The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Note On the Texts Used In This Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Vindiciae Gallicae
• Advertisement to the Third Edition
• Introduction
• Section I: The General Expediency and Necessity of a Revolution In France.
• Section II: Of the Composition and Character of the National Assembly.
• Section III: Popular Excesses Which Attended the Revolution.
• Section IV: New Constitution of France. *
• Section V: English Admirers Vindicated.
• Section VI: Speculations On the Probable Consequences of the French Revolution In Europe.
• A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt
• A Discourse On the Law of Nature and Nations <341>
• Appendix to the “discourse”: Extracts From the Lectures
• On the State of France In 1815. <184><185>
• Appendix to “on the State of France In 1815”
• Dramatis Personae

On the State of France in 1815.<184><185>

To appreciate the effects of the French Revolution on the people of France, is an undertaking for which no man now alive has sufficient materials, or sufficient impartiality, even if he had sufficient ability. It is a task from which Tacitus and Machiavel would have shrunk; and to which the little pamphleteers, who speak on it with dogmatism, prove themselves so unequal by their presumption, that men of sense do not wait for the additional proof which is always amply furnished by their performances. The French Revolution was a destruction of great abuses, executed with much violence, injustice, and inhumanity. The destruction of abuse is, in itself, and for so much, a good: injustice and inhumanity would cease to be vices, if they were not productive of great mischief to society. This is a most perplexing account to balance.

As applied, for instance, to the cultivators and cultivation of France, there seems no reason to doubt the unanimous testimony of all travellers and observers, that agriculture has advanced, and that the condition of the agricultural population has been sensibly improved. M. de la Place calculates agricultural produce to have increased one fifth during<186> the last twenty-five years. M. Cuvier, an unprejudiced and dispassionate man, rather friendly than adverse to much of what the Revolution destroyed, and who, in his frequent journeys through France, surveyed the country with the eyes of a naturalist and a politician, bears the most decisive testimony to the same general result. M. de Candolle, a very able and enlightened Genevese, who is Professor of Botany at Montpellier, is preparing for the press the fruit of several years devoted to the survey of French cultivation, in which we are promised the detailed proofs of its progress.1 The apprehensions lately entertained by the landed interest of England, and countenanced by no less an authority than that of Mr. Malthus, that France, as a permanent exporter of corn, would supply our market, and drive our inferior lands out of cultivation,—though we consider them as extremely unreasonable,—must be allowed to be of some weight in this question.2 No such dread of the rivalship of French corn-growers was ever felt or affected in this country in former times. Lastly, the evidence of Mr. Birkbeck, an independent thinker, a shrewd observer, and an experienced farmer, though his journey was rapid, and though he perhaps wished to find benefits resulting from the Revolution, must be allowed to be of high value.3

But whatever may have been the benefits conferred by the Revolution on the cultivators, supposing them to have been more questionable than they appear to have been, it is at all events obvious, that the division of the confiscated lands among the peasantry must have given that body an interest and a pride in the maintenance of the order or disorder which that revolution had produced. All confiscation is unjust. The French confiscation, being the most extensive, is the most abominable example of that species of legal robbery. But we speak only of its political effects on the temper of the peasantry. These effects are by no means confined to those who had become proprietors. The promotion of many inspired all with<187> pride: the whole class was raised in self-importance by the proprietary dignity acquired by numerous individuals. Nor must it be supposed that the apprehensions of such a rabble of ignorant owners, who had acquired their ownerships by means of which their own conscience would distrust the fairness, were to be proportioned to the reasonable probabilities of danger. The alarms of a multitude for objects very valuable to them, are always extravagantly beyond the degree of the risk, especially when they are strengthened by any sense, however faint and indistinct, of injustice, which, by the immutable laws of human nature, stamps every possession which suggests it with a mark of insecurity. It is a panic fear;—one of those fears which are so rapidly spread and so violently exaggerated by sympathy, that the lively fancy of the ancients represented them as inflicted by a superior power.

Exemption from manorial rights and feudal services was not merely, nor perhaps principally, considered by the French farmers as a relief from oppression. They were connected with the exulting recollections of deliverance from a yoke,—of a triumph over superiors,—aided even by the remembrance of the licentiousness with which they had exercised their saturnalian privileges in the first moments of their short and ambiguous liberty. They recollected these distinctions as an emancipation of their caste. The interest, the pride, the resentment, and the fear, had a great tendency to make the maintenance of these changes a point of honour among the whole peasantry of France. On this subject, perhaps, they were likely to acquire that jealousy and susceptibility which the dispersed population of the country rarely exhibit, unless when their religion, or their national pride, or their ancient usages, are violently attacked. The only security for these objects would appear to them to be a government arising, like their own property and privileges, out of the Revolution.

