The Revolution 351 



the destruction of the old government, and not the establishment of 

 the new. All that I saw, and much that I heard, in France, 

 gave me the clearest conviction that a change was necessary for 

 the happiness of the people ; a change that should limit the royal 

 authority; .that should restrain the feudal tjTanny of the 

 nobility; that should reduce the church to the level of good 

 citizens; that should correct the abuses of finance; that 

 should give purity to the administration of justice; and that 

 should place the people in a state of ease and give them weight 

 enough to secure this blessing. Thus far I must suppose every 

 friend of mankind agreed. But whether, in order to effect thus 

 much, all France were to be overthrown, ranks annihilated, pro- 

 perty attacked, the monarchy abolished, and the king and royal 

 family trampled upon ; and above all the rest, the whole effect 

 of the revolution, good or bad, put on the issue of a conduct 

 which, to speak in the mildest language, made a civil war prob- 

 able: — this is a question absolutely distinct. In my private 

 opinion, these extremities were not necessary; France might 

 have been free without violence; a necessitous court, a weak 

 ministry, and a timid prince could have refused nothing to the 

 demands of the states essential to public happiness. The 



has operated, in which property is very far from safe; in which the 

 populace legislate and then execute, not laws of their representatives, but 

 of their own ambulatory wills; in which, at this moment (March 1792), they 

 are a scene of anarchy, with every sign of a civil war commencing. These 

 two great experiments, as far as they have gone, ought to pour conviction 

 in every mind that order and property never can be safe if the right of 

 election is personal instead of being attached to property; and whenever 

 propositions for the reformation of our representation shall be seriously 

 considered, which is certainly necessary, nothing ought to be in contempla- 

 tion but taking power from the crown and the aristocracy — not to give it 

 to the mob but to the middle classes of moderate fortune. The proprietor 

 of an estate of £50 a year is as much interested in the preservation of order 

 and of property as the possessor of fifty thousand; but the people without 

 property have a direct and positive interest in public confusion, and the 

 consequent division of that property of which they are destitute. Hence 

 the necessity, a pressing one in the present moment, of a militia rank and 

 file of property ; the essential counterpoise to assemblies in ale-house 

 kitchens, clubbing their pence to have the Rights of Man read to them, 

 by which should be understood (in Europe, not in America) the right 

 TO PLUNDER. Let the State of France at present be coolly considered, and 

 it will be found to originate absolutely in population without property 

 being represented; it exhibits scenes such as can never take place in 

 America. See the National Assembly of a great empire, at the crisis of its / 



fate, listening to the harangues of the Paris populace, the female populace t> , 

 of St. Antoine, and the president formally answering and flattering them!<^, yj 

 Will such spectacles ever be seen in the American Congress? Can that be ' ''■' 

 a well constituted government in which the most precious moments are ) 

 so consumed? The place of assembling (Paris) is alone sufficient to 

 endanger the constitution. — Author's note. 



