156 REFLECTIONS ON THE more public-spirited. Can one hear of the pro- scription of such persons, and the confiscation of their effects, without indignation and horror? He is not a man who does not feel such emotions on such occasions. He does not deserve the name of a free man who will not express them.
Few barbarous' conquerors have ever made so terrible a revolution in property. None of the heads of the Roman factions, when they established "cru- delem Warn Jiastam" in all their auctions of rapine, have ever set up to sale the goods of the conquered citizen to such an enormous amount. It must be allowed in favour of those tyrants of antiquity, that what was done by them could hardly be said to be done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed, their tempers soured, their understandings confused, with the spirit of revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflictions and retaliations of blood and rapine. They were driven beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the return of power with the return of property to the families of those they had injured beyond all hope of forgiveness.
These Roman conflscators, who were yet only in the elements of tyranny, and were not instructed in the rights of men to exercise all sorts of cruelties on each other without provocation, thought it neces- sary to spread a sort of colour over their injustice. They considered the vanquished party as composed of traitors who had borne arms, or otherwise had acted with hostility against the commonwealth. They regarded them as persons who had forfeited their property by their crimes. With you, in your REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 157 improved state of the human mind, there was no such formality. You seized upon five millions sterling of annual rent, and turned forty or fifty thousand human creatures out of their houses, be- cause "such was your pleasure." The tyrant Harry the Eighth of England, as he -was not better enlightened than the Roman Mariuses and Syllas, and had not studied in your new schools, did not know what an effectual instrument of despotism was to be found in that grand magazine of offensive weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved to rob the abbies, as the club of the Jacobins have robbed all the ecclesiastics, he began by setting on foot a commission to examine into the crimes and abuses which prevailed in those communities. As it might be expected, his commission reported truths, exaggerations, and falsehoods. But, truly or falsely, it reported abuses and offences. However, as abuses might be corrected, as every crime of persons does not infer a forfeiture with regard to communities, and as property, in that dark age, was not discovered to be a creature of prejudice, all those abuses (and there were enough of them) were hardly thought sufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for his purposes to make. He therefore procured the formal surrender of these estates. All these operose proceedings were adopted by one of the most decided tyrants in the rolls of history, as necessary pre- liminaries, before he could venture, by bribing the members of his two servile houses with a share of the spoil, and holding out to them an eternal im- munity from taxation, to demand a confirmation of his iniquitous proceedings by an act of parliament.
158 REFLECTIONS ON THE Had fete reserved him to our times, four technical terms would have done his business, and saved him all this trouble; be needed nothing more than one short form of incantation — " Philosophy, Light, Liberality, the Rights of Men."
I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny. which no voice has hitherto ever commended under any of their false colours; yet in these false colours an homage was paid by despotism to justice. The power which was above all fear and all remorse was not set above all shame. Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections with our political poet on that occasion, and will pray to avert the omen whenever these acts of rapacious despotism present themselves to his view or his imagination: •■ May no such storm Fall on our times, where ruin must reform.
Tell me (my muse; what monstrous, dire offence, What crimes could any Christian king incense To such a rage? Was't luxury, or lust.'
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just?
Were these their crimes.' they were his own much more; But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor." * This same wealth, which is at all times tr< and Use nut ion to indigent and rapacious despotism, * The rest of the passage is this: ■■ \\ ho having spent the treasures of his crown, Condemns their luxury to feed his own. And yet this act. to varnish o'er the fhamc Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
rime mi bold, but would be underi-tood \ real, or at least a seeming good: REVOLUTION IN IUANCL". Ij9 under all modes of polity, was your temptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in one object. But was the state of France so wretched and undone, that no other resource but rapine re- mained to preserve its existence? On this point I wish to receive some information. When the states met, was the condition of the finances of France such, that, after economising on principles of justice and mercy through all departments, no fair repartition of burthens upon all the orders could possibly restore them? If such an equal imposition would have been sufficient, you well know it might easily have been made. M. Necker, in the budget which he laid before the orders assembled at Ver- Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name, And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils; But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.
And thus to th' ages past he makes amends, Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell, In empty aery contemplations dwell, And, like the block, unmoved lay: but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temp'rate region can be known, Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone.'
