Part I, 2

As I write, some proposals for a declaration of rights presented by the Marquis de la Fayette to the National Assembly on the 11th of July, 1789, three days before the taking of the Bastille, happen to lie before me. I ask his pardon for using his former title; I do so only to identify him. I cannot help observing with astonishment how opposed are the sources from which he and Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of appealing to musty records and moldy parchments to prove that the rights of the living were "renounced and abdicated for ever" by people now dead, as Mr. Burke does, M. de la Fayette appeals to the living world. He says emphatically: "Recall the sentiments nature has engraved upon every citizen's heart, sentiments that acquire new force when all solemnly recognize them:—For a nation to love liberty, she need only know it; and to be free, she need only will it." How dry, barren, and dark is the source Mr. Burke draws from! How ineffectual, despite their flowery adornment, are all his rhetoric and arguments beside these clear, concise, soul-stirring sentiments! Brief and few as they are, they open a vast field of generous and courageous thought; they do not end like Mr. Burke's sentences, leaving music in the ear and nothing in the heart.

Having introduced M. de la Fayette, I will add an anecdote about his farewell address to the Congress of America in 1783. It came freshly to mind when I saw Mr. Burke's thunderous attack on the French Revolution. M. de la Fayette went to America early in the war and remained a volunteer in her service to the end. His conduct throughout that enterprise is among the most extraordinary in the history of a young man scarcely twenty years of age. Living in a country that offered every sensual pleasure, and having the means to enjoy it, how few would have exchanged that life for America's forests and wilderness, and spent the flower of their youth in unrewarded danger and hardship! Yet that is what he did. When the war ended and he was about to depart for good, he appeared before Congress and, reflecting in his affectionate farewell on the Revolution he had witnessed, said: "May this great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!" When Dr. Franklin, then in France, received the address, he asked Count Vergennes to have it printed in the French Gazette but could never obtain his consent. Count Vergennes was in fact an aristocratic despot at home and feared the example of the American Revolution in France, just as others now fear the example of the French Revolution in England. Mr. Burke's tribute of fear—for that is what his book must be called—parallels Count Vergennes' refusal. But let us return more closely to his book.

"We have seen," says Mr. Burke, "the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary tyrant." This is one of a thousand instances in which Mr. Burke betrays his ignorance of the causes and principles of the French Revolution.

The nation revolted not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of the government. Those principles originated not with him but in the system established many centuries earlier. They were too deeply rooted to be removed—and the Augean stables of parasites and plunderers too foul to be cleansed—by anything less than a complete and universal revolution. When action becomes necessary, one should put one's whole heart and soul into it or not attempt it at all. That crisis had arrived; the choice was to act with determined vigor or not act at all. The king was known to be the nation's friend, a circumstance favorable to the undertaking. Perhaps no man raised in the position of an absolute king has ever had a heart less inclined to exercise that kind of power than the present King of France. Yet the principles of the government remained unchanged. The monarch and the monarchy were different things. The revolt began and the Revolution continued against the entrenched despotism of the latter, not against the person or principles of the former.

Mr. Burke overlooks the distinction between men and principles and therefore fails to see that a people may revolt against the despotism of the latter without accusing the former of despotism.

The natural moderation of Louis XVI. did nothing to change the hereditary despotism of the monarchy. Every tyranny committed under that despotism in earlier reigns could still be revived by a successor. France, now enlightened, would not be satisfied with the respite of a single reign. A temporary pause in the practice of despotism does not end its principles: the first depends on the virtue of whoever currently wields power, the second on the virtue and courage of the nation. In England, the revolts against Charles I. and James II. opposed the personal despotism of those men; in France, the revolt opposed the established government's hereditary despotism. Yet men like Mr. Burke, who would consign posterity's rights away forever on the authority of a moldy parchment, are not qualified to judge this Revolution. It embraces too wide a field for their vision and advances with a force of reason they cannot match.

The Revolution can, however, be considered from many perspectives. When despotism has been established for centuries in a country, as in France, it resides not only in the king's person. It appears to do so in ceremony and nominal authority, but not in practice. Its banner flies everywhere. Every office and department has its own despotism, founded on custom and habit. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. The original hereditary despotism lodged in the king's person divides and divides again into a thousand forms, until the whole of it is exercised by deputies. Such was the case in France. Against a despotism passing through an endless maze of offices until its source can scarcely be seen, there is no means of redress. It strengthens itself by taking on the appearance of duty and tyrannizes under the pretense of obedience.

