CLERGY REFUSE THE OATH. 533 functions, that, by refusing to swear, they incurred their dismissal. This was affording them a means of escape; but Barnave blocked up every issue, by a bitterly violent speech, doubtless expecting thereby to regain ground in public opinion; and he proposed and obtained that the oath should be ordered to be taken that very hour. This imprudent measure would necessarily have the effect of inducing the clergy to decide on a refusal. The refusers were about to have the glory of disinterestedness, and also that of courage; for the doors were besieged by a crowd, whose threats could be heard. In this matter, both parties accuse each other; these say that the Jacobins attempted to carry this measure by intimidation; those, that the aristocrats posted a noisy crowd, in order to establish the fact, that they were subjected to violence, to render their adversaries odious, and to be able to say, as in fact they did, "that the Assembly was not free." The president orders the first name to be called. The Bishop." I ask permission to speak." -"No speech! Do you take the oath? Yes, or no?" (Noise without.) A Member Let the mayor go and put an end to this disturbance! The Bishop of Agen." You have said that those who refuse shall forfeit their duties. I feel no regret for the loss of my place; but I should regret to lose your esteem; I therefore beg you to receive the assurance of the sorrow I feel at not being able to take the oath.' Another name is called. 66 Fournès (a curate)." I will speak with the simplicity of the primitive Christians . . . I consider it a glory and an honour to follow my bishop, even as Laurent followed his pastor." Leclerc (a curate).— 'I am a child of the Catholic church." This calling of names succeeding so badly, a member remarked that it had not been required by the Assembly, that it was not free from danger, and that they ought to be satisfied with asking the oath to be taken collectively. This collective demand met with no better success. The only advantage the Assembly derived from it was to remain for a quarter of an 534 TRIUMPH OF THE PRIESTS. hour, or more, silent and powerless, and to give the enemy an opportunity of uttering a few noble sentences, which could not fail, in a country like France, to raise up many enemies against the Revolution. The Bishop of Poictiers.-"I am seventy years of age, thirty-five of which I have passed in the episcopacy, where I have done all the good I was able to do. Now, worn out by old age and study, I will not dishonour my grey hairs; I will not take an oath . (Murmurs). I will accept my fate in a spirit of penitence. This fate was by no means terrible. The bishops left the Assembly without any peril, and returned thither, just as they pleased; for the indignation of the crowd did not occasion any act of violence. The 4th of January was a triumph of the priests over the lawyers. The latter, in their awkwardness, had put on the priests' old garment of intolerance, so fatal to the wearer; and their dangerous position had inspired the clerical nobles with happy and excellent language, which acted like a weapon against their adversaries. The majority of these bishops who spoke so well, were, however, only intriguing courtiers of bad reputation, who, had they lived in our more serious modern society, which expects to find virtue and knowledge in the priest, would, sooner or later, have been obliged, by shame, to withdraw; but the profound policy of such men as Camus and Barnave had found the true means of gaining over the people to their side, of making them Christian heroes, and consecrating them by martyrdom. CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST STEP OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. THE year 1791, so sadly commenced by the scene of the 4th of January, presents from the very first the appearance of a fatal change, a violent contradiction to the principle of the Revolution : liberty trampling upon the rights of liberty,-an appeal to force. Whence arose this appeal to physical force? Wonderful to relate, from the most cultivated minds, from legists, physicians, scholars, and writers, intellectual men, who, by urging forward the blind multitude, wanted to decide intellectual matters by a material agency. e Marat had managed to organise a sort of warfare in Paris among the conquerors of the Bastille. Hulin and others, who had enlisted in the salaried National Guard, were denounced by him to the vengeance of the people," as Lafayette's spies;" and not satisfied with giving their names, he added their address, the street and the number, so that, without any inquiry, the people might go and assassinate them. His newspaper was really a list of proscription, wherein he wrote inconsiderately, and without any examination or control, all the names that were dictated to him. Names that had been dear to humanity ever since the 14th of July, Elie and M. de la Salle, forgotten by the ingratitude of the new government, were nevertheless inscribed by Marat pell-mell with the others. He himself confesses that, in his precipitation, he confounded La Salle with the horrible De Sade, an infamous and blood-thirsty author. On another occasion, he inscribed among the moderate or Lafayette party, Maillard, the hero of the 5th of October, and the judge of the 2d of September. In spite of all his violence or criminal levity, Marat's evidently sincere indignation against abuses caused me, I must confess, to feel somewhat interested about him; and then again, the grand title of Friend of the People claimed from history a serious examination. I have therefore religiously prepared the trial of this strange being, reading, pen in hand, his journals, pamphlets, and all his works. I knew, from many instances, how often the sentiment of justice and indignation and pity for the oppressed, may become violent and occasionally cruel passions. Who has not often seen women, at the sight of a child beaten, or even an animal ill-treated, give way to the utmost fury? Was Marat furious only from sensitiveness, as several persons seem to believe?