To cashier them for misconduct.
3. To frame a government for ourselves."
Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in
this or in that person, or in this or in that description of
persons, but that it exists in the whole; that it is a right
resident in the nation. Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a
right exists in the nation, either in whole or in part, or that it
exists anywhere; and, what is still more strange and marvellous, he
says: "that the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and
that they will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives
and fortunes." That men should take up arms and spend their lives
and fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they
have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery, and suited
to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.
The method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England
have no such rights, and that such rights do not now exist in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or anywhere at all, is of the same
marvellous and monstrous kind with what he has already said; for his
arguments are that the persons, or the generation of persons, in
whom they did exist, are dead, and with them the right is dead also.
To prove this, he quotes a declaration made by Parliament about a
hundred years ago, to William and Mary, in these words: "The Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of the people
aforesaid" (meaning the people of England then living) "most humbly
and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, for
EVER." He quotes a clause of another Act of Parliament made in the
same reign, the terms of which he says, "bind us" (meaning the
people of their day), "our heirs and our posterity, to them, their
heirs and posterity, to the end of time."
Mr. Burke conceives his point sufficiently established by
producing those clauses, which he enforces by saying that they exclude
the right of the nation for ever. And not yet content with making such
declarations, repeated over and over again, he farther says, "that
if the people of England possessed such a right before the Revolution"
(which he acknowledges to have been the case, not only in England, but
throughout Europe, at an early period), "yet that the English Nation
did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce and
abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever."
As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid
principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French
Revolution and the National Assembly, and charges that august,
illuminated and illuminating body of men with the epithet of usurpers,
I shall, sans ceremonie, place another system of principles in
opposition to his.
The English Parliament of 1688 did a certain thing, which, for
themselves and their constituents, they had a right to do, and which
it appeared right should be done. But, in addition to this right,
which they possessed by delegation, they set up another right by
assumption, that of binding and controlling posterity to the end of
time. The case, therefore, divides itself into two parts; the right
which they possessed by delegation, and the right which they set up by
assumption. The first is admitted; but with respect to the second, I
reply-
There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a
Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in
any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and
controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for
ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and
therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers
of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power
to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all
cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and
presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and
insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any
generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The
Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no
more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind
or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the
people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those
who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every
generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its
occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to
be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants
cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns
of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall
be its governors, or how its government shall be organised, or how
administered.
I am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor
for nor against any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole
nation chooses to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No.
Where, then, does the right exist? I am contending for the rights of
the living, and against their being willed away and controlled and
contracted for by the manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and
Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the
rights and freedom of the living. There was a time when kings disposed
of their crowns by will upon their death-beds, and consigned the
people, like beasts of the field, to whatever successor they
appointed. This is now so exploded as scarcely to be remembered, and
so monstrous as hardly to be believed. But the Parliamentary clauses
upon which Mr. Burke builds his political church are of the same
nature.
The laws of every country must be analogous to some common
principle. In England no parent or master, nor all the authority of
Parliament, omnipotent as it has called itself, can bind or control
the personal freedom even of an individual beyond the age of
twenty-one years. On what ground of right, then, could the
Parliament of 1688, or any other Parliament, bind all posterity for
ever?
Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived
at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal
imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist
between them- what rule or principle can be laid down that of two
nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who
never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to
the end of time?
In England it is said that money cannot be taken out of the
pockets of the people without their consent. But who authorised, or
who could authorise, the Parliament of 1688 to control and take away
the freedom of posterity (who were not in existence to give or to
withhold their consent) and limit and confine their right of acting in
certain cases for ever?
A greater absurdity cannot present itself to the understanding of
man than what Mr. Burke offers to his readers. He tells them, and he
tells the world to come, that a certain body of men who existed a
hundred years ago made a law, and that there does not exist in the
nation, nor ever will, nor ever can, a power to alter it. Under how
many subtilties or absurdities has the divine right to govern been
imposed on the credulity of mankind? Mr. Burke has discovered a new
one, and he has shortened his journey to Rome by appealing to the
power of this infallible Parliament of former days, and he produces
what it has done as of divine authority, for that power must certainly
be more than human which no human power to the end of time can alter.
But Mr. Burke has done some service- not to his cause, but to his
country- by bringing those clauses into public view. They serve to
demonstrate how necessary it is at all times to watch against the
attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
It is somewhat extraordinary that the offence for which James II.
was expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be
re-acted, under another shape and form, by the Parliament that
expelled him. It shows that the Rights of Man were but imperfectly
understood at the Revolution, for certain it is that the right which
that Parliament set up by assumption (for by the delegation it had
not, and could not have it, because none could give it) over the
persons and freedom of posterity for ever was of the same tyrannical
unfounded kind which James attempted to set up over the Parliament and
the nation, and for which he was expelled. The only difference is (for
in principle they differ not) that the one was an usurper over living,
and the other over the unborn; and as the one has no better
authority to stand upon than the other, both of them must be equally
null and void, and of no effect.
From what, or from whence, does Mr. Burke prove the right of any
human power to bind posterity for ever? He has produced his clauses,
but he must produce also his proofs that such a right existed, and
show how it existed. If it ever existed it must now exist, for
whatever appertains to the nature of man cannot be annihilated by man.
It is the nature of man to die, and he will continue to die as long as
he continues to be born. But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of
political Adam, in whom all posterity are bound for ever. He must,
therefore, prove that his Adam possessed such a power, or such a
right.
The weaker any cord is, the less will it bear to be stretched, and
the worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to
break it. Had anyone proposed the overthrow of Mr. Burke's
positions, he would have proceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He would
have magnified the authorities, on purpose to have called the right of
them into question; and the instant the question of right was started,
the authorities must have been given up.
It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive that
although laws made in one generation often continue in force through
succeeding generations, yet they continue to derive their force from
the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force,
not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and
the non-repealing passes for consent.
But Mr. Burke's clauses have not even this qualification in their
favour. They become null, by attempting to become immortal. The nature
of them precludes consent. They destroy the right which they might
have, by grounding it on a right which they cannot have. Immortal
power is not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of
Parliament. The Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed an act to
have authorised themselves to live for ever, as to make their
authority live for ever. All, therefore, that can be said of those
clauses is that they are a formality of words, of as much import as if
those who used them had addressed a congratulation to themselves,
and in the oriental style of antiquity had said: O Parliament, live
for ever!
The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the
opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living,
and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in
it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age
may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases,
who is to decide, the living or the dead?
As almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book are employed upon
these clauses, it will consequently follow that if the clauses
themselves, so far as they set up an assumed usurped dominion over
posterity for ever, are unauthoritative, and in their nature null
and void; that all his voluminous inferences, and declamation drawn
therefrom, or founded thereon, are null and void also; and on this
ground I rest the matter.
We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr.
Burke's book has the appearance of being written as instruction to the
French nation; but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant
metaphor, suited to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness
attempting to illuminate light.
While I am writing this there are accidentally before me some
proposals for a declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette
(I ask his pardon for using his former address, and do it only for
distinction's sake) to the National Assembly, on the 11th of July,
1789, three days before the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but
remark with astonishment how opposite the sources are from which
that gentleman and Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of
referring to musty records and mouldy parchments to prove that the
rights of the living are lost, "renounced and abdicated for ever,"
by those who are now no more, as Mr. Burke has done, M. de la
Fayette applies to the living world, and emphatically says: "Call to
mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every
citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly
recognised by all:- For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient
that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills
it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke
labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his
declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise,
and soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on
to a vast field of generous and manly thinking, and do not finish,
like Mr. Burke's periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the
heart.
As I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I will take the liberty of
adding an anecdote respecting his farewell address to the Congress
of America in 1783, and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw
Mr. Burke's thundering attack on the French Revolution. M. de la
Fayette went to America at the early period of the war, and
continued a volunteer in her service to the end. His conduct through
the whole of that enterprise is one of the most extraordinary that
is to be found in the history of a young man, scarcely twenty years of
age. Situated in a country that was like the lap of sensual
pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how few are there to be
found who would exchange such a scene for the woods and wildernesses
of America, and pass the flowery years of youth in unprofitable danger
and hardship! but such is the fact. When the war ended, and he was
on the point of taking his final departure, he presented himself to
Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate farewell the
Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words: "May this
great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the oppressor,
and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to the
hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count
Vergennes to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but never could
obtain his consent. The fact was that Count Vergennes was an
aristocratical despot at home, and dreaded the example of the American
Revolution in France, as certain other persons now dread the example
of the French Revolution in England, and Mr. Burke's tribute of fear
(for in this light his book must be considered) runs parallel with
Count Vergennes' refusal. But to return more particularly to his work.
