His ideas of the duties and powers of Congress were likewise very proper on the whole. Most citizens of the present day will agree with him that "the excess rather than the deficiency of laws is what we have to dread." He opposed the hurtful provision which requires that each congressman should be a resident of his own district, urging that congressmen represented the people at large, as well as their own small localities; and he also objected to making officers of the army and navy ineligible. He laid much stress on the propriety of pa.s.sing navigation acts to encourage American bottoms and seamen, as a navy was essential to our security, and the shipping business was always one that stood in peculiar need of public patronage. Also, like Hamilton and most other Federalists, he favored a policy of encouraging domestic manufactures.
Incidentally he approved of Congress having the power to lay an embargo, although he has elsewhere recorded his views as to the general futility of such kinds of "commercial warfare." He believed in having a uniform bankruptcy law; approved of abolishing all religious tests as qualifications for office, and was utterly opposed to the "rotation in office" theory.
One curious incident in the convention was the sudden outcropping, even thus early, of a "Native American" movement against all foreigners, which was headed by Butler, of South Carolina, who himself was of Irish parentage. He strenuously insisted that no foreigners whomsoever should be admitted to our councils,--a rather odd proposition, considering that it would have excluded quite a number of the eminent men he was then addressing. Pennsylvania in particular--whose array of native talent has always been far from imposing--had a number of foreigners among her delegates, and loudly opposed the proposition, as did New York. These States wished that there should be no discrimination whatever between native and foreign born citizens; but finally a compromise was agreed to, by which the latter were excluded only from the Presidency, but were admitted to all other rights after a seven years" residence,--a period that was certainly none too long.
A much more serious struggle took place over the matter of slavery, quite as important then as ever, for at that time the negroes were a fifth of our population, instead of, as now, an eighth. The question, as it came before the convention, had several sides to it; the especial difficulty arising over the representation of the Slave States in Congress, and the importation of additional slaves from Africa. No one proposed to abolish slavery off-hand; but an influential though small number of delegates, headed by Morris, recognized it as a terrible evil, and were very loath either to allow the South additional representation for the slaves, or to permit the foreign trade in them to go on. When the Southern members banded together on the issue, and made it evident that it was the one which they regarded as almost the most important of all, Morris attacked them in a telling speech, stating with his usual boldness facts that most Northerners only dared hint at, and summing up with the remark that, if he was driven to the dilemma of doing injustice to the Southern States or to human nature, he would have to do it to the former; certainly he would not encourage the slave trade by allowing representation for negroes. Afterwards he characterized the proportional representation of the blacks even more strongly, as being "a bribe for the importation of slaves."
In advocating the proposal, first made by Hamilton, that the representation should in all cases be proportioned to the number of free inhabitants, Morris showed the utter lack of logic in the Virginian proposition, which was that the Slave States should have additional representation to the extent of three fifths of their negroes. If negroes were to be considered as inhabitants, then they ought to be added in their entire number; if they were to be considered as property, then they ought to be counted only if all other wealth was likewise included. The position of the Southerners was ridiculous: he tore their arguments to shreds; but he was powerless to alter the fact that they were doggedly determined to carry their point, while most of the Northern members cared comparatively little about it.
In another speech he painted in the blackest colors the unspeakable misery and wrong wrought by slavery, and showed the blight it brought upon the land. "It was the curse of Heaven on the states where it prevailed." He contrasted the prosperity and happiness of the Northern States with the misery and poverty which overspread the barren wastes of those where slaves were numerous. "Every step you take through the great region of slavery presents a desert widening with the increasing number of these wretched beings." He indignantly protested against the Northern States being bound to march their militia for the defense of the Southern States against the very slaves of whose existence the northern men complained. "He would sooner submit himself to a tax for paying for all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a Const.i.tution."
