tyrants as liberty, and the practical scorn and con-
tumely of their upstart masters as marks of respect
and homage, I look upon it as absolutely imprac-
ticable. These madmen, to be cured, must first,
like other madmen, be subdued. The sound part
of the community, which I believe to be large,
but by no means the largest part, has been taken
by surprise, and is disjointed, terrified, and dis-
armed. That sound part of the community must
first be put into a better condition, before it can
do any thing in the way of deliberation or per-
suasion. This must be an act of power, as well
as of wisdom ; of power, in the hands of firm,
determined patriots, who can distinguish the misled
from traitors, who will regulate the state (if such
should be their fortune) with a discriminating,
c 2 manly,
LETTER TO A MEMBER
manly, and provident mercy ; men who are purg-
ed of the surfeit and indigestion of systems, if ever
they have been admitted into the habit of their
minds ; men who will lay the foundation of a real
reform, in effacing every vestige of that philosophy
which pretends to have made discoveries in the
terra australis of morality ; men who will fix the
state upon these bases of morals and politicks,
which are our old, and immemorial, and, I hope,
will be our eternal possession.
This power, to such men, must come from
without. It may be given to you in pity ; for
surely no nation ever called so pathetically on the
compassion of all its neighbours. It may be given
by those neighbours on motives of safety to them-
selves. Never shall I think any country in Europe
to be secure, whilst there is established, in the very
centre of it, a state (if so it may be called) found-
ed on principles of anarchy, and which is, in re-
ality, a college of armed fanatics, for the propa-
gation of the principles of assassination, robbery,
rebellion, fraud, faction, oppression, and impiety.
Mahomet, hid, as for a time he was, in the bottom
of the sands of Arabia, had his spirit and character
been discovered, would have been an object of
precaution to provident minds. What if he had
erected his fanatick standard for the destruction
of the Christian religion in luce Asitf, in the midst
of the then noon-day splendour of the then
civilized
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 21
civilized world ? The princes of Europe, in the
beginning of this century, did well not to suffer
the monarchy of France to swallow up the others.
They ought not now, in my opinion, to suffer all
the monarchies and commonwealths to be swal-
lowed up in the gulph of this polluted anarchy.
They may be tolerably safe at present, because the
comparative power of France for the present is
little. But times and occasions make dangers. In-
testine troubles may rise in other countries. There
is a power always on the watch, qualified and dis-
posed to profit of every conjuncture, to establish
its own principles and modes of mischief, where-
ever it can hope for success. What mercy would
these usurpers have on other sovereigns, and on
other nations, when they treat their own king
with such unparalleled indignities, and so cruelly
oppress their own countrymen ?
The king of Prussia, in concurrence with us,
nobly interfered to save Holland from confusion;
The same power, joined with the rescued Holland
and with Great Britain, has put the emperour in
the possession of the Netherlands ; and secured,
under that prince, from all arbitrary innovation,
the ancient, hereditary constitution of those pro-
vinces. The chamber of Wetzlar has restored the
bishop of Liege, unjustly dispossessed by the re-
bellion of his subjects. The king of Prussia was
bound by no treaty, nor alliance of blood, nor had
c 3 any
22 LETTER TO A MEMBER
any particular reasons for thinking the emperour's
government would be more mischievous or more
oppressive to human nature than that of the Turk :
yet on mere motives of policy that prince has in-
terposed with the threat of t all his force, to snatch
even the Turk from the pounces of the imperial
eagle. If this is done in favour of a barbarous
nation, with a barbarous neglect of police, fatal to
the human race, in favour of a nation, by prin-
ciple in eternal enmity with the Christian name ;
a nation which will not so much as give the salu-
tation of peace (Salam) to any of us ; nor make
any pact with any Christian nation beyond a truce ;
- if this be done in favour of the Turk, shall it
be thought either impolitick, or unjust, or uncha-
ritable, to employ the same power to rescue from
captivity a virtuous monarch (by the courtesy of
Europe considered as Most Christian) who, after
an intermission of one hundred and seventy-five
years, had called together the states of his king-
dom to reform abuses, to establish a free govern-
ment, and to strengthen his throne ; a monarch,
who at the very outset, without force, even with*
out solicitation, had given to his people such a
Magna Charta of privileges as never was given
by any king to any subjects ? Is it to be tamely
borne by kings who love their subjects, or by sub-
jects who love their kings, that this monarch, in
the midst of these gracious acts, was insolently and
cruelly
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 23
cruelly torn from his palace by a gang of traitors
and assassins, and kept in close prison to this very
hour, whilst his royal name and sacred character
were used for the total ruin of those whom the
laws had appointed him to protect ?