"We have seen," says Mr. Burke, "the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people
has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant." This is one among a thousand other instances, in
which Mr. Burke shows that he is ignorant of the springs and
principles of the French Revolution.
It was not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of
the Government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not
their origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries
back: and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the
Augean stables of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be
cleansed by anything short of a complete and universal Revolution.
When it becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul
should go into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then
arrived, and there remained no choice but to act with determined
vigor, or not to act at all. The king was known to be the friend of
the nation, and this circumstance was favorable to the enterprise.
Perhaps no man bred up in the style of an absolute king, ever
possessed a heart so little disposed to the exercise of that species
of power as the present King of France. But the principles of the
Government itself still remained the same. The Monarch and the
Monarchy were distinct and separate things; and it was against the
established despotism of the latter, and not against the person or
principles of the former, that the revolt commenced, and the
Revolution has been carried.
Mr. Burke does not attend to the distinction between men and
principles, and, therefore, he does not see that a revolt may take
place against the despotism of the latter, while there lies no
charge of despotism against the former.
The natural moderation of Louis XVI. contributed nothing to alter
the hereditary despotism of the monarchy. All the tyrannies of
former reigns, acted under that hereditary despotism, were still
liable to be revived in the hands of a successor. It was not the
respite of a reign that would satisfy France, enlightened as she was
then become. A casual discontinuance of the practice of despotism,
is not a discontinuance of its principles: the former depends on the
virtue of the individual who is in immediate possession of the
power; the latter, on the virtue and fortitude of the nation. In the
case of Charles I. and James II. of England, the revolt was against
the personal despotism of the men; whereas in France, it was against
the hereditary despotism of the established Government. But men who
can consign over the rights of posterity for ever on the authority
of a mouldy parchment, like Mr. Burke, are not qualified to judge of
this Revolution. It takes in a field too vast for their views to
explore, and proceeds with a mightiness of reason they cannot keep
pace with.
But there are many points of view in which this Revolution may be
considered. When despotism has established itself for ages in a
country, as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that
it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in
nominal authority; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has
its standard everywhere. Every office and department has its
despotism, founded upon custom and usage. Every place has its
Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. The original hereditary
despotism resident in the person of the king, divides and
sub-divides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till at last
the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case in France;
and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through an
endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely
perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by
assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannies under the pretence of
obeying.
When a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the
nature of her government, he will see other causes for revolt than
those which immediately connect themselves with the person or
character of Louis XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a thousand
despotisms to be reformed in France, which had grown up under the
hereditary despotism of the monarchy, and became so rooted as to be in
a great measure independent of it. Between the Monarchy, the
Parliament, and the Church there was a rivalship of despotism; besides
the feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial
despotism operating everywhere. But Mr. Burke, by considering the king
as the only possible object of a revolt, speaks as if France was a
village, in which everything that passed must be known to its
commanding officer, and no oppression could be acted but what he could
immediately control. Mr. Burke might have been in the Bastille his
whole life, as well under Louis XVI. as Louis XIV., and neither the
one nor the other have known that such a man as Burke existed. The
despotic principles of the government were the same in both reigns,
though the dispositions of the men were as remote as tyranny and
benevolence.
What Mr. Burke considers as a reproach to the French Revolution
(that of bringing it forward under a reign more mild than the
preceding ones) is one of its highest honors. The Revolutions that
have taken place in other European countries, have been excited by
personal hatred. The rage was against the man, and he became the
victim. But, in the instance of France we see a Revolution generated
in the rational contemplation of the Rights of Man, and distinguishing
from the beginning between persons and principles.
But Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles when he is
contemplating Governments. "Ten years ago," says he, "I could have
felicitated France on her having a Government, without inquiring
what the nature of that Government was, or how it was administered."
Is this the language of a rational man? Is it the language of a
heart feeling as it ought to feel for the rights and happiness of
the human race? On this ground, Mr. Burke must compliment all the
Governments in the world, while the victims who suffer under them,
whether sold into slavery, or tortured out of existence, are wholly
forgotten. It is power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke
venerates; and under this abominable depravity he is disqualified to
judge between them. Thus much for his opinion as to the occasions of
the French Revolution. I now proceed to other considerations.
I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you
proceed along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke's language, it
continually recedes and presents itself at a distance before you;
but when you have got as far as you can go, there is no point at
all. Just thus it is with Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six
pages. It is therefore difficult to reply to him. But as the points he
wishes to establish may be inferred from what he abuses, it is in
his paradoxes that we must look for his arguments.
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke
should recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that
his readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned
exclamation.
When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended
to be believed that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of
Europe is extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if
anyone knows what it is), the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of
manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!" and all this because
the Quixot age of chivalry nonsense is gone, what opinion can we
form of his judgment, or what regard can we pay to his facts? In the
rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of wind mills,
and his sorrows are that there are no Quixots to attack them. But if
the age of aristocracy, like that of chivalry, should fall (and they
had originally some connection) Mr. Burke, the trumpeter of the Order,
may continue his parody to the end, and finish with exclaiming:
"Othello's occupation's gone!"
Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid paintings, when the French
Revolution is compared with the Revolutions of other countries, the
astonishment will be that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but
this astonishment will cease when we reflect that principles, and
not persons, were the meditated objects of destruction. The mind of
the nation was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what the
consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a higher conquest
than could be produced by the downfall of an enemy. Among the few
who fell there do not appear to be any that were intentionally singled
out. They all of them had their fate in the circumstances of the
moment, and were not pursued with that long, cold-blooded unabated
revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in the affair of 1745.
Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the
Bastille is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of
implication as if he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were
built up again. "We have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and tenanted
the mansion; and we have prisons almost as strong as the Bastille
for those who dare to libel the queens of France."*[2] As to what a
madman like the person called Lord George Gordon might say, and to
whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a prison, it is unworthy a
rational consideration. It was a madman that libelled, and that is
sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity for confining
him, which was the thing that was wished for. But certain it is that
Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other people
may do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in the
grossest style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some
points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that
Mr. Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power
of the Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.
Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection
that I can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who
lingered out the most wretched of lives, a life without hope in the
most miserable of prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his
talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than
he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching
his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his
imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.
Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand that hath purloined him
from himself, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the
genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his heroine must be a
tragedy-victim expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of
misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon.
As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction of the Bastille
(and his silence is nothing in his favour), and has entertained his
readers with refections on supposed facts distorted into real
falsehoods, I will give, since he has not, some account of the
circumstances which preceded that transaction. They will serve to show
that less mischief could scarcely have accompanied such an event
when considered with the treacherous and hostile aggravations of the
enemies of the Revolution.
The mind can hardly picture to itself a more tremendous scene than
what the city of Paris exhibited at the time of taking the Bastille,
and for two days before and after, nor perceive the possibility of its
quieting so soon. At a distance this transaction has appeared only
as an act of heroism standing on itself, and the close political
connection it had with the Revolution is lost in the brilliancy of the
achievement. But we are to consider it as the strength of the
parties brought man to man, and contending for the issue. The Bastille
was to be either the prize or the prison of the assailants. The
downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of despotism, and
this compounded image was become as figuratively united as Bunyan's
Doubting Castle and Giant Despair.
The National Assembly, before and at the time of taking the
Bastille, was sitting at Versailles, twelve miles distant from
Paris. About a week before the rising of the Partisans, and their
taking the Bastille, it was discovered that a plot was forming, at the
head of which was the Count D'Artois, the king's youngest brother, for
demolishing the National Assembly, seizing its members, and thereby
crushing, by a coup de main, all hopes and prospects of forming a free
government. For the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well
this plan did not succeed. Examples are. not wanting to show how
dreadfully vindictive and cruel are all old governments, when they are
successful against what they call a revolt.
