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Part V.
Part V.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to, national
representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from such a
profane burlesque, and abominable perversion of that sacred institute? Lovers
of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your
assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny of which they have all the
shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit. I am sure many of the
members who compose even the majority of that body must feel as I do,
notwithstanding the applauses of the Revolution Society. Miserable king!
miserable assembly! How must that assembly be silently scandalized with those
of their members, who could call a day which seemed to blot the sun out of
heaven, "un beau jour! ^14" How must they be inwardly indignant at hearing,
others who thought fit to declare to them, "that the vessel of the state would
fly forward in her course towards regeneration with more speed than ever,"
from the stiff gale of treason and murder, which preceded our preacher`s
triumph! What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience, and inward
indignation, they heard of the slaughter of innocent gentlemen in their
houses, that "the blood spilled was not the most pure!" What must they have
felt, when they were besieged by complaints of disorders which shook their
country to its foundations, at being compelled coolly to tell the
complainants, that they were under the protection of the law, and that they
would address the king (the captive king) to cause the laws to be enforced for
their protection; when the enslaved ministers of that captive king had
formally notified to them, that there were neither law, nor authority, nor
power left to protect! What must they have felt at being obliged, as a
felicitation on the present new year, to request their captive king to forget
the stormy period of the last, on account of the great good which he was
likely to produce to his people; to the complete attainment of which good they
adjourned the practical demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their
obedience, when he should no longer possess any authority to command!
[Footnote 14: 6th of October, 1789.]
This address was made with much good nature and affection, to be sure.
But among the revolutions in France must be reckoned a considerable revolution
in their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to learn manners at
second-hand from your side of the water, and that we dress our behaviour in
the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old cut; and have not so
far conformed to the new Parisian mode of good breeding, as to think it quite
in the most refined strain of delicate compliment (whether in condolence or
congratulation) to say, to the most humiliated creature that crawls upon the
earth, that great public benefits are derived from the murder of his servants,
the attempted assassination of himself and of his wife, and the mortification,
disgrace, and degradation, that he has personally suffered. It is a topic of
consolation which our ordinary of Newgate would be too humane to use to a
criminal at the foot of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of
Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and is
allowed his rank and arms in the herald`s college of the rights of men, would
be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of the sense of his new dignity,
to employ that cutting consolation to any of the persons whom the leze nation
might bring under the administration of his executive powers.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The anodyne draught of
oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness,
and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus to administer the
opiate potion of amnesty, powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and
contempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of "the balm of hurt minds," the cup
of human misery full to the brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons, at least as forcible as those which were so
delicately urged in the compliment on the new year, the king of France will
probably endeavour to forget these events and that compliment. But history,
who keeps a durable record of all our acts, and exercises her awful censure
over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget either those
events, or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind.
History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October, 1789, the king
and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter,
lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a
few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the
queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried
out her to save herself by flight - that this was the last proof of fidelity
he could give - that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut
down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed
into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets
and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to
fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had escaped to
seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for
a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant
children, (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous
people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace
in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and
strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcases. Thence they were
conducted into the capital of their kingdom.
Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous
slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed
the king`s body guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an
execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and
beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears,
and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train
were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and
frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations
of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness
of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six
hours, they were, under a guard, composed of those very soldiers who had thus
conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces
of Paris, now converted into a bastile for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars? to be commemorated with
grateful thanksgiving? to be offered to the divine humanity with fervent
prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation? - These Theban and Thracian orgies, acted
in France, and applauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic
enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom: although a
saint and apostle, who may have revelations of his own, and who has so
completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to
think it pious and decorous to compare it with the entrance into the world of
the Prince of Peace, proclaimed in a holy temple by a venerable sage, and not
long before not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence
of shepherds.
At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded transport.
I knew, indeed, that the sufferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to
some sort of palates. There were reflections which might serve to keep this
appetite within some bounds of temperance. But when I took one circumstance
into my consideration, I was obliged to confess, that much allowance ought to
be made for the society, and that the temptation was too strong for common
discretion; I mean, the circumstance of the Io Paean of the triumph, the
animating cry which called "for all the Bishops to be hanged on the
lamp-posts," ^15 might well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on the
foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to so much enthusiasm some
little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into hymns
of joy and thanksgiving on an event which appears like the precursor of the
Millenium, and the projected fifth monarchy, in the destruction of all church
establishments.
[Footnote 15: Tous les Eveques a la lanterne.]
