DUMONT'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MIRABEAU. chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love-songs too near the ears of her highness's maids of honour, and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy. We had intended also to say something concerning the literature of that splendid period, and especially concerning those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Philosophers, who have made the DUMONT'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MIRABEAU.* If a few THIS is a very amusing and a very in- great original thinker, and to a sincere and structive book; but, even if it were less amus- ardent friend of the human race. ing and less instructive, it would still be inte- weaknesses were mingled with his eminent resting as a relic of a wise and virtuous man. virtues, if a few errors insinuated themselves M. Dumont was one of those persons, the care among the many valuable truths which he of whose fame belongs in an especial manner taught, this is assuredly no time for noticing to mankind, for he was one of those persons those weaknesses or those errors in an unkind who have, for the sake of mankind, neglected or sarcastic spirit. A great man has gone the care of their own fame. In his walk from among us, full of years, of good works, through life there was no obtrusiveness, no and of deserved honours. In some of the highpushing, no elbowing, none of the little arts est departments in which the human intellect With every can exert itself, he has not left his equal or his which bring forward little men. right to the head of the board, he took the low-second behind him. From his contemporaries est room, and well deserved to be greeted with- he has had, according to the usual lot, more or Friend, go up higher. Though no man was less than justice. He has had blind flatterers more capable of achieving for himself a sepa- and blind detractors; flatterers who could see rate and independent renown, he attached him- nothing but perfection in his style, detractors self to others; he laboured to raise their fame; who could see nothing but nonsense in his he was content to receive, as his share of the matter. He will now have judges. Posterity reward, the mere overflowings which redound- will pronounce its calm and impartial decision, ed from the full measure of their glory. Not and that decision will, we firmly believe, place that he was of a servile and idolatrous habit in the same rank with Galileo and with Locke of mind; not that he was one of the tribe of the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish Boswells, those literary Gibeonites, born to be and left it a science. Never was there a lite hewers of wood and drawers of water to the rary partnership so fortunate as that of Mr higher intellectual castes. Possessed of talents Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw material and acquirements which made him great, he which Mr. Bentham furnished was most prewished only to be useful. In the prime of cious, but it was unmarketable. He was, assumanhood, at the very time of life at which am- redly, at once a great logician and a great bitious men are most ambitious, he was not rhetorician. But the effect of his logic was solicitous to proclaim that he furnished infor- injured by a vicious arrangement, and the mation, arguments, and eloquence to Mirabeau. effect of his rhetoric by a vicious style. His In his later years he was perfectly willing that mind was vigorous, comprehensive, subtile, But he spoke in an unknown tongue; and, that his renown should merge in that of Mr. Ben- fertile of arguments, fertile of illustrations. tham. the congregation might be edified, it was necessary that some brother having the gift of interpretation should expound the invaluable jargon His oracles were of high import, but they were traced on leaves and flung loose to the wind So negligent was he of the arts of selection distribution, and compression, that to person who formed their judgment of him from hi be the least systematic of all philosopher works in their undigested state, he seemed tem which, whether sound or unsound, is mo The truth is, that his opinions formed a sy exact, more entire, and more consistent wi Q itself than any other. Yet, to superficial rea The services which M. Dumont has rendered to society can be fully appreciated only by those who have studied Mr. Bentham's works, both in their rude and in their finished state. The difference both for show and for use is as great as the difference between a lump of golden ore and a rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the mint. Of Mr. Bentham we would at all times speak with the reverence which is due to a * Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les deux Premières Assemblées Législatives. Par ETIENNE DUMONT, de Geneve: ouvrage posthume publié par M. J. L. Duval, Membre du Conseil Représentatif du Canton du Genève. 6vo. Paris. 1832. 