Albert Beveridge - The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4)

Everybody in America echoed the shouts of the Parisian populace when the Bastille fell. Was it not the prison where kings thrust their subjects to perish of starvation and torture? 16 16 Recent investigation establishes the fact that the inmates of the Bastille generally found themselves very well off indeed. The records of this celebrated prison show that even prisoners of mean station, when incarcerated for so grave a crime as conspiracy against the King's life, had, in addition to remarkably abundant meals, an astonishing amount of extra viands and refreshments including comfortable quantities of wine, brandy, and beer. Prisoners of higher station fared still more generously, of course. (Funck-Brentano: Legends of the Bastille , 85-113; see also ib. , introduction.) It should be said, however, that the lettres de cachet were a chief cause of complaint, although the stories, generally exaggerated, concerning the cruel treatment of prisoners came to be the principal count of the public indictment of the Bastille. Lafayette, "as a missionary of liberty to its patriarch," hastened to present Washington with "the main key of the fortress of despotism." 17 17 Lafayette to Washington, March 17, 1790; Cor. Rev. : Sparks, iv, 322. Washington responded that he accepted the key of the Bastille as "a token of the victory gained by liberty." 18 18 Washington to Lafayette, August 11, 1790; Writings: Ford, xi, 493. Thomas Paine wrote of his delight at having been chosen by Lafayette to "convey … the first ripe fruits of American principles, transplanted into Europe, to his master and patron." 19 19 Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790; Cor. Rev. : Sparks, iv, 328. Paine did not, personally, bring the key, but forwarded it from London. Mutual congratulations were carried back and forth by every ship.

Soon the mob in Paris took more sanguinary action and blood flowed more freely, but not in sufficient quantity to quench American enthusiasm for the cause of liberty in France. We had had plenty of mobs ourselves and much crimson experience. Had not mobs been the precursors of our own Revolution?

The next developments of the French uprising and the appearance of the Jacobin Clubs, however, alarmed some and gave pause to all of the cautious friends of freedom in America and other countries.

Edmund Burke hysterically sounded the alarm. On account of his championship of the cause of American Independence, Burke had enjoyed much credit with all Americans who had heard of him. "In the last age," exclaimed Burke in Parliament, February 9, 1790, "we were in danger of being entangled by the example of France in the net of a relentless despotism… Our present danger from the example of a people whose character knows no medium, is, with regard to government, a danger from anarchy; a danger of being led, through an admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy." 20 20 Burke in the House of Commons; Works : Burke, i, 451-53.

Of the French declaration of human rights Burke declared: "They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys at school… They systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. 21 21 Ib. … On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings," exclaimed the great English liberal, "laws are to be supported only by their own terrours… In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows." 22 22 Reflections on the Revolution in France ; ib. , i, 489. Jefferson well stated the American radical opinion of Burke: "The Revolution of France does not astonish me so much as the Revolution of Mr. Burke… How mortifying that this evidence of the rottenness of his mind must oblige us now to ascribe to wicked motives those actions of his life which were the mark of virtue & patriotism." (Jefferson to Vaughan, May 11, 1791; Works : Ford, vi, 260.)

Burke's extravagant rhetoric, although reprinted in America, was little heeded. It would have been better if his pen had remained idle. For Burke's wild language, not yet justified by the orgy of blood in which French liberty was, later, to be baptized, caused a voice to speak to which America did listen, a page to be written that America did read. Thomas Paine, whose "Common Sense" had made his name better known to all people in the United States than that of any other man of his time except Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Henry, was then in France. This stormy petrel of revolution seems always to have been drawn by instinct to every part of the human ocean where hurricanes were brooding. 23 23 Paine had not yet lost his immense popularity in the United States. While, later, he came to be looked upon with horror by great numbers of people, he enjoyed the regard and admiration of nearly everybody in America at the time his Rights of Man appeared.

Paine answered Burke with that ferocious indictment of monarchy entitled "The Rights of Man," in which he went as far to one extreme as the English political philosopher had gone to the other; for while Paine annihilated Burke's Brahminic laudation of rank, title, and custom, he also penned a doctrine of paralysis to all government. As was the case with his "Common Sense," Paine's "Rights of Man" abounded in attractive epigrams and striking sentences which quickly caught the popular ear and were easily retained by the shallowest memory.

"The cause of the French people is that of … the whole world," declared Paine in the preface of his flaming essay; 24 24 Writings : Conway, ii, 272. and then, the sparks beginning to fly from his pen, he wrote: "Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government… It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished… The instant formal government is abolished," said he, "society begins to act; … and common interest produces common security." And again: "The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government… It is but few general laws that civilised life requires."

Holding up our own struggle for liberty as an illustration, Paine declared: "The American Revolution … laid open the imposition of governments"; and, using our newly formed and untried National Government as an example, he asserted with grotesque inaccuracy: "In America … all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged… Their taxes are few, because their government is just." 25 25 Writings : Conway, ii, 406. At this very moment the sympathizers with the French Revolution in America were saying exactly the reverse.

Proceeding thence to his assault upon all other established governments, especially that of England, the great iconoclast exclaimed: "It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto [1790] existed in the world, could have commenced by any other means than a violation of every principle sacred and moral."

Striking at the foundations of all permanent authority, Paine declared that "Every age and generation must be … free to act for itself in all cases … The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." The people of yesterday have "no right … to bind or to control … the people of the present day … in any shape whatever … Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require." 26 26 Writings : Conway, ii, 278-79, 407, 408, 413, 910. So wrote the incomparable pamphleteer of radicalism.