Anyone reflecting on France's condition under its government will see reasons for revolt beyond those immediately connected with the person or character of Louis XVI. France had, so to speak, a thousand despotisms to reform. They had grown under the monarchy's hereditary despotism and become so entrenched as to be largely independent of it. Monarchy, Parliament, and Church competed in despotism, alongside feudal despotism operating locally and ministerial despotism operating everywhere. But Mr. Burke treats the king as the only possible object of revolt, as though France were a village where its commanding officer must know everything that happens and could immediately stop every oppression. Mr. Burke might have spent his entire life in the Bastille under Louis XVI. as readily as under Louis XIV., without either king knowing a man named Burke existed. The government's despotic principles were the same in both reigns, though the men's dispositions were as far apart as tyranny and benevolence.

What Mr. Burke regards as a reproach to the French Revolution—that it came under a milder reign than those before it—is one of its greatest honors. Revolutions in other European countries were stirred by personal hatred. Anger fell on the man, and he became its victim. In France, however, we see a Revolution born of rational reflection on the Rights of Man, distinguishing from the start between persons and principles.

Mr. Burke seems to have no idea of principles when considering governments. "Ten years ago," he says, "I could have felicitated France on her having a Government, without inquiring what the nature of that Government was, or how it was administered." Does a rational man speak this way? Is this the language of a heart that feels as it should for the rights and happiness of humanity? By this reasoning Mr. Burke must congratulate every government in the world, while forgetting entirely the victims who suffer under them, whether sold into slavery or tortured to death. Mr. Burke venerates power, not principles; such appalling corruption leaves him unfit to judge between them. So much for his opinion about the causes of the French Revolution. I turn now to other considerations.

I know a place in America called Point-no-Point. As you follow its shore, bright and flowery as Mr. Burke's language, the point continually recedes and reappears farther ahead; but when you have gone as far as you can, there is no point at all. So it is with Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six pages. Answering him is therefore difficult. Yet since what he hopes to establish can be inferred from what he attacks, we must look for his arguments in his paradoxes.

The tragic pictures with which Mr. Burke has inflamed his own imagination, and seeks to work upon his readers', might do very well on a stage, where facts are invented for spectacle and arranged to draw tears from an audience's sympathy. But Mr. Burke should remember that he is writing history, not plays, and that readers expect truth, not the declamatory rant of grand exclamations.

When a man writing something he intends us to believe dramatically laments that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of Europe is extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if anyone knows what it is), the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!"—all because the absurd Quixotic age of chivalry is gone—what can we think of his judgment, or how can we trust his facts? In his imaginative frenzy he has discovered a world of windmills and mourns the absence of Quixotes to attack them. But should the age of aristocracy fall as the age of chivalry did (and the two were once connected), Mr. Burke, trumpeter of the Order, can carry his parody through to the end and cry: "Othello's occupation's gone!"

Despite Mr. Burke's horrifying pictures, what will astonish us when we compare the French Revolution with revolutions elsewhere is how few lives it cost. That astonishment fades when we recall that its intended targets were principles, not persons. The nation was moved by a higher impulse than concern with individuals could inspire and sought a greater victory than the defeat of an enemy could bring. Of the few who died, none appears to have been deliberately singled out. They met their fate in the circumstances of the moment; they were not hunted by the prolonged, cold-blooded, unrelenting vengeance that pursued the unfortunate Scots in the affair of 1745.

In Mr. Burke's entire book I find the Bastille mentioned hardly more than once, and then with a suggestion that he regrets its demolition and wishes it rebuilt. "We have rebuilt Newgate," he says, "and tenanted the mansion; and we have prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the queens of France."*2 As for what a madman like the man called Lord George Gordon might say—Newgate is for him more an asylum than a prison—it merits no serious consideration. A madman committed the libel, and that is excuse enough; it also offered the opportunity, desired by others, to confine him. Yet Mr. Burke, who does not call himself mad (whatever others may do), has libeled the entire representative authority of France without provocation, in the coarsest language of vulgar abuse, and still takes his seat in the British House of Commons! From his violence and grief, his silence on some subjects and excess on others, one can hardly avoid believing that Mr. Burke deeply regrets the downfall of arbitrary power—the power of the Pope and the Bastille.

Nowhere in his book, so far as I can find, does he spare a glance of compassion or a sympathetic thought for those who dragged out the most wretched of lives, a life without hope, in the most miserable of prisons. It is painful to watch a man use his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. Real suffering does not touch his heart; its showy imitation strikes his imagination. He pities the plumage but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kissing the aristocratic hand that has stolen him from himself, he becomes an artificial creature, deserted by the authentic soul of nature. His hero or heroine must die theatrically as a tragic victim, not fade into death as a real prisoner of misery in the silence of a dungeon.

Since Mr. Burke passes over the whole affair of the Bastille—and his silence does him no credit—and entertains his readers with reflections on supposed facts twisted into outright falsehoods, I will give some account of the circumstances leading up to it, as he has not. They will show how little harm attended such an event, considering the treacherous and hostile actions of the Revolution's enemies that intensified the danger.

