The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10)

by Unknown

BARNAVE (1761-1793)

Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave was born at Grenoble, France, in 1761. He was the son of an advocate, who gave him a careful education. His first work of a public character, a pamphlet against the Feudal system, led to his election to the States-General in 1789. He advocated the Proclamation of the Rights of Man and identified himself with those enthusiastic young Republicans of whom Lafayette is the best type. The emancipation of the Jews from all civil and religious disabilities and the abolition of slavery throughout French territory owed much to his efforts. He also opposed the Absolute Veto and led the fight for the sequestration of the property of the Church. This course made him a popular idol and in the early days of the Revolution he was the leader of the extreme wing of the Republicans. When he saw, however, that mob law was about to usurp the place of the Republican institutions for which he had striven, he leaned towards the court and advocated the sacrosanctity of the King's person. Denounced as a renegade, with his life threatened and his influence lost, he retired to his native province. In August 1792 he was impeached for correspondence with the King, and on November 26th, 1793. he was guillotined. The specimens of his eloquence here given were translated for this Library from the Paris edition of his works, published in 1843.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY AGAINST MAJORITY ABSOLUTISM
(Delivered in the National Assembly, August 11th, 1791)

It is not enough to desire to be free—one must know how to be free. I shall speak briefly on this subject, for after the success of our deliberations, I await with confidence the spirit and action of this Assembly. I only wish to announce my opinions on a question, the rejection of which would sooner or later mean the loss of our liberties. This question leaves no doubt in the minds of those who reflect on governments and are guided by impartial judgments. Those who have combatted the committee have made a fundamental error. They have confounded democratic government with representative government; they have confounded the rights of the people with the qualifications of an elector, which society dispenses for its well understood interest. Where the government is representative, where there exists an intermediary degree of electors, society which elects them has essentially the right to determine the conditions of their eligibility. There is one right existing in our constitution, that of the active citizen, but the function of an elector is not a right. I repeat, society has the right to determine its conditions. Those who misunderstand the nature as they do the advantages of representative government, remind us of the governments of Athens and Sparta, ignoring the differences that distinguish them from France, such as extent of territory, population, etc. Do they forget that they interdicted representative government? Have they forgotten that the Lacedemonians had the right to vote in the assemblies only when they held helots? And only by sacrifice of individual rights did the Lacedemonians, Athenians, and Romans possess any democratic governments! I ask those who remind us of them, if it is at such government they would arrive? I ask those who profess here metaphysical ideas, because they have no practical ideas, those who envelop the question in clouds of theory, because they ignore entirely the fundamental facts of a positive government—I ask is it forgotten that the democracy of a portion of a people would exist but by the entire enslavement of the other portion of the people? A representative government has but one evil to fear, that of corruption. That such a government shall be good, there must be guaranteed the purity and incorruptibility of the electorate. This body needs the union of three eminent guarantees. First, the light of a fair education and broadened views. Second, an interest in things, and still better if each had a particular and considerable interest at stake to defend. Third, such condition of fortune as to place the elector above attack from corruption.

These advantages I do not look for in the superior class of the rich, for they undoubtedly have too many special and individual interests, which they separate from the general interests. But if it is true that we must not look for the qualifications of the pure elector among the eminently rich, neither should I look for it among those whose lack of fortune has prevented their enlightenment; among such, unceasingly feeling the touches of want, corruption too easily can find its means. It is, then, in the middle class that we find the qualities and advantages I have cited. And, I ask, is it the demand that they contribute five to ten francs that causes the assertion that we would throw elections into the hands of the rich? You have established the usage that the electors receive nothing; if it were otherwise their great number would make an election most expensive. From the instant that the voter has not means enough to enable him to sacrifice a little time from his daily labor, one of three things would occur. The voter would absent himself, or insist on being paid by the State, else he would be rewarded by the one who wanted to obtain his suffrage. This does not occur when a comfortable condition is necessary to constitute an elector. As soon as the government is established, when the constitution is guaranteed, there is but a common interest for those who live on their property, and those who toil honestly. Then can be distinguished those who desire a stable government and those who seek but revolution and change, since they increase in importance in the midst of trouble as vermin in the midst of corruption.

