CHAPTER XXII.

Ridiculous beginning of the new legislature; the sham of the constituent assembly; response of the new constituent assembly.

The constituent assembly finished its undertaking and from the beginning the legislature was a litany of shams. Never were laws invoked with such a pompous ceremony. It reminded one of the grand entry of the Holy Ark by the Israélites as all the deputies came in carrying in their hand the new Gospel of France. A solemn legal declaration was made and words of thanks were lavished upon the authors of this monstrous political production. The constitutional chairman, realizing that he dealt with new men in every way, except in pride

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and impudence, first addressed his successors and then, in a passionate tone, praised the assembly for their virtue and sublime work.

“We have,” he said, “undertaken a superhuman work, but we are pleased to have completed our task. In the midst of storms we have articulated in a firm hand the principles of a constitution which will ensure freedom forever. Whereas human rights were heretofore ignored; now they are established for the whole of humanity. Whereas we had only the States General; now we have a national assembly. Formerly the separate orders demanded discreet decrees but now they no longer exist, all having disappeared before the worthy quality of citizen.

“Privilege, the enemy of what is good, used to define public rights, but now there is no more privilege. A vexatious feudalism has disappeared. Whereas the French were subjected to a worrisome administration, we have now freed them from that. Whereas the kingdom used to be divided into 36 provinces, we have now created 83 departments divided into more than 500 districts.

“We have abolished pensions, repaid loans, and reformed finances.

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“We have provided free access to justice. We have put limitations on spending and placed regulations on public revenues so that funds can be used to amortize debts. We have established a personal income tax; placed a tariff on rights, and destroyed the means which made possible the rebirth of arbitrary taxes.

“Finally we created freedom and equality.

“If everything had to be destroyed, it was only because we had to start from scratch. If it seems that we were too drastic, it is only because we tackled all the abuses at once.

“Our meetings were tumultuous but our decrees bear the unmistakable stamp of wisdom.

“We are accused for having aspired to some whimsical perfection, or to not have done enough for the people; to have destroyed the executive branch; or to have exceeded the bounds of our authority, but was it possible to regenerate an old and corrupt nation without resorting to extreme measures? It was necessary, indeed essential, to transcend accepted levels of authority before returning it to you."

“Dear Sirs,” replied the legislative

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assembly, “you haven’t done any of the things about which you spoke. You behaved as masons rather than architects. Quite arbitrarily you cut things down, turned things around, and created waste without any plan or reason. You employed the spade and explosives to repair some cracks that only needed some cement. Did you call for people with expertise? No! Rather than choosing people to guide you, you commandeered ambitious ones who were devoid of principles and experience.

“First you uprooted all the old ideas before knowing whether you were able to propagate any new ones capable of forming a social system.

“You established a familiarity based on the lowest common denominator without bothering to examine whether equality and law-and-order could even co-exist.

“You mocked religion without even wondering whether manners and respect could exist without its support.

“Inspired by a contempt for royalty, you didn’t sense the need for the head of a vast empire to be accompanied by an imposing majesty.

“You destroyed taxes without reckoning

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on their replacement, and this is what has blocked economic development. It didn’t require 1500 heads to carry out a similar operation; the least transaction made by a bank would have sufficed. Besides, the people were only asking for relief, but you overpowered them with your indiscreet popularity.

“So, what was your mission? You were called to revitalize the government in an orderly manner; to be critical of some irregularities that were harming the movement of the machine and thus preserving it from destruction. But you made like the daughters of Eson who, in order to reinvigorate their father (by the counsel of a magician) killed him and hacked him to pieces. But here the comparison fails because certainly your counselors weren’t sorcerers!

“Where on this terrestrial sphere have you seen the need for 48 thousand municipal assemblies occupying each year some 900 thousand citizens to set up 8 thousand primary assemblies to oversee a total of 5 million people within 547 district assemblies, 83 departments with another 50 thousand with voting privileges, ready to be mobilized in as many precincts as there are divisions in the kingdom, all in order to

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govern the nation, name its legislators and judges, and finally to institute all the government agencies?

“With this multiplicity of cogs and wheels, and this astonishingly complicated apparatus, which the state has become, how could it possibly preserve its activity? How could there possibly be any harmony when some 50 thousand sovereigns spread over the surface of France will have a continual influence on the body politic through the pressures exerted by 83 departmental assemblies?

“Such complications must inevitably make the machine collapse, and break it in the end. There doesn’t exist now, nor has there ever existed in any part of the world, such a vicious organization.

“Here, then, are the grand fruits of your imaginations! Here is the tomb that you have prepared for the French empire after 14 centuries of existence! You have said well that the assemblies of voters aren’t merely civil servants: they are much more than that since it is they who embody all the civil administration of the state. Moreover their authority must be unlimited because they now wield absolute control.

