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Part VIII.
Part VIII.
Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the public debts? Assume
that it was not, and that a loss must be incurred somewhere - When the only
estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting parties had in
contemplation at the time in which their bargain was made, happens to fail,
who according to the principles of natural and legal equity, ought to be the
sufferer? Certainly it ought to be either the party who trusted, or the party
who persuaded him to trust; or both; and not third parties who had no concern
with the transaction. Upon any insolvency they ought to suffer who are weak
enough to lend upon bad security, or they who fraudulently held out a security
that was not valid. Laws are acquainted with no other rules of decision. But
by the new institute of the rights of men, the only persons, who in equity
ought to suffer, are the only persons who are to be saved harmless: those are
to answer the debt who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor
mortgagees.
What had the clergy to do with these transactions? What had they to do
with any public engagement further than the extent of their own debt? To that,
to be sure, their estates were bound to the last acre. Nothing can lead more
to the true spirit of the Assembly, which fits for public confiscation, with
its new equity, and its new morality, than an attention to their proceeding
with regard to this debt of the clergy. The body of confiscators, true to that
monied interest for which they were false to every other, have found the
clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Of course they declared them legally
entitled to the property which their power of incurring the debt and
mortgaging the estate implied; recognizing the rights of those persecuted
citizens, in the very act in which they were thus grossly violated.
If, as I said, any persons are to make good deficiencies to the public
creditor, besides the public at large, they must be those who managed the
agreement. Why therefore are not the estates of all the comptrollers-general
confiscated? ^24 Why not those of the long succession of ministers,
financiers, and bankers who have been enriched whilst the nation was
impoverished by their dealings and their counsels? Why is not the estate of M.
Laborde declared forfeited rather than of the archbishop of Paris, who has had
nothing to do in the creation or in the jobbing of the public funds? Or, if
you must confiscate old landed estates in favour of the money-jobbers, why is
the penalty confined to one description? I do not know whether the expenses of
the Duke de Choiseul have left anything of the infinite sums which he had
derived from the bounty of his master, during the transactions of a reign
which contributed largely by every species of prodigality in war and peace, to
the present debt of France. If any such remains, why is not this confiscated?
I remember to have been in Paris during the time of the old government. I was
there just after the Duke d`Aiguillon had been snatched (as it was generally
thought) from the block by the hand of a protecting despotism. He was a
minister, and had some concern in the affairs of that prodigal period. Why do
I not see his estate delivered up to the municipalities in which it is
situated? The noble family of Noailles have long been servants (meritorious
servants I admit) to the crown of France, and have had of course some share in
its bounties. Why do I hear nothing of the application of their estates to the
public debt? Why is the estate of the Duke de Rochefoucault more sacred than
that of the Cardinal de Rochefoucault? The former is, I doubt not, a worthy
person; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness to talk of the use, as
affecting the title to the property) he makes a good use of his revenues; but
it is no disrespect to him to say, what authentic information well warrants me
in saying, that the use made of a property equally valid, by his brother ^25
the cardinal archbishop of Rouen, was far more laudable and far more
public-spirited. Can one hear of the proscription of such persons, and the
confiscation of their effects, without indignation and horror? He is not a man
who does not feel such emotions on such occasions. He does not deserve the
name of a free-man who will not express them.
[Footnote 24: All have been confiscated in their turn.]
[Footnote 25: Not his brother, nor any near relation; but this mistake does
not affect the argument.]
Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible a revolution in
property. None of the heads of the Roman factions, when they established
"crudelem illam hastam" in all their auctions of rapine, have ever set up to
sale the goods of the conquered citizen to such an enormous amount. It must be
allowed in favour of those tyrants of antiquity, that what was done by them
could hardly be said to be done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed,
their tempers soured, their understandings confused, with the spirit of
revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflictions and
retaliations of blood and rapine. They were driven beyond all bounds of
moderation by the apprehension of the return of power with the return of
property, to the families of those they had injured beyond all hope of
forgiveness.
These Roman confiscators, who were yet only in the elements of tyranny,
and were not instructed in the rights of men to exercise all sorts of
cruelties on each other without provocation, thought it necessary to spread a
sort of colour over their injustice. They considered the vanquished party as
composed of traitors who had borne arms, or otherwise had acted with
hostility, against the commonwealth. They regarded them as persons who had
forfeited their property by their crimes. With you, in your improved state of
the human mind, there was no such formality. You seized upon five millions
sterling of annual rent, and turned forty or fifty thousand human creatures
out of their houses, because "such was your pleasure." The tyrant Harry the
Eighth of England, as he was not better enlightened than the Roman Mariuses
and Syllas, and had not studied in your new schools, did not know what an
effectual instrument of despotism was to be found in that grand magazine of
offensive weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved to rob the abbeys, as
the club of the Jacobins have robbed all the ecclesiastics, he began by
setting on foot a commission to examine into the crimes and abuses which
prevailed in those communities. As it might be expected, his commission
reported truths, exaggerations, and falsehoods. But truly or falsely, it
reported abuses and offences. However, as abuses might be corrected, as every
crime of persons does not infer a forfeiture with regard to communities, and
as property, in that dark age, was not discovered to be a creature of
prejudice, all those abuses (and there were enow of them) were hardly thought
sufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for his purpose to make.
He therefore procured the formal surrender of these estates. All these operose
proceedings were adopted by one of the most decided tyrants in the rolls of
history, as necessary preliminaries, before he could venture, by bribing the
members of his two servile houses with a share of the spoil, and holding out
to them an eternal immunity from taxation, to demand a confirmation of his
iniquitous proceedings by an act of Parliament. Had fate reserved him to our
times, four technical terms would have done his business, and saved him all
this trouble; he needed nothing more than one short form of incantation -
"Philosophy, Light, Liberality, the Rights of Men."
I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny, which no voice has
hitherto ever commended under any of their false colours; yet in these false
colours an homage was paid by despotism to justice. The power which was above
all fear and all remorse was not set above all shame. Whilst shame keeps its
watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be
utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections with our
political poet on that occasion, and will pray to avert the omen whenever
these acts of rapacious despotism present themselves to his view or his
imagination:
- "May no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform.
Tell me (my Muse) what monstrous dire offence,
What crimes could any Christian king incense
To such a rage? Was`t luxury, or lust?
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just?
Were these their crimes? they were his own much more,
But wealth is crime enough to him that`s poor." ^26
[Footnote 26: The rest of the passage is this -
"Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
And yet this act, to varnish o`er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion`s name.
No crime so bold, but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good;
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils;
But princes` swords are sharper than their styles.
And thus to th` ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell,
In empty aery contemplation dwell;
And, like the block, unmoved lay; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temperate region can be known,
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture;
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance?
And rather in the dark to grope our way,
Than, led by a false guide, to err by day?
Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand,
What barbarous invader sacked the land?
But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring
This desolation, but a Christian king;
When nothing, but the name of zeal, appears
`Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs,
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th` effects of our devotion are?"
Cooper`s Hill, by Sir John Denham.]
This same wealth, which is at all times treason and lese nation to
indigent and rapacious despotism, under all modes of polity, was your
temptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in one object. But
was the state of France so wretched and undone, that no other recourse but
rapine remained to preserve its existence? On this point I wish to receive
some information. When the states met, was the condition of the finances of
France such, that, after economizing on principles of justice and mercy
through all departments, no fair repartition of burthens upon all the orders
could possibly restore them? If such an equal imposition would have been
sufficient, you well know it might easily have been made. M. Necker, in the
budget which he laid before the orders assembled at Versailles, made a
detailed exposition of the state of the French nation. ^27
[Footnote 27: Rapport de Mons. le Directeur-General des Finances, fait par
ordre du Roi a Versailles. Mai 5, 1789.]
