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Part IX.
Part IX.
It is not universally true, that France is a fertile country.
Considerable tracts of it are barren, and labour under other natural
disadvantages. In the portions of that territory where things are more
favourable, as far as I am able to discover, the numbers of the people
correspond to the indulgence of nature. ^30 The Generality of Lisle (this I
admit is the strongest example) upon an extent of four hundred and four
leagues and a half, about ten years ago, contained seven hundred and
thirty-four thousand six hundred souls, which is one thousand seven hundred
and seventy-two inhabitants to each square league. The middle term for the
rest of France is about nine hundred inhabitants to the same admeasurement.
[Footnote 30: De l`Administration des Finances de la France, par Mons. Necker,
vol. i. p. 288.]
I do not attribute this population to the deposed government; because I
do not like to compliment the contrivances of men with what is due in a great
degree to the bounty of Providence. But that decried government could not have
obstructed, most probably it favoured, the operation of those causes,
(whatever they were,) whether of nature in the soil, or habits of industry
among the people, which has produced so large a number of the species
throughout that whole kingdom, and exhibited in some particular places such
prodigies of population. I never will suppose that fabric of a state to be the
worst of all political institutions, which, by experience, is found to contain
a principle favourable (however latent it may be) to the increase of mankind.
The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, by
which we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting or
destructive. France far exceeds England in the multitude of her people; but I
apprehend that her comparative wealth is much inferior to ours; that it is not
so equal in the distribution, nor so ready in the circulation. I believe the
difference in the form of the two governments to be amongst the causes of this
advantage on the side of England. I speak of England, not of the whole British
dominions; which, if compared with those of France, will, in some degree,
weaken the comparative rate of wealth upon our side. But that wealth, which
will not endure a comparison with the riches of England, may constitute a very
respectable degree of opulence. M. Necker`s book published in 1785, ^31
contains an accurate and interesting collection of facts relative to public
economy and to political arithmetic; and his speculations on the subject are
in general wise and liberal. In that work he gives an idea of the state of
France, very remote from the portrait of a country whose government was a
perfect grievance, an absolute evil, admitting no cure but through the violent
and uncertain remedy of a total revolution. He affirms, that from the year
1726 to the year 1784, there was coined at the mint of France, in the species
of gold and silver, to the amount of about one hundred millions of pounds
sterling. ^32
[Footnote 31: De l`Administration des Finances de la France, par Mons.
Necker.]
[Footnote 32: Vol. iii. chap. 8 and chap. 9.]
It is impossible that M. Necker should be mistaken in the amount of the
bullion which has been coined in the mint. It is a matter of official record.
The reasonings of this able financier, concerning the quantity of gold and
silver which remained for circulation, when he wrote in 1785, that is, about
four years before the deposition and imprisonment of the French king, are not
of equal certainty; but they are laid on grounds so apparently solid, that it
is not easy to refuse a considerable degree of assent to this calculation. He
calculates the numeraire, or what we call specie, then actually existing in
France, at about eighty-eight millions of the same English money. A great
accumulation of wealth for one country, large as that country is! M. Necker
was so far from considering this influx of wealth as likely to cease, when he
wrote in 1785, that he presumes upon a future annual increase of two per cent.
Upon the money brought into France during the periods from which he computed.
Some adequate cause must have originally introduced all the money coined
at its mint into that kingdom; and some cause as operative must have kept at
home, or returned into its bosom, such a vast flood of treasure as M. Necker
calculates to remain for domestic circulation. Suppose any reasonable
deductions from M. Necker`s computation, the remainder must still amount to an
immense sum. Causes thus powerful to acquire, and to retain, cannot be found
in discouraged industry, insecure property, and a positively destructive
government. Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of France; the
multitude and opulence of her cities; the useful magnificence of her spacious
high roads and bridges; the opportunity of her artificial canals and
navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a solid
continent of so immense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works
of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war
or trade; when I bring before my view the number of her fortifications,
constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made and maintained at so
prodigious a charge, presenting an armed front and impenetrable barrier to her
enemies upon every side; when I recollect how very small a part of that
extensive region is without cultivation, and to what complete perfection the
culture of many of the best productions of the earth have been brought in
France; when I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics,
second to none but ours, and in some particulars not second; when I
contemplate the grand foundations of charity, public and private; when I
survey the state of all the arts that beautify and polish life; when I reckon
the men she has bred for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the
multitude of her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her
critics, her historians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred and
profane; I behold in all this something which awes and commands the
imagination, which checks the mind on the brink of precipitate and
indiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should very seriously
examine, what and how great are the latent vices that could authorize us at
once to level so spacious a fabric with the ground. I do not recognize in this
view of things, the despotism of Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of a
government, that has been, on the whole, so oppressive, or so corrupt, or so
negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all reformation. I must think such a
government well deserved to have its excellencies heightened, its faults
corrected, and its capacities improved into a British constitution.