182 ers of his works in their original form, and indeed to all readers of those works who did not bring great industry and great acuteness to the study, he seemed to be a man of a quick and ingenious but ill-regulated mind, who saw truth only by glimpses, who threw out many striking hints, but who had never thought of combining his doctrines in one harmonious whole. M. Dumont was admirably qualified to supply what was wanting in Mr. Bentham. In the qualities in which the French writers surpass those of all other nations-neatness, clearness, precision, condensation-he surpassed all French writers. If M. Dumont had never been born, Mr. Bentham would still have been a very great man. But he would have been great to himself alone. The fertility of his mind would have resembled the fertility of those vast American wildernesses, in which blossoms and decays a rich but unprofitable vegetation, "wherewith the reaper filleth not his hand, neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom." It would have been with his discoveries as it has been with the "Century of Inventions." His speculations on laws would have been of no more practical use than Lord Worcester's speculations on steam-engines. Some generations hence, perhaps, when legislation has found its Watt, an antiquary might have published to the world the curious fact, that in the reign of George the Third there had been a man called Bentham, who had given hints of many discoveries made since his time, and who had really, for his age, taken a most philosophical view of the principles of jurisprudence. Many persons have attempted to interpret between this powerful mind and the public. But, in our opinion, M. Dumont alone has succeeded. It is remarkable that, in foreign countries, where Mr. Bentham's works are known solely through the medium of the French version, his merit is almost universally acknowledged. Even those who are most decidedly opposed to his political opinions, the very chiefs of the Holy Alliance, have publicly testified their respect for him. In England, on the contrary, many persons who certainly entertained no prejudice against him on political grounds, were long in the habit of mentioning him contemptuously. Indeed, what was said of Bacon's philosophy may be said of Bentham's. It was of little repute among us till judgments in its favour came from beyond sea, and convinced us, to our shame, that we had been abusing and laughing at one of the greatest men of the age. M. Dumont might easily have found employments more gratifying to personal vanity, than that of arranging works not his own. could have found no employment more useful But he or more truly honourable. The book before us, hastily written as it is, contains abundant proof, if proof were needed. that he did not become an editor because he wanted the talents which would have made him eminent as a writer. Persons who hold democratical opinions, and who have been accustomed to consider M. Dumont as one of their party, have been surprised and mortified to learn, that he speaks with very little respect of the French Revolu tion, and of its authors. Some zealous Tories have naturally expressed great satisfaction at finding their doctrines, in some respects, confirmed by the testimony of an unwilling wit ness. The date of the work, we think, explains every thing. If it had been written ten years been very different from what it is. It was earlier, or twenty years later, it would have written, neither during the first excitement of the Revolution, nor at that later period, when the practical good produced by the Revolution had become manifest to the most prejudiced observers; but in those wretched times, when the enthusiasm had abated, and the solid advantages were not yet fully seen. ten in the year 1799, a year in which the most sanguine friend of liberty might well feel some It was writmisgivings as to the effects of what the National Assembly had done. The evils which attend every great change had been severely felt. The benefit was still to come. The price, a heavy price, had been paid. The thing purchased had not yet been delivered. Europe was swarming with French exiles. The fleets and armies of the second coalition were victorious. Within France, the reign of terror was over; but the reign of law had not commenced. There had been, indeed, during three or four years, a written constitution, by which rights were defined, and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly violated, and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. laws which had been framed to secure the dis tinct authority of the executive magistrates The of election, the freedom of debate, the freedom and of the legislative assemblies-the freedom of the press, the personal freedom of citizens which the republic was governed, was by -were a dead letter. The ordinary mode in coups d'état. councils were placed under military restraint On one occasion, the legislative by the directors. Then again, directors were deposed by the legislative councils. Elections were set aside by the executive authority. Ship loads of writers and speakers were sent, without a legal trial, to die of fever in Guiana. France, in short, was in that state in which revolutions, effected by violence, almost always leave a nation. The habit of obedience had been lost. The spell of proscription had been broken. more than on any arguments about property Those associations on which, far and order, the authority of magistrates rests, had completely passed away. The power of the government consisted merely in the physiMoral force it had none. It was itself a gocal force which it could bring to its support. vernment sprung from a recent convulsion. Its might be justifiable. Its own existence proved own fundamental maxim was, that rebellion that rebellion might be successful. The people had been accustomed, during several years, to offer resistance to the constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the con stituted authorities yield to that resistance and void"-an incessant whirl of hostile The whole political world was "without form atoms, which every moment formed some new combination. The only man who could fix the agitated elements of society in a stable form, | perceive where their error lay. We can per was following a wild vision of glory and em-ceive that the evil was temporary, and the pire through the Syrian