The only offence of this unhappy monarch to-
wards his people was his attempt, under a mo-
narchy, to give them a free constitution. For this,
by an example hitherto unheard-of in the world,
he has been deposed. It might well disgrace sove-
reigns to take part with a deposed tyrant. It
would suppose in them a vicious sympathy. But
not to make a common cause with a just prince,
dethroned by traitors and rebels, who proscribe,
plunder, confiscate, and in every way cruelly op-
press their fellow-citizens, in my opinion is to for-
get what is due to the honour, and to the rights
of all virtuous and legal government.
I think the king of France to be as much an
object both of policy and compassion as the Grand
Seignior or his states. I do not conceive that the
total annihilation of France (if that could be
effected) is a desirable thing to Europe ; or even
to this its rival nation. Provident patriots did
not think it good for Rome that even Carthage
should be quite destroyed ; and he was a wise
Greek, wise for the general Grecian interests, as
well us a brave Lacedemonian enemy, and gene-
rous conquerour, who did not wish, by the
c 4 destruction
24 LETTER TO A MEMBER
destruction of Athens, to pluck out the other eye
of Greece.
However, Sir, what I have here said of the in-
terference of foreign princes is only the opinion of
a private individual ; who is neither the represen-
tative of any state, nor the organ of any party;
but who thinks himself bound to express his own
sentiments with freedom and energy in a crisis of
such importance to the whole human race.
I am not apprehensive that in speaking freely
on the subject of the king and queen of France, I
shall accelerate (as you fear) the execution of trai-
terous designs against them.. You are of opinion,
Sir, that the usurpers may, and that they will,
gladly lay hold of any pretext to throw off the
very name of a king : -assuredly I do not wish
ill to your king ; but better for him not to live
(he does not reign) than to live the passive instru-
ment of tyranny and usurpation.
I certainly meant to shew, to the best of my
power, that the existence of such an executive
officer, in such a system of republick as theirs, is
absurd in the highest degree. But in demonstrating
this to them, at least, I can have made no dis-
covery. They only held out the royal name to
catch those Frenchmen to. whom the name of
king is still venerable. The calculate the dura-
tion of that sentiment; and when they find it
nearly expiring, they will not trouble themselves
with
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 25
with excuses for extinguishing- the name, as they
have the thing. They used it as a sort of navel-
string to nourish their unnatural offspring from
the bowels of royalty itself. Now that the mon-
ster can purvey for its own subsistence, it will only
carry the mark about it, as a token of its having
torn the womb it came from. Tyrants seldom
want pretexts. Fraud is the ready minister of in-
justice ; and whilst the currency of false pretence
and sophistick reasoning was expedient to their
designs, they were under no necessity of drawing
upon me to furnish them with that coin. But
pretexts and sophisms have had their day, and
have done their work. The usurpation no longer
seeks plausibility. It trusts to power.
Nothing that I can say, or that you can say,
will hasten them, by a Dingle hour, in the execu-
tion of a design which they have long since enter-
tained. In spite of their solemn declarations, their
soothing addresses, and the multiplied oaths which
they have taken and forced others to take, they
will assassinate the king when his name will no
longer be necessary to their designs ; but not a
moment sooner. They will probably first assas-
sinate the queen, whenever the renewed menace
of such an assassination loses its effect upon the
anxious mind of an affectionate husband. At pre-
sent, the advantage which they derive from the
daily threats against her life is her only security
for
6 , LETTER TO A MEMBER
for preserving it. They keep their sovereign alive
for the purpose of exhibiting him, like some wild
beast at a fair ; as if they had a Bajazet in a cage.