Whoever has examined into the proceedings of that deposed government for
several years back, cannot fail to have observed, amidst the inconstancy and
fluctuation natural to courts, an earnest endeavour towards the prosperity and
improvement of the country; he must admit, that it had long been employed, in
some instances wholly to remove, in many considerably to correct, the abusive
practices and usages that had prevailed in the state; and that even the
unlimited power of the sovereign over the persons of his subjects,
inconsistent, as undoubtedly it was, with law and liberty, had yet been every
day growing more mitigated in the exercise. So far from refusing itself to
reformation, that government was open, with a censurable degree of facility,
to all sorts of projects and projectors on the subject. Rather too much
countenance was given to the spirit of innovation, which soon was turned
against those who fostered it, and ended in their ruin. It is but cold, and no
very flattering, justice to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for many
years, it trespassed more by levity and want of judgment in several of its
schemes, than from any defect in diligence or in public spirit. To compare the
government of France for the last fifteen or sixteen years with wise and
well-constituted establishments during that, or during any period, is not to
act with fairness. But if in point of prodigality in the expenditure of money,
or in point of rigour in the exercise of power, it be compared with any of the
former reigns, I believe candid judges will give little credit to the good
intentions of those who dwell perpetually on the donations to favourites, or
on the expenses of the court, or on the horrors of the Bastile, in the reign
of Louis the Sixteenth. ^33
[Footnote 33: The world is obliged to M. de Calonne for the pains he has taken
to refute the scandalous exaggerations relative to some of the royal expenses,
and to detect the fallacious account given of pensions, for the wicked purpose
of provoking the populace to all sorts of crimes.]
Whether the system, if it deserves such a name, now built on the ruins of
that ancient monarchy, will be able to give a better account of the population
and wealth of the country, which it has taken under its care, is a matter very
doubtful. Instead of improving by the change, I apprehend that a long series
of years must be told, before it can recover in any degree the effects of this
philosophic revolution, and before the nation can be replaced on its former
footing. If Dr. Price should think fit, a few years hence, to favour us with
an estimate of the population of France, he will hardly be able to make up his
tale of thirty millions of souls, as computed in 1789, or the Assembly`s
computation of twenty-six millions of that year; or even M. Necker`s
twenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that there are considerable emigrations
from France; and that many, quitting that voluptuous climate, and that
seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge in the frozen regions, and under
the British despotism, of Canada.
In the present disappearance of coin, no person could think it the same
country, in which the present minister of the finances has been able to
discover fourscore millions sterling in specie. From its general aspect one
would conclude that it had been for some time past under the special direction
of the learned academicians of Laputa and Balnibarbi. ^34 Already the
population of Paris has so declined, that M. Necker stated to the National
Assembly the provision to be made for its subsistence at a fifth less than
what had formerly been found requisite. ^35 It is said (and I have never heard
it contradicted) that a hundred thousand people are out of employment in that
city, though it is become the seat of the imprisoned court and National
Assembly. Nothing, I am credibly informed, can exceed the shocking and
disgusting spectacle of mendicancy displayed in that capital. Indeed the votes
of the National Assembly leave no doubt of the fact. They have lately
appointed a standing committee of mendicancy. They are contriving at once a
vigorous police on this subject, and, for the first time, the imposition of a
tax to maintain the poor, for whose present relief great sums appear on the
face of the public accounts of the year. ^36 In the meantime the leaders of
the legislative clubs and coffee houses are intoxicated with admiration at
their own wisdom and ability. They speak with the most sovereign contempt of
the rest of the world. They tell the people, to comfort them in the rags with
which they have clothed them, that they are a nation of philosophers; and
sometimes, by all the arts of quackish parade, by show, tumult, and bustle,
sometimes by the alarms of plots and invasions, they attempt to drown the
cries of indigence, and to divert the eyes of the observer from the ruin and
wretchedness of the state. A brave people will certainly prefer liberty
accompanied with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But
before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure
it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no
other price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal
in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions; and
does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.
[Footnote 34: See Gulliver`s Travels for the idea of countries governed by
philosophers.]
[Footnote 35: M. de Calonne states the falling off of the population of Paris
as far more considerable; and it may be so, since the period of M. Necker`s
calculation.]