We are far from commending these sentiments, and<188> still farther from confounding them with the spirit of liberty. If the forms of a free constitution could have been preserved under a counter-revolutionary government, perhaps these hostile dispositions of the peasants and new proprietors against such a government, might have been gradually mitigated and subdued into being one of the auxiliaries of freedom. But, in the present state of France, there are unhappily no elements of such combinations. There is no such class as landed gentry,—no great proprietors resident on their estates,—consequently no leaders of this dispersed population, to give them permanent influence on the public counsels, to animate their general sluggishness, or to restrain their occasional violence. In such a state they must, in general, be inert;—in particular matters, which touch their own prejudices and supposed interest, unreasonable and irresistible. The extreme subdivision of landed property might, under some circumstances, be favourable to a democratical government. Under a limited monarchy it is destructive of liberty, because it annihilates the strongest bulwarks against the power of the crown. Having no body of great proprietors, it delivers the monarch from all regular and constant restraint, and from every apprehension but that of an inconstant and often servile populace. And, melancholy as the conclusion is, it seems too probable that the present state of property and prejudice among the larger part of the people of France, rather disposes them towards a despotism deriving its sole title from the Revolution, and interested in maintaining the system of society which it has established, and armed with that tyrannical power which may be necessary for its maintenance.

Observations of a somewhat similar nature are applicable to other classes of the French population. Many of the tradesmen and merchants, as well as of the numerous bodies of commissaries and contractors grown rich by war, had become landed proprietors. These classes in general had participated in the early<189> movements of the Revolution. They had indeed generally shrunk from its horrors; but they had associated their pride, their quiet, almost their moral character, with its success, by extensive purchases of confiscated land. These feelings were not to be satisfied by any assurances, however solemn and repeated, or however sincere, that the sales of national property were to be inviolable. The necessity of such assurance continually reminded them of the odiousness of their acquisitions, and of the light in which the acquirers were considered by the government. Their property was to be spared as an evil, incorrigible from its magnitude. What they must have desired, was a government from whom no such assurances could have been necessary.

The middle classes in cities were precisely those who had been formerly humbled, mortified, and exasperated by the privileges of the nobility,—for whom the Revolution was a triumph over those who, in the daily intercourse of life, treated them with constant disdain,—and whom that Revolution raised to the vacant place of these desposed chiefs. The vanity of that numerous, intelligent, and active part of the community—merchants, bankers, manufacturers, tradesmen, lawyers, attorneys, physicians, surgeons, artists, actors, men of letters—had been humbled by the monarchy, and had triumphed in the Revolution: they rushed into the stations which the gentry—emigrant, beggared, or proscribed—could no longer fill: the whole government fell into their hands.

Buonaparte’s nobility was an institution framed to secure the triumph of all these vanities, and to provide against the possibility of a second humiliation. It was a body composed of a Revolutionary aristocracy, with some of the ancient nobility,—either rewarded for their services to the Revolution, by its highest dignities, or compelled to lend lustre to it, by accepting in it secondary ranks, with titles inferior to their own,—and with many lawyers, men of letters,<190> merchants, physicians, &c., who often receive inferior marks of honour in England, but whom the ancient system of the French monarchy had rigorously excluded from such distinctions. The military principle predominated, not only from the nature of the government, but because military distinction was the purest that was earned during the Revolution. The Legion of Honour spread the same principle through the whole army, which probably contained six-and-thirty thousand out of the forty thousand who composed the order. The whole of these institutions was an array of new against old vanities,—of that of the former roturiers against that of the former nobility. The new knights and nobles were daily reminded by their badges, or titles, of their interest to resist the re-establishment of a system which would have perpetuated their humiliation. The real operation of these causes was visible during the short reign of Louis XVIII. Military men, indeed, had the courage to display their decorations, and to avow their titles: but most civilians were ashamed, or afraid, to use their new names of dignity; they were conveyed, if at all, in a subdued voice, almost in a whisper; they were considered as extremely unfashionable and vulgar. Talleyrand renounced his title of Prince of Beneventum; and Massena’s resumption of his dignity of Prince was regarded as an act of audacity, if not of intentional defiance.