They choose to make monarchy contemptible by
exposing it to derision in the person of the most
benevolent of their kings.
In my opinion their insolence appears more
odious even than their crimes. The horrours of
the 5th and 6th of October were less detestable
than the festival of the 14th of July. There are
situations (God forbid I should think that of the
5th and 6th of October one of them) in which
the best men may be confounded with the worst,
and in the darkness and confusion, in the press
and medley of such extremities, it may not be so
easy to discriminate the one from the other. The
necessities created, even by ill designs, have their
excuse. They may be forgotten by others, when
the guilty themselves do not choose to cherish
their recollection, and by ruminating their of-
fences, nourish themselves through the example
of their past, to the perpetration of future crimes.
Jt is in the relaxation of security, it is in the ex-
pansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilata-
tion of the heart, and of its softening into festi-
vity and pleasure, that the real character of men
is discerned. If there is any good in them, it ap-
pears then or never. Even wolves and tygers,
when gorged with their prey, are safe and gentle.
It
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 7
It is at such times that noble minds give all the
reins to their good nature. They indulge their
genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the
afflicted, in generosity to the conquered ; forbear-
ing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits.
Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in
all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it
is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited
fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile
souls swell with their hoarded poisons ; it is then
that they display their odious splendour, and shine
out in full lustre of their native villainy and
baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense
or honour can be mistaken for one of them. It
was in such a season, for them of political ease and
security, though their people were but just emerg-
ed from actual famine, and were ready to be
plunged into the gulph of penury and beggary, that
your philosophick lords chose, with an ostenta-
tious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible num-
ber of idle and thoughtless people, collected, with
art and pains, from all quarters of the world.
They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which
they raised a species of piljtory.* On this pillory
they set their lawful king and queen, with an in-
sulting figure over their heads. There they ex-
posed these objects of pity and respect to all good
* The pillory (carcan) in England is generally made very
high, like that raised for exposing the king of France.
mind
28 LETTER TO A MEMBER
minds to the derision of an unthinking and un-
principled multitude, degenerated even from the
versatile tenderness which marks the irregular and
O
capricious feelings of the populace. That their
cruel insult might have nothing wanting to com-
plete it, they chose the anniversary of that day in-
which they exposed the life of their prince to the
most imminent dangers, and the vilest indignities,
just following the instant when the assassins, whom
they had hired without owning, first openly took
up arms against their king, corrupted his guards,
surprised his castle, butchered some of the poor
invalids of his garrison, murdered his governour,
and, like wild beasts, tore to pieces the chief ma-
gistrate of his capital city, on account of his fide-
lity to his service.
Till the justice of the world is awakened, such
as these will go on, without admonition, and with-
out provocation, to every extremity. Those who
have made the exhibition of the 14th of July are
capable of every evil. They do not commit crimes
for their designs ; but they form designs that they
may commit crimes. It is not their necessity, but
their nature, that impels them. They are mo-
dern philosophers ; which when you say of them
you express every thing that is ignoble, savage,
and hard-hearted.