deserts. The time was not yet come, when "Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar stood ruled;" when, out of the chaos into which the old society had been resolved, were to rise a new dynasty, a new peerage, a new church, and a new code. The dying words of Madame Roland, "Oh Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!" were at that time echoed by many of the most upright and benevolent of mankind. M. Guizot has, in one of his admirable pamphlets, happily and justly described M. Lainé as "an honest and liberal man, discouraged by the Revolution." This description, at the time when M. Dumont's Memoirs were written, would have applied to almost every honest and liberal man in Europe; and would, beyond all doubt, have applied to M. Dumont himself. To that fanatical worship of the all-wise and allgood people, which had been common a few years before, had succeeded an uneasy suspicion that the follies and vices of the people would frustrate all attempts to serve them. The wild and joyous exultation with which the meeting of the States-General and the fall of the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place was dejection, and a gloomy distrust of specious appearances. The philosophers and philanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign produced? Philosophy had brought with it mummeries as absurd as any which had been practised by the most su perstitious zealot of the darkest age. Philanthropy had brought with it crimes as horrible as the massacre of St. Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that a courtesan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thought, that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth century was folly; and that those hopes of great political and social ameliorations, which had been cherished by Voltaire and Cordorcet, were utterly delusive. good durable. But we cannot be sure, that, if our lot had been cast in their times, we should not, like them, have been discouraged and disgusted; that we should not, like them, have seen, in that great victory of the French people, only insanity and crime. It is curious to observe how some men are applauded, and others reviled, for merely being what all their neighbours are, for merely going positively down the stream of events, for merely representing the opinions and passions of a whole generation. The friends of popular government ordinarily speak with extreme severity of Mr. Pitt, and with respect and tenderness of Mr. Canning. Yet the whole dif ference, we suspect, consisted merely in this: that Mr. Pitt died in 1806, and Mr. Canning in 1827. During the years which were common to the public life of both, Mr. Canning was assuredly not a more illiberal statesman than his patron. The truth is, that Mr. Pitt began his political life at the end of the American War, when the nation was suffering from the effects of corruption. He closed it in the midst of the calamities produced by the French Revolution, when the nation was strongly impressed with the horrors of anarchy. He changed, undoubtedly. In his youth he had brought in reform bills. In his manhood he brought in gagging bills. But the change, though lamentable, was, in our opinion, perfectly natural, and might have been perfectly honest. He changed with the great body of his countrymen. Mr. Canning, on the other hand, entered into public life when Europe was in dread of the Jacobins. He closed his public life when Europe was suffering under the tyranny of the Holy Alliance. He, too, changed with the nation. As the crimes of the Jacobins had turned the master into something very like a Tory, the events which followed the Congress of Vienna turned the pupil into something very like a Whig. So much are men the creatures of circumstances. We see that, if M. Dumont had died in 1799, he would have died, to use the new cant word, a decided "conservative." If Mr. Pitt had lived to 1832, it is our firm belief that he would have been a decided reformer. The judgment passed by M. Dumont in this work on the French Revolution must be taken with considerable allowances. It resembles a criticism on a play, of which only the first act has been performed, or on a building from which the scaffolding has not yet been taken down. We have no doubt, that if the excellent author had revised these memoirs thirty years after the time at which they were written, he would have seen reason to omit a few passages, and to add many qualifications and explanations. Under the influence of these feelings, M. Dumont has gone so far as to say, that the writings of Mr. Burke on the French Revolution, though disfigured by exaggeration, and though containing doctrines subversive of all public liberty, had been, on the whole, justified by events, and had probably saved Europe from great disasters. That such a man as the friend and fellow-labourer of Mr. Bentham, should have expressed such an opinion, is a circumstance which well deserves the consideration He would not probably have been incline of uncharitable politicians. These Memoirs to retract the censures, just, though sever have not convinced us that the French Revo- which he has passed on the ignorance, the prelution was not a great blessing to mankind. sumption, and the pedantry of the National As But they have convinced us that very great sembly. But he would have admitted that, in indulgence is due to those, who, while the Re-spite of those faults, perhaps even by reason volution was actually taking place, regarded it of those faults, that Assembly had conferred with unmixed aversion and horror. We can inestimable benefits on mankind. It is clear kind than was produced by their fierce and