From these middle classes were chosen another body, who were necessarily attached to the Revolutionary government,—the immense body of civil officers who were placed in all the countries directly or indirectly subject to France,—in Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Holland, in the Netherlands,—for the purposes of administration of finance, and of late to enforce the vain prohibition of commerce with England. These were all thrown back on France by the peace. They had no hope of employment: their gratitude, their resentment, and their expectations bound them to the fortune of Napoleon.<191>

The number of persons in France interested, directly or indirectly, in the sale of confiscated property—by original purchase, by some part in the successive transfers, by mortgage, or by expectancy,—has been computed to be ten millions. This must be a great exaggeration: but one half of that number would be more than sufficient to give colour to the general sentiment. Though the lands of the Church and the Crown were never regarded in the same invidious light with those of private owners, yet the whole mass of confiscation was held together by its Revolutionary origin: the possessors of the most odious part were considered as the outposts and advanced guards of the rest. The purchasers of small lots were peasants; those of considerable estates were the better classes of the inhabitants of cities. Yet, in spite of the powerful causes which attached these last to the Revolution, it is certain, that among the class called “La bonne bourgeoisie” are to be found the greatest number of those who approved the restoration of the Bourbons as the means of security and quiet. They were weary of revolution, and they dreaded confusion: but they are inert and timid, and almost as little qualified to defend a throne as they are disposed to overthrow it. Unfortunately, their voice, of great weight in the administration of regular governments, is scarcely heard in convulsions. They are destined to stoop to the bold;—too often, though with vain sorrow and indignation, to crouch under the yoke of the guilty and the desperate.

The populace of great towns (a most important constituent part of a free community, when the union of liberal institutions, with a vigorous authority, provides both a vent for their sentiments, and a curb on their violence,) have, throughout the French Revolution, showed at once all the varieties and excesses of plebeian passions, and all the peculiarities of the French national character in their most exaggerated state. The love of show, or of change,—the rage for liberty or slavery, for war or for peace, soon<192> wearing itself out into disgust and weariness,—the idolatrous worship of demagogues, soon abandoned, and at last cruelly persecuted,—the envy of wealth, or the servile homage paid to it,—all these, in every age, in every place, from Athens to Paris, have characterised a populace not educated by habits of reverence for the laws, or bound by ties of character and palpable interest to the other classes of a free commonwealth. When the Parisian mob were restrained by a strong government, and compelled to renounce their democratic orgies, they became proud of conquest,—proud of the splendour of their despotism,—proud of the magnificence of its exhibitions and its monuments. Men may be so brutalised as to be proud of their chains. That sort of interest in public concerns, which the poor, in their intervals of idleness, and especially when they are met together, feel perhaps more strongly than other classes more constantly occupied with prudential cares, overflowed into new channels. They applauded a general or a tyrant, as they had applauded Robespierre, and worshipped Marat. They applauded the triumphal entry of a foreign army within their walls as a grand show; and they huzzaed the victorious sovereigns, as they would have celebrated the triumph of a French general. The return of the Bourbons was a novelty, and a sight, which, as such, might amuse them for a day; but the establishment of a pacific and frugal government, with an infirm monarch and a gloomy court, without sights or donatives, and the cessation of the gigantic works constructed to adorn Paris, were sure enough to alienate the Parisian populace. There was neither vigour to overawe them,—nor brilliancy to intoxicate them,—nor foreign enterprise to divert their attention.

Among the separate parties into which every people is divided, the Protestants are to be regarded as a body of no small importance in France. Their numbers were rated at between two and three millions; but their importance was not to be estimated<193> by their numerical strength. Their identity of interest,—their habits of concert,—their common wrongs and resentments,—gave them far more strength than a much larger number of a secure, lazy, and dispirited majority. It was, generally speaking, impossible that French Protestants should wish well to the family of Louis XIV., peculiarly supported as it was by the Catholic party. The lenity with which they had long been treated, was ascribed more to the liberality of the age than that of the Government. Till the year 1788, even their marriages and their inheritances had depended more upon the connivance of the tribunals, than upon the sanction of the law. The petty vexations, and ineffectual persecution of systematic exclusion from public offices, and the consequent degradation of their body in public opinion, long survived the detestable but effectual persecution which had been carried on by missionary dragoons, and which had benevolently left them the choice to be hypocrites, or exiles, or galley-slaves. The Revolution first gave them a secure and effective equality with the Catholics, and a real admission into civil office. It is to be feared that they may have sometimes exulted over the sufferings of the Catholic Church, and thereby contracted some part of the depravity of their ancient persecutors. But it cannot be doubted that they were generally attached to the Revolution, and to governments founded on it.

The same observations may be applied, without repetition, to other sects of Dissidents. Of all the lessons of history, there is none more evident in itself, and more uniformly neglected by governments, than that persecutions, disabilities, exclusions,—all systematic wrong to great bodies of citizens,—are sooner or later punished; though the punishment often falls on individuals, who are not only innocent, but who may have had the merit of labouring to repair the wrong.