There was, however, (as in all human affairs there is) in the midst of
this joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to
try the long-suffering of their faith. The actual murder of the king and
queen, and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious circumstances of
this "beautiful day." The actual murder of the bishops, though called for by
so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. A group of regicide and
sacrilegious slaughter, was indeed boldly sketched, but it was only sketched.
It unhappily was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre
of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great master, from the school of the
rights of men, will finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not yet
the complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined
superstition and error; and the king of France wants another object or two to
consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is to arise from
his own sufferings, and the patriotic crimes of an enlightened age. ^16
[Footnote 16: It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject
by an eye-witness. That eye-witness was one of the most honest, intelligent,
and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of the most active and
zealous reformers of the state. He was obliged to secede from the assembly;
and he afterwards became a voluntary exile, on account of the horrors of this
pious triumph, and the dispositions of men, who, profiting of crimes, if not
causing them, have taken the lead in public affairs.
Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal`s Second Letter to a Friend
"Parlons du parti que j`ai pris; il est bien justifie dans ma conscience. - Ni
cette ville coupable, ni cette assemblee plus coupable encore, ne meritoient
que je me justifie; mais j`ai a coeur que vous, et les personnes qui pensent
comme vous, ne me condamnent pas. - Ma sante, je vous jure, me rendoit mes
fonctions impossibles; mais meme en les mettant de cote il a ete au-dessus de
mes forces de supporter plus longtems l`horreur que me causoit ce sang, - ces
tetes cette reine presque egorgee, - ce roi, - amene sclave, - entranta Paris,
au milieu de ses assassins, et precede des tetes de ses malheureux grades -
ces perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales, ce cri de Tous
Les Eveques A La Lanterne, dans le moment ou le roi entre sa capitale avec
deux aveques de son conseil dans sa voiture - un coup de fusil, que j`ai vu
tirer dans un des carosses de la reine. M. Bailly appellant cela un beau jour,
- l`assemblee ayant declare froidement le matin, qu`il n`etoit pas de sa
dignite d`aller toute entiere environner le roi - M. Mirabeau disant
impunement dans cette assemblee que le vaisseau de l`etat, loins d`etre arrete
dans sa course, s`elanceroit avec plus de rapidite que jamais vers sa
regeneration - M. Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang coulaient
autour de nous - le vertueux Mounier echappant par miracle a vingt assassins,
qui avoient voulu faire de sa tete un trophee de plus: Viola ce qui me fit
jurer de ne plus mettre le pied dans cette caverne d` Antropophages [the
National Assembly] ou je n`avois plus de force d`elever la voix, ou depuis six
semaines je l`avois elevee en vain.
"Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnetes gens, ont pense que le dernier effort a
faire pour le bien etoit d`en sortir. Aucune idee de crainte ne s`est
approchee de moi. Je rougirois de m`en defendre. J`avois encore recu sur la
route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que ceux qui l`ont enivre de
fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissements, dont d`autres auroient ete
flattes, et qui m`ont fait fremir. C`est a l`indignation, c`est a l`horreur,
c`est aux convulsions physiques, que le seul aspect du sang me fait eprouver
que j`ai cede. On brave une seul mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle
peut etre utile. Mais aucune puissance sous le Ciel, mais aucune opinion
publique, ou privee n`ont le droit de me condamner a souffrir unutilement
mille supplices par minute, et a perir de desespoir, de rage, au milieu des
triomphes, du crime que je n`ai pu arreter. Ils me proscriront, ils
confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai plus.
Voila ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier;
tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera alors moi qui auroit
eu tort de la leur donner."
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentleman of the Old
Jewry. - See Mons. Mounier`s narrative of these transactions; a man also of
honour, and virtue, and talents, and therefore a fugitive.]
Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go to the
length that in all probability it was intended it should be carried, yet I
must think that such treatment of any human creatures must be shocking to any
but those who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here.
Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, and not being illuminated by a
single ray of this new-sprung modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the
exalted rank of the persons suffering, and particularly the sex, the beauty,
and the amiable qualities of the descendant of so many kings and emperors,
with the tender age of royal infants, insensible only through infancy and
innocence of the cruel outrages to which their parents were exposed, instead
of being a subject of exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that
most melancholy occasion.
I hear that the august person, who was the principal object of our
preacher`s triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that shameful
occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children, and
the faithful guards of his person, that were massacred in cold blood about
him; as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange and frightful
transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be more grieved for them than
solicitous for himself. It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds
infinitely to the honour of his humanity. I am very sorry to say it, very
sorry indeed, that such personages are in a situation in which it is not
becoming in us to praise the virtues of the great.