This plan must have been some time in contemplation; because, in
order to carry it into execution, it was necessary to collect a
large military force round Paris, and cut off the communication
between that city and the National Assembly at Versailles. The
troops destined for this service were chiefly the foreign troops in
the pay of France, and who, for this particular purpose, were drawn
from the distant provinces where they were then stationed. When they
were collected to the amount of between twenty-five and thirty
thousand, it was judged time to put the plan into execution. The
ministry who were then in office, and who were friendly to the
Revolution, were instantly dismissed and a new ministry formed of
those who had concerted the project, among whom was Count de
Broglio, and to his share was given the command of those troops. The
character of this man as described to me in a letter which I
communicated to Mr. Burke before he began to write his book, and
from an authority which Mr. Burke well knows was good, was that of
"a high-flying aristocrat, cool, and capable of every mischief."
While these matters were agitating, the National Assembly stood in
the most perilous and critical situation that a body of men can be
supposed to act in. They were the devoted victims, and they knew it.
They had the hearts and wishes of their country on their side, but
military authority they had none. The guards of Broglio surrounded the
hall where the Assembly sat, ready, at the word of command, to seize
their persons, as had been done the year before to the Parliament of
Paris. Had the National Assembly deserted their trust, or had they
exhibited signs of weakness or fear, their enemies had been encouraged
and their country depressed. When the situation they stood in, the
cause they were engaged in, and the crisis then ready to burst,
which should determine their personal and political fate and that of
their country, and probably of Europe, are taken into one view, none
but a heart callous with prejudice or corrupted by dependence can
avoid interesting itself in their success.
The Archbishop of Vienne was at this time President of the
National Assembly- a person too old to undergo the scene that a few
days or a few hours might bring forth. A man of more activity and
bolder fortitude was necessary, and the National Assembly chose (under
the form of a Vice-President, for the Presidency still resided in
the Archbishop) M. de la Fayette; and this is the only instance of a
Vice-President being chosen. It was at the moment that this storm
was pending (July 11th) that a declaration of rights was brought
forward by M. de la Fayette, and is the same which is alluded to
earlier. It was hastily drawn up, and makes only a part of the more
extensive declaration of rights agreed upon and adopted afterwards
by the National Assembly. The particular reason for bringing it
forward at this moment (M. de la Fayette has since informed me) was
that, if the National Assembly should fall in the threatened
destruction that then surrounded it, some trace of its principles
might have the chance of surviving the wreck.
Everything now was drawing to a crisis. The event was freedom or
slavery. On one side, an army of nearly thirty thousand men; on the
other, an unarmed body of citizens- for the citizens of Paris, on whom
the National Assembly must then immediately depend, were as unarmed
and as undisciplined as the citizens of London are now. The French
guards had given strong symptoms of their being attached to the
national cause; but their numbers were small, not a tenth part of
the force that Broglio commanded, and their officers were in the
interest of Broglio.
Matters being now ripe for execution, the new ministry made their
appearance in office. The reader will carry in his mind that the
Bastille was taken the 14th July; the point of time I am now
speaking of is the 12th. Immediately on the news of the change of
ministry reaching Paris, in the afternoon, all the playhouses and
places of entertainment, shops and houses, were shut up. The change of
ministry was considered as the prelude of hostilities, and the opinion
was rightly founded.
The foreign troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince
de Lambesc, who commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by
the Place of Louis XV., which connects itself with some of the
streets. In his march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword.
The French are remarkable for their respect to old age; and the
insolence with which it appeared to be done, uniting with the
general fermentation they were in, produced a powerful effect, and a
cry of "To arms! to arms!" spread itself in a moment over the city.
Arms they had none, nor scarcely anyone who knew the use of them;
but desperate resolution, when every hope is at stake, supplies, for a
while, the want of arms. Near where the Prince de Lambesc was drawn
up, were large piles of stones collected for building the new
bridge, and with these the people attacked the cavalry. A party of
French guards upon hearing the firing, rushed from their quarters
and joined the people; and night coming on, the cavalry retreated.
The streets of Paris, being narrow, are favourable for defence,
and the loftiness of the houses, consisting of many stories, from
which great annoyance might be given, secured them against nocturnal
enterprises; and the night was spent in providing themselves with
every sort of weapon they could make or procure: guns, swords,
blacksmiths' hammers, carpenters' axes, iron crows, pikes, halberts,
pitchforks, spits, clubs, etc., etc. The incredible numbers in which
they assembled the next morning, and the still more incredible
resolution they exhibited, embarrassed and astonished their enemies.
Little did the new ministry expect such a salute. Accustomed to
slavery themselves, they had no idea that liberty was capable of
such inspiration, or that a body of unarmed citizens would dare to
face the military force of thirty thousand men. Every moment of this
day was employed in collecting arms, concerting plans, and arranging
themselves into the best order which such an instantaneous movement
could afford. Broglio continued lying round the city, but made no
further advances this day, and the succeeding night passed with as
much tranquility as such a scene could possibly produce.
But defence only was not the object of the citizens. They had a
cause at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery. They
every moment expected an attack, or to hear of one made on the
National Assembly; and in such a situation, the most prompt measures
are sometimes the best. The object that now presented itself was the
Bastille; and the eclat of carrying such a fortress in the face of
such an army, could not fail to strike terror into the new ministry,
who had scarcely yet had time to meet. By some intercepted
correspondence this morning, it was discovered that the Mayor of
Paris, M. Defflesselles, who appeared to be in the interest of the
citizens, was betraying them; and from this discovery, there
remained no doubt that Broglio would reinforce the Bastille the
ensuing evening. It was therefore necessary to attack it that day; but
before this could be done, it was first necessary to procure a
better supply of arms than they were then possessed of.
There was, adjoining to the city a large magazine of arms
deposited at the Hospital of the Invalids, which the citizens summoned
to surrender; and as the place was neither defensible, nor attempted
much defence, they soon succeeded. Thus supplied, they marched to
attack the Bastille; a vast mixed multitude of all ages, and of all
degrees, armed with all sorts of weapons. Imagination would fail in
describing to itself the appearance of such a procession, and of the
anxiety of the events which a few hours or a few minutes might
produce. What plans the ministry were forming, were as unknown to
the people within the city, as what the citizens were doing was
unknown to the ministry; and what movements Broglio might make for the
support or relief of the place, were to the citizens equally as
unknown. All was mystery and hazard.
That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such
only as the highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in
the space of a few hours, is an event which the world is fully
possessed of. I am not undertaking the detail of the attack, but
bringing into view the conspiracy against the nation which provoked
it, and which fell with the Bastille. The prison to which the new
ministry were dooming the National Assembly, in addition to its
being the high altar and castle of despotism, became the proper object
to begin with. This enterprise broke up the new ministry, who began
now to fly from the ruin they had prepared for others. The troops of
Broglio dispersed, and himself fled also.
Mr. Burke has spoken a great deal about plots, but he has never once
spoken of this plot against the National Assembly, and the liberties
of the nation; and that he might not, he has passed over all the
circumstances that might throw it in his way. The exiles who have fled
from France, whose case he so much interests himself in, and from whom
he has had his lesson, fled in consequence of the miscarriage of
this plot. No plot was formed against them; they were plotting against
others; and those who fell, met, not unjustly, the punishment they
were preparing to execute. But will Mr. Burke say that if this plot,
contrived with the subtilty of an ambuscade, had succeeded, the
successful party would have restrained their wrath so soon? Let the
history of all governments answer the question.
Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None. They
were themselves the devoted victims of this plot, and they have not
retaliated; why, then, are they charged with revenge they have not
acted? In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which
all degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering
themselves, by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction meditated
against them, is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When
men are sore with the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the
prospects of new ones, is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of
insensibility to be looked for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage;
yet the greatest is that which himself has committed. His book is a
volume of outrage, not apologised for by the impulse of a moment,
but cherished through a space of ten months; yet Mr. Burke had no
provocation- no life, no interest, at stake.