The voluntary associations which have led or influenced the people during the Revolution, are a very material object in a review like the present. The<194> very numerous body who, as Jacobins or Terrorists, had participated in the atrocities of 1793 and 1794, had, in the exercise of tyranny, sufficiently unlearned the crude notions of liberty with which they had set out. But they all required a government established on Revolutionary foundations. They all took refuge under Buonaparte’s authority. The more base accepted clandestine pensions or insignificant places: Barrere wrote slavish paragraphs at Paris; Tallien was provided for by an obscure or a nominal consulship in Spain. Fouché, who conducted this part of the system, thought the removal of an active Jacobin to a province cheaply purchased by five hundred a year. Fouché, himself, one of the most atrocious of the Terrorists, had been gradually formed into a good administrator under a civilized despotism,—regardless indeed of forms, but paying considerable respect to the substance, and especially to the appearance of justice,—never shrinking from what was necessary to crush a formidable enemy, but carefully avoiding wanton cruelty and unnecessary evil. His administration, during the earlier and better part of Napoleon’s government, had so much repaired the faults of his former life, that the appointment of Savary to the police was one of the most alarming acts of the internal policy during the violent period which followed the invasion of Spain.

At the head of this sort of persons, not indeed in guilt, but in the conspicuous nature of the act in which they had participated, were the Regicides. The execution of Louis XVI. being both unjust and illegal, was unquestionably an atrocious murder: but it would argue great bigotry and ignorance of human nature, not to be aware, that many who took a share in it must have viewed it in a directly opposite light. Mr. Hume himself, with all his passion for monarchy, admits that Cromwell probably considered his share in the death of Charles I. as one of his most distinguished merits.4 Some of those who voted for the death of Louis XVI. have proved that they acted only from erroneous judgment, by<195> the decisive evidence of a virtuous life. One of them perished in Guiana, the victim of an attempt to restore the Royal Family.5 But though among the hundreds who voted for the death of that unfortunate Prince, there might be seen every shade of morality from the blackest depravity to the very confines of purity—at least in sentiment, it was impossible that any of them could be contemplated without horror by the brothers and daughter of the murdered Monarch. Nor would it be less vain to expect that the objects of this hatred should fail to support those Revolutionary authorities, which secured them from punishment,—which covered them from contempt by station and opulence,—and which compelled the monarchs of Europe to receive them into their palaces as ambassadors. They might be—the far greater part of them certainly had become—indifferent to liberty,—perhaps partial to that exercise of unlimited power to which they had been accustomed under what they called a “free” government: but they could not be indifferent in their dislike of a government, under which their very best condition was that of pardoned criminals, whose criminality was the more odious on account of the sad necessity which made it pardoned. All the Terrorists, and almost all the Regicides, had accordingly accepted emoluments and honours from Napoleon, and were eager to support his authority as a Revolutionary despotism, strong enough to protect them from general unpopularity, and to ensure them against the vengeance or the humiliating mercy of a Bourbon government.

Another party of Revolutionists had committed great errors in the beginning, which co-operated with the alternate obstinacy and feebleness of the Counter-revolutionists, to produce all the evils which we feel and fear, and which can only be excused by their own inexperience in legislation, and by the prevalence of erroneous opinions, at that period, throughout the most enlightened part of Europe. These were the best leaders of the Constituent Assembly, who never<196> relinquished the cause of liberty, nor disgraced it by submissions to tyranny, or participation in guilt.

The best representative of this small class, is M. de La Fayette, a man of the purest honour in private life, who has devoted himself to the defence of liberty from his earliest youth. He may have committed some mistakes in opinion; but his heart has always been worthy of the friend of Washington and of Fox. In due time the world will see how victoriously he refutes the charges against him of misconduct towards the Royal Family, when the palace of Versailles was attacked by the mob, and when the King escaped to Varennes. Having hazarded his life to preserve Louis XVI., he was imprisoned in various dungeons, by Powers, who at the same time released Regicides. His wife fell a victim to her conjugal heroism. His liberty was obtained by Buonaparte, who paid court to him during the short period of apparent liberality and moderation which opened his political career. M. de la Fayette repaid him, by faithful counsel; and when he saw his rapid strides towards arbitrary power, he terminated all correspondence with him, by a letter, which breathes the calm dignity of constant and intrepid virtue. In the choice of evils, he considered the prejudices of the Court and the Nobility as more capable of being reconciled with liberty, than the power of an army. After a long absence from courts, he appeared at the levee of Monsieur, on his entry into Paris; and was received with a slight,—not justified by his character, nor by his rank—more important than character in the estimate of palaces. He returned to his retirement, far from courts or conspiracies, with a reputation for purity and firmness, which, if it had been less rare among French leaders, would have secured the liberty of that great nation, and placed her fame on better foundations than those of mere military genius and success.