“It wasn’t enough for you to turn the monarchy

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upside down, but you also destroyed religion and its principle of obedience. Justice is based on obedience because of the responsible relationship between the one who owes it and the one at the head who has a right to it. Even in the military, the instrument of executive power, there is a chain of command that requires obedience.

“Where religion ends, license begins. And without justice, autonomy reigns supreme where the popular whim becomes law. Without military discipline it is impossible that one person can be in command of many.

“Your constitution was a useless piece of work if there ever was one. In vain you try to justify yourselves by saying, ‘We had no ordinances or contracts to serve as our guide’. Our response is that a constitution is neither an ordinance nor a contract; it is a regulator which governs the empire and the sovereign. The regulator of the French empire, however, has existed for 1400 years!

“Where is there a nation whose constitution depends merely on fickle caprice? To ensure tranquility within a nation there needs to be laws based on its social mores, its customs, its local idiosyncrasies, its industry, and its relationship with its neighbors. Laws must not be something which favor a select few over a short term, drafted by parties who choke one another and whose fruits are laws that are always in flux, without

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stability and a tendency toward anarchy. Now everyone considers himself a competent judge of the abuses, but that only opens the door for competing factions and disorder.

“The duty of the multitude is to obey either one person or several, and neither Plato nor Aristote in Greece passed for bad citizens because they considered a government headed by a single person as being the best. Furthermore, Sophocles freely admitted in Athens that it was necessary for people to have a paternalistic government. Of course it is possible for monarchies to have a bad king, but republics too have had bad magistrates, and the latter offers more disadvantages than the former.

“Furthermore, your suppression of feudal rights, without compensation, is a very unjust act. It has caused some 200 thousand heads of families to become beggars – people who deserved due compensation. Their lands should have been purchased at a fixed rate of redemption so that nobody would have been hurt or feel sorry for this action. Your ‘human rights’ were a cry for carnage, and instead of guiding the people, it led them to license, crime and the most dreadful of atrocities.

“Your division of France into a chessboard is folly. In mechanics, operating one

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machine is perfectly simple; but your 83 departments and 500 districts or more, will create perpetual friction that nothing can overcome. Before, only 36 intendants were required to accomplish this same work.

“Your tariffs and your personal taxes also aren’t worth anything. Indirect taxes were wiser because they were based on consumption. Besides, they were both hidden and fair at the same time.

“Finally all your actions were foolhardy. And what have they resulted in? Here is a table of woes:
Complete disorganization.
A spirit of rebellion, generally widespread.
Dreadful food shortage.
A shortage of cash.
A general discredit.
Universal dissatisfaction amongst renters.
An alarming increase in the price of foodstuffs.
The destruction of factories.
The destruction of trade and commerce – the lifeblood of a nation.
War with the principal powers of Europe.
Universal contempt for anything that’s French.

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The plundering of a multitude of wealthy proprietors.
The division of families.
Destruction of society.
A spirit of plunder and general armed robbery.

“Yes, these are the real fruits of the days you presided over and your deliberations. All along it was a question of assisting the state, not destroying it. Your task was to reform the abuses, not to metamorphose them into other abuses; to curb spending with wisdom, but not to make cash disappear entirely! Your job was to find ways of making up a national debt of 56 million – not to dig a financial bottomless pit! Your mandate was to fulfill the wishes of the people as articulated in various books, but not to create an oligarchical government. It seems that you destroyed all in order to propagate an anarchy whose power you sought to usurp under the questionable pretext of the happiness and well-being of the people.

“Did you establish human rights while at the same time using your henchmen to violate the precincts of the old, infirm and innocent, and murdering all those who could expose your ambitious aims?

“Were you establishing human rights when you covered France with torturers who went everywhere with iron weapons and a torch in their hands?

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“Did you establish human rights by creating a Committee of Research more inquisitorial than the infamous court of Goa?

“Did you establish human rights by bribing an army of brigands composed of the rowdiest and vilest ruffians to demolish, raze and set fire to cities, boroughs, houses, and thatched cottages?

“Were you observing these rights when you confiscated fortunes without bothering to think about any obligations for reimbursement? And did you protect these rights by issuing paper notes whose value was absolutely worthless?

“Did you protect these rights when you forgave the Cannibals of Avignon? Did you observe these rights when you incited insubordination by raising the garrison at Nancy, or by crowning the murderers of the brave Désiles who were punished by superiors who were foreign officers?

“Did you conserve these rights by equating officers with deserting soldiers and thus destroying honour, the potent mainspring which animates the military establishment?

“Did you conserve the rights of nations by suffering heaps of insults to be cast on all crowned heads of state while at the same time calling ‘cheap

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slaves’ all the people who didn't want monsters as their leaders?

“What, then, are the labors that you are so proud of, and which you flaunt with such audacity? Are you proud of your violent decrees against priests, or against emigrants whom you drove to despair?