More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their
opponents: but four or five persons were seized by the populace, and
instantly put to death; the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of
Paris, who was detected in the act of betraying them; and afterwards
Foulon, one of the new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law, who had
accepted the office of intendant of Paris. Their heads were stuck upon
spikes, and carried about the city; and it is upon this mode of
punishment that Mr. Burke builds a great part of his tragic scene. Let
us therefore examine how men came by the idea of punishing in this
manner.
They learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate
the punishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck
upon spikes, which remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed
nothing in the horror of the scene from those carried about upon
spikes at Paris; yet this was done by the English Government. It may
perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him
after he is dead; but it signifies much to the living; it either
tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts, and in either case it
instructs them how to punish when power falls into their hands.
Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It
is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. In England
the punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering;
the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the
populace. In France, under the former Government, the punishments were
not less barbarous. Who does not remember the execution of Damien,
torn to pieces by horses? The effect of those cruel spectacles
exhibited to the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite
revenge; and by the base and false idea of governing men by terror,
instead of reason, they become precedents. It is over the lowest class
of mankind that government by terror is intended to operate, and it is
on them that it operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough
to feel they are the objects aimed at; and they inflict in their
turn the examples of terror they have been instructed to practise.
There is in all European countries a large class of people of that
description, which in England is called the "mob." Of this class
were those who committed the burnings and devastations in London in
1780, and of this class were those who carried the heads on iron
spikes in Paris. Foulon and Berthier were taken up in the country, and
sent to Paris, to undergo their examination at the Hotel de Ville; for
the National Assembly, immediately on the new ministry coming into
office, passed a decree, which they communicated to the King and
Cabinet, that they (the National Assembly) would hold the ministry, of
which Foulon was one, responsible for the measures they were
advising and pursuing; but the mob, incensed at the appearance of
Foulon and Berthier, tore them from their conductors before they
were carried to the Hotel de Ville, and executed them on the spot. Why
then does Mr. Burke charge outrages of this kind on a whole people? As
well may he charge the riots and outrages of 1780 on all the people of
London, or those in Ireland on all his countrymen.
But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and
derogatory to the human character should lead to other reflections
than those of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some
claim to our consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of
mankind as are distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or
the ignorant mob, are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we
ask ourselves this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as
an unavoidable consequence, out of the ill construction of all old
governments in Europe, England included with the rest. It is by
distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased,
till the whole is out of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly
thrown into the back-ground of the human picture, to bring forward,
with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the
commencement of a revolution, those men are rather the followers of
the camp than of the standard of liberty, and have yet to be
instructed how to reverence it.
I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts,
and I then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I
here lay down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of
the French Revolution, as much as any one thing he could have
asserted. These outrages were not the effect of the principles of
the Revolution, but of the degraded mind that existed before the
Revolution, and which the Revolution is calculated to reform. Place
them then to their proper cause, and take the reproach of them to your
own side.
It is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris
that, during such a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the
control of all authority, they have been able, by the influence of
example and exhortation, to restrain so much. Never were more pains
taken to instruct and enlighten mankind, and to make them see that
their interest consisted in their virtue, and not in their revenge,
than have been displayed in the Revolution of France. I now proceed to
make some remarks on Mr. Burke's account of the expedition to
Versailles, October the 5th and 6th.
I can consider Mr. Burke's book in scarcely any other light than a
dramatic performance; and he must, I think, have considered it in
the same light himself, by the poetical liberties he has taken of
omitting some facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery
bend to produce a stage effect. Of this kind is his account of the
expedition to Versailles. He begins this account by omitting the
only facts which as causes are known to be true; everything beyond
these is conjecture, even in Paris; and he then works up a tale
accommodated to his own passions and prejudices.
It is to be observed throughout Mr. Burke's book that he never
speaks of plots against the Revolution; and it is from those plots
that all the mischiefs have arisen. It suits his purpose to exhibit
the consequences without their causes. It is one of the arts of the
drama to do so. If the crimes of men were exhibited with their
sufferings, stage effect would sometimes be lost, and the audience
would be inclined to approve where it was intended they should
commiserate.
After all the investigations that have been made into this intricate
affair (the expedition to Versailles), it still remains enveloped in
all that kind of mystery which ever accompanies events produced more
from a concurrence of awkward circumstances than from fixed design.
While the characters of men are forming, as is always the case in
revolutions, there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to
misinterpret each other; and even parties directly opposite in
principle will sometimes concur in pushing forward the same movement
with very different views, and with the hopes of its producing very
different consequences. A great deal of this may be discovered in this
embarrassed affair, and yet the issue of the whole was what nobody had
in view.
The only things certainly known are that considerable uneasiness was
at this time excited at Paris by the delay of the King in not
sanctioning and forwarding the decrees of the National Assembly,
particularly that of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the
decrees of the fourth of August, which contained the foundation
principles on which the constitution was to be erected. The kindest,
and perhaps the fairest conjecture upon this matter is, that some of
the ministers intended to make remarks and observations upon certain
parts of them before they were finally sanctioned and sent to the
provinces; but be this as it may, the enemies of the Revolution
derived hope from the delay, and the friends of the Revolution
uneasiness.
During this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps, which was
composed as such regiments generally are, of persons much connected
with the Court, gave an entertainment at Versailles (October 1) to
some foreign regiments then arrived; and when the entertainment was at
the height, on a signal given, the Garde du Corps tore the national
cockade from their hats, trampled it under foot, and replaced it
with a counter-cockade prepared for the purpose. An indignity of
this kind amounted to defiance. It was like declaring war; and if
men will give challenges they must expect consequences. But all this
Mr. Burke has carefully kept out of sight. He begins his account by
saying: "History will record that on the morning of the 6th October,
1789, the King and Queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm,
dismay, and slaughter, lay down under the pledged security of public
faith to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled
melancholy repose." This is neither the sober style of history, nor
the intention of it. It leaves everything to be guessed at and
mistaken. One would at least think there had been a battle; and a
battle there probably would have been had it not been for the
moderating prudence of those whom Mr. Burke involves in his
censures. By his keeping the Garde du Corps out of sight Mr. Burke has
afforded himself the dramatic licence of putting the King and Queen in
their places, as if the object of the expedition was against them. But
to return to my account-
This conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might well be expected,
alarmed and enraged the Partisans. The colors of the cause, and the
cause itself, were become too united to mistake the intention of the
insult, and the Partisans were determined to call the Garde du Corps
to an account. There was certainly nothing of the cowardice of
assassination in marching in the face of the day to demand
satisfaction, if such a phrase may be used, of a body of armed men who
had voluntarily given defiance. But the circumstance which serves to
throw this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of the
Revolution appear to have encouraged it as well as its friends. The
one hoped to prevent a civil war by checking it in time, and the other
to make one. The hopes of those opposed to the Revolution rested in
making the King of their party, and getting him from Versailles to
Metz, where they expected to collect a force and set up a standard. We
have, therefore, two different objects presenting themselves at the
same time, and to be accomplished by the same means: the one to
chastise the Garde du Corps, which was the object of the Partisans;
the other to render the confusion of such a scene an inducement to the
King to set off for Metz.
On the 5th of October a very numerous body of women, and men in
the disguise of women, collected around the Hotel de Ville or
town-hall at Paris, and set off for Versailles. Their professed object
was the Garde du Corps; but prudent men readily recollect that
mischief is more easily begun than ended; and this impressed itself
with the more force from the suspicions already stated, and the
irregularity of such a cavalcade. As soon, therefore, as a
sufficient force could be collected, M. de la Fayette, by orders
from the civil authority of Paris, set off after them at the head of
twenty thousand of the Paris militia. The Revolution could derive no
benefit from confusion, and its opposers might. By an amiable and
spirited manner of address he had hitherto been fortunate in calming
disquietudes, and in this he was extraordinarily successful; to
frustrate, therefore, the hopes of those who might seek to improve
this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the King's
quitting Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and to prevent at the
same time the consequences that might ensue between the Garde du Corps
and this phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to the King,
that he was on his march to Versailles, by the orders of the civil
authority of Paris, for the purpose of peace and protection,
expressing at the same time the necessity of restraining the Garde
du Corps from firing upon the people.*[3]
He arrived at Versailles between ten and eleven at night. The
Garde du Corps was drawn up, and the people had arrived some time
before, but everything had remained suspended. Wisdom and policy now
consisted in changing a scene of danger into a happy event. M. de la
Fayette became the mediator between the enraged parties; and the King,
to remove the uneasiness which had arisen from the delay already
stated, sent for the President of the National Assembly, and signed
the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and such other parts of the
constitution as were in readiness.
