Paled their ineffectual fires
before La Fayette, whose name was the nation's for three years. Supreme arbiter, he carried into the Assembly his authority as commandant of the national guard; his authority, as an influential member of the Assembly. Of these two conjoined titles be made a real dictatorship of opinion. As an orator he was but of slight consideration; his gentle style, though witty and keen, had nothing of that firm and electric manner which strikes the senses, makes the heart vibrate and communicates its vigour and effects to all who listen. Elegant as the language of a drawing room and overwhelmed in the mazes of diplomatic intrigues, he spoke of liberty in court phrases. The only parliamentary act of M. La Fayette was a proclamation of the rights of man, which was adopted by the National Assembly. This decalogue of free men, formed in the forests of America, contained more metaphysical phrases than sound policy. It applied as ill to an old society as the nudity of the savage to the complicated wants of civilised man: but it had the merit of placing man bare for the moment, and, by showing him what he was and what he was not, of setting him on the discovery of the real value of his duties and his rights. It was the cry of the revolt of nature against all tyrannies. This cry was destined to crumble into dust an old world used up in servitude, and to produce another new and breathing. It was to La Fayette's honour that he first proposed it.
The federation of 1790 was the apogee of M. de La Fayette: on that day he surpassed both king and assembly. The nation armed and reflective was there in person, and he commanded it; he could have done every thing and attempted nothing: the misfortune of that man was in his situation. A man of transition, his life passed between two ideas; if he had had but one he could have been master of the destinies of his country. The monarchy or the republic were alike in his hand; he had but to open it wide, he only half opened it, and it was only a semi-liberty that issued from it. In inspiring his country with a desire for a republic, he defended a constitution and a throne. His principles and his conduct were in opposition; he was honest, and yet seemed to betray; whilst he struggled with regret from duty to the monarchy, his heart was in the republic. Protector of the throne, he was at the same time its bugbear. One life can only be devoted to one cause. Monarchy and republicanism had the same esteem, the same wrongs in his mind, and he served for and against both. He died without having seen either of them triumphant, but he died virtuous and popular. He had, beside his private virtues, a public virtue, which will ever be a pardon to his faults, and immortality to his name; he had before all, more than all, and after all, the feeling, constancy, and moderation of the Revolution.
Such was the man and such the army on which reposed the executive power, the safety of Paris, the constitutional throne, and the life of the king.
XXIII.
Thus on the 1st of June, 1791, were parties situated, such the men and things in the midst of which the irresistible spirit of a vast social renovation advanced with occult and continuous impulse. What but contention, anarchy, crime, and death, could emanate from such elements! No party had the reason, no mind had the genius, no soul had the virtue, no arm had the energy, to control this chaos, and extract from it justice, truth, and strength. Things will only produce what they contain. Louis XVI. was upright and devoted to well doing, but he had not understood, from the very first symptoms of the Revolution, that there was only one part for the leader of a people, and that was to place himself in the van of the newly born idea, to forbear any struggle for the past, and thus to combine in his own person the twofold power of chief of the nation, and chief of a party. The character of moderation is only possible on the condition of having already acquired the unreserved confidence of the party whom it is desired to control. Henri IV. assumed this character, but it was after victory; had he attempted it before Ivry, he would have lost, not only the kingdom of France, but also of Navarre.
The court was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's person the sources of its vanities,—profitable exactions. The clergy, with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state, its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical establishment seemed to be wholly independent of the monarchical establishment. It had only rallied round the monarchy, on the day it had beheld its own fortune compromised; and then it had appealed to the faith of the people, in order to preserve its wealth; but the people now only saw in the monks mendicants, and in the bishops extortioners. The nobility, effeminate by lengthened peace, emigrated in masses, abandoning their king to his besetting perils, and fully trusting in the prompt and decisive intervention of foreign powers. The third estate, jealous and envious, fiercely demanded their place and their rights amongst the privileged castes; its justice appeared hatred. The Assembly comprised in its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for his own purpose, and according to his own scheme; and it must have been wrecked on these shoals a hundred times, if there were not in human crises something even stronger than the men who appear to guide them—the will of the event itself.
The Revolution in all its comprehensive bearings was not understood at that period by any one except, perchance, Robespierre and the thorough going democrats. The King viewed it only as a vast reform, the Duc d'Orleans as a great faction, Mirabeau but in its political point of view, La Fayette only in its constitutional aspect, the Jacobins as a vengeance, the mob as the abasing of the higher orders, the nation as a display of patriotism. None ventured as yet to contemplate its ultimate consummation.
All was thus blind, except the Revolution itself. The virtue of the Revolution was in the idea which forced these men on to accomplish it, and not in those who actually accomplished it; all its instruments were vitiated, corrupt, or personal; but the idea was pure, incorruptible, divine. The vices, passions, selfishness of men were inevitably doomed to produce in the coming crises those shocks, those violences, those perversities, and those crimes which are to human passions what consequences are to principles.
If each of the parties or men, mixed up from the first day with these great events had taken their virtue, instead of their impulses as the rule of their actions, all these disasters which eventually crushed them, would have been saved to them and to their country. If the king had been firm and sagacious, if the clergy had been free from a longing for things temporal, and if the aristocracy had been good; if the people had been moderate, if Mirabeau had been honest, if La Fayette had been decided, if Robespierre had been humane, the Revolution would have progressed, majestic and calm as a heavenly thought, through France, and thence through Europe; it would have been installed like a philosophy in facts, in laws, and in creeds. But it was otherwise decreed. The holiest most just and virtuous thought, when it passes through the medium of imperfect humanity, comes out in rags and in blood. Those very persons who conceived it, no longer recognise, disavow it. Yet it is not permitted, even to crime, to degrade the truth, that survives all, even its victims. The blood which sullies men does not stain its idea; and despite the selfishness which debases it, the infamies which trammel it, the crimes which pollute it, the blood-stained Revolution purifies itself, feels its own worth, triumphs, and will triumph.