by Edmund Burke
That approbation of what they had already done had its natural effect on the executive assassins, then in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their deliberate, cold-blooded system of murder. He did not at all differ from either of them in the principle of those executions, but only in the time of their duration, — and that only as it affected himself. This, though to him a great consideration, was none to his confederates, who were at the same time his rivals. They were encouraged to accomplish the work they had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst this grave moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their work of “vengeance mingled with a sort of justice,” was before a grave assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded without interruption in their business for four days together, — that is, until the seventh of that month, and until all the victims of the first proscription in Paris and at Versailles and several other places were immolated at the shrine of the grim Moloch of liberty and equality. All the priests, all the loyalists, all the first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789, that could be found, were promiscuously put to death.
Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it is curious to remark how the nerve and vigor of his style, which had spoken so potently to his sovereign, is relaxed when he addresses himself to the sans-culottes, — how that strength and dexterity of arm, with which he parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes to fence with the poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no longer be direct. The whole compass of the language is tried to find synonymes and circumlocutions for massacre and murder. Things are never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess, sometimes too continued an exercise of a revolutionary power.
However, after what had passed had been praised, or excused, or pardoned, he declares loudly against such proceedings in future. Crimes had pioneered and made smooth the way for the march of the virtues, and from that time order and justice and a sacred regard for personal property were to become the rules for the new democracy. Here Roland and the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will render many of the parts of Brissot’s pamphlet, in which Roland’s views and intentions are so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and the more useful in their application by the English reader.
Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party hoped to gain the bankers, merchants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the misfortunes of their country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens. In this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded in a great degree. They obtained a majority in the National Convention. Composed, however, as that assembly is, their majority was far from steady. But whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and many of the outlying departments, they lost the city of Paris entirely and irrecoverably: it was fallen into the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their instruments were the sans-culottes, or rabble, who domineered in that capital, and were wholly at the devotion of those incendiaries, and received their daily pay. The people of property were of no consequence, and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As that great man had not obtained the helm of the state, it was not yet come to his turn to act the part of Brissot and his friends in the assertion of subordination and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival chiefs, and is now the great patron of Jacobin order.
To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which threatened to leave nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis the Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders were Roland, Pétion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet, &c., &c., &c., applied themselves to gain the great commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and Bordeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin description, to whom the concealed royalists, still very numerous, joined themselves, obtained a temporary superiority in all these places. In Bordeaux, on account of the activity and eloquence of some of its representatives, this superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the Garonne, or Gironde; and being the centre of a department named from that river, the appellation of Girondists was given to the whole party. These, and some other towns, declared strongly against the principles of anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were sent to the Convention, promising to maintain its authority, which the addressers were pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though chosen, not to compose an executive government, but to form a plan for a Constitution. In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed force from the several departments to maintain the freedom of that body, and to provide for the personal safety of the members: neither of which, from the 14th of July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by their assemblies sitting under any denomination.
This scheme, which was well conceived, had not the desired success. Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some threats of such a departure were from time to time thrown out, was too powerful for the party of the Gironde. Some of the proposed guards, but neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive: they were debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the frontiers. The game played by the revolutionists in 1789, with respect to the French guards of the unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards, called together for the protection of the revolutionists. Every part of their own policy comes round, and strikes at their own power and their own lives.
The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in taking the alarm. They had just reason to apprehend, that, if they permitted the smallest delay, they should see themselves besieged by an army collected from all parts of France. Violent threats were thrown out against that city in the Assembly. Its total destruction was menaced. A very remarkable expression was used in these debates,— “that in future times it might be inquired on what part of the Seine Paris had stood.” The faction which ruled in Paris, too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn, they accused the Girondists of a treasonable design to break the republic one and indivisible (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy of Paris) into a number of confederate commonwealths. The Girondin faction on this account received also the name of Federalists.
Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities. Paris, the mother of equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this alternative: either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of Paris.
In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the great mother club of the Jacobins was entirely in the Parisian interest. The Girondins no longer dared to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great patriarchal Jacobinière of Paris, to which they were (to use their own term) affiliated. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive, had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere: and they chose to interfere in everything, and on every occasion. All hope of gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any law but their own will, was evidently vain and hopeless. Nothing but an armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it had been caused by it.
As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins and the commons of Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining property of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare
a manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character, and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which all those concerned in this Revolution were, at the several periods of their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its parts.
It is almost needless to mention to the reader the fate of the design to which this pamphlet was to be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were more prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to what La Fayette calls the most sacred of all duties, that of insurrection. Another era of holy insurrection commenced the 31st of last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the sacred, irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was laughed to scorn. They had themselves shown in their proceedings against the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied upon, in their revolutionary Constitution. The members of the Girondin party in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to save themselves by flight. The unhappy author of this piece, with twenty of his associates, suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial the iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.
