A few months after Talleyrand was installed Bishop of Autun, he was elected a representative to the States-General. Of his peculiar fitness for the place, Sir Henry Bulwer brings forward some striking and convincing testimony.
When the States-General met, they formed themselves into the National Assembly; they resolved to legislate in one and the same hall, the nobles and the clergy, mixed with the commonalty, and all three merged into one body. The Three Estates were no more; it was only the Third Estate that remained. The impending danger from immediate bankruptcy of the nation being the vital as it was the first subject for discussion, the high reputation possessed by the Bishop of Autun for financial abilities and practical skill easily gained for him the first place as a man of business, as the first rank in social position was already accorded to him. He spoke well, sensibly, to the point. Mirabeau was the greater orator, it is true, but Mirabeau was the orator for the commons; Talleyrand was no orator at all; he was a fluent speaker, never indulging in meretricious or ornamental embellishments, never appealing to the vulgar passions: he was the pride and glory, the great favorite of the nobles and clergy. His sphere had been more select, more exalted, more refined, where the declamation, passionate appeals, rounded periods, startling antitheses of Mirabeau would have been deemed low and voted down. Mirabeau was unable to shine in the Parisian salons frequented by the choice aristocracy, while Talleyrand despised making a figure of himself for the applause of the bourgeoisie of the Third Estate. But what the Third Estate was wanting in elegance of manners, in wit and cultivation, they supplied in the strength of their numbers, and in the corresponding determination to absorb all political power. It was evident the nobles and the clergy would be compelled to succumb. At last they gave way, and not only yielded up whatever political rights or immunities were their own, but whatever also was confided by others to their keeping. To quote from Sir Henry:
"On the 4th of August … almost all the institutions and peculiarities which constituted the framework of government and society throughout France were unhesitatingly swept away, at the instigation and demand of the first magistrates and nobles of the land, who did not sufficiently consider that they who destroy at once all existing laws (whatever those laws may be) destroy, at the same time, all established habits of thought; that is, all customs of obedience, all spontaneous feelings of respect and affection, without which a form of government is merely an idea on paper. In after times, M. de Talleyrand, when speaking of this period, said, in one of his characteristic phrases: 'La Révolution a désossé la France,' 'The Revolution has disboned France.' … The Bishop of Autun was undoubtedly among the foremost in destroying the traditions which constitute a community, and proclaiming the theories which captivate a mob." (P. 55.)
This extract is a fair specimen of the false statement of facts, and of the fallacious reasoning in the diplomatic body, on popular events. It is as destitute of truth as it is of logic, or a correct understanding of the principles upon which civil government is constituted. In all that was done so far, only antiquated, effete, feudal, or petty provincial privileges were surrendered; privileges which properly belonged to the state for the benefit of the nation whenever the state might deem it proper to demand them or to destroy them; for, long before, they ought to have been abolished. The aristocracy now chose voluntarily to relinquish them gracefully. They removed thereby great grievances from the public, and many intolerable burdens from the peasants. The laws which were repealed at the same time were only customs or statutes which had protected the privileges given up, and became obsolete when nothing was left for them to protect. Instead of dissolving society, the relinquishment of petty political rights was the removal of pernicious, detestable rubbish. All laws were not abrogated; nor was one destroyed, altered, or amended which protected the person or preserved property.
The next step of progress in the right direction was a vigorous effort to induce the king to be equally generous and patriotic in relinquishing some of his odious antiquated prerogatives. But Louis XVI. was unwilling to conform to the public wishes; he refused, because compliance would trench upon the sovereignty which he had received untouched from his royal ancestors, and which he resolved to transmit untarnished to his posterity. But when the pressure for a written constitution began to threaten his personal safety, he yielded with a mental reservation that he had given way to superior force; he conscientiously, but erroneously and fatally, believed his consent was not binding on him or his heirs. The representatives of the nation now maintained, that ministers having the national confidence should be called into the royal cabinet. To this reasonable request, the king refused his consent; but he temporized by reluctantly giving audience to Mirabeau, Talleyrand, and some others of the liberal party, leaving them under the mistaken impression that he would listen to their advice. But the king did not adopt their counsels; he did not intend that any of them should become his counsellors.
