The principled Royalists are certainly not of force to effect these objects by themselves. If they were, the operations of the present great combination would be wholly unnecessary. What I contend for is, that they should be consulted with, treated with, and employed; and that no foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment and local knowledge so competent to answer all these purposes, as the natural proprietors of the country.
Their number, for an exiled party, is also considerable. Almost the whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and civil, have been steadily devoted to the monarchy. This body does not amount to less than seventy thousand,—a very great number in the composition of the respectable classes in any society. I am sure, that, if half that number of the same description were taken out of this country, it would leave hardly anything that I should call the people of England. On the faith of the Emperor and the king of Prussia, a body of ten thousand nobility on horseback, with the king's two brothers at their head, served with the king of Prussia in the campaign of 1792, and equipped themselves with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and exhausted credit.[34] It is not now the question, how that great force came to be rendered useless and totally dissipated. I state it now, only to remark that a great part of the same force exists, and would act, if it were enabled. I am sure everything has shown us that in this war with France one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this.
If we wish to make an impression on the minds of any persons in France, or to persuade them to join our standard, it is impossible that they should not be more easily led, and more readily formed and disciplined, (civilly and martially disciplined,) by those who speak their language, who are acquainted with their manners, who are conversant with their usages and habits of thinking, and who have a local knowledge of their country, and some remains of ancient credit and consideration, than with a body congregated from all tongues and tribes. Where none of the respectable native interests are seen in the transaction, it is impossible that any declarations can convince those that are within, or those that are without, that anything else than some sort of hostility in the style of a conqueror is meant. At best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they would, I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, Spaniards, Neapolitans, Sardinians, Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Slavonians, Croatians, acting as principals, it is impossible they should think we come with a beneficent design. Many of those fierce and barbarous people have already given proofs how little they regard any French party whatsoever. Some of these nations the people of France are jealous of: such are the English and the Spaniards;—others they despise: such are the Italians;—others they hate and dread: such are the German and Danubian powers. At best, such interposition of ancient enemies excites apprehension; but in this case, how can they suppose that we come to maintain their legitimate monarchy in a truly paternal French government, to protect their privileges, their laws, their religion, and their property, when they see us make use of no one person who has any interest in them, any knowledge of them, or any the least zeal for them? On the contrary, they see that we do not suffer any of those who have shown a zeal in that cause which we seem to make our own to come freely into any place in which the allies obtain any footing.
If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to see what it is they expect. We have had a proposal from the Royalists of Poitou. They are well entitled, after a bloody war maintained for eight months against all the powers of anarchy, to speak the sentiments of the Royalists of France. Do they desire us to exclude their princes, their clergy, their nobility? The direct contrary. They earnestly solicit that men of every one of these descriptions should be sent to them. They do not call for English, Austrian, or Prussian officers. They call for French emigrant officers. They call for the exiled priests. They have demanded the Comte d'Artois to appear at their head. These are the demands (quite natural demands) of those who are ready to follow the standard of monarchy.
The great means, therefore, of restoring the monarchy, which we have made the main object of the war, is, to assist the dignity, the religion, and the property of France to repossess themselves of the means of their natural influence. This ought to be the primary object of all our politics and all our military operations. Otherwise everything will move in a preposterous order, and nothing but confusion and destruction will follow.
I know that misfortune is not made to win respect from ordinary minds. I know that there is a leaning to prosperity, however obtained, and a prejudice in its favor. I know there is a disposition to hope something from the variety and inconstancy of villany, rather than from the tiresome uniformity of fixed principle. There have been, I admit, situations in which a guiding person or party might be gained over, and through him or them the whole body of a nation. For the hope of such a conversion, and of deriving advantage from enemies, it might be politic for a while to throw your friends into the shade. But examples drawn from history in occasions like the present will be found dangerously to mislead us. France has no resemblance to other countries which have undergone troubles and been purified by them. If France, Jacobinized as it has been for four full years, did contain any bodies of authority and disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not,) such is the levity of those who have expelled everything respectable in their country, such their ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit, their habits of defying everything human and divine, that no engagement would hold with them for three months; nor, indeed, could they cohere together for any purpose of civilized society, if left as they now are. There must be a means, not only of breaking their strength within themselves, but of civilizing them; and these two things must go together, before we can possibly treat with them, not only as a nation, but with any division of them. Descriptions of men of their own race, but better in rank, superior in property and decorum, of honorable, decent, and orderly habits, are absolutely necessary to bring them to such a frame as to qualify them so much as to come into contact with a civilized nation. A set of those ferocious savages with arms in their hands, left to themselves in one part of the country whilst you proceed to another, would break forth into outrages at least as bad as their former. They must, as fast as gained, (if ever they are gained,) be put under the guide, direction, and government of better Frenchmen than themselves, or they will instantly relapse into a fever of aggravated Jacobinism.
We must not judge of other parts of France by the temporary submission of Toulon, with two vast fleets in its harbor, and a garrison far more numerous than all the inhabitants able to bear arms. If they were left to themselves, I am quite sure they would not retain their attachment to monarchy of any name for a single week.