It was now about one in the morning. Everything appeared to be
composed, and a general congratulation took place. By the beat of a
drum a proclamation was made that the citizens of Versailles would
give the hospitality of their houses to their fellow-citizens of
Paris. Those who could not be accommodated in this manner remained
in the streets, or took up their quarters in the churches; and at
two o'clock the King and Queen retired.
In this state matters passed till the break of day, when a fresh
disturbance arose from the censurable conduct of some of both parties,
for such characters there will be in all such scenes. One of the Garde
du Corps appeared at one of the windows of the palace, and the
people who had remained during the night in the streets accosted him
with reviling and provocative language. Instead of retiring, as in
such a case prudence would have dictated, he presented his musket,
fired, and killed one of the Paris militia. The peace being thus
broken, the people rushed into the palace in quest of the offender.
They attacked the quarters of the Garde du Corps within the palace,
and pursued them throughout the avenues of it, and to the apartments
of the King. On this tumult, not the Queen only, as Mr. Burke has
represented it, but every person in the palace, was awakened and
alarmed; and M. de la Fayette had a second time to interpose between
the parties, the event of which was that the Garde du Corps put on the
national cockade, and the matter ended as by oblivion, after the
loss of two or three lives.
During the latter part of the time in which this confusion was
acting, the King and Queen were in public at the balcony, and
neither of them concealed for safety's sake, as Mr. Burke
insinuates. Matters being thus appeased, and tranquility restored, a
general acclamation broke forth of Le Roi a Paris- Le Roi a Paris- The
King to Paris. It was the shout of peace, and immediately accepted
on the part of the King. By this measure all future projects of
trapanning the King to Metz, and setting up the standard of opposition
to the constitution, were prevented, and the suspicions
extinguished. The King and his family reached Paris in the evening,
and were congratulated on their arrival by M. Bailly, the Mayor of
Paris, in the name of the citizens. Mr. Burke, who throughout his book
confounds things, persons, and principles, as in his remarks on M.
Bailly's address, confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly for
calling it "un bon jour," a good day. Mr. Burke should have informed
himself that this scene took up the space of two days, the day on
which it began with every appearance of danger and mischief, and the
day on which it terminated without the mischiefs that threatened;
and that it is to this peaceful termination that M. Bailly alludes,
and to the arrival of the King at Paris. Not less than three hundred
thousand persons arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles
to Paris, and not an act of molestation was committed during the whole
march.
Mr. Burke on the authority of M. Lally Tollendal, a deserter from
the National Assembly, says that on entering Paris, the people shouted
"Tous les eveques a la lanterne." All Bishops to be hanged at the
lanthorn or lamp-posts. It is surprising that nobody could hear this
but Lally Tollendal, and that nobody should believe it but Mr.
Burke. It has not the least connection with any part of the
transaction, and is totally foreign to every circumstance of it. The
Bishops had never been introduced before into any scene of Mr. Burke's
drama: why then are they, all at once, and altogether, tout a coup, et
tous ensemble, introduced now? Mr. Burke brings forward his Bishops
and his lanthorn-like figures in a magic lanthorn, and raises his
scenes by contrast instead of connection. But it serves to show,
with the rest of his book what little credit ought to be given where
even probability is set at defiance, for the purpose of defaming;
and with this reflection, instead of a soliloquy in praise of
chivalry, as Mr. Burke has done, I close the account of the expedition
to Versailles.*[4]
I have now to follow Mr. Burke through a pathless wilderness of
rhapsodies, and a sort of descant upon governments, in which he
asserts whatever he pleases, on the presumption of its being believed,
without offering either evidence or reasons for so doing.
Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts,
principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or
denied. Mr. Burke with his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, published by the National Assembly of France, as
the basis on which the constitution of France is built. This he
calls "paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man."
Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does,
then he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere,
and that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man?
But if Mr. Burke means to admit that man has rights, the question then
will be: What are those rights, and how man came by them originally?
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity,
respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the
intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce
what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no
authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we
shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if
antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be
produced, successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on,
we shall at last come out right; we shall come to the time when man
came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his
high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him. But of titles I
shall speak hereafter.
We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his
rights. As to the manner in which the world has been governed from
that day to this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make
a proper use of the errors or the improvements which the history of it
presents. Those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were
then moderns, as we are now. They had their ancients, and those
ancients had others, and we also shall be ancients in our turn. If the
mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people
who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take
us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an
hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of
antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority
against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of
the rights of man at the creation. Here our enquiries find a
resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a dispute about the
rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from
the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have
referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must
now refer.
Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion,
yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is
traced to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation
of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been upstart
governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously
working to un-make man.
If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the
mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the
first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no
succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set
any up. The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of
man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to
the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each
other. Every generation is equal in rights to generations which
preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in
rights with his contemporary.
Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account,
whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary
in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in
establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are
all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and
with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had
been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being the
only mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently
every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its
existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the
first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same
kind.
The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine
authority or merely historical, is full to this point, the unity or
equality of man. The expression admits of no controversy. "And God
said, Let us make man in our own image. In the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them." The distinction of sexes is
pointed out, but no other distinction is even implied. If this be
not divine authority, it is at least historical authority, and shows
that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is
the oldest upon record.
It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the
world are founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of
man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in
whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and
the bad are the only distinctions. Nay, even the laws of governments
are obliged to slide into this principle, by making degrees to consist
in crimes and not in persons.
It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest
advantage to cultivate. By considering man in this light, and by
instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places him in
a close connection with all his duties, whether to his Creator or to
the creation, of which he is a part; and it is only when he forgets
his origin, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his birth and
family, that he becomes dissolute. It is not among the least of the
evils of the present existing governments in all parts of Europe
that man, considered as man, is thrown back to a vast distance from
his Maker, and the artificial chasm filled up with a succession of
barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, through which he has to pass. I
will quote Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up
between man and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a
herald, he says: "We fear God- we look with awe to kings- with
affection to Parliaments with duty to magistrates- with reverence to
priests, and with respect to nobility." Mr. Burke has forgotten to put
in "'chivalry." He has also forgotten to put in Peter.
The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which
he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and
simple, and consists but of two points. His duty to God, which every
man must feel; and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would
be done by. If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will
be respected: if not, they will be despised; and with regard to
those to whom no power is delegated, but who assume it, the rational
world can know nothing of them.
Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural
rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to
show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into
society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights
than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His
natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. But in
order to pursue this distinction with more precision, it will be
necessary to mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.
A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which
appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the
intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those
rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness,
which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil
rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member
of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural
right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which
his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent.
Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that
class of natural rights which man retains after entering into
society and those which he throws into the common stock as a member of
society.
The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power
to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself.
Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual
rights, or rights of the mind; consequently religion is one of those
rights. The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in
which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to
execute them is defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by
natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as
the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it. But what
availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to redress? He therefore
deposits this right in the common stock of society, and takes the
ann of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in addition
to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor in
society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.
From these premisses two or three certain conclusions will follow:
First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in
other words, is a natural right exchanged.
Secondly, That civil power properly considered as such is made up of
the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which
becomes defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not
his purpose, but when collected to a focus becomes competent to the
Purpose of every one.
Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural
rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to
invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in
which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
We have now, in a few words, traced man from a natural individual to
a member of society, and shown, or endeavoured to show, the quality of
the natural rights retained, and of those which are exchanged for
civil rights. Let us now apply these principles to governments.
In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to
distinguish the governments which have arisen out of society, or out
of the social compact, from those which have not; but to place this in
a clearer light than what a single glance may afford, it will be
proper to take a review of the several sources from which
governments have arisen and on which they have been founded.
They may be all comprehended under three heads.
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of
man.
The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors,
and the third of reason.
