call them the heroes of the 10th of August, if he will: “The heroes of the 14th of July,” has always been understood to mean, a gang of blood-thirsty cannibals, and I would by no means wish to withhold the title from those of the 10th of August.
Will the Doctor allow, that it was a mob that murdered the state prisoners from Orleans? Or does he insist upon calling that massacre an act of civism, and the actors in it the heroes of the 12th of September? But whether it was an act of civism, a massacre, or a victory, or whatever it was, I cannot help giving it a place here, as I find it recorded by his countryman, Doctor Moore.
“The mangled bodies,” says he, “were lying in the street, on the left hand, as you go to the Chateau, from Paris. Some of the lower sort of the inhabitants of Versailles were looking on; the rest, struck with terror, were shut up in their shops and houses. The body of the Duke of Brissac was pointed out, the head and one of the hands was cut off: a man stood near smoking tobacco, with his sword drawn, and a human hand stuck on the point: another fellow walked carelessly among the bodies with an entire arm of another of the prisoners fixed to the point of his sword. A wagon afterwards arrived, into which were thrown as many of the slaughtered bodies as the horses could draw: a boy of about fifteen years of age was in the wagon, assisting to receive the bodies as they were put in, and packing them in the most convenient manner, with an air of as much indifference as if they had been so many parcels of goods. One of the wretches who threw in the bodies, and who probably had assisted in the massacre, said to the spectators in praise of the boy’s activity, ‘See that little fellow there; how bold he is!’
“The assassins of the prisoners were a party who came from Paris the preceding evening, most of them in post-chaises for that purpose, and who attacked those unhappy men while they remained in the street, waiting till the gate of the prison, which was prepared for their reception, should be opened. The detachment which had guarded the prisoners from Orleans, stood shameful and passive spectators of the massacre. The miserable prisoners being all unarmed, and some of them fettered, could do nothing in their own defence; they were most of them stabbed; and a few, who attempted resistance, were cut down with sabres.
There never was a more barbarous and dastardly action performed in the face of the sun. Gracious Heaven! were those barbarities, which would disgrace savages, committed by Frenchmen! by that lively and ingenious people, whose writings were so much admired, whose society has been so much courted, and whose manners have been so much imitated by all the neighbouring nations? This atrocious deed executed in the street of Versailles, and the horrors committed in the prisons of Paris, will fix indelible stains on the character of the French nation. It is said, those barbarities revolted the hearts of many of the citizens of Paris and Versailles, as much as they could those of the inhabitants of London or Windsor. It is also said, that those massacres were not committed by the inhabitants of Paris or Versailles, but by a set of hired assassins. But who hired those assassins? Who remained in shameful stupor and dastardly inactivity, while their laws were insulted, their prisons violated, and their fellow-citizens butchered in the open streets? I do not believe, that from the wickedest gang of highwaymen, housebreakers, and pickpockets, that infest London and the neighbourhood, men could be selected who could be bribed to murder, in cold blood, such a number of their countrymen. And if they could, I am convinced that no degree of popular delusion they are capable of, no pretext, no motive whatever, could make the inhabitants of London or Windsor, or any town of Great Britain, suffer such dreadful executions to be performed within their walls.”
No; I hope not: yet I do not know what might have been effected by an introduction of the same system of anarchy, that has changed the airy French into a set of the most ferocious inhuman bloodhounds that ever disgraced the human shape.
From scenes like these, the mind turns for relief and consolation to the riot at Birmingham. That riot, considered comparatively with what Dr. Priestley and his friends wished and attempted to stir up, was peace, harmony and gentleness. Has this man any reason to complain? He will perhaps say, he did not approve of the French riots and massacres; to which I shall answer, that he did approve of them. His public celebration of them was a convincing proof of this; and if it were not, his sending his son to Paris in the midst of them, to request the honour of becoming a French citizen, is a proof that certainly will not be disputed. Ref 010 If, then, we take a view of the riots of which the Doctor is an admirer, and of those of which he expresses his detestation, we must fear that he is very far from being that “friend of human happiness,” that the Democratic Society pretend to believe him. In short, in whatever light we view the Birmingham riots, we can see no object that excites our compassion, except the inhabitants of the hundred, and the unfortunate rioters themselves.
It was the form of the English Government, and those artificial distinctions; that is to say, of King, Prince, Bishop, &c. that he wanted to destroy, in order to produce that “other system of liberty,” which he had been so long dreaming about. In his answer to the address of “the republican natives of Great Britain and Ireland resident at New York,” he says, “the wisdom and happiness of republican Governments, and the evils resulting from hereditary monarchical ones, cannot appear in a stronger light to you, than they do to me;” and yet this same man pretended an inviolable attachment to the hereditary monarchical Government of Great Britain! Says he, by way of vindicating the principles of his club to the people of Birmingham, “the first toast that was drunk was, ‘The King and Constitution.’ ” What! does he make a merit in England of having toasted that which he abominates in America? Alas! philosophers are but mere men.
It is clear that a parliamentary reform was not the object; an aftergame was intended, which the vigilance of Government, and the natural good sense of the people, happily prevented; and the Doctor, disappointed and chagrined, is come here to discharge his heart of the venom it has been long collecting against his country. He tells the Democratic Society that he cannot promise to be a better subject of this Government, than he has been of that of Great Britain. Let us hope that he intends us an agreeable disappointment; if not, the sooner he emigrates back again, the better.
System-mongers are an unreasonable species of mortals: time, place, climate, nature itself, must give way. Ref 011 They must have the same government in every quarter of the globe; when perhaps there are not two countries which can possibly admit of the same form of government at the same time. A thousand hidden causes, a thousand circumstances and unforeseen events, conspire to the forming of a government. It is always done by little and little. When completed, it presents nothing like a system; nothing like a thing composed, and written in a book. Ref 012 It is curious to hear people cite the American Government as the summit of human perfection, while they decry the English; when it is absolutely nothing more than the Government which the Kings of England established here, with such little modifications as were necessary on account of the state of society and local circumstances. If, then, the Doctor is come here for a change of government and laws, he is the most disappointed of mortals. He will have the mortification to find in his “asylum” the same laws as those from which he has fled, the same upright manner of administering them, the same punishment of the oppressor, and the same protection of the oppressed. In the Courts of Justice he will every day see precedents quoted from the English lawbooks; and (which to him may appear wonderful) we may venture to predict, that it will be very long before they will be supplanted by the bloody records of the revolutionary tribunal.
Happiness being the end of all good government, that which produces the most is consequently the best; and comparison being the only method of determining the relative value of things, it is easy to see which is preferable, the tyranny which the French formerly enjoyed, or the liberty and equality they at present labour under. If the Doctor had come about a year sooner, he might have had the satisfaction of being not only an ear, but an eye witness also, of some of the blessed effects of this celebrated revolution. He might then have been regaled with that sight, so delectable to a modern philosopher; opulence reduced to misery.
The stale pretence, that the league against the French has been the cause of their inhuman conduct to each other, cannot, by the most perverse sophistry, be applied to the island of St. Domingo. That fine rich colony was ruined, its superb capital and villas reduced to ashes, one half of its inhabitants massacred, and the other half reduced to beggary, before an enemy ever appeared on the coast. No: it is that