senseless temerity. Demolition is undoubtedly man is to construct. a vulgar task; the highest glory of the statesevery thing, a time to set up, and a time to pull But there is a time for and those of the legislator, have equally their down. The talents of revolutionary leaders, use and their season. It is the natural, the almost universal law, that the age of insurrections and proscriptions shall precede the age of good government, of temperate liberty, and liberal order. that among the French of that day, political knowledge was absolutely in its infancy. It would indeed have been strange if it had attained maturity in the time of censors, of lettres-de-cachet, and of beds of justice. The electors did not know how to elect. sentatives did not know how to deliberate. The repreM. Dumont taught the constituent body of Montreuil how to perform their functions, and found them apt to learn. He afterwards tried in concert with Mirabeau, to instruct the National Assembly in that admirable system of parliamentary tactics which has been long established in the English House of Commons, in swaddling-bands that we learn to waik. It And how should it be otherwise? It is not and which has made the House of Commons, is not in the dark that we learn to distinguish in spite of all the defects in its composition, colours. It is not under oppression that we the best and fairest debating society in the learn how to use freedom. world. But these accomplished legislators, sophism by which misrule is defended is, The ordinary though quite as ignorant as the mob of Mon- when truly stated, this: The people must contreuil, proved much less docile, and cried out tinue in slavery, because slavery has genethat they did not want to go to school to the rated in them all the vices of slaves. Because English. Their debates consisted of endless they are ignorant, they must remain under a successions of trashy pamphlets, all beginning power which has made and which keeps them with something about the original compact of ignorant. Because they have been made ferosociety, man in the hunting state, and other cious by misgovernment, they must be missuch foolery. They sometimes diversified and governed forever. If the system under which enlivened these long readings by a little riot- they live were so mild and liberal, that under ing. They bawled; they hooted; they shook its operation they had become humane and their fists. They kept no order among them- enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a selves. They were insulted with impunity by change. But as this system has destroyed the crowd which filled their galleries. They morality, and prevented the development of gave long and solemn consideration to trifles. the intellect; as it has turned men who might, They hurried through the most important re- under different training, have formed a virtusolutions with fearful expedition. ed months in quibbling about the words of that stupid wild beasts, therefore it ought to last forThey wast-ous and happy community, into savage and false and childish Declaration of Rights on which they professed to found their new con- truly a glorious revolution. ever. The English Revolution, it is said, was stitution, and which was at irreconcilable were redressed; no excesses were committed; Practical evils variance with every clause of that constitu- no sweeping confiscations took place; the aution. They annihilated in a single night pri-thority of the laws was scarcely for a moment vileges, many of which partook of the nature of property, and ought therefore to have been most delicately handled. suspended; the fullest and freest discussion was tolerated in Parliament; the nation showit asserted its liberty, that it was fit to enjoy ed by the calm and temperate manner in which liberty. The French Revolution was, on the other hand, the most horrible event recorded in history, all madness and wickedness, absurdity in theory, and atrocity in practice. What folly and injustice in the revolutionary laws! They are called the Constituent Assembly. Never was a name less appropriate. They were not constituent, but the very reverse of constituent. They constituted nothing that stood, or that deserved to last. They had not, and they could not possibly have, the information or the habits of mind which are necessary for the framing of that most exquisite of all machines, a government. The metaphysical cant with which they prefaced their constitution has long been the scoff of all parties. Their constitution itself, that constitution which they described as absolutely perfect, and to which they predicted immortality, disappeared in a few months, and left no trace behind it. They were great only in the work of destrucwho have neither wisdom nor virtue. It is tion. revolutionary ceremonies! What fanaticism! What grotesque affectation in the What licentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat, feasts of the Supreme Being, and marriages of the Loire, trees of liberty, and heads dancing on pikes-the whole forms a kind of infernal farce, made up of every thing ridiculous and every thing frightful. This it is to give freedom to those of abuses, that arguments like these have been not only by bad men interested in the defence urged against all schemes of political improvement. Some of the highest and purest of husion for the follies and crimes of the French They were man beings conceived such scorn and averRevolution, that they recanted, in the moment of triumph, those liberal opinions to which they had clung in defiance of persecution And if we inquire why it was that they began to doubt whether liberty were a blessing, we shall find that it was only