The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume IV Part 23

The world will judge of the spirit of our proceeding in those places of France which may fall into our power by our conduct in those that are already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be vulgar. Other times, perhaps other measures; but in this awful hour our politics ought to be made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rect.i.tude. We should have all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it, we may give the law. Never can we a.s.sume this command, if we will not risk the consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough in principle not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister advantage. For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and overborne; the Spaniards, the Prussians, G.o.d knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being at the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels, the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to Jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that, in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust,--that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and in the mean time to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so circ.u.mstanced, that, if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we, then, so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the king of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would not be ours, but they would not be Jacobinized. This is, however, a thing impossible. They must in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. But I must speak plain upon this subject. The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. A fair part.i.tion only ought to be made of those territories. This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects.

Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprised into a virtual breach of faith by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.

My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant ma.s.s from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is, to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of partnership, contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree?

Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear. Spain must think she sees that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France to disable that country, and of course every country, from affording her protection, and in the end to turn the Spanish monarchy into a province. If she saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politics as of the least moment in comparison of the extinction of Jacobinism. But her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it by considerations of the common politics, that is, the questions of power between _state and state_. If we manifestly endeavor to destroy the balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe and the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulnerable part,) from fear of what France may do for Spain hereafter, is it to be wondered that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are, (weaker, indeed, than such a ma.s.s of empire ever was,) should feel the same fears from our uncontrolled power that we give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection of the ancient power of France under a monarchy? It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided.

Switzerland is Jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the progress of French principles in that country. Things cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst ourselves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is, to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politics. Our situation does necessarily render them a good deal involved. And to this evil, instead of increasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power.

See what is in that place the consequence (to say nothing of every other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates,--an English and a Spanish. The English gate is by our policy fast barred against the entrance of any Royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I fear, upon no fixed principle, and with very little judgment. By means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted the Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants, they are a nest of Jacobins, which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in a few words. It is _differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis_. The rest of the seaports are of the same description.

Another thing which I cannot account for is, the sending for the Bishop of Toulon and afterwards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly contrary to the declaration as it is to the practice of the allied powers. The king of Prussia did better. When he took Verdun, he actually reinstated the bishop and his chapter. When he thought he should be the master of Chalons, he called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy wherever they obtained possession. We have proposed to restore religion as well as monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other.

It is very likely that the Jacobin _sans-culottes_, or some of them, objected to this measure, who rather choose to have the atheistic buffoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till they are ready to come forward, with the rest of their worthy brethren, in Paris and other places, to declare that they are a set of impostors, that they never believed in G.o.d, and never will preach any sort of religion. If we give way to our Jacobins in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the government, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the king of France, to whom, as the protector and governor, and in substance the head of the Gallican Church, the nomination to the bishoprics belonged, and who made the Bishop of Toulon,--it does not leave it with him, or even in the hands of the king of England, or the king of Spain,--but in the basest Jacobins of a low seaport, to exercise, _pro tempore_, the sovereignty.

If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned. We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. _It is a religious war_.

It includes in its object, undoubtedly, every other interest of society as well as this; but this is the princ.i.p.al and leading feature. It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National a.s.sembly, from the first day of declaring itself such, in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this subject. In fact, it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system, called the Const.i.tutional Church, was, on the face of the whole proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amus.e.m.e.nt to the people, and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword. The Const.i.tutional clergy are not the ministers of any religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that, in the English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons.

This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant.

Such an idea, in the present state of the world, is too contemptible.

Our business is, to leave to the schools the discussion of the controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of disputants on all sides. It is for Christian statesmen, as the world is now circ.u.mstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risk the subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand alliance all modes of government, as well as all modes of religion. In government, we mean to restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms, we are all agreed in as fundamental in government. The same principle ought to guide us in the religious part: conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas, (for in that point we have no ideas in common,) but to what will best promote the great, general ends of the alliance. As statesmen, we are to see which of those modes best suits with the interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There can be no doubt but that the Catholic religion, which is fundamentally the religion of France, must go with the monarchy of France. We know that the monarchy did not survive the hierarchy, no, not even in appearance, for many months,--in substance, not for a single hour. As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even shattered and impaired.