This party, whose principles are decisively favourable to a limited monarchy, and indeed to the general outlines of the institutions of Great Britain, had some<197> strength among the reasoners of the capital, but represented no interest and no opinion in the country at large. Whatever popularity they latterly appeared to possess, arose but too probably from the momentary concurrence, in opposition to the Court, of those who were really their most irreconcileable enemies,—the discontented Revolutionists and concealed Napoleonists. During the late short pause of restriction on the press, they availed themselves of the half-liberty of publication which then existed, to employ the only arms in which they were formidable,—those of argument and eloquence. The pamphlets of M. Benjamin Constant were by far the most distinguished of those which they produced; and he may be considered as the literary representative of a party, which their enemies, as well as their friends, called the “Liberal,” who were hostile to Buonaparte and to military power, friendly to the general principles of the constitution established by Louis XVIII., though disapproving some of its parts, and seriously distrusting the spirit in which it was executed, and the maxims prevalent at Court. M. Constant, who had been expelled from the Tribunat, and in effect exiled from France, by Buonaparte, began an attack on him before the Allies had crossed the Rhine, and continued it till after his march from Lyons. He is unquestionably the first political writer of the Continent, and apparently the ablest man in France. His first Essay, that on Conquest, is a most ingenious development of the principle, that a system of war and conquest, suitable to the condition of barbarians, is so much at variance with the habits and pursuits of civilized, commercial, and luxurious nations, that it cannot be long-lived in such an age as ours.6 If the position be limited to those rapid and extensive conquests which tend towards universal monarchy, and if the tendency in human affairs to resist them be stated only as of great force, and almost sure within no long time of checking their progress, the doctrine of M. Constant will be generally<198> acknowledged to be true. With the comprehensive views, and the brilliant poignancy of Montesquieu, he unites some of the defects of that great writer. Like him, his mind is too systematical for the irregular variety of human affairs; and he sacrifices too many of those exceptions and limitations, which political reasonings require, to the pointed sentences which compose his nervous and brilliant style. His answer to the Abbé Montesquiou’s foolish plan of restricting the press, is a model of polemical politics, uniting English solidity and strength with French urbanity.7 His tract on Ministerial Responsibility, with some errors (though surprisingly few) on English details, is an admirable discussion of one of the most important institutions of a free government, and, though founded on English practice, would convey instruction to most of those who have best studied the English constitution.8 We have said thus much of these masterly productions, because we consider them as the only specimens of the Parisian press, during its semi-emancipation, which deserve the attention of political philosophers, and of the friends of true liberty, in all countries. In times of more calm, we should have thought a fuller account of their contents, and a free discussion of their faults, due to the eminent abilities of the author. At present we mention them, chiefly because they exhibit, pretty fairly, the opinions of the liberal party in that country.

But, not to dwell longer on this little fraternity (who are too enlightened and conscientious to be of importance in the shocks of faction, and of whom we have spoken more from esteem for their character, than from an opinion of their political influence), it will be already apparent to our readers, that many of the most numerous and guiding classes in the newly arranged community of France, were bound, by strong ties of interest and pride, to a Revolutionary government, however little they might be qualified or sincerely disposed for a free constitution,—which they<199> struggled to confound with the former; that these dispositions among the civil classes formed one great source of danger to the administration of the Bourbons; and that they now constitute a material part of the strength of Napoleon. To them he appeals in his Proclamations, when he speaks of “a new dynasty founded on the same bases with the new interests and new institutions which owe their rise to the Revolution.”9 To them he appeals, though more covertly, in his professions of zeal for the dignity of the people, and of hostility to feudal nobility, and monarchy by Divine right.

It is natural to inquire how the conscription, and the prodigious expenditure of human life in the campaigns of Spain and Russia, were not of themselves sufficient to make the government of Napoleon detested by the great majority of the French people. But it is a very melancholy truth, that the body of a people may be gradually so habituated to war, that their habits and expectations are at last so adapted to its demand for men, and its waste of life, that they become almost insensible to its evils, and require long discipline to re-inspire them with a relish for the blessings of peace, and a capacity for the virtues of industry. The complaint is least when the evil is greatest:—it is as difficult to teach such a people the value of peace, as it would be to reclaim a drunkard, or to subject a robber to patient labour.