As I write, I happen to have before me some proposals that the Marquis de la Fayette made to the National Assembly for a declaration of rights. I apologize for using his former title; I use it only to make clear whom I mean. He presented them on the 11th of July, 1789, three days before the Bastille was taken. It is striking how different the sources are from which he and Mr. Burke draw their principles. Mr. Burke uses old records and decaying documents to argue that dead people "surrendered and renounced forever" the rights of the living. M. de la Fayette instead appeals to people alive today. He says clearly: "Remember the feelings nature has put in every citizen's heart. They grow stronger when everyone openly acknowledges them. A nation needs only to know liberty to love it, and needs only to will it to be free." Mr. Burke's source is dry, barren, and unclear. His speeches and arguments may be decorated with flowers, but how weak they are beside these clear, brief words that stir the spirit! Though few and short, they open a wide field of generous and courageous thought. Mr. Burke's sentences end with pleasant sounds in the ear and nothing in the heart.

Since I have mentioned M. de la Fayette, I will tell a story about his farewell address to the Congress of America in 1783. It came to mind when I read Mr. Burke's fierce attack on the French Revolution. M. de la Fayette went to America early in the war and volunteered in its service until the end. His conduct throughout that effort is among the most remarkable things in the history of a young man barely twenty years old. He lived in a country full of pleasures and had the means to enjoy them. How few people would trade that life for America's forests and wilderness, and spend their best youthful years in danger and hardship without personal gain! Yet that is what he did. When the war was over and he was about to leave for good, he appeared before Congress. In his warm farewell he looked back on the Revolution he had witnessed and said: "May this great monument to liberty teach the oppressor a lesson and give the oppressed an example!" When Dr. Franklin, then in France, received this address, he asked Count Vergennes to print it in the French Gazette. He could never get his consent. In fact, Count Vergennes was an aristocratic despot at home and feared that France would follow America's revolutionary example. Some people now fear that England will follow France's example. Mr. Burke's book is a tribute paid by fear, just as Count Vergennes' refusal was. But let us return to the book itself.

Mr. Burke says: "We have seen the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch with more fury, violence, and insults than any people has shown when rising against the most unlawful usurper or the bloodiest tyrant." This is one of a thousand examples showing that Mr. Burke does not understand the causes or principles of the French Revolution.

The nation did not revolt against Louis XVI. It revolted against the government's despotic principles. Those principles did not begin with him. They went back to the government's original foundation many centuries earlier. By then they were too deeply rooted to pull out. The Augean stables of hangers-on and thieves were too filthy to clean without a complete revolution throughout the country. When an action becomes necessary, people must commit heart and soul to it or not attempt it. That moment had come. The only choice was to act with determination or not at all. People knew the king was a friend to the nation, and this helped their undertaking. Perhaps no one raised to be an absolute king has ever been so reluctant to exercise absolute power as the present King of France. But the government's principles remained unchanged. The monarch as a person was different from the monarchy as an institution. The revolt began and the Revolution continued against the established despotism of the monarchy, not against the king's person or his beliefs.

Mr. Burke misses the distinction between people and principles. So he cannot see how a people might revolt against despotic principles without accusing the person who rules of being a despot.

Louis XVI.'s natural moderation did nothing to change the monarchy's inherited despotism. A successor could revive all the acts of tyranny that earlier rulers had committed under that system. France had become too enlightened to be satisfied with a break from despotism lasting only one reign. When despotic practices happen to stop for a while, that does not mean despotic principles have ended. The first depends on the character of the current ruler; the second depends on the character and courage of the nation. In England, the revolts against Charles I. and James II. were against those men's personal despotism. In France, the revolt was against the established government's inherited despotism. Men like Mr. Burke, who use an old document to give away the rights of future generations forever, cannot judge this Revolution. Its scope is too broad for their outlook, and its reasoning moves with a power they cannot follow.

We can look at this Revolution in many ways. When despotism has ruled a country for centuries, as it had in France, it does not reside in the king alone. It may appear to, in its outward form and its official title, but in practice it does not. It raises its flag everywhere. Custom and habit give every office and department its own despotism. Every place has its Bastille and every Bastille its despot. The inherited despotism centered on the king divides into a thousand forms until officials exercise all of it on his behalf. That was France's situation. This kind of despotism runs through an endless maze of offices, so that its source is barely visible and there is no way to obtain redress. It makes itself stronger by looking like duty, and rules tyrannically while pretending merely to follow orders.