Some of the high-minded Virginian statesmen were quite as vigorous as he was in their denunciation of the system. One of them, George Mason, portrayed the effect of slavery upon the people at large with bitter emphasis, and denounced the slave traffic as "infernal," and slavery as a national sin that would be punished by a national calamity,--stating therein the exact and terrible truth. In shameful contrast, many of the Northerners championed the inst.i.tution; in particular, Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, whose name should be branded with infamy because of the words he then uttered. He actually advocated the free importation of negroes into the South Atlantic States, because the slaves "died so fast in the sickly rice swamps" that it was necessary ever to bring fresh ones to labor and perish in the places of their predecessors; and, with a brutal cynicism, peculiarly revolting from its mercantile baseness, he brushed aside the question of morality as irrelevant, asking his hearers to pay heed only to the fact that "what enriches the part enriches the whole."
The Virginians were opposed to the slave trade: but South Carolina and Georgia made it a condition of their coming into the Union. It was accordingly agreed that it should be allowed for a limited time,--twelve years; and this was afterwards extended to twenty by a bargain made by Maryland and the three South Atlantic States with the New England States, the latter getting in return the help of the former to alter certain provisions respecting commerce. One of the main industries of the New England of that day was the manufacture of rum; and its citizens cared more for their distilleries than for all the slaves held in bondage throughout Christendom. The rum was made from mola.s.ses which they imported from the West Indies, and they carried there in return the fish taken by their great fishing fleets; they also carried the slaves into the Southern ports. Their commerce was what they especially relied on; and to gain support for it they were perfectly willing to make terms with even such a black Mammon of unrighteousness as the Southern slaveholding system. Throughout the contest, Morris and a few other stout anti-slavery men are the only ones who appear to advantage; the Virginians, who were honorably anxious to minimize the evils of slavery, come next; then the other Southerners who allowed pressing self-interest to overcome their scruples; and, last of all, the New Englanders whom a comparatively trivial self-interest made the willing allies of the extreme slaveholders. These last were the only Northerners who yielded anything to the Southern slaveholders that was not absolutely necessary; and yet they were the forefathers of the most determined and effective foes that slavery ever had.
As already said, the Southerners stood firm on the slave question: it was the one which perhaps more than any other offered the most serious obstacle to a settlement. Madison pointed out "that the real difference lay, not between the small States and the large, but between the Northern and the Southern States. The inst.i.tution of slavery and its consequences formed the real line of discrimination." To talk of this kind Morris at first answered hotly enough:--"he saw that the Southern gentlemen would not be satisfied unless they saw the way open to their gaining a majority in the public councils.... If [the distinction they set up between the North and South] was real, instead of attempting to blend incompatible things, let them at once take a friendly leave of each other." He afterwards went back from this position, and agreed to the compromise by which the slaves were to add, by three fifths of their number, to the representation of their masters, and the slave trade was to be allowed for a certain number of years, and prohibited forever after. He showed his usual straightforward willingness to call things by their right names in desiring to see "slavery" named outright in the Const.i.tution, instead of being characterized with cowardly circ.u.mlocution, as was actually done.
In finally yielding and a.s.senting to a compromise, he was perfectly right. The crazy talk about the iniquity of consenting to any recognition of slavery whatever in the Const.i.tution is quite beside the mark; and it is equally irrelevant to a.s.sert that the so-called "compromises" were not properly compromises at all, because there were no mutual concessions, and the Southern States had "no shadow of right"
to what they demanded and only in part gave up. It was all-important that there should be a Union, but it had to result from the voluntary action of all the states; and each state had a perfect "right" to demand just whatever it chose. The really wise and high-minded statesmen demanded for themselves nothing save justice; but they had to accomplish their purpose by yielding somewhat to the prejudices of their more foolish and less disinterested colleagues. It was better to limit the duration of the slave trade to twenty years than to allow it to be continued indefinitely, as would have been the case had the South Atlantic States remained by themselves. The three fifths representation of the slaves was an evil anomaly, but it was no worse than allowing the small states equal representation in the Senate; indeed, balancing the two concessions against each other, it must be admitted that Virginia and North Carolina surrendered to New Hampshire and Rhode Island more than they got in return.