If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have recourse to any
new impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts of France on a balance with
its expenses. He stated the permanent charges of all descriptions, including
the interest of a new loan of four hundred millions, at 531,444,000 livres;
the fixed revenue at 475,294,000, making the deficiency 56,150,000, or short
of 2,200,000 pounds sterling. But to balance it, he brought forward savings
and improvements of revenue (considered as entirely certain) to rather more
than the amount of that deficiency; and he concludes with these emphatical
words, (p. 39), "Quel pays, Messieurs, que celui, ou, sans impots et avec de
simples objets inappercus, on peut faire disparoitre un deficit qui a fait
tant de bruit en Europe." As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and
the other great objects of public credit and political arrangement indicated
in Mons. Necker`s speech, no doubt could be entertained, but that a very
moderate and proportioned assessment on the citizens without distinction would
have provided for all of them to the fullest extent of their demand.
If this representation of Mons. Necker was false, then the Assembly are
in the highest degree culpable for having forced the king to accept as his
minister, and since the king`s deposition, for having employed, as their
minister, a man who had been capable of abusing so notoriously the confidence
of his master and their own; in a matter too of the highest moment, and
directly appertaining to his particular office. But if the representation was
exact, (as having always, along with you, conceived a high degree of respect
for M. Necker, I make no doubt it was,) then what can be said in favour of
those, who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and general contribution, have in
cold blood, and impelled by no necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel
confiscation?
Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on the
part of the clergy, or on that of the nobility? No, certainly. As to the
clergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order. Previous to the
meeting of the states, they had in all their instructions expressly directed
their deputies to renounce every immunity, which put them upon a footing
distinct from the condition of their fellow-subjects. In this renunciation the
clergy were even more explicit than the nobility.
But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the fifty-six
millions, (or 2,200,000 pounds sterling), as at first stated by M. Necker. Let
us allow that all the resources he opposed to that deficiency were impudent
and groundless fictions; and that the Assembly (or their lords of articles ^28
at the Jacobins) were from thence justified in laying the whole burthen of
that deficiency on the clergy, - yet allowing all this, a necessity of
2,200,000 pounds sterling will not support a confiscation to the amount of
five millions. The imposition of 2,200,000 pounds on the clergy, as partial,
would have been oppressive and unjust, but it would not have been altogether
ruinous to those on whom it was imposed; and therefore it would not have
answered the real purpose of the managers.
[Footnote 28: In the constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a
committee sat for preparing bills; and none could pass, but those previously
approved by them. This committee was called lords of articles.]
Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on hearing the
clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation, may be led to
imagine, that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies had contributed
nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They certainly did not
contribute equally with each other, nor either of them equally with the
commons. They both, however, contributed largely. Neither nobility nor clergy
enjoyed any exemption from the excise on consumable commodities, from duties
of custom, or from any of the other numerous indirect impositions, which in
France, as well as here, make so very large a proportion of all payments to
the public. The noblesse paid the capitation. They paid also a land-tax,
called the twentieth penny, to the height sometimes of three, sometimes of
four, shillings in the pound; both of them direct impositions of no light
nature, and no trivial produce. The clergy of the provinces annexed by
conquest to France, (which in extent make about an eighth part of the whole,
but in wealth a much larger proportion,) paid likewise to the capitation and
the twentieth penny, at the rate paid by the nobility. The clergy in the old
provinces did not pay the capitation; but they had redeemed themselves at the
expense of about 24 millions, or a little more than a million sterling. They
were exempted from the twentieths: but then they made free gifts; they
contracted debts for the state; and they were subject to some other charges,
the whole computed at about a thirteenth part of their clear income. They
ought to have paid annually about forty thousand pounds more, to put them on a
par with the contribution of the nobility.
When the terrors of this tremendous proscription hung over the clergy,
they made an offer of a contribution, through the archbishop of Aix, which,
for its extravagance, ought not to have been accepted. But it was evidently
and obviously more advantageous to the public creditor than anything which
could rationally be promised by the confiscation. Why was it not accepted? The
reason is plain - There was no desire that the church should be brought to
serve the state. The service of the state was made a pretext to destroy the
church. In their way to the destruction of the church they would not scruple
to destroy their country: and they have destroyed it. One great end in the
project would have been defeated if the plan of extortion had been adopted in
lieu of the scheme of confiscation. The new landed interest connected with the
new republic, and connected with it for its very being, could not have been
created. This was among the reasons why that extravagant ransom was not
accepted.