[Footnote 36:
Travaux de charite pour
subvenir au manque de Livres. Pound s. d.
vail a Paris et dans les provinces 3,866,920 - 161,121 13 4
Destruction de vagabondage et de
la mendicite 1,671,417 - 69,642 7 6
Primes pour l`importation de grains . 5,671,907 - 236,329 9 2
Depenses relatives aux subsistances,
deduction fait des recouvrements
qui ont eu lieu 39,871,790 - 1,661,324 11 8
___________ __________
Total Liv. 51,082,034 - 2,128,418 Pounds 1 8
When I sent this book to the press, I entertained some doubt concerning the
nature and extent of the last article in the above accounts, which is only
under a general head, without any detail. Since then I have seen M. de
Calonne`s work. I must think it a great loss to me that I had not that
advantage earlier. M. de Calonne thinks this article to be on account of
general subsistence; but as he is not able to comprehend how so great a loss
as upwards of 1,661,000 Pounds sterling could be sustained on the difference
between the price and the sale of grain, he seems to attribute this enormous
head of charge to secret expenses of the Revolution. I cannot say anything
positively on that subject. The reader is capable of judging, by the aggregate
of these immense charges, on the state and condition of France; and the system
of public economy adopted in that nation. These articles of account produced
no inquiry or discussion in the National Assembly.]
The advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with exaggerating the
vices of their ancient government, strike at the fame of their country itself,
by painting almost all that could have attracted the attention of strangers, I
mean their nobility and their clergy, as objects of horror. If this were only
a libel, there had not been much in it. But it has practical consequences. Had
your nobility and gentry, who formed the great body of your landed men, and
the whole of your military officers, resembled those of Germany, at the period
when the Hanse-towns were necessitated to confederate against the nobles in
defense of their property - had they been like the Orsini and Vitelli in
Italy, who used to sally from their fortified dens to rob the trader and
traveller had they been such as the Mamelukes in Egypt, or the Nayres on the
coast of Malabar, I do admit, that too critical an inquiry might not be
advisable into the means of freeing the world from such a nuisance. The
statues of Equity and Mercy might be veiled for a moment. The tenderest minds,
confounded with the dreadful exigence in which morality submits to the
suspension of its own rules in favour of its own principles, might turn aside
whilst fraud and violence were accomplishing the destruction of a pretended
nobility which disgraced, whilst it persecuted, human nature. The persons most
abhorrent from blood, and treason, and arbitrary confiscation, might remain
silent spectators of this civil war between the vices.
But did the privileged nobility who met under the king`s precept at
Versailles, in 1789, or their constituents, deserve to be looked on as the
Nayres or Mamelukes of this age, or as the Orsini and Vitelli of ancient
times? If I had then asked the question I should have passed for a madman.
What have they since done that they were to be driven into exile, that their
persons should be hunted about, mangled, and tortured, their families
dispersed, their houses laid in ashes, and that their order should be
abolished, and the memory of it, if possible, extinguished, by ordaining them
to change the very names by which they were usually known? Read their
instructions to their representatives. They breathe the spirit of liberty as
warmly, and they recommend reformation as strongly, as any other order. Their
privileges relative to contribution were voluntarily surrendered; as the king,
from the beginning, surrendered all pretence to a right of taxation. Upon a
free constitution there was but one opinion in France. The absolute monarchy
was at an end. It breathed its last, without a groan, without struggle,
without convulsion. All the struggle, all the dissension, arose afterwards
upon the preference of a despotic democracy to a government of reciprocal
control. The triumph of the victorious party was over the principles of a
British constitution.
I have observed the affectation, which for many years past, has prevailed
in Paris even to a degree perfectly childish, of idolizing the memory of your
Henry the Fourth. If anything could put one out of humour with that ornament
to the kingly character, it would be this overdone style of insidious
panegyric. The persons who have worked this engine the most busily, are those
who have ended their panegyrics in dethroning his successor and descendant; a
man, as good-natured, at the least, as Henry the Fourth; altogether as fond of
his people; and who has done infinitely more to correct the ancient vices of
the state than that great monarch did, or we are sure he ever meant to do.