A conscription is, under pretence of equality, the most unequal of all laws; because it assumes that military service is equally easy to all classes and ranks of men. Accordingly, it always produces pecuniary commutation in the sedentary and educated classes. To them in many of the towns of France it was an oppressive and grievous tax. But to the majority of the people, always accustomed to military service, the life of a soldier became perhaps more agreeable than any other. Families even considered it as a means of provision for their children; each parent labouring to persuade himself that his children would<200> be among those who should have the fortune to survive. Long and constant wars created a regular demand for men, to which the principle of population adapted itself. An army which had conquered and plundered Europe, and in which a private soldier might reasonably enough hope to be a marshal or a prince, had more allurements, and not more repulsive qualities, than many of those odious, disgusting, unwholesome, or perilous occupations, which in the common course of society are always amply supplied. The habit of war unfortunately perpetuates itself: and this moral effect is a far greater evil than the mere destruction of life. Whatever may be the justness of these speculations, certain it is, that the travellers who lately visited France, neither found the conscription so unpopular, nor the decay of male population so perceptible, as plausible and confident statements had led them to expect.

It is probable that among the majority of the French (excluding the army), the restored Bourbons gained less popularity by abolishing the conscription, than they lost by the cession of all the conquests of France. This fact affords a most important warning of the tremendous dangers to which civilized nations expose their character by long war. To say that liberty cannot survive it, is saying little:—liberty is one of the luxuries which only a few nations seem destined to enjoy;—and then only for a short period. It is not only fatal to the refinements and ornaments of civilized life:—its long continuance must inevitably destroy even that degree (moderate as it is) of order and security which prevails even in the pure monarchies of Europe, and distinguishes them above all other societies ancient or modern. It is vain to inveigh against the people of France for delighting in war, for exulting in conquest, and for being exasperated and mortified by renouncing those vast acquisitions. These deplorable consequences arise from an excess of the noblest and most necessary principles in the character of a nation, acted upon by<201> habits of arms, and “cursed with every granted prayer,”10 during years of victory and conquest. No nation could endure such a trial. Doubtless those nations who have the most liberty, the most intelligence, the most virtue,—who possess in the highest degree all the constituents of the most perfect civilization, will resist it the longest. But, let us not deceive ourselves,—long war renders all these blessings impossible: it dissolves all the civil and pacific virtues; it leaves no calm for the cultivation of reason; and by substituting attachment to leaders, instead of reverence for laws, it destroys liberty, the parent of intelligence and of virtue.

The French Revolution has strongly confirmed the lesson taught by the history of all ages, that while political divisions excite the activity of genius, and teach honour in enmity, as well as fidelity in attachment, the excess of civil confusion and convulsion produces diametrically opposite effects,—subjects society to force, instead of mind,—renders its distinctions the prey of boldness and atrocity, instead of being the prize of talent,—and concentrates the thoughts and feelings of every individual upon himself,—his own sufferings and fears. Whatever beginnings of such an unhappy state may be observed in France,—whatever tendency it may have had to dispose the people to a light transfer of allegiance, and an undistinguishing profession of attachment,—it is more useful to consider them as the results of these general causes, than as vices peculiar to that great nation.

To this we must add, before we conclude our cursory survey, that frequent changes of government, however arising, promote a disposition to acquiesce in change. No people can long preserve the enthusiasm, which first impels them to take an active part in change. Its frequency at last teaches them patiently to bear it. They become indifferent to governments and sovereigns. They are spectators of revolutions, instead of actors in them. They are a prey to be fought for by the hardy and bold, and are generally disposed of<202> by an army. In this state of things, revolutions become bloodless, not from the humanity, but from the indifference of a people. Perhaps it may be true, though it will appear paradoxical to many, that such revolutions as those of England and America, conducted with such a regard for moderation and humanity, and even with such respect for established authorities and institutions, independently of their necessity for the preservation of liberty, may even have a tendency to strengthen, instead of weakening, the frame of the commonwealth. The example of reverence for justice,—of caution in touching ancient-institutions,—of not innovating, beyond the necessities of the case, even in a season of violence and anger, may impress on the minds of men those conservative principles of society, more deeply and strongly, than the most uninterrupted observation of them in the ordinary course of quiet and regular government.

Appendix to “On the State of France in 1815”

We have no time to say much at present on the remaining division of this great subject. Wise administration, in the situation of Louis XVIII, was so extremely arduous a task, that the consideration of his misfortunes is not necessary to repress all propensity to severe censure. The restoration of the French Monarchy was impossible. Its elements were destroyed. No proprietary nobility, no opulent church, no judiciary bodies, no army. Twenty-five years had destroyed and produced more than several centuries usually do. A Bourbon Prince was placed at the head of revolutionized France. It was not merely a loose stone in the edifice, it was a case of repulsion between the Government and all the Elements of the Society.