The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan that was first
pretended, soon became apparent. To bring this unwieldy mass of landed
property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast landed domain of the
crown, at once into market, was obviously to defeat the profits proposed by
the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands, and indeed of all
the landed estates throughout France. Such as sudden diversion of all its
circulating money from trade to land, must be an additional mischief. What
step was taken? Did the Assembly, on becoming sensible of the inevitable ill
effects of their projected sale, revert to the offers of the clergy? No
distress could oblige them to travel in a course which was disgraced by any
appearance of justice. Giving over all hopes from a general immediate sale,
another project seems to have succeeded. They proposed to take stock in
exchange for the church lands. In that project great difficulties arose in
equalizing the objects to be exchanged. Other obstacles also presented
themselves, which threw them back again upon some project of sale. The
municipalities had taken an alarm. They would not hear of transferring the
whole plunder of the kingdom to the stock-holders in Paris. Many of those
municipalities had been (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable
indigence. Money was nowhere to be seen. They were therefore led to the point
that was so ardently desired. They panted for a currency of any kind which
might revive their perishing industry. The municipalities were then to be
admitted to a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the first scheme
(if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether impracticable. Public
exigencies pressed upon all sides. The minister of finance reiterated his call
for supply with a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus pressed on all
sides, instead of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and
abbots, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted a new debt, at 3 per
cent., creating a new paper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the
church lands. They issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance
chiefly the demands made upon them by the bank of discount, the great machine,
or paper-mill, of their fictitious wealth.
The spoil of the church was now become the only resource of all their
operations in finance, the vital principle of all their politics, the sole
security for the existence of their power. It was necessary by all, even the
most violent means, to put every individual on the same bottom, and to bind
the nation in one guilty interest to uphold this act, and the authority of
those by whom it was done. In order to force the most reluctant into a
participation of their pillage, they rendered their paper circulation
compulsory in all payments. Those who consider the general tendency of their
schemes to this one object as a centre, and a centre from which afterwards all
their measures radiate, will not think that I dwell too long upon this part of
the proceedings of the National Assembly.
To cut off all appearance of connexion between the crown and public
justice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to the dictators in
Paris, the old independent judicature of the parliaments, with all its merits,
and all its faults, was wholly abolished. Whilst the parliaments existed, it
was evident that the people might some time or other come to resort to them,
and rally under the standard of their ancient laws. It became however a matter
of consideration that the magistrates and officers, in the courts now
abolished, had purchased their places at a very high rate, for which, as well
as for the duty they performed, they received but a very low return of
interest. Simple confiscation is a boon only for the clergy; - to the lawyers
some appearances of equity are to be observed; and they are to receive
compensation to an immense amount. Their compensation becomes part of the
national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one exhaustless fund.
The lawyers are to obtain their compensation in the new church paper, which is
to march with the new principles of judicature and legislature. The dismissed
magistrates are to take their share of martyrdom with the ecclesiastics, or to
receive their own property from such a fund, and in such a manner, as all
those, who have been seasoned with the ancient principles of jurisprudence,
and had been the sworn guardians of property, must look upon with horror. Even
the clergy are to receive their miserable allowance out of the depreciated
paper, which is stamped with the indelible character of sacrilege, and with
the symbols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an outrage upon
credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory paper currency, has seldom
been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy and tyranny, at any time, or in
any nation.