No man who supported slavery can ever have a clear and flawless t.i.tle to our regard; and those who opposed it merit, in so far, the highest honor; but the opposition to it sometimes took forms that can be considered only as the vagaries of lunacy. The only hope of abolishing it lay, first in the establishment and then in the preservation of the Union; and if we had at the outset dissolved into a knot of struggling anarchies, it would have entailed an amount of evil both on our race and on all North America, compared to which the endurance of slavery for a century or two would have been as nothing. If we had even split up into only two republics, a Northern and a Southern, the West would probably have gone with the latter, and to this day slavery would have existed throughout the Mississippi valley; much of what is now our territory would have been held by European powers, scornfully heedless of our divided might, while in not a few states the form of government would have been a military dictatorship; and indeed our whole history would have been as contemptible as was that of Germany for some centuries prior to the rise of the house of Hohenzollern.
The fierceness of the opposition to the adoption of the Const.i.tution, and the narrowness of the majority by which Virginia and New York decided in its favor, while North Carolina and Rhode Island did not come in at all until absolutely forced, showed that the refusal to compromise on any one of the points at issue would have jeopardized everything. Had the slavery interest been in the least dissatisfied, or had the plan of government been a shade less democratic, or had the smaller States not been propitiated, the Const.i.tution would have been rejected off-hand; and the country would have had before it decades, perhaps centuries, of misrule, violence, and disorder.
Madison paid a very just compliment to some of Morris"s best points when he wrote, anent his services in the convention: "To the brilliancy of his genius he added, what is too rare, a candid surrender of his opinions when the light of discussion satisfied him that they had been too hastily formed, and a readiness to aid in making the best of measures in which he had been overruled." Although so many of his own theories had been rejected, he was one of the warmest advocates of the Const.i.tution; and it was he who finally drew up the doc.u.ment and put the finish to its style and arrangement, so that, as it now stands, it comes from his pen.
Hamilton, who more than any other man bore the brunt of the fight for its adoption, asked Morris to help him in writing the "Federalist," but the latter was for some reason unable to do so; and Hamilton was a.s.sisted only by Madison, and to a very slight extent by Jay.
Pennsylvania, the State from which Morris had been sent as a delegate, early declared in favor of the new experiment; although, as Morris wrote Washington, there had been cause to "dread the cold and sour temper of the back counties, and still more the wicked industry of those who have long habituated themselves to live on the public, and cannot bear the idea of being removed from the power and profit of state government, which has been and still is the means of supporting themselves, their families, and dependents, and (which perhaps is equally grateful) of depressing and humbling their political adversaries." In his own native state of New York the influences he thus describes were still more powerful, and it needed all Hamilton"s wonderful genius to force a ratification of the Const.i.tution in spite of the stupid selfishness of the Clintonian faction; as it was, he was only barely successful, although backed by all the best and ablest leaders in the community,--Jay, Livingstone, Schuyler, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Isaac Roosevelt, James Duane, and a host of others.
About this time Morris came back to New York to live, having purchased the family estate at Morrisania from his elder brother, Staats Long Morris, the British general. He had for some time been engaged in various successful commercial ventures with his friend Robert Morris, including an East India voyage on a large scale, shipments of tobacco to France, and a share in iron works on the Delaware River, and had become quite a rich man. As soon as the war was ended, he had done what he could do to have the loyalists pardoned and reinstated in their fortunes; thereby risking his popularity not a little, as the general feeling against the Tories was bitter and malevolent in the highest degree, in curious contrast to the good-will that so rapidly sprang up between the Unionists and ex-Confederates after the Civil War.
He also kept an eye on foreign politics, and one of his letters to Jay curiously foreshadows the good-will generally felt by Americans of the present day towards Russia, running: "If her ladyship (the Czarina) would drive the Turk out of Europe, and demolish the Algerines and other piratical gentry, she will have done us much good for her own sake; ...
but it is hardly possible the other powers will permit Russia to possess so wide a door into the Mediterranean. I may be deceived, but I think England herself would oppose it. As an American, it is my hearty wish that she may effect her schemes."
Shortly after this it became necessary for him to sail for Europe on business.
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST STAY IN FRANCE.
After a hard winter pa.s.sage of forty days" length Morris reached France, and arrived in Paris on February 3, 1789. He remained there a year on his private business; but his prominence in America, and his intimate friendship with many distinguished Frenchmen, at once admitted him to the highest social and political circles, where his brilliant talents secured him immediate importance.