It is difficult to determine whether any prudence could have averted the catastrophe. In justice it ought to be allowed, that more civil liberty was enjoyed during these ten months, than during any period of French history. There were no arbitrary imprisonments; not above one or two feeble attempts to exile obnoxious men to their country houses. Once, or perhaps twice, during the Revolution, there had been more political liberty, more freedom of the press, more real debate in the Legislative assemblies. But, in those tumultuous times there was no tranquillity, no security of person and property.

The King and the Court could not indeed love liberty; few Courts do; and they had much more excuse than most others for hating it. It was obvious that his policy consisted in connecting himself with the purest part of the Revolutionists, in seeing only in the Revolution the abuses which it had destroyed, in keeping out of sight those claims which conveyed too obvious a condemnation of it, in conquering his most natural and justifiable repugnance to individuals, when the display of such a repugnance produced or confirmed the alienation of numerous classes and powerful interests, and, lastly, the hardest but most necessary part of the whole, in the suppression of gratitude, and the delay of justice itself, to those whose suffering and fidelity deserved his affection, but who inspired the majority of Frenchmen with angry recollections and dangerous fears. It is needless to say that so arduous a scheme of policy, which would have required a considerable time for a fair experiment, and which, in the hands of an unmilitary Prince, was likely enough, after all, to fail, was scarcely tried by this respectable and unfortunate Monarch. The silly attack made by his ministers on the press, rendered the Government odious, without preventing the publication, or limiting the perusal of one libel. It answered no purpose, but that of giving some undeserved credit for its suppression to Buonaparte, who has other means of controuling the press than those which are supplied by laws and tribunals. Macdonald, who spoke against it with most rigour and spirit in the House of Peers, was one of the last Marshals who quitted the King (if he has quitted him); and Constant, who wrote against it with such extraordinary talent and eloquence, was the last French writer of celebrity who threw himself into the breach, and defied the vengeance of the Conqueror.

The policy of some of the restored Governments in other countries of Europe, was extremely injurious to the Bourbon administration. Spain, governed by a Bourbon Prince, threw discredit, or rather disgrace, upon all ancient Governments. The conduct of Ferdinand at Valencay was notorious in France. It was well known that he had importuned Napoleon for a Princess of the Imperial Family, and that he wrote constant letters of congratulation to Joseph on his victories over the Spanish armies, whom Ferdinand called the rebel subjects of Joseph. It was known, that, besides all those imbecilities of superstition which disgraced his return, besides the re-establishment of the Inquisition, besides the exile, on various grounds or pretexts, of several thousand families, he had thrown into prison more than five thousand persons, for no other crime than that of administering or seconding a Government which all Europe had recognized, which had resisted all the offers of Buonaparte, and under whom resistance was made to which he owed his Crown. Many cases of oppression were familiarly known in France, which are hitherto little spoken of in this country. Among them, that of M. Antillon deserves to be mentioned. That gentleman, a pre-eminent Professor in an University, had distinguished himself both in the Cortes, of which he was a Member, and by his writings, especially by several excellent works against the Slave Trade, of which he was the most determined enemy. The first care of King Ferdinand was to imprison such mischievous men. Early in June, he issued a warrant for the apprehension of M. Antillon, whom the officer appointed to execute the warrant found labouring under a severe and dangerous malady at his house in Arragon. Upon the representation of the physicians, the officer hesitated to remove the prisoner, and applied for farther instructions to the Captain General of Arragon. The Captain General suspended the execution of the order till his Majesty’s pleasure could be ascertained. The Ministers immediately intimated to the Viceroy the Royal dissatisfaction at the delay. They commanded M. Antillon to be instantly conducted to Madrid. The order was executed; and M. Antillon died on the road, shortly after he had begun the journey! Such is the narrative which we have received from persons who appear to us worthy of faith. If it be entirely false, it may easily be confuted. If it be exaggerated, it may with equal ease be reduced within the limits of the exact truth. Until it be confuted, we offer it as a specimen of the administration of the Spanish Monarchy.

The Pope and the King of Sardinia seemed to be ambitious of rivalling Ferdinand in puerile superstition, if their limited means forbade them to aspire to rivalship in political oppression. They exerted every effort to give a colour to the opinion, that the restored governments were the enemies of civilization and of reason, and that the great Destroyer was necessary to pave the way for wise institutions, even at the expense of tyranny for a time. Spain was represented at Paris as a mirror, in which all nations might see the destiny prepared for them by restored Princes, and the yoke which would be imposed on them if the Sovereigns were not restrained by fear of their people. These impressions were not effaced even by the policy which induced Louis XVIII to suffer the Journal of Paris to discuss the administration of his Cousin in Spain, as freely as those of London.

THE ARMY! We have not time to develop all that is suggested by this terrible word. And it is unnecessary. The word conveys more than any commentary could unfold.