Besides the sure tokens which are given by the
spirit of their particular arrangements, there are
some
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 29
some characteristick lineaments in the general po-
licy of your tumultuous despotism, which, in my
opinion, indicate, beyond a doubt, that no revo-
lution whatsoever in their disposition is to be ex-
pected. I mean their scheme of educating the
rising generation, the principles which they intend
to instil, and the sympathies which they wish to
form in the mind at the season in which it is the
most susceptible. Instead of forming their young
minds to that docility, to that modesty, which are
the grace and charm of youth, to an admiration of
famous examples, and to an averseness to any
thing which approaches to pride, petulance, and
self-conceit, (distempers to which that time of life
is of itself sufficiently liable) they artificially fo-
ment these evil dispositions, and even form them
into springs of action. Nothing ought to be more
weighed than the nature of books recommended
by publick authority. So recommended, they
soon form the character of the age. Uncertain
indeed is the efficacy, limited indeed is the extent,
of a virtuous institution. But if education takes
in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt
but that it will operate with abundant energy, and
to an extent indefinite. The magistrate, who in
favour of freedom thinks himself obliged to suffer
all sorts of publications, is under a stricter duty
than any other well to consider what sort of
writers he shall authorize ; and shall recommend
by
30 LETTER TO A MEMBER
by the strongest of all sanctions, that is, by pub-
lick honours and rewards. He ought to be cau-
tious how he recommends authors of mixed or
ambiguous morality. He ought to be fearful of
putting into the hands of youth writers indulgent
to the peculiarities of their own complexion, lest
they should teach the humours of the professor,
rather than the principles of the science. He
ought, above all, to be cautious in recommending
any writer who has carried marks of a deranged
understanding ; for where there is no sound rea-
son there can be no real virtue ; and madness is
ever vicious and malignant.
The Assembly proceeds on maxims th'e very re-
verse of these. The Assembly recommends to its
youth a study of the bold experimenters in mora-
lity. Every body knows that there is a great dis-
pute amongst their leaders, which of them is the
best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth, they all
resemble him. His blood they transfuse into their
minds and into their manners. Him they study ;
him they meditate ; him they turn over in all the
time they can spare from the laborious mischief of
the day, or the debauches of the night. Rousseau
is their canon of holy writ ; in his life he is their
canon of Polycktus ; he is their standard figure of
perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pat-
tern to authors and to Frenchmen, the founderies
of Paris are now running for statues, with the
kettles
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 31
kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches.
If an author had written like a great genius on
geometry, though its practical and speculative
morals were vitious in the extreme, it might ap-
pear, that in voting the statue, they honoured
only the geometrician. But Rousseau is a moralist,
or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, put-
ting the circumstances together, to mistake their
design in choosing the author, with whom they
have beonin to recommend a course of studies.
O
Their great problem is to find a substitute for all
the principles which hitherto have been employed
to regulate the human will and action. They find
dispositions in the mind of such force and quality
as may fit men, far better than the old morality,
for the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may
go much further in supporting their power, and
destroying their enemies. They have therefore
chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious
vice, in the place of plain duty. True humility,
the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but
deep and firm foundation of all real virtue. But
this, as very painful in the practice, and little im-
posing in the appearance,, they have totally dis-
carded. Their object is to merge all natural and
all social sentiment in inordinate vanity. In a
small degree, and conversant in little things, va-
nity is of little moment. When full grown, it is
the worst of vices, and the occasional mimick of
them
32 LETTER TO A MEMBER
them all. It makes the whole man false. It leaves
nothing sincere or trust-worthy about him. His
best qualities are poisoned and perverted by it,
and operate exactly as the worst. When your
lords had many writers as immoral as the object
of their statue (such as Voltaire and others) they
chose Rousseau ; because in him that peculiar vice,
which they wished to erect into ruling virtue, was
by far the most conspicuous.
We have had the great professor and founder
tf the philosophy of vanity in England. As I had
good opportunities of knowing his proceedings
almost from day to day, he left no doubt on my
mind that he entertained no principle either to
influence his heart, or to guide his understanding
but vanity. With this vice he was possessed to a
degree little short of madness. It is from the same
deranged, eccentrick vanity, that this, the insane
Socrates of the National Assembly, was impelled to
publish a mad confession of his mad faults, and to
attempt a new sort of glory from bringing har-
dily to light the obscure and vulgar vices, which
we know may sometimes be blended with emi-
nent talents. He has not observed on the nature
of vanity who does not know that it is omnivo-
rous ; that it has no choice in its food ; that it is
fond to talk even of its own faults and vices, as
what will excite surprise and draw attention, and
what will pass at worst for openness and candour.