The next nine years of his life were spent in Europe, and it was during this time that he unknowingly rendered his especial and peculiar service to the public. As an American statesman he has many rivals, and not a few superiors; but as a penetrating observer and recorder of contemporary events, he stands alone among the men of his time. He kept a full diary during his stay abroad, and was a most voluminous correspondent; and his capacity for keen, shrewd observation, his truthfulness, his wonderful insight into character, his sense of humor, and his power of graphic description, all combine to make his comments on the chief men and events of the day a unique record of the inside history of Western Europe during the tremendous convulsions of the French Revolution. He is always an entertaining and in all matters of fact a trustworthy writer. His letters and diary together form a real mine of wealth for the student either of the social life of the upper cla.s.ses in France just before the outbreak, or of the events of the Revolution itself.
In the first place, it must be premised that from the outset Morris was hostile to the spirit of the French Revolution, and his hostility grew in proportion to its excesses until at last it completely swallowed up his original antipathy to England, and made him regard France as normally our enemy, not our ally. This was perfectly natural, and indeed inevitable: in all really free countries, the best friends of freedom regarded the revolutionists, when they had fairly begun their b.l.o.o.d.y career, with horror and anger. It was only to oppressed, debased, and priest-ridden peoples that the French Revolution could come as the embodiment of liberty. Compared to the freedom already enjoyed by Americans, it was sheer tyranny of the most dreadful kind.
Morris saw clearly that the popular party in France, composed in part of amiable visionaries, theoretic philanthropists, and closet const.i.tution-mongers, and in part of a brutal, sodden populace, maddened by the grinding wrongs of ages, knew not whither its own steps tended; and he also saw that the then existing generation of Frenchmen were not, and never would be, fitted to use liberty aright. It is small matter for wonder that he could not see as clearly the good which lay behind the movement; that he could not as readily foretell the real and great improvement it was finally to bring about, though only after a generation of hideous convulsions. Even as it was, he discerned what was happening, and what was about to happen, more distinctly than did any one else. The wild friends of the French Revolution, especially in America, supported it blindly, with but a very slight notion of what it really signified. Keen though Morris"s intellectual vision was, it was impossible for him to see what future lay beyond the quarter of a century of impending tumult. It did not lie within his powers to applaud the fiendish atrocities of the Red Terror for the sake of the problematical good that would come to the next generation. To do so he would have needed the granite heart of a zealot, as well as the prophetic vision of a seer.
The French Revolution was in its essence a struggle for the abolition of privilege, and for equality in civil rights. This Morris perceived, almost alone among the statesmen of his day; and he also perceived that most Frenchmen were willing to submit to any kind of government that would secure them the things for which they strove. As he wrote to Jefferson, when the republic was well under weigh: "The great ma.s.s of the French nation is less solicitous to preserve the present order of things than to prevent the return of the ancient oppression, and of course would more readily submit to a pure despotism than to that kind of monarchy whose only limits were found in those n.o.ble, legal and clerical corps by which the people were alternately oppressed and insulted." To the down-trodden ma.s.ses of continental Europe the gift of civil rights and the removal of the tyranny of the privileged cla.s.ses, even though accompanied by the rule of a directory, a consul, or an emperor, represented an immense political advance; but to the free people of England, and to the freer people of America, the change would have been wholly for the worse.
Such being the case, Morris"s att.i.tude was natural and proper. There is no reason to question the sincerity of his statement in another letter, that "I do, from the bottom of my heart, wish well to this country [France]." Had the French people shown the least moderation or wisdom, he would have unhesitatingly sided with them against their oppressors.
It must be kept in mind that he was not influenced in the least in his course by the views of the upper cla.s.ses with whom he mingled. On the contrary, when he first came to Europe, he distinctly lost popularity in some of the social circles in which he moved, because he was so much more conservative than his aristocratic friends, among whom the closet republicanism of the philosophers was for the moment all the rage. He had no love for the French n.o.bility, whose folly and ferocity caused the Revolution, and whose craven cowardice could not check it even before it had gathered headway. Long afterwards he wrote of some of the _emigres_: "The conversation of these gentlemen, who have the virtue and good fortune of their grandfathers to recommend them, leads me almost to forget the crimes of the French Revolution; and often the unforgiving temper and sanguinary wishes which they exhibit make me almost believe that the a.s.sertion of their enemies is true, namely, that it is success alone which has determined on whose side should be the crimes, and on whose the miseries." The truth of the last sentence was strikingly verified by the White Terror, even meaner, if less b.l.o.o.d.y, than the Red.
