There is an incalculable power of conviction and devotion of idea, in the daring of one against all. To brave at once, with no other power than individual reason, with no other support than conscience, human consideration, that cowardice of the mind, masked under respect for error; to dare the hatred of earth and the anathema of heaven, is the heroism of the writer. Voltaire was not a martyr in his body, but he consented to be one in his name, and devoted it during his life and after his death. He condemned his own ashes to be thrown to the winds, and not to have either an asylum or a tomb. He resigned himself even to lengthened exile in exchange for the liberty of a free combat. He isolated himself voluntarily from men, in order that their too close contact might not interfere with his thoughts.
At eighty years of age, feeble, and feeling his death nearly approaching, he several times made his preparations hastily, in order to go and struggle still, and die at a distance from the roof of his old age. The unwearied activity of his mind was never checked for a moment. He carried his gaiety even to genius, and under that pleasantry of his whole life we may perceive a grave power of perseverance and conviction. Such was the character of this great man. The enlightened serenity of his mind concealed the depth of its workings: under the joke and laugh his constancy of purpose was hardly sufficiently recognised. He suffered all with a laugh, and was willing to endure all, even in absence from his native land, in his lost friendships, in his refused fame, in his blighted name, in his memory accursed. He took all—bore all—for the sake of the triumph of the independence of human reason. Devotion does not change its worth in changing its cause, and this was his virtue in the eyes of posterity. He was not the truth, but he was its precursor, and walked in advance of it.
One thing was wanting to him—the love of a God. He saw him in mind, and he detested those phantoms which ages of darkness had taken for him, and adored in his stead. He rent away with rage those clouds which prevent the divine idea from beaming purely on mankind; but his weakness was rather hatred against error, than faith in the Divinity. The sentiment of religion, that sublime résumé of human thought; that reason, which, enlightened by enthusiasm, mounts to God as a flame, and unites itself with him in the unity of the creation with the Creator, of the ray with the focus—this, Voltaire never felt in his soul. Thence sprung the results of his philosophy; it created neither morals, nor worship, nor charity; it only decomposed—destroyed. Negative, cold, corrosive, sneering, it operated like poison—it froze—it killed—it never gave life. Thus, it never produced—even against the errors it assailed, which were but the human alloy of a divine idea—the whole effect it should have elicited. It made sceptics, instead of believers. The theocratic reaction was prompt and universal, as it ought to have been. Impiety clears the soul of its consecrated errors, but does not fill the heart of man. Impiety alone will never ruin a human worship: a faith destroyed must be replaced by a faith. It is not given to irreligion to destroy a religion on earth. There is but a religion more enlightened which can really triumph over a religion fallen into contempt, by replacing it. The earth cannot remain without an altar, and God alone is strong enough against God.
VIII.
It was on the 5th of August, 1791, the first anniversary of the famous night of the 4th of August, 1790, when feudality crumbled to atoms, that the National Assembly commenced the revision of the constitution. It was a solemn and imposing act, was this comprehensive coup d'œil cast by legislators at the end of their career, over the ruins they had scattered, and the foundations they had laid in their course. But how different at this moment was the disposition of their mind from what they felt in commencing this mighty work! They had begun it with an enthusiasm of the ideal, they now contemplated it with the misgivings and the sadness of reality. The National Assembly was opened amidst the acclamations of a people unanimous in their hopes, and was about to close amidst the clamorous recriminations of all parties.
The king was captive, the princes emigrants, the clergy at feud, the nobility in flight, the people seditious; Necker's popularity had vanished, Mirabeau was dead, Maury silenced, Cazalès, Lally, Mounier had deserted from their work. Two years had carried off more men and things than a generation removes in ordinary times. The great voices of '89, inspired with philosophy and vast hopes, no longer resounded beneath those vaults. The foremost ranks had fallen. The men of second order were now to contend in their stead. Intimidated, discouraged, repentant, they had neither the spirit to yield to the impulse of the people nor the power to resist it. Barnave had recovered his virtue in his sensibility; but virtue which comes late is like the experience which follows the act, and only enables us to measure the extent of our errors. In revolutions there is no repentance—there is only expiation. Barnave, who might have saved the monarchy, had he only united with Mirabeau, was just commencing his expiatory sentence. Robespierre was to Barnave what Barnave had been to Mirabeau; but Robespierre, more powerful than Barnave, instead of acting on the impulse of a passion as fluctuating as jealousy, acted under the influence of a fixed idea, and an unalterable theory. Robespierre had the whole people at his back.
IX.
From the opening of the sittings Barnave attempted to consolidate around the constitution the opinions so fiercely shaken by Robespierre and his friends. He did it with a caution which bespoke but too well the weakness of his position, notwithstanding the boldness of his language. "The labours of your committee of the constitution are assailed," he said. "There exist against our work but two kinds of opposition. Those who, up to the present time, have constantly shown themselves inimical to the Revolution—the enemies of equality, who hate our constitution because it is the condemnation of their aristocracy. Yet there is another class hostile also, and I will divide it into two distinct species. One of these is the men who, in the opinion of their own conscience, give the preference to another government which they disguise more or less in their language, and seek to deprive our monarchical government of all the strength which can retard the advent of a republic. I declare that these persons I shall not attack. Whosoever has a pure political opinion has a right to communicate it; but we have another class of foes. They are the foes of all government. If this class betrays its opposition, it is not because it prefers the republic to the monarchy, democracy to aristocracy, it is because all that concentrates the political machine, all that is order, all that places in his right position the honest man and the rogue, the candid man and the calumniator, is contrary and hateful to its system." (Long and loud applause from the majority on the left.) "Yes, gentlemen," continued Barnave, "such is the party which has the most strongly opposed our labours. They have sought fresh sources of revolution because the revolution as defined by us escaped them. These are the men who, changing the name of things, by uttering sentiments apparently patriotic, in the stead of sentiments of honour, probity, purity—by sitting even in the most august places with a mask of virtue, have believed that they would impose upon public opinion, and have coalesced with certain writers. (The plaudits here redoubled, and all eyes were turned towards Robespierre and Brissot.) If we desire to see our constitution carried out, if you desire that the nation, after having owed to you its hopes of liberty,—for as yet it is but hope (Murmurs of dissent),—shall owe to you reality, prosperity, happiness, peace, let us endeavour to simplify it, by giving to the government—by which I mean all the powers established by this constitution—the amount of simultaneous strength requisite to move the social machine, and to preserve to the nation the liberty you have conferred upon it. If the welfare of your country is dear to you, take care what you are about to do. Above all, let us discard injurious mistrust, which can serve none but our enemies, when they would believe that this national assembly, this constant majority, at once bold and sagacious, which has so much cast upon it since the king's departure, is ready to disappear before the divisions so skilfully fomented by perfidious imputations. (Loud cheering.) You will see renewed, do not doubt this, the disorders, the convulsions of which you are weary, and to which the completion of the Revolution ought also to be a completion. You will see renewed without hopes, projects, temptations which we openly brave because we feel our strength and are united—because we know that so long as we are united they will not be attempted; and if extravagant ideas should dare to try them it would always result in their shame. But the attempts would succeed, and on the success of them they might, with some semblance rely, if we were once divided amongst ourselves, not knowing in whom we might believe. We suspect each other of different plans when we have but the same idea—of contrary feelings, when every one of us has in his heart the testimony of his colleagues' purity, during two years of labour performed together—during consecutive proofs of courage—during sacrifices which nothing can compensate but the approving voice of conscience."
Here Barnave's voice was lost in the applauses of the majority, and the Assembly electrified, seemed for the moment unanimous in its monarchical feeling.