MENACES AND VIOLENCE. 43 a monarch of the character of Louis XVI. there was no reason to apprehend any attempt to regain, by violence, what he had yielded from principles of philanthropy and conviction. The Third Estate would have grown into power, instead of usurping it; and would have gradually compressed the other orders into their proper dimensions, instead of displacing them by a violence that could never be forgiven. Even if the Orders had deliberated separately, (as it appears to us they ought clearly to have done,) the commons were sure of an ultimate preponderance, and the government of a permanent and incalculable amelioration. Convened in a legislative assembly, and engrossing almost entirely the respect and affections of the nation, they would have enjoyed the unlimited liberty of political discussion, and gradually impressed on the government the character of their peculiar principles. By the restoration of the legislative function to the commons of the kingdom, the system was rendered complete, and required only to be put into action in order to assume all those improvements which necessarily resulted from the increased wealth and intelligence of its representatives. Of this fair chance of amelioration, the nation was disappointed, chiefly, we are inclined to think, by the needless asperity and injudicious menaces of the popular party. They relied openly upon the strength of their adherents among the populace. If they did not actually encourage them to threats and to acts of violence, they availed themselves at least of those which were committed, to intimidate and depress their opponents; for it is indisputably certain, that the unconditional compliance of the court with all the demands of the constituent assembly, was the result either of actual force, or the dread of its immediate application. This was the inauspicious commencement of the sins and the sufferings of the Revolution. Their progress and termination were natural and necessary. The multitude, once allowed to overawe the old government with threats, soon subjected the new government to the same degradation; and, once permitted to act in arms, came speedily to 44 ! INCONSIDERATE AND IGNORANT PRECIPITATION. dictate to those who were assembled to deliberate. As soon as an appeal was made to force, the decision came to be with those by whom force could at all times be commanded. Reason and philosophy were discarded; and mere terror and brute violence, in the various forms of proscriptions, insurrections, massacres, and military executions, harassed and distracted the misguided nation, till, by a natural consummation, they fell under the despotic sceptre of a military usurper. These consequences, we conceive, were obvious, and might have been easily foreseen. Nearly half a century had elapsed since they were pointed out in those memorable words of the most profound and philosophical of historians. "By recent, as well as by antient example, it was become evident, that illegal violence, with whatever pretences it may be covered, and whatever object it may pursue, must inevitably end at last in the arbitrary and despotic government of a single person." * The second inexcusable blunder, of which the Constituent Assembly was guilty, was one equally obvious, and has been more frequently noticed. It was the extreme restlessness and precipitation with which they proceeded to accomplish, in a few weeks, the legislative labours of a century. Their constitution was struck out at a heat; and their measures of reform proposed and adopted like toasts at an election dinner. Within less than six months from the period of their first convocation, they declared the illegality of all the subsisting taxes; they abolished the old constitution of the StatesGeneral; they settled the limits of the Royal prerogative, their own inviolability, and the responsibility of ministers. Before they put any one of their projects to the test of experiment, they had adopted such an enormous multitude, as entirely to innovate the condition of the country, and to expose even those which were salutary to misapprehension and miscarriage. From a scheme of reformation so impetuous, and an impatience * Hume's History, chapter lx. at the end. The whole passage is deserving of the most profound meditation. MORAL CHANGES MUST BE GRADUAL. 45 so puerile, nothing permanent or judicious could be reasonably expected. In legislating for their country, they seem to have forgotten that they were operating on a living and sentient substance, and not on an inert and passive mass, which they might model and compound according to their pleasure or their fancy. Human society, however, is not like a piece of mechanism which may be safely taken to pieces, and put together by the hands of an ordinary artist. It is the work of Nature, and not of man; and has received, from the hands of its Author, an organization that cannot be destroyed without danger to its existence, and certain properties and powers that cannot be altered or suspended by those who may have been entrusted with its management. By studying those properties, and directing those powers, it may be modified and altered to a very considerable extent. But they must be allowed to develope themselves by their internal energy, and to familiarize themselves with their new channel of exertion. A child cannot be stretched out by engines to the stature of a man; or a man compelled, in