VI. conferred upon a nation.* The beneficial effect of these CHAP. changes was speedily demonstrated by the consequences of the errors into which her government subsequently fell. 1791. They enabled the nation to bear, and to prosper under, accumulated evils, any one of which would have extinguished the national strength under the monarchy national bankruptcy, depreciated assignats, civil divisions, 1 De Stael, the Reign of Terror, foreign invasion, the conscriptions of i. 276, 288. Napoleon, subjugation by Europe.1 errors and The errors of the Constituent Assembly have produced 104. consequences equally important, some still more lasting. And its By destroying, in a few months, the constitution of a faults. thousand years, it set adrift all the ideas of men, and spread the fever of innovation universally throughout the empire. By confiscating the property of the church, it gave a fatal precedent of injustice, too closely followed in future times, exasperated a large and influential class, and rendered public manners dissolute by leaving the seeds of war between the clergy and the people. By establishing the right of universal suffrage, and conferring the nomination of all offices of trust upon the nation, it habituated the people to the exercise of powers inconsistent with the * It is impossible to travel through Switzerland, the Tyrol, Norway, Sweden, Biscay, and some other parts of Europe, where the peasantry are proprietors of the land they cultivate, without being convinced of the great effect of such a state of things in ameliorating the condition of the lower orders, and promoting the development of those habits of comfort and those artificial wants, which form the true regulators of the principle of increase. The aspect of France since the Revolution, when compared with what it was before that event, abundantly proves that its labouring poor have experienced the benefit of this change; and that, if it had not been brought about by injustice, its fruits would have been highly beneficial. But no great act of iniquity can be committed by a nation, any more than an individual, without its consequences being felt by the latest generations. The confiscation of land has been to France what a similar measure had before been to Ireland,-a source of weakness and discord which will never be closed. It has destroyed the barrier alike against the crown and the populace, and left the nation no protection against the violence of either. Freedom has been rendered to the last degree precarious, from the consequences of this great change: and the subsequent irresistible authority of the central government, how tyrannical soever, at Paris, may be distinctly traced to the prostration of the strength of the provinces by the destruction of their landed proprietors. The ruinous consequences of this injustice upon the future freedom of France will be amply demonstrated in the sequel of this work. VI. 1791. CHAP. monarchical form of government which it had itself established, and which the new possessors were incapable of exercising with advantage either to themselves or the state. It diminished the influence of the crown to such a degree as to render it incapable of controlling the people, and left the kingdom a prey to factions arising out of the hasty changes which had been introduced. By excluding themselves from the next Assembly, its members deprived France of all the benefits of their experience, and permitted their successors to commence the same course of error and innovation, to the danger of which they had been too late awakened. By combining the legislature into one assembly, in which the representatives of the lower ranks had a decisive superiority, it in effect vested supreme political power in one single class of society-a perilous gift at all times, but in an especial manner to be dreaded when that class was in a state of violent excitement, and totally unaccustomed to the powers with which it was intrusted. By removing the check of a separate deliberate assembly, it exposed the political system to the unrestrained influence of those sudden gusts of passion to which all large assemblages of men are occasionally subject, and to which the impetuosity of the national character rendered such an assembly in France in an especial manner liable. By destroying the parliaments, the hierarchy, the corporations, and the privileges of the provinces, it swept away the firmest bulwark by which constitutional freedom might have been protected in future times, by annihilating those institutions which combine men of similar interests together, and leaving only a multitude of insulated individuals to maintain a hopeless contest with the executive and the capital, wielding at will the power of the army and the resources of government. By the overthrow of the national religion, and appropriation to secular purposes of all the funds for its support, it not only gave the deepest wound to public virtue, but inflicted an irreparable injury on the cause of freedom, by arraying under opposite banners VI. 1791. 