* * *
At length
the mighty crisis came on. The French
revolution draws near, -- that stupendous event of which it is impossible to be
silent, -- next to impossible to speak.
Louis XV. once said to a
courtier, "This French monarchy is fourteen hundred years old; it cannot
last long." Such was the terrific
sentiment which, even in the bosom of his base pleasures, stole into the
conscience of the modern Sardanapalus.
But in that mysterious and bewildering chain of connection which binds
together the fortunes of states and of men, the last convulsive effort of this
worn-out and decrepit monarchy, in which the spasmodic remains of her strength
were exhausted, and her finances plunged into irretrievable confusion, was the
American alliance. This corrupt and
feeble despotism, trembling on the verge of an abyss, towards which time and
events were urging it, is made to hold out a strong and helping hand to assist
the rising republic into the family of nations.
The generous spirits whom she sent to lead her armies to the triumphs of
republicanism in America, came back to demand for their own country, and to
assert on their own soil, those political privileges for which they had been
contending in America. The process of
argument was short. If this plan of
government, administered by responsible agents, is good for America, it is good
for France. If our brethren in the
United States will not submit to power assumed by men not accountable for its
abuse, why should we? If we have done
wisely and well in going to shed our blood for this constitutional liberty
beyond the Atlantic, let us be ready to shed it in the same great cause, for
our fathers, for our friends, for ourselves, in our native land. Is it possible to find, I will not say a
sound and sufficient answer to this argument, but an answer which would be
thought sound and sufficient by the majority of ardent tempers and inquisitive
minds?
The
atrocious, the unexampled, the ungodly abuses of the reign of terror have made
the very name of the French revolution hateful to mankind. The blood chills, the flesh creeps, the hair
stands on end, at the recital of its horrors; and no slight degree of the odium
they occasion is unavoidably reflected on all who had any agency in bringing it
on. The subsequent events in Europe have
also involved the French revolution in a deep political unpopularity. It is unpopular in Great Britain, in the rest
of Europe, in America, in France itself; and not a little of the unpopularity
falls on every one whose name is prominently connected with it. All this is prejudice, -- natural prejudice,
if you please, -- but still prejudice.
The French Revolution was the work of sheer necessity. It began in the act of the court, casting
about in despair for the means of facing the frightful dilapidation of the
finances. Louis XV. was right; the
monarchy could not go on. The revolution
was inevitable as fate.
I go
farther. Penetrated as I am to
heart-sickness when I peruse the tale of its atrocities, I do not scruple to
declare, that the French revolution, as it existed in the purposes of Lafayette
and his associates, and while it obeyed their impulse, and so long as it was
controlled by them, was, notwithstanding the melancholy excesses which stained
even its early stages, a work of righteous reform; that justice, humanity, and
religion demanded it. I maintain this
with some reluctance, because it is a matter in respect to which all are not of
one mind, and I would not willingly say any thing on this occasion which could
awaken a single discordant feeling. But
I speak from a sense of duty; and, standing as I do over the grave of
Lafayette, I may not, if my feeble voice can prevent it, allow the fame of one
of the purest men that ever lived to be sacrificed to a prejudice; to be
overwhelmed with the odium of abuses which he did not foresee, which, if he had
foreseen, he could not have averted, and with which he had himself no personal
connection, but as their victim. It is
for this reason I maintain that the French revolution, as conceived by Lafayette,
was a work of righteous reform. Read the
history of France, from the revocation of the edict of Nantes downwards. Reflect upon the scandalous influence which
dictated that inhuman decree to the dotage of Louis XIV., a decree which cost
France as much blood as flowed under the guillotine. Trace the shameful annals of the regency, and
the annals, not less shameful, of Louis XV.
Consider the overgrown wealth and dissoluteness of the clergy, and the
arrogance and corruption of the nobility, possessing together a vast proportion
of the property, and bearing no part of the burdens of the state. Recollect the abuses of the law, -- high
judicial places venal in the market, -- warrants of arrest issued to the number
of one hundred and fifty thousand in the single reign of Louis XV., often-times
in blank, to court favorites, to be filled up with what names, for what
prisons, for what times they pleased.
Add to this oppression of the peasantry by iniquitous taxes that have become proverbial in the history of misgovernment, and the outlawry of
one twenty-fourth part of the population of Protestants, who were forbidden to
leave the kingdom, subject to be shot if they crossed the frontier, but deprived
of the protection of the government at home, their contracts annulled, their
children declared illegitimate, and their ministers -- who might venture in
dark forests and dreary caverns, to conduct their prohibited devotions --
doomed to the scaffold. As late as 1745,
two Protestant ministers were executed in France for performing their sacred
functions. Could men bear these things
in a country like France, a reading, inquiring country, with the success of the
American revolution before their eyes, and at the close of the eighteenth
century? Can any man who has Anglo-Saxon
blood in his veins hesitate for an answer?
Did not England shake off less abuses than these a century and a half
before? Had not a paltry unconstitutional
tax, neither in amount nor in principle be named with the taille or the gabelle,
just put the continent of America in a flame?
and was it possible that the young officers of the French army should
come back to their native land, from the war of political emancipation waged on
this continent, and sit down contented under the old abuses at home? It was not possible. The revolution was as inevitable as fate, and
the only question was, by whose agency was it brought on.
***
Edward Everett, Eulogy
on Lafayette, Delivered in Faneuil Hall, At the Request of the Young Men of
Boston, September 6, 1834.