a morning, to excel in all the exercises of an athlete. Those into whose hands the destinies of a great nation are committed, should bestow on its reformation at least as much patient observance and as much tender precaution as are displayed by a skilful gardener in his treatment of a sickly plant. He props up the branches that are weak or overloaded, and gradually prunes and reduces those that are too luxuriant: he cuts away what is absolutely rotten and distempered: he stirs the earth about the root, and sprinkles it with water, and waits for the coming spring! He trains the young branches to the right hand or to the left; and leads it, by a gradual and spontaneous progress, to expand or exalt itself, season after season, in the direction which he had previously determined: and thus, in the course of a few summers, he brings it, without injury or compulsion, into that form and proportion which could not with safety have been imposed upon it in a shorter time. The reformers of France applied no such gentle solicita 46 POLITICAL POWER ONLY SAFE WHEN COMBINED tions, and would not wait for the effects of any such preparatory measures, or voluntary developments. They forcibly broke its lofty boughs asunder, and endeavoured to straighten its crooked joints by violence: they tortured it into symmetry in vain, and shed its life-blood on the earth, in the middle of its scattered branches. The third great danger, against which we think it was the duty of the intelligent and virtuous part of the Deputies to have provided, was that which arose from the sudden transference of power to the hands of men who had previously no natural or individual influence in the community. This was an evil indeed, which arose necessarily, in some degree, from the defects of the old government, and from the novelty of the situation in which the country was placed by the convocation of the States-General; but it was materially aggravated by the presumption and improvidence of those enthusiastic legislators, and tended powerfully to produce those disasters by which they were ultimately overwhelmed. No representative legislature, it appears to us, can ever be respectable or secure, unless it contain within itself a great proportion of those who form the natural aristocracy of the country, and are able, as individuals, to influence the conduct and opinions of the greater part of its inhabitants. Unless the power and weight and authority of the assembly, in short, be really made up of the power and weight and authority of the individuals who compose it, the factitious dignity they may derive from their situation can never be of long endurance; and the dangerous power with which they may be invested, will become the subject of scrambling and contention among the factions of the metropolis, and be employed for any purpose but the general good of the community. In England, the House of Commons is made up of the individuals who, by birth, by fortune, or by talents, possess singly the greatest influence over the rest of the people. The most certain and the most permanent influence, is that of rank and of riches; and these are the qualifications, accordingly, which return the greatest WITH INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE. 47 number of members. Men submit to be governed by the united will of those, to whose will, as individuals, the greater part of them have been previously accustomed to submit themselves; and an act of parliament is reverenced and obeyed, not because the people are impressed with a constitutional veneration for an institution called a parliament, but because it has been passed by the authority of those who are recognised as their natural superiors, and by whose influence, as individuals, the same measures might have been enforced over the greater part of the kingdom. Scarcely any new power is acquired, therefore, by the combination of those persons into a legislature: They carry each their share of influence and authority into the senate along with them; and it is by adding the items of it together, that the influence and authority of the senate itself is made up. From such a senate, therefore, it is obvious that their power can never be wrested, and that it would not even attach to those who might succeed in supplanting them in the legislature, by violence or intrigue; or by any other means than those by which they themselves had originally secured their nomination. In such a state of representation, in short, the influence of the representatives is not borrowed from their office, but the influence of the office is supported by that which is personal to its members; and parliament is chiefly regarded as the great depository of all the authority which formerly existed, in a scattered state, among its members. This authority, therefore, belonging to the men, and not to their places, can neither be lost by them, if they are forced from their places, nor found by those who may supplant them. The Long Parliament, after it was purged by the Independents, and the assemblies that met under that name, during the Protectorate of Cromwell, held the place, and enjoyed all the form of power that had belonged to their predecessors: But as they no longer contained those individuals who were able to sway and influence the opinion of the body of the people, they were without respect or authority, and speedily came to be the objects of public derision and contempt. |