If it should please G.o.d to give to the allies the means of restoring peace and order in that focus of war and confusion, I would, as I said in the beginning of this memorial, first replace the whole of the old clergy; because we have proof more than sufficient, that, whether they err or not in the scholastic disputes with us, they are not tainted with atheism, the great political evil of the time. I hope I need not apologize for this phrase, as if I thought religion nothing but policy: it is far from my thoughts, and I hope it is not to be inferred from my expressions. But in the light of policy alone I am here considering the question. I speak of policy, too, in a large light; in which large light, policy, too, is a sacred thing.

There are many, perhaps half a million or more, calling themselves Protestants, in the South of France, and in other of the provinces. Some raise them to a much greater number; but I think this nearer to the mark. I am sorry to say that they have behaved shockingly since the very beginning of this rebellion, and have been uniformly concerned in its worst and most atrocious acts. Their clergy are just the same atheists with those of the Const.i.tutional Catholics, but still more wicked and daring. Three of their number have met from their republican a.s.sociates the reward of their crimes.

As the ancient Catholic religion is to be restored for the body of France, the ancient Calvinistic religion ought to be restored for the Protestants, with every kind of protection and privilege. But not one minister concerned in this rebellion ought to be suffered amongst them.

If they have not clergy of their own, men well recommended, as untainted with Jacobinism, by the synods of those places where Calvinism prevails and French is spoken, ought to be sought. Many such there are. The Presbyterian discipline ought, in my opinion, to be established in its vigor, and the people professing it ought to be bound to its maintenance. No man, under the false and hypocritical pretence of liberty of conscience, ought to be suffered to have no conscience at all. The king's commissioner ought also to sit in their synods, as before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I am conscious that this discipline disposes men to republicanism: but it is still a discipline, and it is a cure (such as it is) for the perverse and undisciplined habits which for some time have prevailed. Republicanism repressed may have its use in the composition of a state. Inspection may be practicable, and responsibility in the teachers and elders may be established, in such an hierarchy as the Presbyterian. For a time like ours, it is a great point gained, that people should be taught to meet, to combine, and to be cla.s.sed and arrayed in some other way than in clubs of Jacobins. If it be not the best mode of Protestantism under a monarchy, it is still an orderly Christian church, orthodox in the fundamentals, and, what is to our point, capable enough of rendering men useful citizens. It was the impolitic abolition of their discipline, which exposed them to the wild opinions and conduct that have prevailed amongst the Huguenots. The toleration in 1787 was owing to the good disposition of the late king; but it was modified by the profligate folly of his atheistic minister, the Cardinal de Lomenie. This mischievous minister did not follow, in the edict of toleration, the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes. But his toleration was granted to _non-Catholics_,--a dangerous word, which might signify anything, and was but too expressive of a fatal indifference with regard to all piety.

I speak for myself: I do not wish any man to be converted from his sect.

The distinctions which we have reformed from animosity to emulation may be even useful to the cause of religion. By some moderate contention they keep alive zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism.

Another political question arises about the mode of government which ought to be established. I think the proclamation (which I read before I had proceeded far in this memorial) puts it on the best footing, by postponing that arrangement to a time of peace.

When our politics lead us to enterprise a great and almost total political revolution in Europe, we ought to look seriously into the consequences of what we are about to do. Some eminent persons discover an apprehension that the monarchy, if restored in France, may be restored in too great strength for the liberty and happiness of the natives, and for the tranquillity of other states. They are therefore of opinion that terms ought to be made for the modification of that monarchy. They are persons too considerable, from the powers of their mind, and from their situation, as well as from the real respect I have for them, who seem to entertain these apprehensions, to let me pa.s.s them by unnoticed.

As to the power of France as a state, and in its exterior relations, I confess my fears are on the part of its extreme reduction. There is undoubtedly something in the vicinity of France, which makes it naturally and properly an object of our watchfulness and jealousy, whatever form its government may take. But the difference is great between a plan for our own security and a scheme for the utter destruction of France. If there were no other countries in the political map but these two, I admit that policy might justify a wish to lower our neighbor to a standard which would even render her in some measure, if not wholly, our dependant. But the system of Europe is extensive and extremely complex. However formidable to us, as taken in this one relation, France is not equally dreadful to all other states. On the contrary, my clear opinion is, that the liberties of Europe cannot possibly be preserved but by her remaining a very great and preponderating power. The design at present evidently pursued by the combined potentates, or of the two who lead, is totally to destroy her as such a power. For Great Britain resolves that she shall have no colonies, no commerce, and no marine. Austria means to take away the whole frontier, from the borders of Switzerland to Dunkirk. It is their plan also to render the interior government lax and feeble, by prescribing, by force of the arms of rival and jealous nations, and without consulting the natural interests of the kingdom, such arrangements as, in the actual state of Jacobinism in France, and the unsettled state in which property must remain for a long time, will inevitably produce such distraction and debility in government as to reduce it to nothing, or to throw it back into its old confusion. One cannot conceive so frightful a state of a nation. A maritime country without a marine and without commerce; a continental country without a frontier, and for a thousand miles surrounded with powerful, warlike, and ambitious neighbors! It is possible that she might submit to lose her commerce and her colonies: her security she never can abandon. If, contrary to all expectations, under such a disgraced and impotent government, any energy should remain in that country, she will make every effort to recover her security, which will involve Europe for a century in war and blood. What has it cost to France to make that frontier? What will it cost to recover it? Austria thinks that without a frontier she cannot secure the _Netherlands_. But without her frontier France cannot secure _herself_. Austria has been, however, secure for an hundred years in those very Netherlands, and has never been dispossessed of them by the chance of war without a moral certainty of receiving them again on the restoration of peace. Her late dangers have arisen not from the power or ambition of the king of France. They arose from her own ill policy, which dismantled all her towns, and discontented all her subjects by Jacobinical innovations. She dismantles her own towns, and then says, "Give me the frontier of France!" But let us depend upon it, whatever tends, under the name of security, to aggrandize Austria, will discontent and alarm Prussia. Such a length of frontier on the side of France, separated from itself, and separated from the ma.s.s of the Austrian country, will be weak, unless connected at the expense of the Elector of Bavaria (the Elector Palatine) and other lesser princes, or by such exchanges as will again convulse the Empire.

Take it the other way, and let us suppose that France so broken in spirit as to be content to remain naked and defenceless by sea and by land. Is such a country no prey? Have other nations no views? Is Poland the only country of which it is worth while to make a part.i.tion? We cannot be so childish as to imagine that ambition is local, and that no others can be infected with it but those who rule within certain parallels of lat.i.tude and longitude. In this way I hold war equally certain. But I can conceive that both these principles may operate: ambition on the part of Austria to cut more and more from France; and French impatience under her degraded and unsafe condition. In such a contest will the other powers stand by? Will not Prussia call for indemnity, as well as Austria and England? Is she satisfied with her gains in Poland? By no means. Germany must pay; or we shall infallibly see Prussia leagued with France and Spain, and possibly with other powers, for the reduction of Austria; and such may be the situation of things, that it will not be so easy to decide what part England may take in such a contest.

I am well aware how invidious a task it is to oppose anything which tends to the apparent aggrandizement of our own country. But I think no country can be aggrandized whilst France is Jacobinized. This post removed, it will be a serious question how far her further reduction will contribute to the general safety, which I always consider as included. Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take one precaution against our _own_. I must fairly say, I dread our _own_ power and our _own_ ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded.

It is ridiculous to say we are not men, and that, as men, we shall never wish to aggrandize ourselves in some way or other. Can we say that even at this very hour we are not invidiously aggrandized? We are already in possession of almost all the commerce of the world. Our empire in India is an awful thing. If we should come to be in a condition not only to have all this ascendant in commerce, but to be absolutely able, without the least control, to hold the commerce of all other nations totally dependent upon our good pleasure, we may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard-of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.