When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles,
to hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up
the back-stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the
government of superstition. The oracles were consulted, and whatever
they were made to say became the law; and this sort of government
lasted as long as this sort of superstition lasted.
After these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like
that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword
assumed the name of a sceptre. Governments thus established last as
long as the power to support them lasts; but that they might avail
themselves of every engine in their favor, they united fraud to force,
and set up an idol which they called Divine Right, and which, in
imitation of the Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and
in contradiction to the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted
itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and
State. The key of St. Peter and the key of the Treasury became
quartered on one another, and the wondering cheated multitude
worshipped the invention.
When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for
Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the
honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the
attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all
knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus
imposed upon.
We have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in
contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and
conquest.
It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing
the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact
between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot
be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man
must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was
a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could
originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.
The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each
in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with
each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which
governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which
they have a right to exist.
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought
to be, we must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily
discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people or
over the people. Mr. Burke has made no distinction. He investigates
nothing to its source, and therefore he confounds everything; but he
has signified his intention of undertaking, at some future
opportunity, a comparison between the constitution of England and
France. As he thus renders it a subject of controversy by throwing the
gauntlet, I take him upon his own ground. It is in high challenges
that high truths have the right of appearing; and I accept it with the
more readiness because it affords me, at the same time, an opportunity
of pursuing the subject with respect to governments arising out of
society.
But it will be first necessary to define what is meant by a
Constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt the word; we must fix
also a standard signification to it.
A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has
not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced
in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent
to a government, and a government is only the creature of a
constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its
government, but of the people constituting its government. It is the
body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by
article; and which contains the principles on which the government
shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organised, the
powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of
Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the
powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and in
fine, everything that relates to the complete organisation of a
civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by
which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government
what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of
judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither
can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and
the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
Can, then, Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot,
we may fairly conclude that though it has been so much talked about,
no such thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and
consequently that the people have yet a constitution to form.
Mr. Burke will not, I presume, deny the position I have already
advanced- namely, that governments arise either out of the people or
over the people. The English Government is one of those which arose
out of a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it arose
over the people; and though it has been much modified from the
opportunity of circumstances since the time of William the
Conqueror, the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is
therefore without a constitution.
I readily perceive the reason why Mr. Burke declined going into
the comparison between the English and French constitutions, because
he could not but perceive, when he sat down to the task, that no
such a thing as a constitution existed on his side the question. His
book is certainly bulky enough to have contained all he could say on
this subject, and it would have been the best manner in which people
could have judged of their separate merits. Why then has he declined
the only thing that was worth while to write upon? It was the
strongest ground he could take, if the advantages were on his side,
but the weakest if they were not; and his declining to take it is
either a sign that he could not possess it or could not maintain it.
Mr. Burke said, in a speech last winter in Parliament, "that when
the National Assembly first met in three Orders (the Tiers Etat, the
Clergy, and the Noblesse), France had then a good constitution."
This shows, among numerous other instances, that Mr. Burke does not
understand what a constitution is. The persons so met were not a
constitution, but a convention, to make a constitution.
The present National Assembly of France is, strictly speaking, the
personal social compact. The members of it are the delegates of the
nation in its original character; future assemblies will be the
delegates of the nation in its organised character. The authority of
the present Assembly is different from what the authority of future
Assemblies will be. The authority of the present one is to form a
constitution; the authority of future assemblies will be to
legislate according to the principles and forms prescribed in that
constitution; and if experience should hereafter show that
alterations, amendments, or additions are necessary, the
constitution will point out the mode by which such things shall be
done, and not leave it to the discretionary power of the future
government.
A government on the principles on which constitutional governments
arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of
altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make
itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it
shows there is no constitution. The act by which the English
Parliament empowered itself to sit seven years, shows there is no
constitution in England. It might, by the same self-authority, have
sat any great number of years, or for life. The bill which the present
Mr. Pitt brought into Parliament some years ago, to reform Parliament,
was on the same erroneous principle. The right of reform is in the
nation in its original character, and the constitutional method
would be by a general convention elected for the purpose. There is,
moreover, a paradox in the idea of vitiated bodies reforming
themselves.
From these preliminaries I proceed to draw some comparisons. I
have already spoken of the declaration of rights; and as I mean to
be as concise as possible, I shall proceed to other parts of the
French Constitution.
The constitution of France says that every man who pays a tax of
sixty sous per annum (2s. 6d. English) is an elector. What article
will Mr. Burke place against this? Can anything be more limited, and
at the same time more capricious, than the qualification of electors
is in England? Limited- because not one man in an hundred (I speak
much within compass) is admitted to vote. Capricious- because the
lowest character that can be supposed to exist, and who has not so
much as the visible means of an honest livelihood, is an elector in
some places: while in other places, the man who pays very large taxes,
and has a known fair character, and the farmer who rents to the amount
of three or four hundred pounds a year, with a property on that farm
to three or four times that amount, is not admitted to be an
elector. Everything is out of nature, as Mr. Burke says on another
occasion, in this strange chaos, and all sorts of follies are
blended with all sorts of crimes. William the Conqueror and his
descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and bribed
some parts of it by what they call charters to hold the other parts of
it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so
many of those charters abound in Cornwall; the people were averse to
the Government established at the Conquest, and the towns were
garrisoned and bribed to enslave the country. All the old charters are
the badges of this conquest, and it is from this source that the
capriciousness of election arises.
The French Constitution says that the number of representatives
for any place shall be in a ratio to the number of taxable inhabitants
or electors. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? The
county of York, which contains nearly a million of souls, sends two
county members; and so does the county of Rutland, which contains
not an hundredth part of that number. The old town of Sarum, which
contains not three houses, sends two members; and the town of
Manchester, which contains upward of sixty thousand souls, is not
admitted to send any. Is there any principle in these things? It is
admitted that all this is altered, but there is much to be done yet,
before we have a fair representation of the people. Is there
anything by which you can trace the marks of freedom, or discover
those of wisdom? No wonder then Mr. Burke has declined the comparison,
and endeavored to lead his readers from the point by a wild,
unsystematical display of paradoxical rhapsodies.
The French Constitution says that the National Assembly shall be
elected every two years. What article will Mr. Burke place against
this? Why, that the nation has no right at all in the case; that the
government is perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point; and he
can quote for his authority the precedent of a former Parliament.
The French Constitution says there shall be no game laws, that the
farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the
produce of his lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can
take; that there shall be no monopolies of any kind- that all trades
shall be free and every man free to follow any occupation by which
he can procure an honest livelihood, and in any place, town, or city
throughout the nation. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England,
game is made the property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and
with respect to monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies.
Every chartered town is an aristocratical monopoly in itself, and
the qualification of electors proceeds out of those chartered
monopolies. Is this freedom? Is this what Mr. Burke means by a
constitution?
In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the
country is hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An
Englishman is not free of his own country; every one of those places
presents a barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman- that
he has no rights. Within these monopolies are other monopolies. In a
city, such for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and
thirty thousand inhabitants, the right of electing representatives
to Parliament is monopolised by about thirty-one persons. And within
these monopolies are still others. A man even of the same town,
whose parents were not in circumstances to give him an occupation,
is debarred, in many cases, from the natural right of acquiring one,
be his genius or industry what it may.
Are these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating
itself from slavery, like France? Certainly they are not, and
certain am I, that when the people of England come to reflect upon
them they will, like France, annihilate those badges of ancient
oppression, those traces of a conquered nation. Had Mr. Burke
possessed talents similar to the author of "On the Wealth of Nations."
he would have comprehended all the parts which enter into, and, by
assemblage, form a constitution. He would have reasoned from
minutiae to magnitude. It is not from his prejudices only, but from
the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is unfitted for the subject
he writes upon. Even his genius is without a constitution. It is a
genius at random, and not a genius constituted. But he must say
something. He has therefore mounted in the air like a balloon, to draw
the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand upon.
Much is to be learned from the French Constitution. Conquest and
tyranny transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from
Normandy into England, and the country is yet disfigured with the
marks. May, then, the example of all France contribute to regenerate
the freedom which a province of it destroyed!
The French Constitution says that to preserve the national
representation from being corrupt, no member of the National
Assembly shall be an officer of the government, a placeman or a
pensioner. What will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper
his answer: Loaves and Fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and
fishes has more mischief in it than people have yet reflected on.