The English reader will draw from this work of Brissot, and from the result of the last struggles of this party, some useful lessons. He will be enabled to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves, have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how to appreciate the liberty of France, which has been so much magnified in England. They will do justice to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and his Parliament, who have put them into a state of defence, in the war audaciously made upon us in favor of that kind of liberty. When we see (as here we must see) in their true colors the character and policy of our enemies, our gratitude will become an active principle. It will produce a strong and zealous coöperation with the efforts of our government in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy advantages the full value of which the querulous weakness of human nature requires sometimes the opportunity of a comparison to understand and to relish.
Our confidence in those who watch for the public will not be lessened. We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our affairs was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed, — and that it ought to have been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature and accomplish their plans for reducing us to the condition of France, as that condition is faithfully and without exaggeration described in the following work. We now have our arms in our hands; we have the means of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources of England to the deepest, the most craftily devised, the best combined, and the most extensive design that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the world, against all property, all order, all religion, all law, and all real freedom.
The reader is requested to attend to the part of this pamphlet which relates to the conduct of the Jacobins with regard to the Austrian Netherlands, which they call Belgia or Belgium. It is from page seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation. Here their views and designs upon all their neighbors are fully displayed. Here the whole mystery of their ferocious politics is laid open with the utmost clearness. Here the manner in which they would treat every nation into which they could introduce their doctrines and influence is distinctly marked. We see that no nation was out of danger, and we see what the danger was with which every nation was threatened. The writer of this pamphlet throws the blame of several of the most violent of the proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded to, had a majority in the National Assembly. He admits that neither he nor they ever publicly opposed these measures; but he attributes their silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain, that, whether from fear or from approbation, they never discovered any dislike of those proceedings till Dumouriez was driven from the Netherlands. But whatever their motive was, it is plain that the most violent is, and since the Revolution has always been, the predominant party.
If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly it could not,) I am sure there is not an Englishman who would not blush to be left out of the general effort made in favor of the general safety. But we are not secondary parties in this war; we are principals in the danger, and ought to be principals in the exertion. If any Englishman asks whether the designs of the French assassins are confined to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot, the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war against England, will give him his answer. He will find in this book, that the republicans are divided into factions full of the most furious and destructive animosity against each other; but he will find also that there is one point in which they perfectly agree: that they are all enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend with each other about the means of propagating their tenets and extending their empire by conquest.
It is true that in this present work, which the author professedly designed for an appeal to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to make her appearance in public; but through every disguise her hideous figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a private letter of Brissot, written towards the end of the last year, and quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet Du Pan. “We must” (says our philosopher) “set fire to the four corners of Europe”; in that alone is our safety. “Dumouriez cannot suit us. I always distrusted him. Miranda is the general for us: he understands the revolutionary power; he has courage, lights,” &c. Here everything is fairly avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez is a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction. On the other hand, if there can be any man in this country so hardy as to undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers of France, and if it should be said in their favor, that it is not just to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others, we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of this part of his book against them: it comes from among themselves. Camille Desmoulins published the History of the Brissotins in answer to this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last holy revolution of the 31st of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine “which he grazed.” In the beginning of his work he displays “the task of glory,” as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention. All is summed up in two points: “To create the French Republic; to disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic principles of equality.” The coincidence is exact; the proof is complete and irresistible.
In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy, against Jacobinism are its partisans. They who do not dread it love it. It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of Jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this
system must be regarded either with enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horror.
Another great lesson may be taught by this book, and by the fortune of the author and his party: I mean a lesson drawn from the consequences of engaging in daring innovations from an hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the world. This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour. The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, (a tribunal composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient government,) were by no means ordinary men, or without very considerable talents and resources. But with all their talents and resources, and the apparent momentary extent of their power, we see the fate of their projects, their power, and their persons. We see before our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of confusion, or with the materials and instruments of rebellion to build up a solid and stable government.
Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may not have the worst intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the morals, and the whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the formation and duration of any rational scheme of a republic as it is to that of a monarchy, absolute or limited. It is, indeed, a system which can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.
The translator has only to say for himself, that he has found some difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps, or through the perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his language requires to be first translated into French, — at least into such French as the Academy would in former times have tolerated. He writes with great force and vivacity; but the language, like everything else in his country, has undergone a revolution. The translator thought it best to be as literal as possible, conceiving such a translation would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author’s peculiar mode of thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style, but he makes it up in fidelity. Indeed, the facts and observations are so much more important than the style, that no apology is wanted for producing them in any intelligible manner.