I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object of
the triumph, has borne that day, (one is interested that beings made for
suffering should suffer well) and that she bears all the succeeding days, that
she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the
exile of her friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and the whole
weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene patience, in a manner suited
to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring of a sovereign distinguished
for her piety and her courage: that, like her, she has lofty sentiments; that
she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she
will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she will
fall by no ignoble hand.
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France,
then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb,
which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just
above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began
to move in, - glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour,
and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate
without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she
added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love,
that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace
concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see
such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men
of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped
from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and
calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that
proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart,
which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly
sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of
principle, that charity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which
inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it
touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its
grossness.
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient
chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying
state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long succession of
generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally
extinguished, the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given its
character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it under all
its forms of government, and distinguished it to its advantage, from the
states of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most
brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without
confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through
all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings
into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without
force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged
sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern
authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to
be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made
power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of
life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the
sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by
this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life
is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the
wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding
ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature,
and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a
ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a
woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order. All homage
paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be
regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, are but
fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its
simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are
only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way,
gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we
ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of
cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as
it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by
their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them
from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private
interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see
nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the
part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our
institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons;
so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that
sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their
place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes
as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept
given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems,
is equally true as to states: - Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia
sunto. There ought to be a system of manners in every nation, which a
well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our
country ought to be lovely.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which manners
and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for its support.
The usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed
ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has
acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, by
freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of
tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will
be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long
roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the political code of all power,
not standing on its own honour, and the honour of those who are to obey it.
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot
possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor
can we know distinctly to what hort we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a
mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your revolution was
completed. How much of that prosperous state was owing to the spirit of our
old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be
indifferent in their operation, we must presume, that, on the whole, their
operation was beneficial.
We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find them,
without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have been produced,
and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain, than that our manners,
our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and
with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages
upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the
spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the
clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in
existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments
were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received
to nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging their
ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know
their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not
debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not
aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians,
learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a
swinish multitude. ^17
[Footnote 17: See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here
particularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution
of the former with this prediction.]
If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willing to
owe to ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full as much as
they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our
economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures; are themselves
but effects, which as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew
under the same shade in which learning flourished. They too may decay with
their natural protecting principles. With you, for the present at least, they
all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and manufacturers are wanting
to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentiment
supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the
arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without
these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of
gross, stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time, poor and sordid, barbarians,
destitute of religion, honour, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present,
and hoping for nothing hereafter?
I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that
horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of
conception, a coarseness and a vulgarity, in all the proceedings of the
Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their
science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.
It is not clear, whether in England we learned those grand and decorous
principles and manners, of which considerable traces yet remain, from you, or
whether you took them from us. But to you, I think, we trace them best. You
seem to me to be - gentis incunabula nostrae. France has always more or less
influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and
polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps
with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and
connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have
dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have
given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on
occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from
that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As
things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an
attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced
to apologize for harbouring the common feelings of men.
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those of
his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? - For
this plain reason - because it is natural I should; because we are so made, as
to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable
condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human
greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because
in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because when kings are
hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and
become the objects of insult to the base, and of pity to the good, we behold
such disasters in the moral, as we should behold a miracle in the physical,
order of things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (as it has long
since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our weak, unthinking
pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom. Some tears
might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I
should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense
of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it in real life. With such a
perverted mind, I could never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People
would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since,
have extorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be
the tears of folly.
Indeed the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches,
where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal with
an audience not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men, and who must
apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to
produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation. There, where men follow
their natural impulses, they would not bear the odious maxims of a
Machiavelian policy, whether applied to the attainments of monarchical or
democratic tyranny. They would reject them on the modern, as they once did on
ancient stage, where they could not bear even the hypothetical proposition of
such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the
character he sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would bear what has
been borne, in the midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal day; a
principal actor weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors, - so
much actual crime against so much contingent advantage, - and after putting in
and out weights, declaring that the balance was on the side of the advantages.
They would not bear to see the crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger
against the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers of politics finding
democracy still in debt, but by no means unable or unwilling to pay the
balance. In the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any elaborate
process of reasoning, will show, that this method of political computation
would justify every extent of crime. They would see, that on these principles,
even where the very worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to
the fortune of the conspirators, than to their parsimony in the expenditure of
treachery and blood. They would soon see, that criminal means once tolerated
are soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than through the
highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder for public
benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder
the end; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge,
could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such must be the consequences of
losing, in the splendour of these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural
sense of wrong and right.