The National Assembly has made the discovery, and it holds out the
example to the world. Had governments agreed to quarrel on purpose
to fleece their countries by taxes, they could not have succeeded
better than they have done.
Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of
what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament,
imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless
supposed to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in
the manner in which an English Parliament is constructed it is like
a man being both mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of
misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon
himself. If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who
receive the supplies when voted, and are to account for the
expenditure of those supplies to those who voted them, it is
themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of Errors
concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the Ministerial party
nor the Opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse is
the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country
people call "Ride and tie- you ride a little way, and then I."*[5]
They order these things better in France.
The French Constitution says that the right of war and peace is in
the nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay
the expense?
In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at the
Tower for sixpence or a shilling a piece: so are the lions; and it
would be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any
inanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see
the absurdity of worshipping Aaron's molten calf, or
Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but why do men continue to practise
themselves the absurdities they despise in others?
It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation
is represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in
the Crown or in the Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those
who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in
all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it
is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased
without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing
the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a
bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would
declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars
were raised to carry on taxes.
Mr. Burke, as a member of the House of Commons, is a part of the
English Government; and though he professes himself an enemy to war,
he abuses the French Constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds
up the English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France; but
he should first know the remarks which the French make upon it. They
contend in favor of their own, that the portion of liberty enjoyed
in England is just enough to enslave a country more productively
than by despotism, and that as the real object of all despotism is
revenue, a government so formed obtains more than it could do either
by direct despotism, or in a full state of freedom, and is,
therefore on the ground of interest, opposed to both. They account
also for the readiness which always appears in such governments for
engaging in wars by remarking on the different motives which
produced them. In despotic governments wars are the effect of pride;
but in those governments in which they become the means of taxation,
they acquire thereby a more permanent promptitude.
The French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these
evils, has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and
ministers, and placed the right where the expense must fall.
When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much
interested in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a
principle it applies as much to one country as another. William the
Conqueror, as a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in
himself, and his descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a
right.
Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any
right to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything
but in part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground
he throws the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running
a line of succession springing from William the Conqueror to the
present day, he makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the
Conqueror was, and where he came from, and into the origin, history
and nature of what are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a
beginning, and the fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to
discover it. Let, then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of
Normandy, for it is to this origin that his argument goes. It also
unfortunately happens, in running this line of succession, that
another line parallel thereto presents itself, which is that if the
succession runs in the line of the conquest, the nation runs in the
line of being conquered, and it ought to rescue itself from this
reproach.
But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war
descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the
right of Parliament to withhold the supplies. It will always happen
when a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right,
and it often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the
other, and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war
as a matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the
supplies as a matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse,
than the disease. The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other
ties its hands; but the more probable issue is that the contest will
end in a collusion between the parties, and be made a screen to both.
On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First,
the right of declaring it: secondly, the right of declaring it:
secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of
conducting it after it is declared. The French Constitution places the
right where the expense must fall, and this union can only be in the
nation. The mode of conducting it after it is declared, it consigns to
the executive department. Were this the case in all countries, we
should hear but little more of wars.
Before I proceed to consider other parts of the French Constitution,
and by way of relieving the fatigue of argument, I will introduce an
anecdote which I had from Dr. Franklin.
While the Doctor resided in France as Minister from America,
during the war, he had numerous proposals made to him by projectors of
every country and of every kind, who wished to go to the land that
floweth with milk and honey, America; and among the rest, there was
one who offered himself to be king. He introduced his proposal to
the Doctor by letter, which is now in the hands of M. Beaumarchais, of
Paris- stating, first, that as the Americans had dismissed or sent
away*[6] their King, that they would want another. Secondly, that
himself was a Norman. Thirdly, that he was of a more ancient family
than the Dukes of Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, his
line having never been bastardised. Fourthly, that there was already a
precedent in England of kings coming out of Normandy, and on these
grounds he rested his offer, enjoining that the Doctor would forward
it to America. But as the Doctor neither did this, nor yet sent him an
answer, the projector wrote a second letter, in which he did not, it
is true, threaten to go over and conquer America, but only with
great dignity proposed that if his offer was not accepted, an
acknowledgment of about L30,000 might be made to him for his
generosity! Now, as all arguments respecting succession must
necessarily connect that succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke's
arguments on this subject go to show that there is no English origin
of kings, and that they are descendants of the Norman line in right of
the Conquest. It may, therefore, be of service to his doctrine to make
this story known, and to inform him, that in case of that natural
extinction to which all mortality is subject, Kings may again be had
from Normandy, on more reasonable terms than William the Conqueror;
and consequently, that the good people of England, at the revolution
of 1688, might have done much better, had such a generous Norman as
this known their wants, and they had known his. The chivalric
character which Mr. Burke so much admires, is certainly much easier to
make a bargain with than a hard dealing Dutchman. But to return to the
matters of the constitution-
The French Constitution says, There shall be no titles; and, of
consequence, all that class of equivocal generation which in some
countries is called "aristocracy" and in others "nobility," is done
away, and the peer is exalted into the MAN.
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing
is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the
human character, which degrades it. It reduces man into the diminutive
of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in
things which are little. It talks about its fine blue ribbon like a
girl, and shows its new garter like a child. A certain writer, of some
antiquity, says: "When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I
became a man, I put away childish things."
It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly
of titles has fallen. It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count and
Duke, and breeched itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it
has exalted. It has put down the dwarf, to set up the man. The punyism
of a senseless word like Duke, Count or Earl has ceased to please.
Even those who possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they
outgrew the rickets, have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of
man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that
separate him from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the
magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives
immured within the Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the
envied life of man.
Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not
a greater wonder that they should be kept up anywhere? What are
they? What is their worth, and "what is their amount?" When we think
or speak of a Judge or a General, we associate with it the ideas of
office and character; we think of gravity in one and bravery in the
other; but when we use the word merely as a title, no ideas
associate with it. Through all the vocabulary of Adam there is not
such an animal as a Duke or a Count; neither can we connect any
certain ideas with the words. Whether they mean strength or
weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or the rider or the
horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid to that which
describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination has given
figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy
tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a
chimerical nondescript.
But this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to hold them
in contempt, all their value is gone, and none will own them. It is
common opinion only that makes them anything, or nothing, or worse
than nothing. There is no occasion to take titles away, for they
take themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them. This
species of imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of
Europe, and it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to
rise. There was a time when the lowest class of what are called
nobility was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a man
in armour riding throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was
more stared at than a modern Duke. The world has seen this folly fall,
and it has fallen by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will
follow its fate. The patriots of France have discovered in good time
that rank and dignity in society must take a new ground. The old one
has fallen through. It must now take the substantial ground of
character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles; and they have
brought their titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering
to Reason.
If no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles they
would not have been worth a serious and formal destruction, such as
the National Assembly have decreed them; and this makes it necessary
to enquire farther into the nature and character of aristocracy.
That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and
nobility in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest.
It was originally a military order for the purpose of supporting
military government (for such were all governments founded in
conquest); and to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose
for which it was established, all the younger branches of those
families were disinherited and the law of primogenitureship set up.
The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this
law. It is the law against every other law of nature, and Nature
herself calls for its destruction. Establish family justice, and
aristocracy falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship,
in a family of six children five are exposed. Aristocracy has never
more than one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are
thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the
unnatural repast.
As everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or less,
the interest of society, so does this. All the children which the
aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general,
cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but
at a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places in governments and
courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.
With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother
contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children,
and by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards
and orphans. They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the
one line, and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore,
therefore, parents to their children, and children to their parents-
relations to each other, and man to society- and to exterminate the
monster aristocracy, root and branch- the French Constitution has
destroyed the law of PRIMOGENITURESHIP. Here then lies the monster;
and Mr. Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph.
Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of
view. We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it
before or behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or
publicly, it is still a monster.
In France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than
what it has in some other countries. It did not compose a body of
hereditary legislators. It was not "'a corporation of aristocracy, for
such I have heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers.
Let us then examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has
resolved against having such a House in France.
Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is
kept up by family tyranny and injustice.
Secondly. Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an
aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of
distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life
by trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and
relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With
what ideas of justice or honour can that man enter a house of
legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a
whole family of children or doles out to them some pitiful portion
with the insolence of a gift?
Thirdly. Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as
inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and
as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man;
and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate.
Fourthly. Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to
nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.
Fifthly. Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of
governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having
property in man, and governing him by personal right.
Sixthly. Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human
species. By the universal economy of nature it is known, and by the
instance of the Jews it is proved, that the human species has a
tendency to degenerate, in any small number of persons, when separated
from the general stock of society, and inter-marrying constantly
with each other. It defeats even its pretended end, and becomes in
time the opposite of what is noble in man. Mr. Burke talks of
nobility; let him show what it is. The greatest characters the world
have known have arisen on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not
been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy. The
artificial NOBLE shrinks into a dwarf before the NOBLE of Nature;
and in the few instances of those (for there are some in all
countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in
aristocracy, THOSE MEN DESPISE IT.- But it is time to proceed to a new
subject.
The French Constitution has reformed the condition of the clergy. It
has raised the income of the lower and middle classes, and taken
from the higher. None are now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty
pounds sterling), nor any higher than two or three thousand pounds.
What will Mr. Burke place against this? Hear what he says.
He says: "That the people of England can see without pain or
grudging, an archbishop precede a duke; they can see a Bishop of
Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester in possession of L10,000 a-year; and
cannot see why it is in worse hands than estates to a like amount,
in the hands of this earl or that squire." And Mr. Burke offers this
as an example to France.
As to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes the duke, or
the duke the bishop, it is, I believe, to the people in general,
somewhat like Sternhold and Hopkins, or Hopkins and Sternhold; you may
put which you please first; and as I confess that I do not
understand the merits of this case, I will not contest it with Mr.
Burke.
But with respect to the latter, I have something to say. Mr. Burke
has not put the case right. The comparison is out of order, by being
put between the bishop and the earl or the squire. It ought to be
put between the bishop and the curate, and then it will stand thus:-
"The people of England can see without pain or grudging, a Bishop of
Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand
pounds a-year, and a curate on thirty or forty pounds a-year, or
less." No, sir, they certainly do not see those things without great
pain or grudging. It is a case that applies itself to every man's
sense of justice, and is one among many that calls aloud for a
constitution.
In France the cry of "the church! the church!" was repeated as often
as in Mr. Burke's book, and as loudly as when the Dissenters' Bill was
before the English Parliament; but the generality of the French clergy
were not to be deceived by this cry any longer. They knew that
whatever the pretence might be, it was they who were one of the
principal objects of it. It was the cry of the high beneficed
clergy, to prevent any regulation of income taking place between those
of ten thousand pounds a-year and the parish priest. They therefore
joined their case to those of every other oppressed class of men,
and by this union obtained redress.
The French Constitution has abolished tythes, that source of
perpetual discontent between the tythe-holder and the parishioner.
When land is held on tythe, it is in the condition of an estate held
between two parties; the one receiving one-tenth, and the other
nine-tenths of the produce: and consequently, on principles of equity,
if the estate can be improved, and made to produce by that improvement
double or treble what it did before, or in any other ratio, the
expense of such improvement ought to be borne in like proportion
between the parties who are to share the produce. But this is not
the case in tythes: the farmer bears the whole expense, and the
tythe-holder takes a tenth of the improvement, in addition to the
original tenth, and by this means gets the value of two-tenths instead
of one. This is another case that calls for a constitution.
The French Constitution hath abolished or renounced Toleration and
Intolerance also, and hath established UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE.
Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the
counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself
the right of withholding Liberty of Conscience, and the other of
granting it. The one is the Pope armed with fire and faggot, and the
other is the Pope selling or granting indulgences. The former is
church and state, and the latter is church and traffic.
But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man
worships not himself, but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience
which he claims is not for the service of himself, but of his God.
In this case, therefore, we must necessarily have the associated
idea of two things; the mortal who renders the worship, and the
IMMORTAL BEING who is worshipped. Toleration, therefore, places
itself, not between man and man, nor between church and church, nor
between one denomination of religion and another, but between God
and man; between the being who worships, and the BEING who is
worshipped; and by the same act of assumed authority which it
tolerates man to pay his worship, it presumptuously and
blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.
Were a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, "An Act to
tolerate or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of
a Jew or Turk," or "to prohibit the Almighty from receiving it," all
men would startle and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The
presumption of toleration in religious matters would then present
itself unmasked; but the presumption is not the less because the
name of "Man" only appears to those laws, for the associated idea of
the worshipper and the worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art
thou, vain dust and ashes! by whatever name thou art called, whether a
King, a Bishop, a Church, or a State, a Parliament, or anything
else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man
and its Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou
believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and
there is no earthly power can determine between you.
With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if
every one is left to judge of its own religion, there is no such thing
as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each
other's religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is
right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is
wrong. But with respect to religion itself, without regard to names,
and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the
Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the
fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from each
other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every
one is accepted.
A Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, or the archbishop who
heads the dukes, will not refuse a tythe-sheaf of wheat because it
is not a cock of hay, nor a cock of hay because it is not a sheaf of
wheat; nor a pig, because it is neither one nor the other; but these
same persons, under the figure of an established church, will not
permit their Maker to receive the varied tythes of man's devotion.
One of the continual choruses of Mr. Burke's book is "Church and
State." He does not mean some one particular church, or some one
particular state, but any church and state; and he uses the term as
a general figure to hold forth the political doctrine of always
uniting the church with the state in every country, and he censures
the National Assembly for not having done this in France. Let us
bestow a few thoughts on this subject.
All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with
principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first
by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or
immoral. Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they
proceeded by persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that
they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?
It proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke recommends. By
engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal,
capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced,
called the Church established by Law. It is a stranger, even from
its birth, to any parent mother, on whom it is begotten, and whom in
time it kicks out and destroys.
The inquisition in Spain does not proceed from the religion
originally professed, but from this mule-animal, engendered between
the church and the state. The burnings in Smithfield proceeded from
the same heterogeneous production; and it was the regeneration of this
strange animal in England afterwards, that renewed rancour and
irreligion among the inhabitants, and that drove the people called
Quakers and Dissenters to America. Persecution is not an original
feature in any religion; but it is alway the strongly-marked feature
of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Take away the
law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original
benignity. In America, a catholic priest is a good citizen, a good
character, and a good neighbour; an episcopalian minister is of the
same description: and this proceeds independently of the men, from
there being no law-establishment in America.
If also we view this matter in a temporal sense, we shall see the
ill effects it has had on the prosperity of nations. The union of
church and state has impoverished Spain. The revoking the edict of
Nantes drove the silk manufacture from that country into England;
and church and state are now driving the cotton manufacture from
England to America and France. Let then Mr. Burke continue to preach
his antipolitical doctrine of Church and State. It will do some
good. The National Assembly will not follow his advice, but will
benefit by his folly. It was by observing the ill effects of it in
England, that America has been warned against it; and it is by
experiencing them in France, that the National Assembly have abolished
it, and, like America, have established UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE,
AND UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CITIZENSHIP.*[7]
I will here cease the comparison with respect to the principles of
the French Constitution, and conclude this part of the subject with
a few observations on the organisation of the formal parts of the
French and English governments.
The executive power in each country is in the hands of a person
styled the King; but the French Constitution distinguishes between the
King and the Sovereign: It considers the station of King as
official, and places Sovereignty in the nation.
The representatives of the nation, who compose the National
Assembly, and who are the legislative power, originate in and from the
people by election, as an inherent right in the people.- In England it
is otherwise; and this arises from the original establishment of
what is called its monarchy; for, as by the conquest all the rights of
the people or the nation were absorbed into the hands of the
Conqueror, and who added the title of King to that of Conqueror, those
same matters which in France are now held as rights in the people,
or in the nation, are held in England as grants from what is called
the crown. The Parliament in England, in both its branches, was
erected by patents from the descendants of the Conqueror. The House of
Commons did not originate as a matter of right in the people to
delegate or elect, but as a grant or boon.
By the French Constitution the nation is always named before the
king. The