As to France, I must observe that for a long time she has been stationary. She has, during this whole century, obtained far less by conquest or negotiation than any of the three great Continental powers.

Some part of Lorraine excepted, I recollect nothing she has gained,--no, not a village. In truth, this Lorraine acquisition does little more than secure her barrier. In effect and substance it was her own before.

However that may be, I consider these things at present chiefly in one point of view, as obstructions to the war on Jacobinism, which _must_ stand as long as the powers think its extirpation but a _secondary_ object, and think of taking advantage, under the name of _indemnity_ and _security_, to make war upon the whole nation of France, royal and Jacobin, for the aggrandizement of the allies, on the ordinary principles of interest, as if no Jacobinism existed in the world.

So far is France from being formidable to its neighbors for its domestic strength, that I conceive it will be as much as all its neighbors can do, by a steady guaranty, to keep that monarchy at all upon its basis.

It will be their business to nurse France, not to exhaust it. France, such as it is, is indeed highly formidable: not formidable, however, as a great republic; but as the most dreadful gang of robbers and murderers that ever was embodied. But this distempered strength of France will be the cause of proportionable weakness on its recovery. Never was a country so completely ruined; and they who calculate the resurrection of her power by former examples have not sufficiently considered what is the present state of things. Without detailing the inventory of what organs of government have been destroyed, together with the very materials of which alone they can be recomposed, I wish it to be considered what an operose affair the whole system of taxation is in the old states of Europe. It is such as never could be made but in a long course of years. In France all taxes are abolished. The present powers resort to the capital, and to the capital in kind. But a savage, undisciplined people suffer a _robbery_ with more patience than an _impost_. The former is in their habits and their dispositions. They consider it as transient, and as what, in their turn, they may exercise.

But the terrors of the present power are such as no regular government can possibly employ. They who enter into France do not succeed to _their_ resources. They have not a system to reform, but a system to begin. The whole estate of government is to be reacquired.

What difficulties this will meet with in a country exhausted by the taking of the capital, and among a people in a manner new-principled, trained, and actually disciplined to anarchy, rebellion, disorder, and impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is, and who may have occupied themselves by revolving in their thoughts what they were to do, if it fell to their lot to reestablish the affairs of France. What support or what limitations the restored monarchy must have may be a doubt, or how it will pitch and settle at last. But one thing I conceive to be far beyond a doubt: that the settlement cannot be immediate; but that it must be preceded by some sort of power, equal at least in vigor, vigilance, prompt.i.tude, and decision, to a military government. For such a _preparatory_ government, no slow-paced, methodical, formal, lawyer-like system, still less that of a showy, superficial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or of men like ladies, least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry,--none of these ever will or ever can lay the foundations of an order that can last. Whoever claims a right by birth to govern there must find in his breast, or must conjure up in it, an energy not to be expected, perhaps not always to be wished for, in well-ordered states. The lawful prince must have, in everything but crime, the character of an usurper. He is gone, if he imagines himself the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after an apparent conquest as before. His task is, to win it: he must leave posterity to enjoy and to adorn it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to be always (I speak nearly to the letter) on horseback. This opinion is the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no event is likely to alter.

A valuable friend of mine, who I hope will conduct these affairs, so far as they fall to his share, with great ability, asked me what I thought of acts of general indemnity and oblivion, as a means of settling France, and reconciling it to monarchy. Before I venture upon any opinion of my own in this matter, I totally disclaim the interference of foreign powers in a business that properly belongs to the government which we have declared legal. That government is likely to be the best judge of what is to be done towards the security of that kingdom, which it is their duty and their interest to provide for by such measures of justice or of lenity as at the time they should find best. But if we weaken it not only by arbitrary limitations of our own, but preserve such persons in it as are disposed to disturb its future peace, as they have its past, I do not know how a more direct declaration can be made of a disposition to perpetual hostility against a government. The persons saved from the justice of the native magistrate by foreign authority will owe nothing to his clemency. He will, and must, look to those to whom he is indebted for the power he has of dispensing it. A Jacobin faction, constantly fostered with the nourishment of foreign protection, will be kept alive.