If it is true, then, that under an established constitutional government all its well-wishers have the same interest, the power of the same must be placed in the hands of the enlightened who can have no interest pressing on them, greater than the common interest of all the citizens. Depart from these principles and you fall into the abuses of representative government. You would have extreme poverty in the electorate and extreme opulence in the legislature. You would see soon in France what yon see now in England, the purchase of voters in the boroughs not with money even, but with pots of beer. Thus incontestably are elected many of their parliamentary members. Good representation must not be sought in either extreme, but in the middle class. The committee have thus placed it by making it incumbent that the voter shall possess an accumulation the equivalent of, say forty days of labor. This would unite the qualities needed to make the elector exercise his privilege with an interest in the same. It is necessary that he own from one hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty livres, either in property or chattels. I do not think it can seriously be said that this qualification is fixed too high, unless we would introduce among our electors men who would beg or seek improper recompense.

If you would have liberty subsist do not hesitate because of specious arguments which will be presented to you by those who, if they reflect, will recognize the purity of our intentions and the resultant advantages of our plans. I add to what I have already said that the system will diminish many existing inconveniences, and the proposed law will not have its full effect for two years. They tell us we are taking from the citizen a right which elevated him by the only means through which he can acquire it. I reply that if it was an honor the career which you will open for them will imprint them with character greater and more in conformity with true equality. Our opponents have not failed either to magnify the inconveniences of changing the constitution. Nor do I desire its change. For that reason we should not introduce imprudent discussions to create the necessity of a national convention. In one word, the advice and conclusions of the committee are the sole guarantees for the prosperity and peaceable condition of the nation.

COMMERCIAL POLITICS

Commerce forms a numerous class, friends of external peace and internal tranquillity, who attach themselves to the established government.

It creates great fortunes, which in republics become the origin of the most forceful aristocracies. As a rule commerce enriches the cities and their inhabitants, and increases the laboring and mechanical classes, in opening more opportunities for the acquirement of riches. To an extent it fortifies the democratic element in giving the people of the cities greater influence in the government. It arrives at nearly the same result by impoverishing the peasant and land owner, by the many new pleasures offered him and by displaying to him the ostentation and voluptuousness of luxury and ease. It tends to create bands of mercenaries rather than those capable of worthy personal service. It introduces into the nation luxury, ease, and avarice at the same time as labor.

The manners and morals of a commercial people are not the manners of the merchant. He individually is economical, while the general mass are prodigal. The individual merchant is conservative and moral, while the general public are rendered dissolute.

The mixture of riches and pleasures which commerce produces joined to freedom of manners, leads to excesses of all kinds, at the same time that the nation may display the perfection of elegance and taste that one noticed in Rome, mistress of the world or in France before the Revolution. In Rome the wealth was the inflow of the whole world, the product of the hardiest ambition, producing the deterioration of the soldier and the indifference of the patrician. In France the wealth was the accumulation of an immense commerce and the varied labors of the most industrious nation on the earth diverted by a brilliant and corrupt court, a profligate and chivalrous nobility, and a rich and voluptuous capital.

Where a nation is exclusively commercial, it can make an immense accumulation of riches without sensibly altering its manners. The passion of the trader is avarice and the habit of continuous labor. Left alone to his instincts he amasses riches to possess them, without designing or knowing how to use them. Examples are needed to conduct him to prodigality, ostentation, and moral corruption. As a rule the merchant opposes the soldier. One desires the accumulations of industry, the other of conquest. One makes of power the means of getting riches, the other makes of riches the means of getting power. One is disposed to be economical, a taste due to his labor. The other is prodigal, the instinct of his valor. In modern monarchies these two classes form the aristocracy and the democracy. Commerce in certain republics forms an aristocracy, or rather an "extra aristocracy in the democracy." These are the directing forces of such democracies, with the addition of two other governing powers, which have come in, the clergy and the legal fraternity, who assist largely in shaping the course of events.