Could- we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure, But to be cast into a calenture.'
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance?
And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day?
Who sees these dismal heaps, hut would demand, WTiat barbarous invader sack'd the land.'
But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king; When nothing,, but the name of zeal, appears 'Twixt our best actions, and the worst of theirs; What does he think our sacrilege would spare, When such th' effects of our devotion are '. " Coopku's Hill, by Sir John Denbam.
160 H\ 1 LECTIONS ON THE sailles, made a detailed exposition of the state of the French nation.* If we give credit to him. it was nol necessary to have recourse to any new impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts of France on a balance with its expenses. He stated the permanent charges of all descriptions, including the interest of a new loan of four hundred millions, at 531,444,000 livres; the fixed revenue at 475,294,000, making the deficiency 56,150,000, or short of 2,200,000, sterling. But to balance it, he brought forward savings and improve- ments of revenue (considered as entirely certain) to rather more than the amount of that deficiency; and he concludes with these emphatical words: "Quel pays, Messieurs, que celui, ou, sans impots et avec de simples objets inappercus, on pent faire disparoitre un deficit qui a fait tant de bruit en FAirope."f As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and the other great objects of public credit and political arrangement indicated in Mons. Keeker's speech, no doubt could be entertained, but that a very moderate and proportioned assessment on the citizens without distinction would have provided for all of them to the fullest extent of their demand.
If this representation of Mons. Necker was false. then the Assembly are in the'highest degree culpable for having forced the king to accept as his minister, and, since the king's deposition, for having employed as their minister, a man who bad been capable of abusing so notoriously the confidence of his master.
• Rapport ilc Moms, le Directeur-G6nera] des finances. I'.iit par ordrc du Hoi a Versailles. Mai.">, 1789.
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 161 and their own; in a matter too of the highest mo- ment, and directly appertaining to his particular office. But if the representation was exact, (as, having always along with you conceived a high degree of respect for M. Necker, I make no doubt it was,) then what can be said in favour of those, who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and general contribution, have in cold blood, and impelled by no necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel con- fiscation?
Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on the part of the clergy or on that of the nobility? No, certainly. As to the clergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order. Previous to the meeting of the states, they had in all their instructions expressly directed their deputies to renounce every immunity which put them upon a footing distinct from the condition of their fellow- subjects. In this renunciation the clergy were even more explicit than the nobility.
But let us suppose that the deficiency had re- mained at the 56 millions, (or £2,200,000, sterling,) as at first stated by M. Necker. Let. us allow that all the resources he opposed to that deficiency were impudent and groundless fictions; and that the As- sembly (or their lords of articles* at the Jacobins) were from thence justified in laying the whole bur- then of that deficiency on the clergy, — yet, allowing all this, a necessity of £2,200,000 sterling will not support a confiscation to the amount of five millions.
* In the constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a com- mittor sat for preparing bills; and none could pass hut those pre viously approved by them. This committee was called lords of articles.
p:J 162 REFLECTIONS ON Till The imposition of.£2,200,000 on the clergy, U partial, would have been oppressive and unjust, but it would not have been altogether ruinous to those on whom it was imposed; and therefore it would not have answered the real purpose of the managers. Perhaps persons Unacquainted with the state of France, on hearing the clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation, may be led to imagine, that previous to the Revolution these bodies had contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They certainly did not con- tribute equally with each other, nor either of them equally with the commons. They both howevei contributed largely. Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the excise on consu- mable commodities, from duties of custom, or from any of the other numerous indirect impositions, which in France, as well as here, make so very large a proportion of all payments to the public. The noblesse paid the capitation. They paid also a land- tax, called the twentieth penny, to the height some- times of three, sometimes of four shillings in the pound; both of them direct impositions of no light nature, and no trivial produce. The clergy of the provinces annexed by conquest to France (which in extent make about an eighth part of the whole, but in wealth a much larger proportion,) paid likewise to the capitation and the twentieth penny, at the rate paid by the nobility. The clergy in the old pro- vinces did not pay the capitation; but they had redeemed themselves at the expense of about twenty- four millions, or a little more than a million ster- ling. They were exempted from tin- twentieths REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 163 but then they made free gifts; they contracted debts for the state; and they were subject to some other charges, the whole computed at about a thirteenth part of their clear income. They ought to have paid annually about forty thousand pounds more, to put them on a par with the contribution of the nobility.
