Volume IV Part 17 (2/2)
As to England, there may be some apprehension from vicinity, from constant communication, and from the very name of liberty, which, as it ought to be very dear to us, in its worst abuses carries something seductive. It is the abuse of the first and best of the objects which we cherish. I know that many, who sufficiently dislike the system of France, have yet no apprehensions of its prevalence here. I say nothing to the ground of this security in the attachment of the people to their Const.i.tution, and their satisfaction in the discreet portion of liberty which it measures out to them. Upon this I have said all I have to say, in the Appeal I have published. That security is something, and not inconsiderable; but if a storm arises, I should not much rely upon it.
[Sidenote: Objection to the stability of the French system.]
There are other views of things which may be used to give us a perfect (though in my opinion a delusive) a.s.surance of our own security. The first of these is from the weakness and rickety nature of the new system in the place of its first formation. It is thought that the monster of a commonwealth cannot possibly live,--that at any rate the ill contrivance of their fabric will make it fall in pieces of itself,--that the a.s.sembly must be bankrupt,--and that this bankruptcy will totally destroy that system from the contagion of which apprehensions are entertained.
For my part I have long thought that one great cause of the stability of this wretched scheme of things in France was an opinion that it could not stand, and therefore that all external measures to destroy it were wholly useless.
[Sidenote: Bankruptcy.]
As to the bankruptcy, that event has happened long ago, as much as it is ever likely to happen. As soon as a nation compels a creditor to take paper currency in discharge of his debt, there is a bankruptcy. The compulsory paper has in some degree answered,--not because there was a surplus from Church lands, but because faith has not been kept with the clergy. As to the holders of the old funds, to them the payments will be dilatory, but they will be made; and whatever may be the discount on paper, whilst paper is taken, paper will be issued.
[Sidenote: Resources.]
As to the rest, they have shot out three branches of revenue to supply all those which they have destroyed: that is, _the Universal Register of all Transactions_, the heavy and universal _Stamp Duty_, and the new _Territorial Impost_, levied chiefly on the reduced estates of the gentlemen. These branches of the revenue, especially as they take a.s.signats in payment, answer their purpose in a considerable degree, and keep up the credit of their paper: for, as they receive it in their treasury, it is in reality funded upon all their taxes and future resources of all kinds, as well as upon the Church estates. As this paper is become in a manner the only visible maintenance of the whole people, the dread of a bankruptcy is more apparently connected with the delay of a counter-revolution than with the duration of this republic; because the interest of the new republic manifestly leans upon it, and, in my opinion, the counter-revolution cannot exist along with it. The above three projects ruined some ministers under the old government, merely for having conceived them. They are the salvation of the present rulers.
As the a.s.sembly has laid a most unsparing and cruel hand on all men who have lived by the bounty, the justice, or the abuses of the old government, they have lessened many expenses. The royal establishment, though excessively and ridiculously great for _their_ scheme of things, is reduced at least one half; the estates of the king's brothers, which under the ancient government had been in truth royal revenues, go to the general stock of the confiscation; and as to the crown lands, though under the monarchy they never yielded two hundred and fifty thousand a year, by many they are thought at least worth three times as much.
As to the ecclesiastical charge, whether as a compensation for losses, or a provision for religion, of which they made at first a great parade, and entered into a solemn engagement in favor of it, it was estimated at a much larger sum than they could expect from the Church property, movable or immovable: they are completely bankrupt as to that article.
It is just what they wish; and it is not productive of any serious inconvenience. The non-payment produces discontent and occasional sedition; but is only by fits and spasms, and amongst the country people, who are of no consequence. These seditions furnish new pretexts for non-payment to the Church establishment, and help the a.s.sembly wholly to get rid of the clergy, and indeed of any form of religion, which is not only their real, but avowed object.
[Sidenote: Want of money how supplied.]
They are embarra.s.sed, indeed, in the highest degree, but not wholly resourceless. They are without the species of money. Circulation of money is a great convenience, but a subst.i.tute for it may be found.
Whilst the great objects of production and consumption, corn, cattle, wine, and the like, exist in a country, the means of giving them circulation, with more or less convenience, cannot be _wholly_ wanting.
The great confiscation of the Church and of the crown lands, and of the appanages of the princes, for the purchase of all which their paper is always received at par, gives means of continually destroying and continually creating; and this perpetual destruction and renovation feeds the speculative market, and prevents, and will prevent, till that fund of confiscation begins to fail, a _total_ depreciation.
[Sidenote: Moneyed interest not necessary to them.]