This desire of securing the safety of the actors in the present scene is owing to more laudable motives. Ministers have been made to consider the brothers of the late merciful king, and the n.o.bility of France who have been faithful to their honor and duty, as a set of inexorable and remorseless tyrants. How this notion has been infused into them I cannot be quite certain. I am sure it is not justified by anything they have done. Never were the two princes guilty, in the day of their power, of a single hard or ill-natured act. No one instance of cruelty on the part of the gentlemen ever came to my ears. It is true that the _English_ Jacobins, (the natives have not thought of it,) as an excuse for their infernal system of murder, have so represented them. It is on this principle that the ma.s.sacres in the month of September, 1792, were justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. _He_ says, indeed, that "the whole French nation is to be given up to the hands of an irritated and revengeful n.o.blesse";--and, judging of others by himself and his brethren, he says, "Whoever succeeds in a civil war will be cruel. But here the emigrants, flying to revenge in the cars of military victory, will almost insatiably call for their victims and their booty; and a body of emigrant traitors were attending the King of Prussia and the Duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most sanguinary counsels." So says this wicked Jacobin; but so cannot say the King of Prussia nor the Duke of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary counsel; nor did the king's brothers, or that great body of gentlemen who attended those princes, commit one single cruel action, or hurt the person or property of one individual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like the military luxury attributed to these unfortunate sufferers in our common cause.

If these princes had shown a tyrannic disposition, it would be much to be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we screened the body of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of which, in spite of all our intermeddling in their Const.i.tution, we could not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their feeble lenity than any blamable rigor, we ought, in my opinion, to leave the matter to themselves.

If, however, I were asked to give an advice merely as such, here are my ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And first, the body and ma.s.s of the people never ought to be treated as criminal. They may become an object of more or less constant watchfulness and suspicion, as their preservation may best require, but they can never become an object of punishment. This is one of the few fundamental and unalterable principles of politics.

To punish them capitally would be to make ma.s.sacres. Ma.s.sacres only increase the ferocity of men, and teach them to regard their own lives and those of others as of little value; whereas the great policy of government is, to teach the people to think both of great importance in the eyes of G.o.d and the state, and never to be sacrificed or even hazarded to gratify their pa.s.sions, or for anything but the duties prescribed by the rules of morality, and under the direction of public law and public authority. To punish them with lesser penalties would be to debilitate the commonwealth, and make the nation miserable, which it is the business of government to render happy and flourishing.

As to crimes, too, I would draw a strong line of limitation. For no one offence, _politically an offence of rebellion_, by council, contrivance, persuasion, or compulsion, for none properly a _military offence of rebellion_, or anything done by open hostility in the field, should any man at all be called in question; because such seems to be the proper and natural death of civil dissensions. The offences of war are obliterated by peace.

Another cla.s.s will of course be included in the indemnity,--namely, all those who by their activity in restoring lawful government shall obliterate their offences. The offence previously known, the acceptance of service is a pardon for crimes. I fear that this cla.s.s of men will not be very numerous.

So far as to indemnity. But where are the objects of justice, and of example, and of future security to the public peace? They are naturally pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil laws, nor their having rebelled against the state as a state, but by their having rebelled against the law of Nature and outraged man as man. In this list, all the regicides in general, all those who laid sacrilegious hands on the king, who, without anything in their own rebellious mission to the Convention to justify them, brought him to his trial and unanimously voted him guilty,--all those who had a share in the cruel murder of the queen, and the detestable proceedings with regard to the young king and the unhappy princesses,--all those who committed cold-blooded murder anywhere, and particularly in their revolutionary tribunals, where every idea of natural justice and of their own declared rights of man have been trod under foot with the most insolent mockery,--all men concerned in the burning and demolition of houses or churches, with audacious and marked acts of sacrilege and scorn offered to religion,--in general, all the leaders of Jacobin clubs,--not one of these should escape a punishment suitable to the nature, quality, and degree of their offence, by a steady, but a measured justice.