It
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. S3
It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity
makes even of hypocrisy, that has driven Rous-
seau to record a life not so much as chequered, or
spotted here and there, with virtues, or even dis-
tinguished by a single good action. It is such a
life he chooses to offer to the attention of man-
kind. It is such a life that, with a wild defiance,
he flings in the face of his Creator, whom he ac-
knowledges only to brave. Your Assembly, know-
ing how much more powerful example is found
than precept, has chosen this man (by his own ac-
count without a single virtue) for a model. To him
they erect their first statue. From him they com-
mence their series of honours and distinctions.
It is that newjnvented virtue, which your mas-
ters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly
to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetorick in
the expression of universal benevolence ; whilst his
heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of
common parental affection. Benevolence to the
whole species, and want of feeling for every indi-
vidual with whom the professors come in contact,
form the character of the new philosophy. Set-
ting up for an unsocial independence, this their
hero of vanity refuses the just price of common
labour, as well as the tribute which opulence owes
to genius, and which, when paid, honours the
giver and the receiver ; and then he pleads his
beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts
VOL. vi. D with
34 LETTER TO A MEMBER
with tenderness for those only who touch him by
the remotest relation, and then, without one na-
tural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and ex-
crement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and
sends his children to the hospital of foundlings.
The bear loves, licks, and forms her young ; but
bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however,
finds its account in reversing the train of our na-
tural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental
writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in
his parish.
Under this philosophick instructor in the
ethicks of vanity, they have attempted in France
a regeneration of the moral constitution of man.
Statesmen, like your present rulers, exist by every
thing which is spurious, fictitious, and false; by
every thing which takes the man from his house,
and sets him on a stage ; which makes him up an
artificial creature, with painted, theatrick senti-
ments, fit to be seen by the glare of candle-light,
and formed to be contemplated at a due distance.
Vanity is too apt to prevail in all of us, and in all
countries. To the improvement of Frenchmen it
seems not absolutely necessary that it should be
taught upon system. But it is plain that the pre-
sent rebellion was its legitimate offspring, and it is
piously fed by that rebellion with a daily dole.
If the system of institution recommended by
the assembly be false and theatrick, it is because
their
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 35
their system of government is of the same cha-
racter. To that, and to that alone, it is strictly
conformable. To understand either, we must con-
nect the morals with the politicks of the legisla-
tors. Your practical philosophers, systematick in
every thing, have wisely begun at the source. As
the relation between parents and children is the
first amongst the elements of vulgar, natural mo-
rality*; they erect statues to a wild, ferocious,
low-minded, hard-hearted father, of fine general
feelings ; a lover of his kind, but a hater of his
kindred. Your masters reject the duties of his
vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty ; as not
founded in the social compact ; and not binding
according to the rights of men ; because the rela-
tion is not, of course, the result of free election ;
never so on the side of the children, not always on
the part of the parents.
The next relation which they regenerate by their
statues to Rousseau is that which is next in sanc-
tity to that of a father. They differ from those old-
fashioned thinkers, who considered pedagogues as
sober and venerable characters, and allied to the pa-
rental. The moralists of the dark times, preceptorem
* Filiola tua te delectari laetor et probari tibi QVMW esse
ri>i gof T* Ta : etenim, si hsec non est, nulla potest homini
esse ad hominem naturae adjunctio : qua sublata vitae societas
tollitur. Valete Patron (Rousseau) et tui condiscipuli ! (L* As-
semble Nationale.) Cic. Ep. ad Atticum.
D 2 sancti
3 LETTER TO A MEMBER
sancti voluere parentis esse loco. In this age "of
light, they teach the people that preceptors ought
to be in the place of gallants. They systematically
corrupt a very corruptible race, (for some time a
growing nuisance amongst you) a set of pert, pe-
tulant literators, to whom instead of their proper,
but severe unostentatious duties, they assign the
brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of gay,
young, military sparks, and danglers at toilets.