When the terrors of this tremendous proscription hung over the clergy, they made an offer of a con- tribution, through the archbishop of Aix, which, for its extravagance, ought not to have been accepted. But it was evidently and obviously more advantageous to the public creditor, than any thing which could rationally be promised by the confisca- tion. Why was it not accepted? The reason is plain — There was no desire that the church should be brought to serve the state. The service of the state was made a pretext to destroy the church. One great end in the project would have been de- feated, if the plan of extortion had been adopted in lieu of the scheme of confiscation. The new landed interest connected with the new republic, and con- nected with it for its very being, could not have been created. This was among the reasons why that extravagant ransom was not accepted.
The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan that was first pretended, soon became apparent. To bring this unwieldy mass of landed property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast landed domain of the crown, at once into market, was obviously to defeat the profits proposed by the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands, and indeed of all the landed estates 164 REFLECTIONS ON THE throughout France. Such a sudden diversion of all its circulating money from trade to land, must he an additional mischief. What step was taken? Did the Assembly, on becoming sensible of the inevitable ill effects of their projected sale, revert to the offers of the clergy? No distress could oblige them to travel in a course which was disgraced by any appear- ance of justice. Giving over all hopes from a general immediate sale, another project seems to have succeeded. They proposed to take stock in ex- change for the church lands. In that project great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be exchanged. Other obstacles also presented them- selves, which threw them back again upon some project of sale. The municipalities had taken an alarm. They would not hear of transferring the whole plunder of the kingdom to the stock-holders in Paris. Many of those municipalities had been (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indi- gence. Money was no where to be seen. They were therefore led to the point that was so ardently- desired. They panted for a currency of any kind which might revive their perishing industry. The municipalities were then to be admitted to a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the first scheme (if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether impracticable. Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The minister of finance reiterated his call for supply with a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and abbot>, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted a new debt at.'i per cent, creating a new paper REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 165 currency, founded on an eventual sale of the church lands. They issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands made upon them by the bank of discount, the great machine, or paper-mill, of their fictitious wealth.
The spoil of the church was now become the only resource of all their operations in finance — the vital principle of all their politics — the sole security for i the existence of their power. It was necessary by all, even the most violent means, to put every individual on the same bottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty interest to uphold this act, and the authority of those by whom it was done. In order to force the most reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered their paper circulation compulsory in all payments. Those who consider the general tendency of their schemes to this one object as a centre, and a centre from which after- wards all their measures radiate, will not think that I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings of the National Assembly.
To cut off all appearance of connexion between the crown and public justice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to the dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the parliaments, witli all its merits and all its faults, was wholly abolished. Whilst the parliaments existed, it was evident that the people might some time or other come to resort to them, and rally under the standard of their ancient laws. It became however a matter of consideration, that the magistrates and officers, in the courts now abolished, had purchased their places at a very high rate, for which, as well as for the 16'6 REFLECTIONS ON Tin: duty they performed, they received but a very low- return of interest. Simple confiscation is a boon only for the clergy; — to the lawyers some appear- ances of equity are to be observed; and they are to receive compensation to an immense amount. Their compensation becomes part of the national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one exhaustless fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compensation in the new church paper, which is to march with the new principles of judicature and legislature. The dismissed magistrates are to take their share of martyrdom with the ecclesiastics, or to receive their own property from such a fund, and in such a manner, as all those who have been seasoned with the ancient principles of jurisprudence, and had been the sworn guardians of property, must look upon with horror. Even the clergy are to receive their miserable allow- ance out of the depreciated paper, which is stamped with the indelible character of sacrilege, and with the symbols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory paper currency, has seldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy and tyranny, at any time, or in any nation.