Well it is for his panegyrists that they have not him to deal with. For Henry
of Navarre was a resolute, active, and politic prince. He possessed indeed
humanity and mildness; but a humanity and mildness that never stood in the way
of his interests. He never sought to be loved without putting himself first in
a condition to be feared. He used soft language with determined conduct. He
asserted and maintained his authority in the gross, and distributed his acts
of concession only in the detail. He spent the income of his prerogative
nobly; but he took care not to break in upon the capital; never abandoning for
a moment any of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor
sparing to shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field,
sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues respected
by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those, whom, if they had
lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and brought to
punishment along with the regicides whom he hanged after he had famished Paris
into a surrender.
If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admiration of Henry the
Fourth, they must remember, that they cannot think more highly of him than he
did of the noblesse of France; whose virtue, honour, courage, patriotism, and
loyalty were his constant theme.
But the nobility of France are degenerated since the days of Henry the
Fourth. This is possible. But it is more than I can believe to be true in any
great degree. I do not pretend to know France as correctly as some others; but
I have endeavoured through my whole life to make myself acquainted with human
nature; otherwise I should be unfit to take even my humble part in the service
of mankind. In that study I could not pass by a vast portion of our nature, as
it appeared modified in a country but twenty-four miles from the shore of this
island. On my best observation, compared with my best inquiries, I found your
nobility for the greater part composed of men of high spirit, and of a
delicate sense of honour, both with regard to themselves individually, and
with regard to their whole corps, over whom they kept, beyond what is common
in other countries, a censorial eye. They were tolerably well bred; very
officious, humane, and hospitable; in their conversation frank and open; with
a good military tone; and reasonably tinctured with literature, particularly
of the authors in their own language. Many had pretensions far above this
description. I speak of those who were generally met with.
As to their behaviour to the inferior classes, they appeared to me to
comport themselves towards them with good-nature, and with something more
nearly approaching to familiarity, than is generally practised with us in the
intercourse between the higher and lower ranks of life. To strike any person,
even in the most abject condition, was a thing in a manner unknown, and would
be highly disgraceful. Instances of other ill-treatment of the humble part of
the community were rare: and as to attacks made upon the property or the
personal liberty of the commons, I never heard of any whatsoever from them;
nor, whilst the laws were in vigour under the ancient government, would such
tyranny in subjects have been permitted. As men of landed estates, I had no
fault to find with their conduct, though much to reprehend, and much to wish
changed, in many of the old tenures. Where the letting of their land was by
rent, I could not discover that their agreements with their farmers were
oppressive; nor when they were in partnership with the farmer, as often was
the case, have I heard that they had taken the lion`s share. The proportions
seemed not inequitable. There might be exceptions; but certainly they were
exceptions only. I have no reason to believe that in these respects the landed
noblesse of France were worse than the landed gentry of this country;
certabnly in no respect more vexatious than the landholders, not noble, of
their own nation. In cities the nobility had no manner of power; in the
country very little. You know, Sir, that much of the civil government, and the
police in the most essential parts was not in the hands of that nobility which
presents itself first to our consideration. The revenue, the system and
collection of which were the most grievous parts of the French government, was
not administered by the men of the sword; nor were they answerable for the
vices of its principle, or the vexations, where any such existed, in its
management.
Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility had any
considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which real
oppression existed, I am ready to admit that they were not without
considerable faults and errors. A foolish imitation of the worst part of the
manners of England, which impaired their natural character, without
substituting in its place what perhaps, they meant to copy, has certainly
rendered them worse than formerly they were. Habitual dissoluteness of manners
continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more common amongst them
than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope of remedy, though
possibly with something of less mischief by being covered with more exterior
decorum. They countenanced too much that licentious philosophy, which has
helped to bring on their ruin. There was another error amongst them more
fatal. Those of the commons, who approached to or exceeded many of the
nobility in point of wealth, were not fully admitted to the rank and
estimation which wealth, in reason and good policy, ought to bestow in every
country; though I think not equally with that of other nobility. The two kinds
of aristocracy were too punctiliously kept asunder, less so, however, than in
Germany and some other nations.
This separation, as I have already taken the liberty of suggesting to
you, I conceive to be one principal cause of the destruction of the old
nobility. The military, particularly, was too exclusively reserved for men of
family. But, after all, this was an error of opinion, which a conflicting
opinion would have rectified. A permanent assembly, in which the commons had
their share of power, would soon abolish whatever was too invidious and
insulting in these distinctions; and even the faults in the morals of the
nobility would have been probably corrected, by the greater varieties of
occupation and pursuit to which a constitution by orders would have given
rise.
All this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a mere work of
art. To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate
usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to
provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those
privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual
to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to
distinguish him is one of the securities against injustice and despotism
implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to
preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this?