Bourbon princes and Bourbon n.o.bles were alike, and Morris only erred in not seeing that their destruction was the condition precedent upon all progress.
There was never another great struggle, in the end productive of good to mankind, where the tools and methods by which that end was won were so wholly vile as in the French Revolution. Alone among movements of the kind, it brought forth no leaders ent.i.tled to our respect; none who were both great and good; none even who were very great, save, at its beginning, strange, strong, crooked Mirabeau, and at its close the towering world-genius who sprang to power by its means, wielded it for his own selfish purposes, and dazzled all nations over the wide earth by the glory of his strength and splendor.
We can hardly blame Morris for not appreciating a revolution whose immediate outcome was to be Napoleon"s despotism, even though he failed to see all the good that would remotely spring therefrom. He considered, as he once wrote a friend, that "the true object of a great statesman is to give to any particular nation the kind of laws which is suitable to them, and the best const.i.tution which they are capable of." There can be no sounder rule of statesmanship; and none was more flagrantly broken by the amiable but incompetent political doctrinaires of 1789. Thus the American, as a far-sighted statesman, despised the theorists who began the Revolution, and, as a humane and honorable man, abhorred the black-hearted wretches who carried it on. His view of the people among whom he found himself, as well as his statement of his own position, he himself has recorded: "To fit people for a republic, as for any other form of government, a previous education is necessary.... In despotic governments the people, habituated to beholding everything bending beneath the weight of power, never possess that power for a moment without abusing it. Slaves, driven to despair, take arms, execute vast vengeance, and then sink back to their former condition of slaves. In such societies the patriot, the melancholy patriot, sides with the despot, because anything is better than a wild and b.l.o.o.d.y confusion."
So much for an outline of his views. His writings preserve them for us in detail on almost every important question that came up during his stay in Europe; couched, moreover, in telling, piquant sentences that leave room for hardly a dull line in either letters or diary.
No sooner had he arrived in Paris than he sought out Jefferson, then the American minister, and Lafayette. They engaged him to dine on the two following nights. He presented his various letters of introduction, and in a very few weeks, by his wit, tact, and ability, had made himself completely at home in what was by far the most brilliant and attractive--although also the most hopelessly unsound--fashionable society of any European capital. He got on equally well with fine ladies, philosophers, and statesmen; was as much at his ease in the salons of the one as at the dinner-tables of the other; and all the time observed and noted down, with the same humorous zest, the social peculiarities of his new friends as well as the tremendous march of political events. Indeed, it is difficult to know whether to set the higher value on his penetrating observations concerning public affairs, or on his witty, light, half-satirical sketches of the men and women of the world with whom he was thrown in contact, told in his usual charming and effective style. No other American of note has left us writings half so humorous and amusing, filled, too, with information of the greatest value.
Although his relations with Jefferson were at this time very friendly, yet his ideas on most subjects were completely at variance with those of the latter. He visited him very often; and, after one of these occasions, jots down his opinion of his friend in his usual amusing vein: "Call on Mr. Jefferson, and sit a good while. General conversation on character and politics. I think he does not form very just estimates of character, but rather a.s.signs too many to the humble rank of fools; whereas in life the gradations are infinite, and each individual has his peculiarities of fort and feeble:" Not a bad protest against the dangers of sweeping generalization. Another time he records his judgment of Jefferson"s ideas on public matters as follows: "He and I differ in our systems of politics. He, with all the leaders of liberty here, is desirous of annihilating distinctions of order. How far such views may be right respecting mankind in general is, I think, extremely problematical. But with respect to this nation I am sure they are wrong, and cannot eventuate well."