When we think about France's condition under its government, we can see reasons for revolt besides anything involving Louis XVI.'s person or character. France had, so to speak, a thousand kinds of despotism to reform. They grew under the monarchy's inherited despotism and became so firmly rooted that they were largely independent of it. The monarchy, the Parliament, and the Church competed in despotism. Feudal despotism operated locally, while the ministers' despotism operated everywhere. Mr. Burke imagines the king as the only possible target of a revolt. He talks as if France were a village where the commanding officer knew everything that happened and could immediately stop every abuse. Mr. Burke could have spent his whole life in the Bastille under Louis XVI. or Louis XIV. without either king even knowing a man named Burke existed. The government's despotic principles were the same in both reigns, though the two men's characters differed as much as tyranny and kindness.

Mr. Burke criticizes the French Revolution for beginning under a milder reign than earlier ones. That is actually one of its greatest honors. Revolutions in other European countries were driven by hatred of individuals. Anger focused on the man, who then became the victim. In France we see a Revolution born from thoughtful consideration of the Rights of Man. From the start it distinguished people from principles.

Yet when Mr. Burke considers governments, he seems not to think about principles at all. "Ten years ago," he says, "I could have congratulated France on having a government without asking what kind it was or how it was run." Would a reasonable person speak like this? Would someone who cared properly about the rights and happiness of humanity? By this rule, Mr. Burke must congratulate every government in the world while forgetting its victims, whether they are sold into slavery or tortured to death. He respects power, not principles. This shameful corruption makes him unable to judge between them. So much for his view of what caused the French Revolution. I turn now to other questions.

There is a place in America called Point-no-Point. As you travel along its shore, which is bright and flowery like Mr. Burke's language, the point keeps seeming to move farther away. When you reach the farthest place you can go, there is no point at all. Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six pages are just like that, so they are hard to answer. But we can work out what he wants to prove from what he attacks. We must look for his arguments among his paradoxes.

Mr. Burke's tragic pictures have inflamed his own imagination, and he hopes to stir his readers' feelings with them. They would work well on a stage, where people invent events for spectacle and arrange them to make an easily moved audience cry. But Mr. Burke should remember that he is writing history, not plays. Readers expect truth, not shouted and grandiose theatrical speeches.

He dramatically mourns in a book meant to be believed: "The age of chivalry is gone! The glory of Europe is extinguished forever! The unbought grace of life"—if anyone knows what that means—"the cheap defense of nations, the source of manly feeling and heroic action is gone!" He says all this because the foolish age of chivalry, like Don Quixote's, is over. What can we think of his judgment or his account of the facts? In his wild imagination he has found a world full of windmills. He grieves because there are no Don Quixotes left to attack them. If the age of aristocracy falls like the age of chivalry—and the two were once connected—Mr. Burke, its official trumpeter, can carry on his parody to the end and cry: "Othello has lost his occupation!"

Despite Mr. Burke's horrifying pictures, what is surprising about the French Revolution, compared with revolutions elsewhere, is how few lives it has cost. The surprise disappears when we remember that its intended targets were principles, not people. The nation was moved by something greater than concern with individual people and sought a victory greater than an enemy's downfall. The few who died do not seem to have been deliberately singled out. They met their fate in the circumstances of the moment. No one hunted them down with the long, cold, relentless revenge visited on the unfortunate Scots after the events of 1745.

As far as I can see, Mr. Burke mentions the Bastille only once in his entire book. Even there he almost seems sorry it was torn down and would like it rebuilt. "We have rebuilt Newgate," he says, "and filled the place with occupants; and we have prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to slander the queens of France."*2 We need not seriously consider what someone like Lord George Gordon, a madman, might say. For him Newgate is more an asylum than a prison. A madman was the one who made the slanderous remark; his madness is excuse enough. It also offered a chance to confine him, which was what people wanted. But Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman, whatever others may call him, has attacked the entire representative authority of France without provocation. He has done so with the crudest and coarsest abuse. Yet Mr. Burke keeps his seat in the British House of Commons! His anger and grief, his silence on some matters and excess on others, make it hard not to believe that he is very sorry arbitrary power, the Pope's power, and the Bastille have been brought down.

I cannot find a single compassionate thought in his book for people who spent miserable lives without hope in that dreadful prison. It hurts to see someone use his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has treated Mr. Burke more kindly than he treats nature. Real suffering does not touch his heart, but a flashy imitation of suffering catches his imagination. He feels sorry for the feathers and forgets the dying bird. He is used to kissing the aristocratic hand that stole his own freedom. He has become artificial, and his natural human feeling has left him. His hero or heroine must die theatrically on display, rather than be a real prisoner who quietly dies of misery in a dungeon.

Mr. Burke skips the whole story of the Bastille, and his silence does him no credit. Instead, he gives his readers thoughts about supposed events that he distorts into outright falsehoods. Since he has not done so, I will explain some of the circumstances that led to the attack. They will show that, given the treacherous and hostile actions of the Revolution's enemies, such an event could hardly have caused less harm.