But the Reverend Pastor exults in this "leading in triumph," because
truly Louis the Sixteenth was "an arbitrary monarch;" that is, in other words,
neither more nor less than because he was Louis the Sixteenth, and because he
had the misfortune to be born king of France, with the prerogatives of which,
a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of the people, without any
act of his, had put him in possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out
to him, that he was born king of France. But misfortune is not crime, nor is
indiscretion always the greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the
acts of whose whole reign was a series of concessions to his subjects, who was
willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his people
to a share of freedom, not known, perhaps not desired by their ancestors; such
a prince, though he should be subjected to the common frailties attached to
men and to princes, though he should have once thought it necessary to provide
force against the desperate designs manifestly carrying on against his person,
and the remnants of his authority; though all this should be taken into
consideration, I shall be led with great difficulty to think he deserves the
cruel and insulting triumph of Paris and of Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause
of liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause of
humanity, in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of mankind. But there
are some people of that low and degenerate fashion of mind, that they look up
with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings, who know to keep firm
in their seat, to hold a strict hand over their subjects, to assert their
prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard
against the very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these they never
elevate their voice. Deserters from principle, listed with fortune, they never
see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me, that the king and queen of France
(those I mean who were such before the triumph) were inexorable and cruel
tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for massacring the National
Assembly, (I think I have seen something like the latter insinuated in certain
publications) I should think their captivity just. If this be true, much more
ought to have been done, but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The
punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it has
with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to
punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in avenging the crime.
Justice is grave and decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit
to a necessity, than to make a choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the
Eleventh, or Charles the Ninth, been the subject; if Charles the Twelfth of
Sweden, after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor Christina, after the
murder of Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, I am
sure our conduct would have been different.
If the French king, or king of the French, (or by whatever name he is
known in the new vocabulary of your constitution) has in his own person, and
that of his queen, really deserved these unavowed, but unavenged, murderous
attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel than murder, such a person
would ill deserve even that subordinate executory trust, which I understand is
to be placed in him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which he has
outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for such an office in a new
commonwealth, than that of a deposed tyrant, could not possibly be made. But
to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust
him in your highest concerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is
not consistent with reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice.
Those who could make such an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant
breach of trust than any they have yet committed against the people. As this
is the only crime in which your leading politicians could have acted
inconsistently, I conclude that there is no sort of ground for these horrid
insinuations. I think no better of all the other calumnies.
In England, we give no credit to them. We are generous enemies: we are
faithful allies. We spurn from us with disgust and indignation the slanders of
those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation of the flower-de-luce
on their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast in Newgate; and neither his
being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor his having, in his zeal against
Catholic priests and all sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the
term, it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have
preserved to him a liberty, of which he did not render himself worthy by a
virtuous use of it. We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the mansion. We have
prisons almost as strong as the Bastile, for those who dare to libel the
queens of France. In this spiritual retreat, let the noble libeller remain.
Let him there meditate on his Thalmud, until he learns a conduct more becoming
his birth and parts, and not so disgraceful to the ancient religion to which
he has become a proselyte; or until some persons from your side of the water,
to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him. He may then be enabled
to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue, and a very small poundage
on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces of silver, (Dr. Price has
shown us what miracles compound interest will perform in 1790 years,) the
lands which are lately discovered to have been usurped by the Gallican church.
Send us your Popish archbishop of Paris, and we will send you our Protestant
Rabbin. We shall treat the person you send us in exchange like a gentleman and
an honest man, as he is; but pray let him bring with him the fund of his
hospitality, bounty, and charity; and, depend upon it, we shall never
confiscate a shilling of that honourable and pious fund, nor think of
enriching the treasury with the spoils of the poor-box.
To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honour of our nation to
be somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the proceedings of this society of
the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no man`s proxy. I speak only for
myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all communion
with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I assert
anything else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from observation,
not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty
extensive and mixed communication with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all
descriptions and ranks, and after a course of attentive observations, began
early in life, and continued for nearly forty years. I have often been
astonished, considering that we are divided from you but by a slender dyke of
about twenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the two
countries has lately been very great, to find how little you seem to know of
us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation
from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if they do at all,
represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in England. The
vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue, of several petty
cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and
noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that
our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a mark of general acquiescence
in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen
grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink,
whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British
oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the
noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in
number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled,
meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.
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