"The thirty millions which it costs to support a King in the éclat of stupid brutal luxury, presents us with an easy method of reducing taxes, which reduction would at once release the people, and stop the progress of political corruption. The grandeur of nations consists, not, as Kings pretend, in the splendor of thrones, but in a conspicuous sense of their own dignity, and in a just disdain of those barbarous follies and crimes, which, under the sanction of royalty have hitherto desolated Europe.
"As to the personal safety of Louis Capet, it is so much the more confirmed, as France will not stoop to degrade herself by a spirit of revenge against a wretch who has dishonored himself. In defending a just and glorious cause, it is not possible to degrade it, and the universal tranquillity which prevails is an undeniable proof, that a free people know how to respect themselves."
Malouet, a leading royalist member, tore down the handbill, and, having ascertained its author, demanded the prosecution of Thomas Paine and Achille Duchatelet. He was vehemently supported by Martineau, deputy of Paris, and for a time there was a tremendous agitation. The majority, not prepared to commit themselves to anything at all.
* "How great is a calm, couchant people! On the morrow men
will say to one another, 'We have no king, yet we slept
sound enough.' On the morrow Achille Duchatelet, and Thomas
Paine, the rebellious needleman, shall have the walls of
Paris profusely plastered with their placard, announcing
that there must be a republic."—Carlyle.
Dumont ("Recollections of Mirabeau") gives a particular account of this paper, which Duchatelet wished him to translate. "Paine and he, the one an American, the other a young thoughtless member of the French nobility, put themselves forward to change the whole system of government in France." Lafayette had been sounded, but said it would take twenty years to bring freedom to maturity in France. "But some of the seed thrown out by the audacious hand of Paine began to bud forth in the minds of many leading individuals." (E. g. Condorcet, Brissot, Petion, Claviere.) voted the order of the day, affecting, says Henri Martin, a disdain that hid embarrassment and inquietude.
This document, destined to reappear in a farther crisis, and the royalist rage, raised Paine's Republican Club to vast importance. Even the Jacobins, who had formally declined to sanction republicanism, were troubled by the discovery of a society more radical than themselves. It was only some years later that it was made known (by Paine) that this formidable association consisted of five members, and it is still doubtful who these were. Certainly Paine, Achille Duchatelet, and Condorcet; probably also Brissot, and Nicolas Bonneville. In order to avail itself of this tide of fame, the Société Républicaine started a journal,—The Republican.* The time was not ripe, however; only one copy appeared; that, however, contained a letter by Paine, written in June, which excited considerable flutter. To the reader of to-day it is mainly interesting as showing Paine's perception that the French required instruction in the alphabet of republicanism; but, amid its studied moderation, there was a paragraph which the situation rendered pregnant:
* "Le Republicain; on le defenseur du gouvernement
Representatif; par une Société des Républicans. A Paris.
July 1791. No. 1."
"Whenever the French Constitution shall be rendered conformable to its declaration of rights, we shall then be enabled to give to France, and with justice, the appellation of a Civic Empire; for its government will be the empire of laws, founded on the great republican principles of elective representation and the rights of man. But monarchy and hereditary succession are incompatible with the basis of its Constitution."
Now this was the very constitution which Paine, in his answer to Burke, had made comparatively presentable; to this day it survives in human memory mainly through indulgent citations in "The Rights of Man." Those angels who, in the celestial war, tried to keep friendly with both sides, had human counterparts in France, their constitutional oracle being the Abbé Sievès. He had entered warmly into the Revolution, invented the name "National Assembly," opposed the veto power, supported the Declaration of Rights. But he had a superstitious faith in individual executive, which, as an opportunist, he proposed to vest in the reigning house. This class of "survivals" in the constitution were the work of Sieyès, who was the brain of the Jacobins, now led by Robespierre, and with him ignoring republicanism for no better reason than that their title was "Société des Amis de la Constitution."* Sieyès petted his constitution maternally, perhaps because nobody else loved it, and bristled at Paine's criticism. He wrote a letter to the Moniteur, asserting that there was more liberty under a monarchy than under a republic He announced his intention of maintaining monarchical executive against the new party started into life by the King's flight. In the same journal (July 8th,) Paine accepts the challenge "with pleasure."** Paine himself was something of an opportunist; as in America he had favored reconciliation with George III. up to the Lexington massacre, so had he desired a modus vivendi with Louis XVI. up to his flight.* But now he unfurls the anti-monarchical flag.
* The club, founded in 1789, was called "Jacobin," because
they met in the hall of the Dominicans, who had been called
Jacobins from the street St. Jacques in which they were
first established, anno 1219.
** It was probably this letter that Gouverneur Morris
alludes to in his "Diary," when, writing of a Fourth of July
dinner given by Mr. Short (U. S. Chargé d'Affaires), he
mentions the presence of Paine, "inflated to the eyes and
big with a letter of Revolutions."
*** In this spirit was written Part I. of "The Rights of
Man" whose translation by M. Lanthenas, with new preface,
appeared in May. Sieyès agreed that "hereditaryship" was
theoretically wrong, "but," he said, "refer to the histories
of all elective monarchies and principalities: is there one
in which the elective mode is not worse than the hereditary
succession?" For notes on this incident see Professor F. A.
Aulard's important work, "Les Orateurs de l'Assemblee
Constituante," p. 411. Also Henri Martin's "Histoire de
France," i., p. 193.