writes the American minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."
It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate. They would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would construct in its place would founder before it left port.
If they would only consult the pilots and professional shipbuilders!—There are several of such to be found around them, whom they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous. The Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation of the States-General:2120
"I, a republican, and just, as it were, emerged from that Assembly which has formed one of the most republican of republican constitutions—I preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of the nobility, and moderation, not only in the object, but also in the pursuit of it."
Jefferson, a democrat and radical, expresses himself no differently. At the time of the oath of the Tennis Court, he redoubles his efforts to induce Lafayette and other patriots to make some arrangement with the King to secure freedom of the press, religious, liberty, trial by jury, the habeas corpus, and a national legislature—things which he could certainly be made to adopt—and then to retire into private life, and let these institutions act upon the condition of the people until they had rendered it capable of further progress, with the assurance that there would be no lack of opportunity for them to obtain still more.
"This was all," he continues, "that I thought your countrymen able to bear soberly and usefully."
Arthur Young, who studies the moral life of France so conscientiously, and who is so severe in depicting old abuses, cannot comprehend the conduct of the Commons.
"To set aside practice for theory … in establishing the interests of a great kingdom, in securing freedom to 25,000,000 of people, seems to me the very acme of imprudence, the very quintessence of insanity."
Undoubtedly, now that the Assembly is all-powerful, it is to be hoped that it will be reasonable:
"I will not allow myself to believe for a moment that the representatives of the people can ever so far forget their duty to the French nation, to humanity, and their own fame, as to suffer any inordinate and impracticable views—any visionary or theoretic systems— … to turn aside their exertions from that security which is in their hands, to place on the chance and hazard of public commotion and civil war the invaluable blessings which are certainly in their power. I will not conceive it possible that men who have eternal fame within their grasp will place the rich inheritance on the cast of a die, and, losing the venture, be damned among the worst and most profligate adventurers that ever disgraced humanity."
As their plan becomes more definite the remonstrances become more decided, and all the expert judges point out to them the importance of the wheels which they are willfully breaking.
"As they have2121 hitherto felt severely the authority exercised over them in the name of their princes, every limitation of that authority seems to them desirable. Never having felt the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression"—"They want an American Constitution,2122 but with a King instead of a President, without reflecting they have no American citizens to support that Constitution … If they have the good sense to give the nobles, as nobles, some portion of the national power, this free constitution will probably last, But otherwise it will degenerate either into a pure monarchy, or a vast republic, or a democracy. Will the latter last? I doubt it. I am sure that it will not, unless the whole nation is changed."
A little later, when they renounce a parliamentary monarchy to put in its place "a royal democracy," it is at once explained to them that such an institution applied to France can produce nothing but anarchy, and finally end in despotism.
"Nowhere2123 has liberty proved to be stable without a sacrifice of its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence. … Under this miserable government … the people, soon weary of storms, and abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious hand that stands ready to seize it."
Events occur from month to month in fulfillment of these predictions, and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild birds:2124
"It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when it flies so wild. … This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit of metaphysical whims, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. The Assembly, at once master and slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in practice, engrossing all functions without being able to exercise any, has freed that fierce, ferocious people from every restraint of religion and respect. … Such a state of things cannot last … The glorious opportunity is lost and for this time, at least, the Revolution has failed."
We see, from the replies of Washington, that he is of the same opinion. On the other side of the Channel, Pitt, the ablest practician, and Burke, the ablest theorist, of political liberty, express the same judgment. Pitt, after 1789, declares that the French have overleaped freedom. After 1790, Burke, in a work which is a prophecy as well as a masterpiece, points to military dictatorship as the termination of the Revolution, "the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth." Nothing is of any effect. With the exception of the small powerless group around Malouet and Mounier, the warnings of Morris, Jefferson, Romilly, Dumont, Mallet du Pan, Arthur Young, Pitt and Burke, all of them men who have experience of free institutions, are received with indifference or repelled with disdain. Not only are our new politicians incapable, but they think themselves the contrary, and their incompetence is aggravated by their infatuation.
"I often used to say, "writes Dumont,2125 "that if a hundred persons were stopped at haphazard in the streets of London, and a hundred in the streets of Paris, and a proposal were made to them to take charge of the Government, ninety-nine would accept it in Paris and ninety-nine would refuse it in London … The Frenchman thinks that all difficulties can be overcome by a little quickness of wit. Mirabeau accepted the post of reporter to the Committee on Mines without having the slightest tincture of knowledge on the subject."
In short, most of them enter politics "like the gentleman who, on being asked if he knew how to play on the harpsichord, replied, 'I cannot tell, I never tried, but I will see.'"
"The Assembly had so high an opinion of itself, especially the left side of it, that it would willingly have undertaken the framing of the Code of Laws for all nations … Never has so many men been seen together, fancying that they were all legislators, and that they were there to correct all the errors of the past, to remedy all mistakes of the human mind, and ensure the happiness of all ages to come. Doubt had no place in their minds, and infallibility always presided over their contradictory decrees."—
This is because they have a theory and because, according to their notion, this theory renders special knowledge unnecessary. Herein they are thoroughly sincere, and it is of set purpose that they reverse all ordinary modes of procedure. Up to this time a constitution used to be organized or repaired like a ship. Experiments were made from time to time, or a model was taken from vessels in the neighborhood; the first aim was to make the ship sail; its construction
