Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

duty they performed, they received but a very low réturn of interest. Simple confifcation is a boon only "for the clergy-to the lawyers fome appearances of equity are to be observed; and they are to receive compenfation to an immenfe amount. Their compenfation becomes part of the national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one exhauftlefs fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compenfation in the new church paper, which is to march with the new principles of judicature and legislature. The difiniffed magiftrates are to take their share 'of martyrdom with the ecclefiaftics, or to receive their own property from fuch a fund and in fuch a manner, as all thofe, who have been feasoned with the antient principles of jurisprudence, and had been the fworn guardians of property, muft look upon with horror. Even the clergy are to receive their miferable allowance out of the depreciated paper which is ftamped with the indelible character of facrilege, and with the fymbols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulfory paper currency, has feldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy and tyranny, at any time, or in any nation.

In the courfe of all thefe operations, at length comes out the grand arcanum;-that in reality, and in a fair fenfe, the lands of the church (fo far as any thing certain can be gathered from their proceedings) are not to be fold at all. By the late refolutions, of the national affembly, they are indeed to be delivered to the highest bidder. But it is to be obferved, that a certain portion only of the purchase mo

ney

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

ney is to be laid down. A period of twelve years is to be given for the payment of the reft. The philofophic purchasers are therefore, on payment of a fort of fine, to be put inftantly into poffeffion of the estate. It becomes in fome refpects a fort 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 confequence will be, that these purchafers, 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 wafte in woods, and from whatever money, by hands habituated to the gripings of ufury, they can wring from the miferable peasant. He is to be delivered over to the mercenary and arbitrary difcretion of men, who will be ftimulated to every fpecies of extortion by the growing demands on the growing profits of an eftate held under the precarious fettlement of a new political fyftem.

When all the frauds, impoftures, violences, rapines, burnings, murders, confifcations, compulfory paper currencies, and every defcription of tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this revolution, have their natural effect, that is, to fhock the moral fentiments of all virtuous and fober minds, the abettors of this philofophic fyftem immediately strain their throats in a declamation against the old monarchial government of France. When they have rendered that depofed power fufficiently black,

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

they then proceed in argument, as if all those who disapprove of their new abuses, must of course be partizans of the old; that those who reprobate their crude and violent schemes of liberty ought to be treated as advocates for fervitude, I admit that their neceffities do compel them to this base and contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile men to their proceedings and projects but the fuppofition that there is no third option between them, and fome 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 fophiftry. It is nothing but plain impudence. Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of any thing between the defpotifm of the monarch and the defpotism 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 fuitable and permanent organ? Is it then impoffible that a man may be found who, without criminal ill intention, or pitiable abfurdity, fhall prefer fuch a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes; and who may repute that nation to be deftituțe. of all wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain fuch a government with cafe, or rather to confirm it when actually poffeffed, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and

[blocks in formation]

2

to fubject their country to a thousand evils, in order to avoid it? Is it then a truth fo univerfally acknowledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form into which human fociety can be thrown, that a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits, without the fufpicion of being a friend to tyranny, that is, of being a foe to mankind?

A

I do not know under what defcription to class the prefent ruling authority in France. It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it in a direct train of becoming fhortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy. But for the prefent 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 fituations in which the purely democratic form will become neceffary. There may be fome (very few, and very particularly circumstanced) where it would be clearly defireable. This I do not take to be the cafe of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of confiderable democracies. The antients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who had seen the most of those conftitutions, and who beft understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no more than abfolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy, than the found conftitution of a republic. If I recolle&t rightly, Aristotle observes,

that

that a democracy has many ftriking points of refemblance with a tyranny*. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppreffions upon the minority, whenever ftrong divifions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppreffion 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 fceptre. In fuch a popular perfecution, individual fufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy compaffion of mankind to affuage the smart of their wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous conftancy under their fufferings but those who are fubjected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external confola

* When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had elapfed from my reading the paffage. A learned friend has found it, and it is as follows:

Τὸ ἦθΘ τὸ αὐτὸ, καὶ ἄμφω δεσποτικὰ τῶν βελτιόνων, καὶ τὰ ψηφίσματα, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖ τὰ ἐπιταγμαία· καὶ ὁ δημαγωγα καὶ ὁ κόλαξ, οἱ ἀυτοὶ καὶ ἀνάλογον· καὶ μάλισα ἑκάτεροι παρ' ἑκατέροις ισχύεσιν, οἱ μὲν κόλακες παρὰ τυράννοις, οἱ δὲ δημαγωγοὶ παρὰ τοῖς δήμοις τοῖς τριάτοις..

The ethical character is the fame; both exercise defpotism • over the better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one, ⚫ what ordinances and arrêts are in the other: the demagogue • too, and the court favourite, are not unfrequently the fame • identical men, and always bear a close analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respective forms of government, favourites with the abfolute monarch, and demagogues with a people fuch as I have described.' Arift. Politic. lib. iv. cap. 4.

[ocr errors]

tion.

« AnteriorContinuar »