Louis granted them a hearing in order to conceal his intentions. It was only a blind to cover his purpose, which was to resume, at the first opportunity, what he had relinquished, and to send Mirabeau and Talleyrand, with their friends the sans-culottes, adrift. These liberals were consequently deceived; in truth, they aided in their own deception; they could not imagine the king would prove a traitor to his own interests. The king, however, was only playing over again the losing game practised by Charles I., and by his son, James II., of England. The stake in both countries was the same: it was, whether sovereignty should repose in the crown, as in ancient times, or in the people, in accordance with modern ideas. The prize cannot be divided, as some supposed; it can never be divided; in its very nature it is indivisible; it would be as impossible as to place one crown on two separate heads at the same time. Sir Henry Bulwer, as a true Briton, thinks, no doubt, the Stuart sovereigns were perjured knaves, because they deceived the House of Commons, and broke solemn promises made to their ministers; but he views the Bourbon king as foolish only in doing the same things, and pursuing the same line of policy. Now, in verity, the moral code applies alike to both dynasties, in both countries, in both centuries. Whatever royal promise is made should be royally and religiously fulfilled; but its violation does not justify a resort to the block at Whitehall or to the guillotine at the Carrousel. The execution of a monarch for defending his prerogatives by fair means or false promises, is no less a crime against civilization than it is a political error. No good can come of it; no good ever has.
But the duplicity and falsehood of Louis, in its incidents, brought on the first blow against property; and with the attack on property, all the crimes and calamities, all the misery, poverty, and long list of woes of the Revolution commenced. Then society began to disintegrate; then France began to disbone; it never ended until morality, Christianity, civilization, were crushed to a jelly. Talleyrand was the leader in this raid, and on his head rests the responsibility. He was the great oracle on financial topics in the National Assembly; he was the member looked up to for the solution of the financial problem to save the nation from ruin; he had accepted the position almost thrust upon him; and his reputation was at stake in surmounting the crisis. With success he could compel the king to invite him into the ministry. Mirabeau admitted this in a letter to a friend, and a portfolio in the ministry was the goal of Talleyrand's ambition. All eyes were, therefore, turned to the Bishop of Autun, and the eyes of the bishop turned to the landed property of the church, from whence the wants of the treasury could be immediately and with facility supplied. He was willing to propose the double sacrilege on religion and on society; for it was no less an outrage on civilization or civil government than it was on Christianity, which is the foundation of good government.
The coolness with which Sir Henry Bulwer states this desecration can only be compared with the absurdity in the line of argument with which Talleyrand advocated the measure. If some Bishop Colenso in the House of Lords should propose the seizure and confiscation of the wealth of the Anglican Establishment, the question would appear in a different aspect to the British diplomatist. He would view it with horror. In either case, however, the measure would be infamous. Governments are instituted to protect property, not to squander it; and the only difference between that which is held by an individual for himself and that which is held in trust for the benefit of others, is in the circumstance that whatever is in trust is, in the public estimation, more sacred, because it is preserved for the welfare of the poor, the weak, the ignorant or infirm of mind, who cannot provide for themselves; just as the state extends a more paternal care over the property of infants, idiots, or orphans, than over the interests of men and women of full growth and sound mind. If a call must be made in a sudden exigency for funds, what government, not demented, would spare the mercantile houses of the rich, to sequestrate and spoliate the hospitals for the helpless?
Talleyrand considered the church property as public property; but this view, plausible at first sight, is found on reflection to be fallacious. It was not derived from the nation, nor from the public, but from individuals, and from its own accumulations; it was not designed for the benefit of the public, but for a specific class of the people—the needy—to which class the mass of the community did not belong, and, furthermore, hoped they never would. So much for the bishop's premises and argument. But a stronger objection remains: it is the broad principle of the invasion of private rights, of common justice; and when that principle is once rendered unstable by common consent, the stability of all public opinion, of all civil institutions, of all organized government, is shaken; the state is liable to be overturned. When the National Assembly deemed it proper for the public good to confiscate the church property, the Legislative Assembly followed the example set to deprive persons of their liberty, and the National Convention next voted away lives by the hecatomb daily; under the same plea, the king himself was decapitated. When the public morality was once vitiated, who could foretell where the national criminality would terminate, who or how many would not be its victims?