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian
capital of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus, was the
saying of a wise and good man. It is indeed one sign of a liberal and
benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He
feels no ennobling principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all the
artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion,
and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, envious
disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation
of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished
in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed; any void
produced in society; any ruin on the face of the land. It was therefore with
no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my inquiries and observations did
not present to me any incorrigible vices in the noblesse of France, or any
abuse which could not be removed by a reform very short of abolition. Your
noblesse did not deserve punishment: but to degrade is to punish.
It was with the same satisfaction I found that the result of my inquiry
concerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It is not soothing news to my ears,
that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not with much credulity
I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder.
I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked
for in their punishment. An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse. Vices
and abuses there were undoubtedly in that order, and must be. It was an old
establishment, and not frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in the
individuals that merited confiscation of their substance, nor those cruel
insults and degradations, and that unnatural persecution, which have been
substituted in the place of meliorating regulation.
If there had been any just cause for this new religious persecution, the
atheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters to animate the populace to plunder,
do not love any body so much as not to dwell with complacence on the vices of
the existing clergy. This they have not done. They find themselves obliged to
rake into the histories of former ages (which they have ransacked with a
malignant and profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and
persecution which has been made by that body or in its favour, in order to
justify, upon very iniquitous, because very illogical, principles of
retaliation, their own persecutions, and their own cruelties. After destroying
all other genealogies and family distinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree
of crimes. It is not very just to chastise men for the offences of their
natural ancestors: but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate
succession, as a ground for punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts,
except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice
belonging to the philosophy of this enlightened age. The Assembly punishes
men, many, if not most, of whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in
former times as much as their present persecutors can do, and who would be as
loud and as strong in the expression of that sense, if they were not well
aware of the purposes for which all this declamation is employed.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not for
their punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations. As well might we
in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmen for the evils
which they have brought upon us in the several periods of our mutual
hostilities. You might, on your part, think yourselves justified in falling
upon all Englishmen on account of the unparalleled calamities brought on the
people of France by the unjust invasions of our Henries and our Edwards.
Indeed we should be mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon each
other, full as much as you are in the unprovoked persecution of your present
countrymen, on account of the conduct of men of the same name in other times.
We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary,
without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness.
In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the
materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It
may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and
defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supplying the means of
keeping alive, or reviving, dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to
civil fury. History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought
upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition,
hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which
shake the public with the same
- "troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet."
These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws,
prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. The
pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real good. You
would not secure men from tyranny and sedition, by rooting out of the mind the
principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did, you would
root out everything that is valuable in the human breast. As these are the
pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are
kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies,
judges, and captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving, that there
should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the gospel; no
interpreters of law; no general officers; no public councils. You might change
the names. The things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power
must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation.
Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of
evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and
the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise
historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in
their pretexts and the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more
inventive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very
same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing
its principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its
new organs with a fresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad, it
continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcase, or demolishing
the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst
your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with all those, who, attending
only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with
intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under colour of abhorring the ill
principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same
odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.
Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready
instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous massacre of
St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who could think of retaliating on
the Parisians of this day the abominations and horrors of that time? They are
indeed brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not
difficult to make them dislike it; because the politicians and fashionable
teachers have no interest in giving their passions exactly the same direction.
Still, however, they find it their interest to keep the same savage
dispositions alive. It was but the other day that they caused this very
massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of
those who committed it. In this tragic farce they produced the cardinal of
Lorraine in his robes of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this
spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution, and loathe the
effusion of blood? - No; it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors;
it was to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their clergy, to an
alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order, which, if it ought to exist
at all, ought to exist not only in safety, but in reverence. It was to
stimulate their cannibal appetites (which one would think had been gorged
sufficiently) by variety and seasoning; and to quicken them to an alertness in
new murders and massacres, if it should suit the purpose of the Guises of the
day. An assembly, in which sat a multitude of priests and prelates, was
obliged to suffer this indignity at its door. The author was not sent to the
galleys, nor the players to the house of correction. Not long after this
exhibition, those players came forward to the Assembly to claim the rites of
that very religion which they had dared to expose, and to show their
prostituted faces in the senate, whilst the archbishop of Paris, whose
function was known to his people only by his prayers and benedictions, and his
wealth only by his alms, is forced to abandon his house, and to fly from his
flock, (as from ravenous wolves,) because, truly, in the sixteenth century,
the cardinal of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer. ^37
[Footnote 37: This is on a supposition of the truth of this story, but he was
not in France at the time. One name serves as well as another.]
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