As soon as he began to go out in Parisian society, he was struck by the closet republicanism which it had become the fashion to affect. After his first visit to Lafayette, who received him with that warmth and frank, open-handed hospitality which he always extended to Americans, Morris writes: "Lafayette is full of politics; he appears to be too republican for the genius of his country." And again, when Lafayette showed him the draft of the celebrated Declaration of Rights, he notes: "I gave him my opinions, and suggested several amendments tending to soften the high-colored expressions of freedom. It is not by sounding words that revolutions are produced." Elsewhere he writes that "the young n.o.bility have brought themselves to an active faith in the natural equality of mankind, and spurn at everything which looks like restraint." Some of their number, however, he considered to be actuated by considerations more tangible than mere sentiment. He chronicles a dinner with some members of the National a.s.sembly, where "one, a n.o.ble representing the _Tiers_, is so vociferous against his own order, that I am convinced he means to rise by his eloquence, and finally will, I expect, vote with the opinion of the court, let that be what it may."
The sentimental humanitarians--who always form a most pernicious body, with an influence for bad hardly surpa.s.sed by that of the professionally criminal cla.s.s--of course throve vigorously in an atmosphere where theories of mawkish benevolence went hand in hand with the habitual practice of vices too gross to name. Morris, in one of his letters, narrates an instance in point; at the same time showing how this excess of watery philanthropy was, like all the other movements of the French Revolution, but a violent and misguided reaction against former abuses of the opposite sort. The incident took place in Madame de Stael"s salon. "The Count de Clermont Tonnerre, one of their best orators, read to us a very pathetic oration; and the object was to show that no penalties are the legal compensations for crimes or injuries: the man who is hanged, having by that event paid his debt to society, ought not to be held in dishonor; and in like manner he who has been condemned for seven years to be flogged in the galleys, should, when he has served out his apprenticeship, be received again into good company, as if nothing had happened. You smile; but observe the extreme to which the matter was carried the other way. Dishonoring thousands for the guilt of one has so shocked the public sentiment as to render this extreme fashionable. The oration was very fine, very sentimental, very pathetic, and the style harmonious. Shouts of applause and full approbation. When this was pretty well over, I told him that his speech was extremely eloquent, but that his principles were not very solid. Universal surprise!"
At times he became rather weary of the constant discussion of politics, which had become the chief drawing-room topic. Among the capacities of his lively and erratic nature was the power of being intensely bored by anything dull or monotonous. He remarked testily that "republicanism was absolutely a moral influenza, from which neither t.i.tles, places, nor even the diadem can guard the possessor." In a letter to a friend on a different subject he writes: "Apropos,--a term which my Lord Chesterfield well observes we generally use to bring in what is not at all to the purpose,--apropos, then, I have here the strangest employment imaginable. A republican, and just as it were emerged from that a.s.sembly which has formed one of the most republican of all republican const.i.tutions, I preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of the n.o.bles, and above all moderation, not only in the object, but also in the pursuit of it. All this you will say is none of my business; but I consider France as the natural ally of my country, and, of course, that we are interested in her prosperity; besides, to say the truth, I love France."
His hostility to the fashionable cult offended some of his best friends.
The Lafayettes openly disapproved his sentiments. The Marquis told him that he was injuring the cause, because his sentiments were being continually quoted against "the good party." Morris answered that he was opposed to democracy from a regard to liberty; that the popular party were going straight to destruction, and he would fain stop them if he could; for their views respecting the nation were totally inconsistent with the materials of which it was composed, and the worst thing that could happen to them would be to have their wishes granted. Lafayette half admitted that this was true: "He tells me that he is sensible his party are mad, and tells them so, but is not the less determined to die with them. I tell him that I think it would be quite as well to bring them to their senses and live with them,"--the last sentence showing the impatience with which the shrewd, fearless, practical American at times regarded the dreamy inefficiency of his French a.s.sociates. Madame de Lafayette was even more hostile than her husband to Morris"s ideas. In commenting on her beliefs he says: "She is a very sensible woman, but has formed her ideas of government in a manner not suited, I think, either to the situation, the circ.u.mstances, or the disposition of France."