To administer the only cure for the unheard-of disorders of that undone country, I think it infinitely happy for us that God has given into our hands more effectual remedies than human contrivance could point out. We have in our bosom, and in the bosom of other civilized states, nearer forty than thirty thousand persons, providentially preserved, not only from the cruelty and violence, but from the contagion of the horrid practices, sentiments, and language of the Jacobins, and even sacredly guarded from the view of such abominable scenes. If we should obtain, in any considerable district, a footing in France, we possess an immense body of physicians and magistrates of the mind, whom we now know to be the most discreet, gentle, well-tempered, conciliatory, virtuous, and pious persons who in any order probably existed in the world. You will have a missioner of peace and order in every parish. Never was a wiser national economy than in the charity of the English and of other countries. Never was money better expended than in the maintenance of this body of civil troops for reëstablishing order in France, and for thus securing its civilization to Europe. This means, if properly used, is of value inestimable.
Nor is this corps of instruments of civilization confined to the first order of that state,—I mean the clergy. The allied powers possess also an exceedingly numerous, well-informed, sensible, ingenious, high-principled, and spirited body of cavaliers in the expatriated landed interest of France, as well qualified, at least, as I (who have been taught by time and experience to moderate my calculation of the expectancy of human abilities) ever expected to see in the body of any landed gentlemen and soldiers by their birth. France is well winnowed and sifted. Its virtuous men are, I believe, amongst the most virtuous, as its wicked are amongst the most abandoned upon earth. Whatever in the territory of France may be found to be in the middle between these must be attracted to the better part. This will be compassed, when every gentleman, everywhere being restored to his landed estate, each on his patrimonial ground, may join the clergy in reanimating the loyalty, fidelity, and religion of the people,—that these gentlemen proprietors of land may sort that people according to the trust they severally merit, that they may arm the honest and well-affected, and disarm and disable the factious and ill-disposed. No foreigner can make this discrimination nor these arrangements. The ancient corporations of burghers according to their several modes should be restored, and placed (as they ought to be) in the hands of men of gravity and property in the cities or bailliages, according to the proper constitutions of the commons or third estate of France. They will restrain and regulate the seditious rabble there, as the gentlemen will on their own estates. In this way, and in this way alone, the country (once broken in upon by foreign force well directed) may be gained and settled. It must be gained and settled by itself, and through the medium of its own native dignity and property. It is not honest, it is not decent, still less is it politic, for foreign powers themselves to attempt anything in this minute, internal, local detail, in which they could show nothing but ignorance, imbecility, confusion, and oppression. As to the prince who has a just claim to exercise the regency of France, like other men he is not without his faults and his defects. But faults or defects (always supposing them faults of common human infirmity) are not what in any country destroy a legal title to government. These princes are kept in a poor, obscure, country town of the king of Prussia's. Their reputation is entirely at the mercy of every calumniator. They cannot show themselves, they cannot explain themselves, as princes ought to do. After being well informed as any man here can be, I do not find that these blemishes in this eminent person are at all considerable, or that they at all affect a character which is full of probity, honor, generosity, and real goodness. In some points he has but too much resemblance to his unfortunate brother, who, with all his weaknesses, had a good understanding, and many parts of an excellent man and a good king. But Monsieur, without supposing the other deficient, (as he was not,) excels him in general knowledge, and in a sharp and keen observation, with something of a better address, and an happier mode of speaking and of writing. His conversation is open, agreeable, and informed; his manners gracious and princely. His brother, the Comte d'Artois, sustains still better the representation of his place. He is eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a decided character, full of energy and activity. In a word, he is a brave, honorable, and accomplished cavalier. Their brethren of royalty, if they were true to their own cause and interest, instead of relegating these illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring them forward in their courts and camps, and exhibit them to (what they would speedily obtain) the esteem, respect, and affection of mankind.
Objection made to the regent's endeavor to go to Spain.As to their knocking at every door, (which seems to give offence,) can anything be more natural? Abandoned, despised, rendered in a manner outlaws by all the powers of Europe, who have treated their unfortunate brethren with all the giddy pride and improvident insolence of blind, unfeeling prosperity, who did not even send them a compliment of condolence on the murder of their brother and sister, in such a state is it to be wondered at, or blamed, that they tried every way, likely or unlikely, well or ill chosen, to get out of the horrible pit into which they are fallen, and that in particular they tried whether the princes of their own blood might at length be brought to think the cause of kings, and of kings of their race, wounded in the murder and exile of the branch of France, of as much importance as the killing of a brace of partridges? If they were absolutely idle, and only eat in sloth their bread of sorrow and dependence, they would be forgotten, or at best thought of as wretches unworthy of their pretensions, which they had done nothing to support. If they err from our interests, what care has been taken to keep them in those interests? or what desire has ever been shown to employ them in any other way than as instruments of their own degradation, shame, and ruin?