In the course of all these operations, at length comes out the grand arcanum; — that in reality, and in a fair sense, the lands of the church (so far as any thing certain can be gathered from their pro- ceedings) are not to be sold at all. By the late resolutions of the National Assembljr, they are indeed to be delivered to the highest bidder. But it is to be observed, that a certain portion only nf the jmrchasc money is to />< laid down. A period of REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 167 twelve years is to be given for the payment of the rest. The philosophic purchasers are therefore, on payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly into possession of the estate. It becomes in some respects a sort of gift to them; to be held on the feudal tenure of zeal to the new establishment. This project is - evidently to let in a body of purchasers without money. The consequence will be, that these purchasers, or rather grantees, will pay, not only from the rents as they accrue, which might as well be received by the state, but from the spoil of the materials of buildings, from waste in woods, and from whatever money, by hands habituated to the gripings of usury, they can wring from the miserable peasant. He is to be delivered over to the mercenary and arbitrary discretion of men, who will be stimulated to every species of extortion by the growing demands on the growing profits of an estate held under the precarious settle- ment of a new political system.
When all the frauds, impostures, violences, ra- pines, burnings, murders, confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, and every description' of tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this Revolution, have their natural effect, that is, to shock the moral sentiments of all virtuous and sober minds, the abettors of this philosophic system imme- diately strain their throats in a declamation against the old monarchical government of France. When they have rendered that deposed power sufficiently black, they then proceed in argument, as if all those who disapprove of their new abuses must of course be partizans of the old; that those who reprobate 168 REFLECTIONS ON THE their crude and violent schemes of liberty ought to be treated as advocates foi servitude. I admit that their necessities do compel them to this base and contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile men to their proceedings and projects, but the supposition that there is no third option between them and some tyranny as odious as can be furnished by the records of history, or by the invention of poets. This prattling of theirs hardly deserves the name of sophistry. It is nothing but plain impudence. Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of any thing between the despotism of the monarch, and the despotism of the multitude? Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large, acting by a suitable and permanent organ? Is it then impossible that a man may lie found who, without criminal ill intention, or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes; and who may repute that nation to be destitute of all wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain such a government with ease, "/• rather to cotijirm it when actually possessed, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and to subject their country to a thousand evils, in order to avoid it '? Is it then a truth so universally acknow- ledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form into which human society can be thrown, that a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits.
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 169 without the suspicion of being a friend to tyranny, that is, of being a foe to mankind?
I do not know under what description to class the present ruling authority in France. It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy. But for the present I admit it to be a contrivance of the nature and effect of what it pretends to. I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract principles. There may be situations in which the purely democratic form will become necessary. There may be some (very few, and very particularly circumstanced) where it would be clearly desirable. This I do not take to be the case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors who had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy, than the sound constitution of a republic. If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance witli a tyranny.* * When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had elapsed from my reading the passage. A learned friend has found it, and it is as follows: To?;t)os to uvto, xal cc/l<I>w 8<<nroTtK<i tcui/ (3f\Ti6vwv, lira! T<i »jMjf/>i<rju«T«, war-wip iKtl Tci iTriTay/jLUTii' kuI a 6fi/iay<oy<K xal 6 KoXafc, ol <iutoi teal dvaXoyot' xui Q 17" REFLECTIONS ON TH1 Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their suf- ferings: but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external consolation. They seem deserted by mankind — overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.
But admitting democracy not to have that inevi- table tendency to party tyranny, which I suppose it to have, and admitting it to possess as much good in it when unmixed, as I am sure it possesses when compounded with other forms; does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all to recommend it?
fA.d\i(TTa EKCtTEjOOl trap' tKaTepois ia-yiovo-tv, ol piv KoKa- (ces irapd Tvpdvvofs, ol 6e oiipaytoyol irapd xols ci'ipois Tols TOlOl/TOtS.
" The ethical character is the same; both exercise despotism over the better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one, what ordi- nances and arrets are in the other: the demagogue too, and the court favourite, are not unfrequently the same identical men, and always bear a close analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respective forms of government, favourites with the absolute monarch, and demagogues with a people such as I have described." — Arist. Politic, lib. iv. cap. 4.
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 171 I do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his works in general left any permanent impression on my mind. He is a presumptuous and a superficial writer. But he has one observation, which in my opinion is not without depth and solidity. He says, that he prefers a monarchy to other governments; because you can better ingraft any description of republic on a monarchy, than any thing of monarchy upon the republican forms. I think him. perfectly in the right. The fact is so historically; and it agrees well with the speculation.
I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human institutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in mortal men.