In the first place, no man ought to be subject to any penalty, from the highest to the lowest, but by a trial according to the course of law, carried on with all that caution and deliberation which has been used in the best times and precedents of the French jurisprudence, the criminal law of which country, faulty to be sure in some particulars, was highly laudable and tender of the lives of men. In restoring order and justice, everything like retaliation ought to be religiously avoided; and an example ought to be set of a total alienation from the Jacobin proceedings in their accursed revolutionary tribunals. Everything like lumping men in ma.s.ses, and of forming tables of proscription, ought to be avoided.

In all these punishments, anything which can be alleged in mitigation of the offence should be fully considered. Mercy is not a thing opposed to justice. It is an essential part of it,--as necessary in criminal cases as in civil affairs equity is to law. It is only for the Jacobins never to pardon. They have not done it in a single instance. A council of mercy ought therefore to be appointed, with powers to report on each case, to soften the penalty, or entirely to remit it, according to circ.u.mstances.

With these precautions, the very first foundation of settlement must be to call to a strict account those b.l.o.o.d.y and merciless offenders.

Without it, government cannot stand a year. People little consider the utter impossibility of getting those who, having emerged from very low, some from the lowest cla.s.ses of society, have exercised a power so high, and with such unrelenting and b.l.o.o.d.y a rage, quietly to fall back into their old ranks, and become humble, peaceable, laborious, and useful members of society. It never can be. On the other hand, is it to be believed that any worthy and virtuous subject, restored to the ruins of his house, will with patience see the cold-blooded murderer of his father, mother, wife, or children, or perhaps all of these relations, (such things have been,) nose him in his own village, and insult him with the riches acquired from the plunder of his goods, ready again to head a Jacobin faction to attack his life? He is unworthy of the name of man who would suffer it. It is unworthy of the name of a government, which, taking justice out of the private hand, will not exercise it for the injured by the public arm.

I know it sounds plausible, and is readily adopted by those who have little sympathy with the sufferings of others, to wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one ma.s.s by a general indemnity. This cruel indifference dignifies itself with the name of humanity.

It is extraordinary, that, as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction increase in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them every day stronger and stronger. Our ideas of justice appear to be fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt, when it is grown gigantic. It is not the point of view in which we are in the habit of viewing guilt. The crimes we every day punish are really below the penalties we inflict. The criminals are obscure and feeble. This is the view in which we see ordinary crimes and criminals. But when guilt is seen, though but for a time, to be furnished with the arms and to be invested with the robes of power, it seems to a.s.sume another nature, and to get, as it were, out of our jurisdiction. This I fear is the case with many. But there is another cause full as powerful towards this security to enormous guilt,--the desire which possesses people who have once obtained power to enjoy it at their ease. It is not humanity, but laziness and inertness of mind, which produces the desire of this kind of indemnities. This description of men love general and short methods.

If they punish, they make a promiscuous ma.s.sacre; if they spare, they make a general act of oblivion. This is a want of disposition to proceed laboriously according to the cases, and according to the rules and principles of justice on each case: a want of disposition to a.s.sort criminals, to discriminate the degrees and modes of guilt, to separate accomplices from princ.i.p.als, leaders from followers, seducers from the seduced, and then, by following the same principles in the same detail, to cla.s.s punishments, and to fit them to the nature and kind of the delinquency. If that were once attempted, we should soon see that the task was neither infinite nor the execution cruel. There would be deaths, but, for the number of criminals and the extent of France, not many. There would be cases of transportation, cases of labor to restore what has been wickedly destroyed, cases of imprisonment, and cases of mere exile. But be this as it may, I am sure, that, if justice is not done there, there can be neither peace nor justice there, nor in any part of Europe.