because events had The glory of the National Assembly is this, that they were in truth, what Mr. Burke called them in austere irony, the ablest architects of ruin that ever the world saw. utterly incompetent to perform any work which required a discriminating eye and a skilful hand. But the work which was then to be done was a work of devastation. They had to deal with abuses so horrible and so deeply rooted, that the highest political wisdom could carcely have produced greater good to man DUMONT'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MIRABEAU. proved, in the clearest manner, that liberty is the parent of virtue and of order. They ceased to abhor tyranny merely because it had been signally shown, that the effect of tyranny on the hearts and understandings of men is more demoralizing and more stupefying than had ever been imagined by the most zealous friend of popular rights. The truth is, that a stronger argument against the old monarchy of France may be drawn from the noyades and the fusilades, than from the Bastille and the Parc-auxcerfs. We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovernment which has produced that revolution. Why was the French Revolution so bloody and destructive? Why was our revolution of 1641 comparatively mild? Why was our revolution of 1688 milder still? Why was the American Revolution, considered as an internal movement, the mildest of all? There is an obvious and complete solution of the problem. The English under James the First and Charles the First were less oppressed than the French under Louis the Fifteenth and Louis the Sixteenth. The English were less oppressed after the Restoration than before the great Rebellion. And America, under George the Third, was less oppressed than England under the Stuarts. The reaction was exactly proportioned to the pressure-the vengeance to the provocation. tion, victims were sent to death by scores for the most trifling acts proved by the lowest tes timony, before the most partial tribunals. After the second revolution, those ministers who had signed the ordinances-those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of the foulest kind, was proved by the clearest evidence-were punished only with imprisonment. In the first revolution, property was attacked. In the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions, it is true, left the public mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions were followed by insurrectionary movements. But after the first revolution, the insurgents were almost always stronger than the law; and since the second revolution, the law has invariably been found stronger than the insurgents. There is, indeed, much in the present state of France which may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire to see her free, happy, powerful, and secure. Yet if we compare the present state of France with the state in which she was forty years ago, how vast a change for the better has taken place! How little effect, for example, during the first revolution, would the sentence of a judicial body have produced on an armed and victorious party! If, after the tenth of August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the ninth of Thermidor, or after the carnage of Vendemiaire, or after the arrests of Fructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of the When Mr. Burke was reminded in his later conquered, with what contempt, with what deyears of the zeal which he had displayed in rision, would its award have been received! the cause of the Americans, he vindicated him- The judges would have lost their heads, or self from the charge of inconsistency, by con- would have been sent to die in some unwholesave would only trasting the wisdom and moderation of the some colony. The fate of the victim whom colonial insurgents of 1776, with the fanaticism they had endeavoured to and wickedness of the Jacobins of 1792. He have been made darker and more hopeless by was in fact bringing an argument à fortiori their interference. We have lately seen a sig against himself. The circumstances on which nal proof that in France, the law is now stronghe rested his vindication fully proved that the er than the sword. We have seen a govern old government of France stood in far more need ment, in the very moment of triumph and of a complete change than the old government revenge, submitting itself to the authority of a of America. The difference between Wash-court of law. A just and independent sentence ington and Robespierre, the difference between Franklin and Barrére, the difference between the destruction of a few barrels of tea and the confiscation of thousands of square miles, the difference between the tarring and feathering of a tax-gatherer and the massacres of September, measure the difference between the government of America under the rule of England, and the government of France under the rule of the Bourbons. Louis the Sixteenth made great voluntary concessions to his people; and they sent him to the scaffold. Charles the Tenth violated the fundamental laws of the state, established a despotism, and butchered his subjects for not submitting quietly to that despotism. He failed in his wicked attempt. He was at the mercy of those whom he had injured. The pavements of Paris were still heaped up in barricades; the hospitals were still full of the wounded; the dead were still unburied; a thousand families were in mourning; a hunThe dred thousand citizens were in arms. crime was recent; the life of the criminal was in the hands of the sufferers; and they touched not one hair of his head. In the first revoluVOL. II-24 has been pronounced;-a sentence worthy of Q 2 |