In the course of all these operations, at length comes out the grand
arcanum; - that in reality, and in a fair sense, the lands of the church (so
far as anything certain can be gathered from their proceedings) are not to be
sold at all. By the late resolutions of the National Assembly, they are indeed
to be delivered to the highest bidder. But it is to be observed, that a
certain portion only of the purchase money is to be laid down. A period of
twelve years is to be given for the payment of the rest. The philosophic
purchasers are therefore, on payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly
into possession of the estate. It becomes in some respects a sort of gift to
them; to be held on the feudal tenure of zeal to the new establishment. This
project is evidently to let in a body of purchasers without money. The
consequence will be, that these purchasers, or rather grantees, will pay, not
only from the rents as they accrue, which might as well be received by the
state, but from the spoil of the materials of buildings, from waste in woods,
and from whatever money, by hands habituated to the gripings of usury, they
can wring from the miserable peasant. He is to be delivered over to the
mercenary and arbitrary discretion of men, who will be stimulated to every
species of extortion by the growing demands on the growing profits of an
estate held under the precarious settlement of a new political system.
When all the frauds, impostures, violences, rapines, burnings, murders,
confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, and every description of tyranny
and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this Revolution, have their
natural effect, that is, to shock the moral sentiments of all virtuous and
sober minds, the abettors of this philosophic system immediately strain their
throats in a declamation against the old monarchical government of France.
When they have rendered that deposed power sufficiently black, they then
proceed in argument, as if all those who disapprove of their new abuses must
of course be partisans of the old; that those who reprobate their crude and
violent schemes of liberty ought do be treated as advocates for servitude. I
admit that their necessities to compel them to this base and contemptible
fraud. Nothing can reconcile men to their proceedings and projects, but the
supposition that there is no third option between them and some tyranny as
odious as can be furnished by the records of history, or by the invention of
poets. This prattling of theirs hardly deserves the name of sophistry. It is
nothing but plain impudence. Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole
circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of anything between the despotism
the monarch and the despotism of the multitude? Have they never heard of a
monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary
wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by a
judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large, acting by
a suitable and permanent organ? Is it then impossible that a man may be found,
who, without criminal ill intention, or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such
a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes; and who may repute
that nation to be destitute of all wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in
its choice to obtain such a government with ease, or rather to confirm it when
actually possessed, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and to subject
their country to a thousand evils, in order to avoid it? Is it then a truth so
universally acknowledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form
into which human society can be thrown, that a man is not permitted to
hesitate about its merits, without the suspicion of being a friend to tyranny,
that is, of being a foe to mankind?
I do not know under what description to class the present ruling
authority in France. It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it in a
direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy. But for
the present I admit it to be a contrivance of the nature and effect of what it
pretends to. I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract
principles. There may be situations in which the purely democratic form will
become necessary. There may be some (very few, and very particularly
circumstanced) where it would be clearly desirable. This I do not take to be
the case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no
examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with
them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who had seen the most of those
constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with
their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is
to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it rather
the corruption and degeneracy, than the sound constitution of a republic. If I
recollect rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy has many striking
points of resemblance with a tyranny. ^29 Of this I am certain, that in a
democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most
cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that
kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will
extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury,
than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. In
such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable
condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy
compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds; they have the
plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their
sufferings: but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes, are
deprived of all external consolation. They seem deserted by mankind,
overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.
[Footnote 29: When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had
elapsed from my reading the passage. A learned friend has found it, and it is
as follows:
"The ethical character is the same; both exercise despotism over the
better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one, what ordinances
and arrets are in the other: the demagogue too, and the court favourite,
are not unfrequently the same identical men, and always bear a close
analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respective
forms of government, favourites with the absolute monarch, and
demagogues with a people such as I have described." Arist. Politic.
lib. iv. cap. 4]
But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to party
tyranny, which I suppose it to have, and admitting it to possess as much good
in it when unmixed, as I am sure it possesses when compounded with other
forms; does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all to recommend it? I
do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his works in general left any
permanent impression on my mind. He is a presumptuous and a superficial
writer. But he has one observation, which, in my opinion, is not without depth
and solidity. He says, that he prefers a monarchy to other governments;
because you can better ingraft any description of republic on a monarchy than
anything of monarchy upon the republican forms. I think him perfectly in the
right. The fact is so historically; and it agrees well with the speculation.
I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed
greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of yesterday is
converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But steady, independent
minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as
government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of
satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human institutions as they do of
human characters. They will sort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in
mortal institutions, as it is in mortal men.
Your government in France, though usually, and I think justly, reputed
the best of the unqualified or ill-qualified monarchies, was still full of
abuses. These abuses accumulated in a length of time, as they must accumulate
in every monarchy not under the constant inspection of a popular
representative. I am no stranger to the faults and defects of the subverted
government of France; and I think I am not inclined by nature or policy to
make a panegyric upon anything which is a just and natural object of censure.
But the question is not now of the vices of that monarchy, but of its
existence. Is it then true, that the French government was such as to be
incapable or undeserving of reform; so that it was of absolute necessity that
the whole fabric should be at once pulled down, and the area cleared for the
erection of a theoretic, experimental edifice in its place? All France was of
a different opinion in the beginning of the year 1789. The instructions to the
representatives to the states-general, from every district in that kingdom,
were filled with projects for the reformation of that government, without the
remotest suggestion of a design to destroy it. Had such a design been even
insinuated, I believe there would have been but one voice, and that voice for
rejecting it with scorn and horror. Men have been sometimes led by degrees,
sometimes hurried, into things of which, if they could have seen the whole
together, they never would have permitted the most remote approach. When those
instructions were given, there was no question but that abuses existed, and
that they demanded a reform; nor is there now. In the interval between the
instructions and the Revolution, things changed their shape; and, in
consequence of that change, the true question at present is, Whether those who
would have reformed, or those who have destroyed, are in the right?
To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you would imagine
that they were talking of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of Tahmas
Kouli Khan; or at least describing the barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey,
where the finest countries in the most genial climates in the world are wasted
by peace more than any countries have been worried by war; where arts are
unknown, where manufactures languish, where science is extinguished, where
agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away and perishes under
the eye of the observer. Was this the case of France? I have no way of
determining the question but by reference to facts. Facts do not support this
resemblance. Along with much evil, there is some good in monarchy itself; and
some corrective to its evil from religion, from laws, from manners, from
opinions, the French monarchy must have received; which rendered it (though by
no means a free, and therefore by no means a good, constitution) a despotism
rather in appearance than in reality.
Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country
are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not the
least certain. No country in which population flourishes, and is in
progressive improvement, can be under a very mischievous government. About
sixty years ago, the Intendants of the generalities of France made, with other
matters, a report of the population of their several districts. I have not the
books, which are very voluminous, by me, nor do I know where to procure them,
(I am obliged to speak by memory, and therefore the less positively,) but I
think the population of France was by them, even at that period, estimated at
twenty-two millions of souls. At the end of the last century it had been
generally calculated at eighteen. On either of these estimations, France was
not ill peopled. M. Necker, who is an authority for his own time at least
equal to the Intendants for theirs, reckons, and upon apparently sure
principles, the people of France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions
six hundred and seventy thousand. But was this the probable ultimate term
under the old establishment? Dr. Price is of opinion, that the growth of
population in France was by no means at its acme in that year. I certainly
defer to Dr. Price`s authority a good deal more in these speculations, than I
do in his general politics. This gentleman taking ground on M. Necker`s data,
is very confident that since the period of that minister`s calculation, the
French population has increased rapidly; so rapidly, that in the year 1789 he
will not consent to rate the people of that kingdom at a lower number than
thirty millions. After abating much (and much I think ought to be abated) from
the sanguine calculation of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the population of
France did increase considerably during this later period: but supposing that
it increased to nothing more than will be sufficient to complete the
twenty-four millions six hundred and seventy thousand to twenty-five millions,
still a population of twenty-five millions, and that in an increasing
progress, on a space of about twenty-seven thousand square leagues, is
immense. It is, for instance, a good deal more than the proportionable
population of this island, or even than that of England, the best peopled part
of the united kingdom.
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