History is resorted to for other acts of indemnity in other times. The princes are desired to look back to Henry the Fourth. We are desired to look to the restoration of King Charles. These things, in my opinion, have no resemblance whatsoever. They were cases of a civil war,--in France more ferocious, in England more moderate than common. In neither country were the orders of society subverted, religion and morality destroyed on principle, or property totally annihilated. In England, the government of Cromwell was, to be sure, somewhat rigid, but, for a new power, no savage tyranny. The country was nearly as well in his hands as in those of Charles the Second, and in some points much better. The laws in general had their course, and were admirably administered. The king did not in reality grant an act of indemnity; the prevailing power, then in a manner the nation, in effect granted an indemnity to _him_. The idea of a preceding rebellion was not at all admitted in that convention and that Parliament. The regicides were a common enemy, and as such given up.

Among the ornaments of their place which eminently distinguish them, few people are better acquainted with the history of their own country than the ill.u.s.trious princes now in exile; but I caution them not to be led into error by that which has been supposed to be the guide of life. I would give the same caution to all princes. Not that I derogate from the use of history. It is a great improver of the understanding, by showing both men and affairs in a great variety of views. From this source much political wisdom may be learned,--that is, may be learned as habit, not as precept,--and as an exercise to strengthen the mind, as furnishing materials to enlarge and enrich it, not as a repertory of cases and precedents for a lawyer: if it were, a thousand times better would it be that a statesman had never learned to read,--_vellem nescirent literas_.

This method turns their understanding from the object before them, and from the present exigencies of the world, to comparisons with former times, of which, after all, we can know very little and very imperfectly; and our guides, the historians, who are to give us their true interpretation, are often prejudiced, often ignorant, often fonder of system than of truth. Whereas, if a man with reasonable good parts and natural sagacity, and not in the leading-strings of any master, will look steadily on the business before him, without being diverted by retrospect and comparison, he may be capable of forming a reasonable good judgment of what is to be done. There are some fundamental points in which Nature never changes; but they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to politics. But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs are susceptible of infinite modifications, and of combinations wholly new and unlooked-for. Very few, for instance, could have imagined that property, which has been taken for natural dominion, should, through the whole of a vast kingdom, lose all its importance, and even its influence. This is what history or books of speculation could hardly have taught us. How many could have thought that the most complete and formidable revolution in a great empire should be made by men of letters, not as subordinate instruments and trumpeters of sedition, but as the chief contrivers and managers, and in a short time as the open administrators and sovereign rulers? Who could have imagined that atheism could produce one of the most violently operative principles of fanaticism? Who could have imagined, that, in a commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in an extensive and dreadful war, military commanders should be of little or no account, --that the Convention should not contain one military man of name,--that administrative bodies, in a state of the utmost confusion, and of but a momentary duration, and composed of men with not one imposing part of character, should be able to govern the country and its armies with an authority which the most settled senates and the most respected monarchs scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess I did not foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and not out of my apprehension even for several years.

I believe very few were able to enter into the effects of mere _terror_, as a principle not only for the support of power in given hands or forms, but in those things in which the soundest political speculators were of opinion that the least appearance of force would be totally destructive,--such is the market, whether of money, provision, or commodities of any kind. Yet for four years we have seen loans made, treasuries supplied, and armies levied and maintained, more numerous than France ever showed in the field, _by the effects of fear alone_.

Here is a state of things of which in its totality if history furnishes any examples at all, they are very remote and feeble. I therefore am not so ready as some are to tax with folly or cowardice those who were not prepared to meet an evil of this nature. Even now, after the events, all the causes may be somewhat difficult to ascertain. Very many are, however, traceable. But these things history and books of speculation (as I have already said) did not teach men to foresee, and of course to resist. Now that they are no longer a matter of sagacity, but of experience, of recent experience, of our own experience, it would be unjustifiable to go back to the records of other times to instruct us to manage what they never enabled us to foresee.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Some accounts make them five times as many.

[34] Before the Revolution, the French n.o.blesse were so reduced in numbers that they did not much exceed twenty thousand at least of full-grown men. As they have been very cruelly formed into entire corps of soldiers, it is estimated, that, by the sword, and distempers in the field, they have not lost less than five thousand men; and if this course is pursued, it is to be feared that the whole body of the French n.o.bility may be extinguished. Several hundreds have also perished by famine, and various accidents.

[35] This was the language of the Ministerialists.

[36] Vattel.