But all consideration of public credit in France is of little avail at present. The action, indeed, of the moneyed interest was of absolute necessity at the beginning of this Revolution; but the French republic can stand without any a.s.sistance from that description of men, which, as things are now circ.u.mstanced, rather stands in need of a.s.sistance itself from the power which alone substantially exists in France: I mean the several districts and munic.i.p.al republics, and the several clubs which direct all their affairs and appoint all their magistrates. This is the power now paramount to everything, even to the a.s.sembly itself called National and that to which tribunals, priesthood, laws, finances, and both descriptions of military power are wholly subservient, so far as the military power of either description yields obedience to any name of authority.
The world of contingency and political combination is much larger than we are apt to imagine. We never can say what may or may not happen, without a view to all the actual circ.u.mstances. Experience, upon other data than those, is of all things the most delusive. Prudence in new cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect. A constant vigilance and attention to the train of things as they successively emerge, and to act on what they direct, are the only sure courses. The physician that let blood, and by blood-letting cured one kind of plague, in the next added to its ravages. That power goes with property is not universally true, and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable may mislead us very fatally.
[Sidenote: Power separated from property.]
Whoever will take an accurate view of the state of those republics, and of the composition of the present a.s.sembly deputed by them, (in which a.s.sembly there are not quite fifty persons possessed of an income amounting to 100_l._ sterling yearly,) must discern clearly, _that the political and civil power of France is wholly separated from its property of every description_, and of course that neither the landed nor the moneyed interest possesses the smallest weight or consideration in the direction of any public concern. The whole kingdom is directed by _the refuse of its chicane_, with the aid of the bustling, presumptuous young clerks of counting-houses and shops, and some intermixture of young gentlemen of the same character in the several towns. The rich peasants are bribed with Church lands; and the poorer of that description are, and can be, counted for nothing. They may rise in ferocious, ill-directed tumults,--but they can only disgrace themselves and signalize the triumph of their adversaries.
[Sidenote: Effects of the rota.]
The _truly_ active citizens, that is, the above descriptions, are all concerned in intrigue respecting the various objects in their local or their general government. The rota, which the French have established for their National a.s.sembly, holds out the highest objects of ambition to such vast mult.i.tudes as in an unexampled measure to widen the bottom of a new species of interest merely political, and wholly unconnected with birth or property. This scheme of a rota, though it enfeebles the state, considered as one solid body, and indeed wholly disables it from acting as such, gives a great, an equal, and a diffusive strength to the democratic scheme. Seven hundred and fifty people, every two years raised to the supreme power, has already produced at least fifteen hundred bold, acting politicians: a great number for even so great a country as France. These men never will quietly settle in ordinary occupations, nor submit to any scheme which must reduce them to an entirely private condition, or to the exercise of a steady, peaceful, but obscure and unimportant industry. Whilst they sit in the a.s.sembly, they are denied offices of trust and profit,--but their short duration makes this no restraint: during their probation and apprentices.h.i.+p they are all salaried with an income to the greatest part of them immense; and after they have pa.s.sed the novitiate, those who take any sort of lead are placed in very lucrative offices, according to their influence and credit, or appoint those who divide their profits with them.
This supply of recruits to the corps of the highest civil ambition goes on with a regular progression. In very few years it must amount to many thousands. These, however, will be as nothing in comparison to the mult.i.tude of munic.i.p.al officers, and officers of district and department, of all sorts, who have tasted of power and profit, and who hunger for the periodical return of the meal. To these needy agitators, the glory of the state, the general wealth and prosperity of the nation, and the rise or fall of public credit are as dreams; nor have arguments deduced from these topics any sort of weight with them. The indifference with which the a.s.sembly regards the state of their colonies, the only valuable part of the French commerce, is a full proof how little they are likely to be affected by anything but the selfish game of their own ambition, now universally diffused.
[Sidenote: Impracticability of resistance.]
It is true, amidst all these turbulent means of security to their system, very great discontents everywhere prevail. But they only produce misery to those who nurse them at home, or exile, beggary, and in the end confiscation, to those who are so impatient as to remove from them.
Each munic.i.p.al republic has a _Committee_, or something in the nature of a _Committee of Research_. In these petty republics the tyranny is so near its object that it becomes instantly acquainted with every act of every man. It stifles conspiracy in its very first movements. Their power is absolute and uncontrollable. No stand can be made against it.
These republics are besides so disconnected, that very little intelligence of what happens in them is to be obtained beyond their own bounds, except by the means of their clubs, who keep up a constant correspondence, and who give what color they please to such facts as they choose to communicate out of the track of their correspondence.
<script>