-Such is the first question. If it be so, we must say that sensitiveness has strange and fantastical effects. It is not alone a severe judgment or an exemplary punishment that Marat calls for against those whom he accuses; death would not suffice. His imagination thirsts for torments; he would have flaming stakes, conflagrations, and atrocious mutilations:+"Brand them with a hot iron, cut off their thumbs, slit their tongues," + &c., &c. Whatever may be the object of such rage, whether supposed to be guilty or not, it does not the less degrade the man who gives way to it. This is not the serious and sacred indignation of a heart truly affected by a love of justice. One would rather take it to be the ravings of a delirious woman, suffering from hysterical convulsions, or falling into a fit of epilepsy. What is still more surprising, is that these transports, which some would explain as the excess of fanaticism, proceed from no precise faith The reader will understand, moreover, that in preparing to pass judgment an, I thought I ought not to refer to any of Marat's enemies; I have information generally from his own works; and it is on his own I will condemn or acquit him. Peuple, No. 327, p. 3, January 1st, 1791; No. 351, p. 8, p. 7, Dec. 9th, 1790; No. 325, p. 4, Dec. 30th, 1790, that can be characterised. So much indecision, with so much rage, is a fantastical spectacle; he rushes about in a fury, but whither? He could not tell you. If we are to seek Marat's principles, we must not look for them in the works of his youth (of which I shall speak hereafter), but in those that he wrote in the prime of life, in 1789 and 1790, at the moment when the great crisis of political events was able to increase his powers and transport him above his usual level. Not to mention the Ami du Peuple, begun at this period, Marat published, in '89, "La Constitution, or a project of declaration of rights, together with a plan for a just, wise, and free constitution;" moreover, in '90, his "Plan of Criminal Legislation," of which he had already given an essay in 1780; he offered the latter work to the National Assembly. In a political point of view, these works, extremely weak, contain nothing to distinguish them from an infinite number of pamphlets which then appeared. Therein, Marat is a royalist, and decides, that in every great state the form of government ought to be monarchical; which is the only one suited to France (Constitution, p. 17). "The prince ought to be responsible only in his ministers; his person is to be sacred" (p. 43). Even in February 1791, Marat still remained a royalist. In a social point of view, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can be called proper to the author. We behold with pleasure, however, the particular attention he gives to the lot of women, and his solicitude to repress libertinism, &c. This part of his plan of criminal legislation is excessively developed, and there are some observations and useful views which plead in excuse for certain unseemly and misplaced details, for instance, the description of the old libertine, &c. (Législation, p. 101). The remedies which the author wishes to apply to the evils of society are but trivial, such as one would scarcely expect to see proposed by a man of his age and experience, a physician forty-five years old. Criminal Legislation, he demands Gothic penalties against sacrilege and blasphemy (penance at the church-doors, &c. p. 119, 120); and, in his Constitution, he speaks nevertheless with levity of Christianity and religions in general (p. 57). In his These two works would certainly not have attracted any attention, if the author had not started with an idea that can never fail to be well received, and which must have then been singularly so, in the extreme misery of a capital overburdened with two hundred thousand poor: The weakness or the uncertainty of the right of property, the right of the poor man to take his share, &c. &c. In his Projected Constitution (p. 7), Marat says, in proper terms, in speaking of the rights of man: "When a man is in want of everything, he has a right to take from another the superfluity in which he is wallowing; nay more, he has a right to take from him his necessary things; and, rather than starve, has a right to cut his throat and devour his palpitating flesh." He adds, in a note (p. 6): "Whatever offence he may commit, whatever outrage he may do against his fellows, he no more troubles the order of nature than a wolf does in devouring a lamb." In his book on Man, published in 1775, he had already said: "Pity is a factitious sentiment, acquired in society. . . Never speak to a man of ideas of good MARAT. 537 ness, meekness, and kindness, and he will remain ignorant all his life, even of the name of pity" (vol. i. p. 165). Such, according to Marat, is the state of nature, a terrible state! The right of taking from one's fellow creature, not only whatever superfluity he may have, but his necessary things, nay his flesh, and of eating it! After this, one would think that Marat goes far beyond Morelly, Baboeuf, and others, and that he would found either perfect community or a strict equality of properties. This would be a mistake. He says, in his Constitution (p. 12)," that such an equality could not exist in society; that it is not even in nature;" we must merely desire to draw as near to it as possible. He moreover confesses, in his Criminal Legislation (p. 19), that the division of lands, although just, is nevertheless impossible and impracticable. Marat consigns to a state of nature, anterior to society, this frightful right of taking even our neighbour's necessary things. But, does he acknowledge property in a social state? Yes, generally, it should seem. However, in his Criminal Legislation (p. 18), he seems to confine it to the fruit of labour, without extending it to the land whence this fruit is produced. On the whole, as a socialist, if people will give him this name, he is a wavering and inconsistent eclectic. In order to appreciate him, it would be necessary to compose (which we cannot do here) the history of that old paradox,* which Marat ever approached, without absolutely embracing There is nothing new in these ideas. Absolute equality has been the eternal dream of humanity; a fraternal community,, a union of hearts and property, will ever be its sweetest and most impotent aspiration. We find attempts of it, every moment, in the middle ages, attempts favoured by the mysticism of those times, by a religion of privation and abstinence, and by the spirit of abnegation then prevailing. The modern spirit, very capable of devotion and sacrifice, is nevertheless very little inclined towards that easy abnegation, meekness, sacrifice, and annihilation of the will, that community requires. In these days, personality goes on characterising itself more and more forcibly; accordingly, the chances of this essentially impersonal system are ever diminishing. This is true, especially of France, where the bulk of the agricultural population possesses the spirit of property in the highest degree. The obstacle thus ever increasing, acrimony has also increased, as also an animosity against property, even when properly acquired, gained by labour, which would entail animosity against work and the workman. One word of Rousseau's has awakened the old passion and created a swarm of Utopians. They did not perceive that this word and this book (like the universal doubt which Descartes professed at his starting point), have but a transitory and relative value in Rousseau's whole life, and are even in direct contradiction with all his writings. It is the effort of a captive genius in an unjust society; which, in order to take its flight, begins by denying it entirely and agitating its foundations; afterwards, he makes use of them as a substructure, and by no means rejects whatever seems good. To resume: voluntary community, founded on an enlightened union of minds, an alliance of souls, is incontestably desirable, but infinitely difficult. |