Many readers will say, that this word alone might have been substituted for the whole of what we have written. Short and dogmatical explanations of great events are at once agreeable to the pride of intellect, and very suitable to the narrow capacity and indolent minds of ordinary men. To explain a revolution by a maxim, has an imposing appearance of decisive character and practical good sense. But great revolutions are always produced by the action of some causes, and by the absence of others, without the full consideration of which it is impossible to form a true judgment of their origin. In the case before us, we must consider as well what might have prevented, as what actually produced the catastrophe. The spirit of a soldiery inured to victory, and indignant at defeat—the discontent of officers whose victories were gained over the allies of the government whom they now served—the ambition of generals whose companions had obtained principalities and kingdoms—the disrespect of a conquering army for an unwarlike sovereign—the military habits spread over the whole population of France—did certainly constitute a source of danger to the restored monarch, against which no wisdom could advise, or even conceive a perfect security. But, to retard, is, in such cases, to gain a chance of preventing. Every delay had at least a tendency to unsoldier the army. Time was the Ally of Tranquillity. Two years of quiet might have given the people of France a superiority over the Soldiery, and thus might have ensured Europe against military barbarism. It is true, that the frame of society produced by the Revolution, which we have attempted to describe, contributed to render perhaps the larger, certainly the more active part of the civil population, not cordially affected to the authority of the Bourbons. Even in this very difficult case much had been accomplished to appease the alarms, and (what was harder) to soothe the wounded pride of that numerous body who derived new wealth or consequence from the Revolution. But the wisest policy of this sort required a long time, and an undisturbed operation. The moderate administration of Louis might have accomplished, in a great degree, the work of conciliation. But it was indispensable that it should have been secure against violent interruption for a reasonable period, and that it should not have been brought in to a state of continual odium and suspicion by the contemptible ambition of others in their projects of foreign policy. It was essential that the French people would not be goaded into daily rage at the treaty which confined them within their own ancient limits, by the spectacle of the great military powers bartering republics, confiscating monarchies, adding provinces and kingdoms to their vast dominions. Notwithstanding the natural sources of internal danger, if even some of these unfavourable causes had been absent, the life of Napoleon Buonaparte (supposing him to have been as vigilantly watched as it would have been just and easy to watch him) might have proved a security to the Throne of the Bourbons, by preventing any other military chief from offering himself to the army till they had subsided into a part of the people, and imbibed sentiments compatible with the peace and order of civil life.

As things stand at present, the prospects of the world are sufficiently gloomy; and the course of safety and honour by no means very plain before us. Two things, however, seem clear in the midst of the darkness; one, that a crusade in behalf of the Bourbons and the old monarchy is as palpably hopeless as it is manifestly unjust; and the other, that that course of policy is the wisest and most auspicious, which tends most to reclaim the population of France from its military habits and to withhold it from those scenes of adventure in which its military spirit has been formed.

Chronology of James Mackintosh’s Life

Selective Chronology of Events Relating to the French Revolution and Parliamentary Reform in Britain

[1. ]Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, Botanicon Gallicum seu Synopsis Plantarum in Flora Gallica Descriptarum, 2d ed. (Paris, 1828).

[2. ]T. R. Malthus, The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn (London, 1815), 12–14.

[3. ]Morris Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey through France from Dieppe through Paris and Lyons to the Pyrenees, and back through Toulouse, in July, August, and September 1814 (London, 1814).

[4. ]“The murder of the King, the most atrocious of all [Cromwell’s] actions, was to him covered under a mighty cloud of republican and fanatical illusions; and it is not impossible, but he might believe it, as many others did, the most meritorious action, that he could perform.” David Hume, History of England, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), 6:110.

[5. ]This is probably a reference to Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois (1749–96). Involved in the theater under the ancien régime, Collot d’Herbois was a member of both the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. He played a leading role in Thermidor and was subsequently deported to Guiana, where he died.

[6. ]Benjamin Constant, De l’ésprit de conquête et de l’usurpation (Hanover, 1814). For a recent English translation see “The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and Their Relation to European Civilization,” in Constant, Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

[7. ]B. Constant, Observations sur le discours de M. de Montesquiou (Paris, 1814).

[8. ]B. Constant, De la responsabilité des ministres (Paris, 1815). Translated into English as “The Responsibility of Ministers,” The Pamphleteer (London) 5 (1815): 299–329.

[9. ]No statement to this effect can be found in any of the proclamations or decrees issued by Napoleon during the period of his advance on Paris.

[10. ]”Cursed with every granted prayer” is from Alexander Pope, Moral Essays, epistle 2, To a Lady, line 147, in The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, 6 vols. (London: Methuen; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951–1969), 62.