“You fixed miniscule incomes through certificates which paid ridiculously low amounts of interest. Then, after having made cash disappear by your incompetence in finances, you printed paper sous. In other words, you melted bells in order to create bad buckshot. In so doing you ruined thousands of families whose only fault was to be a creditor of the state. Finally, you created a French population consisting of disgruntled people.

“According to you, France is undergoing brilliant prosperity, but all we see is one appalling upheaval. Amazingly you printed more than two billion in assignats which is more than one quarter of France’s net income; more than all its silverware; more than all the necklaces, bracelets, charms and other patriotic gifts which had to be used to manufacture louis and ecus. So, what became of all that?

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“Nobody was asking you to repay the national debt all at once.” – “But it had to be paid off because we had fallen into arrears!” – “Fine!” - “Our debt had to be repaid!” – “But why did you overwhelm the nation by forcing it to repay loans and guarantees which were not able to be paid off? What! You couldn’t pay the interest on the debt, so you decided to pay off the principal instead! Now your mine is exhausted and payments of any kind have stopped. Therefore the basis of your reasoning was flawed.

“You do not show us the dreadful abyss which you have dug. Perhaps it is impossible to measure the depth of it. So how do you want us to operate now? You leave us with at least thirty thousand pension allowances to be issued, and now for two years those who were supposed to receive compensation have been dying of hunger.

“We have the courts, the clergy, and armies to be paid, and you have left us with no funds. Tell us, therefore, how we are supposed to live up to our current commitments.” – “With assignats [script money].” – “But this avenue is only a temporary palliative which can only worsen the situation. Do you realize the plight that our state is in? No, you don’t, and we say further that the new debts are more

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onerous than those which have been destroyed. So where is your plan of operation?” – “We don’t have one.” – “Yes, that is what you have proved by the extravagances of your conduct. But the intoxication of the people is momentary, and the sweep of passion does not last. Now it will be necessary to examine finally whether the regeneration of France is real, and if freedom and equality (which has been so much preached about lately) truly exist; whether one is truly happier; if the taxes are less onerous, simpler to comprehend and less arbitrary; if direct personal taxes on the masses are easier to bear than indirect taxes; if property is now better protected; if an armed populace is wiser than people without weapons; whether the destruction of the great fortunes of the rich will help relieve the poor or improve the lot of honest tradesmen; if the excessive increase in the cost of foodstuffs doesn’t produce a pernicious depopulation within the state; if the trade balance is more advantageous now than it was it before the new order of things; and if assignats can effectively replace cash.

“If all this is not so, and certainly you do not prove it in the affirmative, then your work has been an absolute disaster. All the insane fanatics and villains that you have


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courted will not prevent the healthy part of the population from asking for a government that works properly. But what is the kind of people whom you chose to be the agents of authority? They were scoundrels without decency, honor, faith or conscience. Everywhere it is dishonourable men who flaunt the revolutionary spirit, and every position that has a capacity to persecute is filled by rascals (1).

“Never have passions been expressed more agreeably; never has hatred and revenge been more beautifully played out than today when it is necessary for a brother to kill his brother, and a son to kill his father. Yes, this is indeed a well-regenerated kingdom (2)!
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(1) I saw the vice-president of one department (and he had been a schoolmaster) balancing his books in a cabaret over a splendid lunch which the accountants gave him. I happened to be with a friend. We looked at each other and, with a knowing look, felt the same feelng of disgust.
(2) There are, however, people of merit who believe in the regeneration of the state. I compare them to an old woman whom I knew, who, dying from the effects of a super-purging, said, “I can’t complain about the medicine. It was most effective. I was well purged.”
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“You were a self-made creation when you broke all the bonds which attached you to your communes. Then you became, say I, a self-appointed legislative assembly, ‘parlemens’ [court], sovereign council, chamber of accounts, treasury, and council, but like any administrative body, you are accountable to the nation for the way you used its revenues. So we are asking you now to give an account on its behalf. You reply that you were not responsible, and that you are no more to blame than we are. The nonsense of this response is obvious. Give us an example of any other nation where revenues are in the hands of people who are exempt from accountability.

“What would one think of a general who, after a campaign of invasion, would say, ‘I don’t administer the regiments, therefore I don’t have to account for their actions. If you don’t believe me, then go ahead and ask them. Here are a hundred thousand men.’ But mere power is not reason enough.

“Didn't you arrange the payments for the troops, the departments, the districts, the pensions, the civic festivals, the panthéonisations? Didn't you arrange your own salaries? Don't the cash clerks receive their orders from you? Didn't liquidations pass by your hands?” – “But we are a legislative body.” – “But you did manage, to be sure, by


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an incredible reversal of protocol, and by doing this you effectively became an administrative body. Therefore you are now accountable.”

Thus by evasiveness the constituent assembly sought to rid itself of having to account for several billion. That in itself isn’t extremely extraordinary, but it showed the extent of its ineptitude and clumsiness by casually overlooking the iniquities of others. Therefore the legislative assembly had to begin by making a critical examination of their reasoning.