The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
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in the attack on the Bastille." 2113 Great is the hubbub and excitement. The scene seems to be in imitation of Berquin,2114 with the additional complication of a mercenary consideration.
But small matters are not closely looked into, and the Assembly, under the pressure of the galleries, stoops to shows, such as are held at fairs. Sixty vagabonds who are paid twelve francs a head, in the costumes of Spaniards, Dutchmen, Turks, Arabs, Tripolitans, Persians, Hindus, Mongols, and Chinese, conducted by the Prussian Anacharsis Clootz, enter, under the title of Ambassadors of the Human Race, to declaim against tyrants, and they are admitted to the honors of the sitting. On this occasion the masquerade is a stroke devised to hasten and extort the abolition of nobility.2115 At other times, there is little or no object in it; its ridiculousness is inexpressible, for the farce is played out as seriously and earnestly as in a village award of prizes. For three days, the children who have taken their first communion before the constitutional bishop have been promenaded through the streets of Paris; at the Jacobin club they recite the nonsense they have committed to memory; and, on the fourth day, admitted to the bar of the Assembly, their spokesman, a poor little thing of twelve years, repeats the parrot-like tirade. He winds up with the accustomed oath, upon which all the others cry out in their piping, shrill voices, "We swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the stock-in-trade of a pedant on his platform:
"You merit a share in the glory of the founders of liberty, prepared as you are to shed your blood in her behalf."
Immense applause from the "left" and the galleries, and a decree ordering the speeches of both president and children to be printed. The children, probably, would rather have gone out to play; but, willingly or unwillingly, they receive or endure the honors of the sitting.2116
Such are the tricks of the stage and of the platform by which the managers here move their political puppets. Emotional susceptibility, once recognized as a legitimate force, thus becomes an instrument of intrigue and constraint. The Assembly, having accepted theatrical exhibitions when these were sincere and earnest, is obliged to tolerate them when they become mere sham and buffoonery. At this vast national banquet, over which it meant to preside, and to which, throwing the doors wide open, it invited all France, its first intoxication was due to wine of a noble quality; but it has touched glasses with the populace, and by degrees, under the pressure of its associates, it has descended to adulterated and burning drinks, to a grotesque unwholesome inebriety which is all the more grotesque and unwholesome, because it persists in believing itself to be reason.
II.—Inadequacy of its information.
Its composition—The social standing and culture of the
larger number—Their incapacity. Their presumption
—Fruitless advice of competent men.—Deductive politics
—Parties—The minority; its faults—The majority; its
dogmatism.
If reason could only resume its empire during the lucid intervals! But reason must exist before it can govern, and in no French Assembly, except the two following this, have there ever been fewer political intellects.—Strictly speaking, with careful search, there could undoubtedly be found in France, in 1789, five or six hundred experienced men, such as the intendants and military commanders of every province; next to these the prelates, administrators of large dioceses the members of the local "parlements," whose courts gave them influence, and who, besides judicial functions, possessed a portion of administrative power; and finally, the principal members of the Provincial Assemblies, all of them influential and sensible people who had exercised control over men and affairs, at once humane, liberal, moderate, and capable of understanding the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of a great reform; indeed, their correspondence, full of facts, stated with precision and judgment, when compared with the doctrinaire rubbish of the Assembly, presents the strongest possible contrast.—But most of these lights remain under a bushel; only a few of them get into the Assembly; these burn without illuminating, and are soon extinguished in the tempest.' I. The venerable Machault is not there, nor Malesherbes; there are none of the old ministers or the marshals of France. Not one of the intendants is there, except Malouet, and by the superiority of this man, the most judicious of the Assembly, one can judge the services which his colleagues would have rendered. Out of two hundred and ninety-one members of the clergy,2117 there are indeed forty-eight bishops or archbishops and thirty-five abbots or canons, but, being prelates and with large endowments, they excite the envy of their order, and are generals without any soldiers. We have the same spectacle among the nobles. Most of them, the gentry of the provinces, have been elected in opposition to the grandees of the Court. Moreover, neither the grandees of the Court, devoted to worldly pursuits, nor the gentry of the provinces, confined to private life, are practically familiar with public affairs. A small group among them, twenty-eight magistrates and about thirty superior officials who have held command or have been connected with the administration, probably have some idea of the peril of society; but it is precisely for this reason that they seem to be behind the age and remain without influence.—In the Third-Estate, out of five hundred and seventy-seven members, only ten have exercised any important functions, those of intendant, councillor of state, receiver-general, lieutenant of police, director of the mint, and others of the same category. The great majority is composed of unknown lawyers and people occupying inferior positions in the profession, notaries, royal attorneys, register commissaries, judges and assessors of; the présidial, bailiffs and lieutenants of the bailiwick, simple practitioners confined from their youth to the narrow circle of an inferior jurisdiction or to a routine of scribbling, with no escape but philosophical excursions in imaginary space under the guidance of Rousseau and Raynal. There are three hundred and seventy-three of this class, to whom may be added thirty-eight farmers and husbandmen, fifteen physicians, and, among the manufacturers, merchants, and capitalists, some fifty or sixty who are their equals in education and in political capacity. Scarcely one hundred and fifty proprietors are here from the middle class.2118 To these four hundred and fifty deputies, whose condition, education, instruction, and mental range qualified them for being good clerks, prominent men in a commune, honorable fathers of a family, or, at best, provincial academicians, add two hundred and eight curés, their equals; this makes six hundred and fifty out of eleven hundred and eighteen deputies, forming a positive majority, which, again, is augmented by about fifty philosophical nobles, leaving out the weak who follow the current, and the ambitious who range themselves on the strong side.—We may divine what a chamber thus made up can do, and those who are familiar with such matters prophesy what it will do.2119
"There are some able men in the National Assembly," writes the American minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."
It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate. They would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would construct in its place would founder before it left port.
If they would only consult the pilots and professional shipbuilders!—There are several of such to be found around them, whom they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous. The Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation