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23. Revolution Brewing in France
t was Mr. Jefferson's fortune to be an eyewitness of the opening scenes of that tremendous revolution which began so gloriously and ended so terribly for France. The immediate and exciting cause of this struggle for political reformation he ascribes to the influence of the American example and American ideas. In his notes on that event he says:
"The American Revolution seems first to have awakened the thinking part of the French nation in general from the sleep of despotism in which they were sunk. The officers, too, who had been to America were mostly young men, less shackled by habit and prejudice and more ready to assent to the suggestions of common sense and feeling of common rights. They came back with new ideas and impressions. The press, notwithstanding it's shackles, began to disseminate them. Conversation assumed new freedoms. Politics became the theme of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zealous party was formed which acquired the appellation of the Patriotic Party, who, sensible of the abusive government under which they lived, sighed for occasions of reforming it. This party comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom sufficiently at its leisure to think, the men of letters, the easy Bourgeois, the young nobility partly from reflection, partly from mode; for these sentiments became matter of mode and as such united most of the young women to the party." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:103)
The part sustained by Mr. Jefferson in the early stages of the French Revolution was of a weighty and prominent character. It was not immediately incorporated into written history, but the revelation of his memoirs to the world soon placed it there. It constitutes one of the most interesting features of his posthumous reputation.
Possessing the confidence and intimacy of many of the leading patriots and especially of the Marquis de Lafayette, their head and Atlas, Mr. Jefferson was consulted by them at every step on measures of importance, and the prudence of his counsels, which were implicitly sought while they could have the benefit of them, helped retard the moment of convulsion and civil war until after his withdrawal from the scene of action. Coming from a country which had successfully passed through a similar struggle, his acquaintance was eagerly sought, and his opinions carried with them an authority almost oracular. In attempting the redress of present grievances, he recommended a mild and gradual reformation of abuses so as not to revolt the conciliatory dispositions of the king; and in providing against their recurrence in the future through a remodeling of the principles of the government, he recommended cautious approaches to republicanism to give time for the growth of public opinion and to work a peaceable regeneration of the political system by slow and successive improvements through a series of years. The interest he felt in the emerging revolution and his anxiety for the final result were very great. He considered a successful reformation of government in France as insuring a general reformation throughout Europe and the resurrection to a new life of a people now ground to dust by the oppressions of the constituted powers.
He went daily from Pais to Versailles to attend the debates of the States General and continued there until the hour of adjournment. This Assembly had been convened as a mediatorial power between the government and the people; and it was well understood that the king would now concede: 1. Freedom of the person by habeas corpus, 2. Freedom of conscience, 3. Freedom of the press, 4. Trial by jury, 5. A representative legislature, 6. Annual meetings, 7. The origination of laws, 8. The exclusive right of taxation and appropriation, and 9. The responsibility of ministers. Mr. Jefferson urged most strenuously an immediate compromise upon the basis of these concessions and the instant adjournment of the Assembly for a year. They came from the very heart of the king, who had not a wish but for the good of the nation, and these improvements, if accepted and carried into effect, Mr. Jefferson had no doubt would be maintained during the present reign, which would be long enough for them to take some root in the constitution and be consolidated by the attachment of the nation.
He most eagerly contended they could obtain in future whatever might be further necessary to improve their constitution and perfect their freedom and happiness. "They thought otherwise however," says he, "and events have proved their lamentable error. For after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic, the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private happiness, and foreign subjugation of their own country for a time, they have obtained no more, nor even that securely. They were unconscious of (for who could foresee?) the melancholy sequel of their well-meant perseverance; that their physical force would be usurped by a first tyrant to trample on the independence and even the existence of other nations: that this would afford fatal example for the atrocious conspiracy of Kings against their people; would generate their unholy and homicide alliance to make common cause among themselves and to crush, by the power of the whole, the efforts of any part to moderate their abuses and oppressions." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:139)
In the evening of August 4th, 1789, on motion of the Viscount de Noailles, brother-in-law of Lafayette, the Assembly abolished all titles of rank, all the abusive privileges of feudalism, the tythes and casuals of the clergy, all provincial privileges, and in fine the feudal regimen generally. Many days were employed in putting into the form of laws the numerous revocations of abuses, after which they proceeded to the preliminary work of a Declaration of Rights. An instrument of this kind had been prepared by Mr. Jefferson and Lafayette and submitted to the Assembly by the latter on the 11th of July; but the sudden occurrence of acts of violence had suspended all proceedings upon it. There being much concord of opinion on the elements of this instrument, it was liberally framed and passed with a very general approbation. They then appointed a committee to prepare a projet of a Constitution, at the head of which was the Archbishop of Bordeaux. From him, in the name of the committee, Mr. Jefferson received a letter requesting him to attend and assist at their deliberations. But he excused himself on the obvious considerations that his mission was to the King as chief magistrate of the nation, that his duties were limited to the concerns of his own country and forbade his intermeddling with the internal transactions of France, where he had been received under a specific character only.
In this critical state of things, Mr. Jefferson received a note from the Marquis de Lafayette informing him of his wish to bring a party of six or eight friends to ask a dinner of him the next day. He assured him of their welcome. When they came, there were Lafayette himself and seven others, leaders of the different divisions of the reform party, but honest men and sensible of the necessity of effecting a coalition by mutual sacrifices. Their object in soliciting this conference was to avail themselves of the counsel and mediation of the American minister and to effect a coalition upon terms about which they should mutually agree. The discussions began at the hour of four and continued till ten o'clock in the evening, during which Mr. Jefferson was witness to a "coolness and candor of argument unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning and chaste eloquence disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation and truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity as handed to us by Xenophon, by Plato and Cicero." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:156)
The result of this conference decided the fate of the French Constitution. It was mutually agreed that the King should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the legislature should be composed of a single body only, and that it should be chosen by the people. This agreement united the patriots on a common ground. They all rallied to the principles thus settled, carried every question agreeably to them, and reduced the aristocracy to impotence and insignificance.
But duties of exculpation were now incumbent upon Mr. Jefferson. He waited the next morning on Count Montmorin, minister of foreign affairs, and explained to him with truth and candor how it happened that his house had been made the scene of conferences of such a character. Montmorin told him he already knew everything which had passed, that so far from taking umbrage at his conduct on that occasion, he earnestly wished he would habitually assist at such conferences, being satisfied he would be useful in moderating the warmer spirits and promoting a wholesome and practicable reformation only. Mr. Jefferson told him he knew too well the duties he owed to the King, to the nation, and to his own country to take any part in the transactions of their internal government, and that he should persevere with care in the character of a neutral and passive spectator with wishes only -- and very sincere ones -- that those measures might prevail which would be for the greatest good of the nation. "I have no doubt indeed," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "that this conference was previously known and approved by this honest minister, who was in confidence and communication with the patriots and wished for a reasonable reform of the Constitution."
At this auspicious stage of the French Revolution, Mr. Jefferson retired from the scene of action, and the wisdom and moderation of his counsels ceased with the opportunities of imparting them. He left France with warm and unabated expectations that no serious commotion would take place and that the nation would soon settle down in the quiet enjoyment of a great degree of acquired liberty, to go on improving its condition by future and successive ameliorations, but never to retrograde. The example of the United States had been viewed as their model on all occasions. The King had now become a passive machine in the hands of the National Assembly and had he been left to himself, would probably have acquiesced in their determinations. A wise constitution would have been formed, hereditary in his line, himself at its head, with powers so large as to enable him to execute all the good of his station and so limited as to restrain him from its abuse. This constitution he would no doubt have faithfully administered, and more than this he most likely never wished. Such was the belief and hope of Mr. Jefferson, and to one source alone he ascribed the overthrow of all these fond anticipations and the deluge of crimes and cruelties which subsequently desolated France. To the despotic and disastrous influence of a single woman he attributed the horrible catastrophe of the French Revolution!
"But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of the Rhetor Burke, with some smartness of fancy but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d'Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit, led herself to the Guillotine and drew the king on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and calamities which will forever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that had there been no queen, there would have been no revolution. No force would have been provoked nor exercised. The king would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom of his sounder counselors who, guided by the increased lights of the age, wished only with the same pace to advance the principles of their social institution. The deed which closed the mortal course of these sovereigns I shall neither approve nor condemn. I am not prepared to say that the first magistrate of a nation cannot commit treason against his country or is unamenable to it's punishment: nor yet that where there is no written law, no regulated tribunal, there is not a law in our hearts and a power in our hands given for righteous employment in maintaining right and redressing wrong. Of those who judged the king, many thought him wilfully criminal, many that his existence would keep the nation in perpetual conflict with the horde of kings who would war against a regeneration which might come home to themselves, and that it were better that one should die than all. I should not have voted with this portion of the legislature. I should have shut up the Queen in a Convent, putting harm out of her power, and placed the king in his station, investing him with limited powers, which I verily believe he would have honestly exercised according to the measure of his understanding. In this way, no void would have been created courting the usurpation of a military adventurer nor occasion given for those enormities which demoralized the nations of the world and destroyed, and is yet to destroy, millions and millions of its inhabitants." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:150)
r. Jefferson had been more than a year soliciting leave to return to America with a view to place his daughters in the society of their friends, to attend to some domestic arrangements of pressing moment, and to resume his station after a short time at Paris; but it was not until the last of August, 1789, that he received the permission desired.
The generous tribute which he has paid to the French nation at this point in his autobiographical notes discloses the state of feeling with which he quitted a country where he had passed so various and useful a portion of his public life.
"And here I cannot leave this great and good country without expressing my sense of it's preeminence of character among the nations of the earth. A more benevolent people I have never known, nor greater warmth and devotedness in their select friendships. Their kindness and accommodation to strangers is unparalleled, and the hospitality of Paris is beyond anything I had conceived to be practicable in a large city. Their eminence, too, in science, the communicative dispositions of their scientific men, the politeness of the general manners, the ease and vivacity of their conversation give a charm to their society to be found nowhere else. In a comparison of this with other countries, we have the proof of primacy which was given to Themistocles after the battle of Salamis. Every general voted to himself the first reward of valor, and the second to Themistocles. So ask the traveled inhabitant of any nation, In what country on earth would you rather live? -- Certainly, in my own where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:159)
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