105. all com the face of the two great governing powers of the human mind-dimi- CHAP. aishing the influence of the elevated and spiritual, and removing all control over the selfish principles of our nature. It is a fact worthy of the most serious consideration from all who study the action and progress of the human Which were mind under the influence of such convulsions, that all mitted in these great and perilous changes were carried into effect their inby the Assembly, not only without any authority from structions. their constituents, but directly in the face of the cahiers containing the official announcement of the intentions of the electors. The form of government which it established, the confiscation of ecclesiastical property which it introduced, the abolition of the provincial parliaments, the suspensive veto, the destruction of titles of honour, the infringement on the right of the King to make peace or war, the nomination of judges by the people, were all so many usurpations directly contrary to the great majority of these official instruments, which still remain a monument 1 Calonne, of the moderation of the people at the commencement, as 216, 218, their subsequent acts were proof of their madness during 290, 304. the progress, of the Revolution.1 222, 223, disasters. The single fault of the Constituent Assembly, which 106. led to all these disastrous consequences, was, that, losing Vicious principle sight of the object for which alone it was assembled—the which led to redress of grievances-it directed all its efforts to the all these attainment of power. Instead of following out the first object, and improving the fabric of the state, to which it was called by the monarch and sent by the country, it contended only for the usurpation of absolute power in all its departments; and in the prosecution of that design destroyed all the balances and equiposes which gave it a steady direction, and serve as correctives to any violent. disposition which may exist in any of the orders. When it had done this, it instantly, and with unpardonable perfidy, laid the axe to the root equally of public faith and private right, by confiscating the property of the church. It made and recorded what has been aptly styled by Mr VI. 1791. CHAP. Burke a digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man, and by its influence destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. "The real object," says Mr Burke, "of all this, was to level all those institutions, and sever all those connections, natural, religious, and civil, which hold together society by a chain of subordination-to raise soldiers against their officers, tradesmen against their landlords, curates against their bishops, children against their parents." A universal liberation from all restraints, civil and religious-moral, political, and military-was the grand end of all their efforts, which the weakness of the holders of property enabled them to carry into complete effect. Their precipitance, rashness, and vehemence in these measures, were the more inexcusable, seeing they had not the usual apology of revolutionists, that they were impelled by terror or necessity. On the contrary, their whole march was a continued triumph-their popularity was such that they literally directed the public movement in unresisted might, their pioneers went before them, levelling in the 14, 15, 89. dust alike the bulwarks of freedom, the safeguards of property, the buttresses of religion, the restraints of virtue.1 But the most ruinous step of the Constituent Assembly, Fatal crea that which rendered all the others irreparable, was the volutionary great number of revolutionary interests which they created. By transferring political power into new and inexperienced hands, who valued the acquisition in proportion to their unfitness to exercise it; by creating a host of proprietors, dependent upon the new system for their existence; by placing the armed and civil force entirely at the disposal of the populace-they founded lasting interests upon fleeting passions, and perpetuated the march of the Revolution, when the people would willingly have reverted to a monarchical government. The persons who had gained either power or property by these changes, it was soon found, would yield them up only to force; the individuals who would be endangered by a return to a legal system, 1 Burke, v. 107. tion of re interests. VI. 1791. strove to the utmost of their power to prevent it. The CHAP. prodigious changes in property and political power, therefore, which the Constituent Assembly introduced, rendered the alternative of a revolution, or a bloody civil war, unavoidable; for though passion is transitory, the interests which changes created by passion may have produced are lasting in their operation. The subsequent annals of the Revolution exhibited many occasions on which the people struggled hard to shake off the tyranny which it had created; none in which the gainers by its innovations did not do their utmost to prevent a return to a constitutional or legal government. This was the great cause of the difference between the subsequent progress of the French and the English Revolutions. The Long Parliament and Cromwell made no essential changes in the property or political franchises of Great Britain; and consequently, after the military usurper expired, no powerful revolutionary interests existed to resist a return to the old constitution. In France, before the Constituent Assembly had sat six months, they had rendered a total change in the structure of society unavoidable, because they had transferred to the multitude nearly the whole influence and possessions of the state. impossibi tinguishing by conces The Constituent Assembly, if it has done nothing else, 108. has at least bequeathed one important political lesson to Proves the mankind, which is, the vanity of the hope that, by con- lity of exceding to the demands of a revolutionary party an increase revolutionof political power, it is possible to put a stop to further ary passion encroachments. It is the nature of such a desire, as of síon. every other vehement passion, to be insatiable; to feed on concessions and acquisitions; and become more powerful and dangerous in proportion as less remains for it to obtain. This truth was signally. demonstrated by the history of this memorable Assembly. Concession there went on at the gallop the rights of the King, the nobles, the clergy, the parliaments, the corporations, and the provinces, were abandoned as fast as they were |