He was considered too much of an aristocrat in the salon of the Comtesse de Tesse, the resort of "republicans of the first feather;" and at first was sometimes rather coldly received there. He felt, however, a most sincere friendship and regard for the comtesse, and thoroughly respected the earnestness with which she had for twenty years done what lay in her power to give her country greater liberty. She was a genuine enthusiast, and, when the National a.s.sembly met, was filled with exultant hope for the future. The ferocious outbreaks of the mob, and the crazy l.u.s.t for blood shown by the people at large, startled her out of her faith, and shocked her into the sad belief that her life-long and painful labors had been wasted in the aid of a bad cause. Later in the year Morris writes: "I find Madame de Tesse is become a convert to my principles. We have a gay conversation of some minutes on their affairs, in which I mingle sound maxims of government with that piquant _legerete_ which this nation delights in. She insists that I dine with her at Versailles the next time I am there. We are vastly gracious, and all at once, in a serious tone, "Mais attendez, madame, est-ce que je suis trop aristocrat?" To which she answers, with a smile of gentle humility, "Oh, mon Dieu, non!""
It is curious to notice how rapidly Morris"s brilliant talents gave him a commanding position, stranger and guest though he was, among the most noted statesmen of France; how often he was consulted, and how widely his opinions were quoted. Moreover, his incisive truthfulness makes his writings more valuable to the historian of his time than are those of any of his contemporaries, French, English, or American. Taine, in his great work on the Revolution, ranks him high among the small number of observers who have recorded clear and sound judgments of those years of confused, formless tumult and horror.
All his views on French politics are very striking. As soon as he reached Paris, he was impressed by the unrest and desire for change prevailing everywhere, and wrote home: "I find on this side of the Atlantic a resemblance to what I left on the other,--a nation which exists in hopes, prospects, and expectations; the reverence for ancient establishments gone; existing forms shaken to the very foundation; and a new order of things about to take place, in which, perhaps, even the very names of all former inst.i.tutions will be disregarded." And again: "This country presents an astonishing spectacle to one who has collected his ideas from books and information half a dozen years old. Everything is _a l"Anglaise_, and a desire to imitate the English prevails alike in the cut of a coat and the form of a const.i.tution. Like the English, too, all are engaged in parliamenteering; and when we consider how novel this last business must be, I a.s.sure you the progress is far from contemptible,"--a reference to Lafayette"s electioneering trip to Auvergne. The rapidity with which, in America, order had come out of chaos, while in France the reverse process had been going on, impressed him deeply; as he says: "If any new lesson were wanting to impress on our hearts a deep sense of the mutability of human affairs, the double contrast between France and America two years ago and at the present would surely furnish it."
He saw at once that the revolutionists had it in their power to do about as they chose. "If there be any real vigor in the nation the prevailing party in the States-General may, if they please, overturn the monarchy itself, should the king commit his authority to a contest with them. The court is extremely feeble, and the manners are so extremely corrupt that they cannot succeed if there be any consistent opposition, unless the whole nation be equally depraved."
He did not believe that the people would be able to profit by the revolution, or to use their opportunities aright. For the numerous cla.s.s of patriots who felt a vague, though fervent, enthusiasm for liberty in the abstract, and who, without the slightest practical knowledge, were yet intent on having all their own pet theories put into practice, he felt profound scorn and contempt; while he distrusted and despised the ma.s.s of Frenchmen, because of their frivolity and viciousness. He knew well that a pure theorist may often do as much damage to a country as the most corrupt traitor; and very properly considered that in politics the fool is quite as obnoxious as the knave.
He also realized that levity and the inability to look life seriously in the face, or to attend to the things worth doing, may render a man just as incompetent to fulfil the duties of citizenship as would actual viciousness.
To the crazy theories of the const.i.tution-makers and closet-republicans generally, he often alludes in his diary, and in his letters home. In one place he notes: "The literary people here, observing the abuses of the monarchical form, imagine that everything must go the better in proportion as it recedes from the present establishment, and in their closets they make men exactly suited to their systems; but unluckily they are such men as exist nowhere else, and least of all in France."
And he writes almost the same thing to Washington: "The middle party, who mean well, have unfortunately acquired their ideas of government from books, and are admirable fellows upon paper: but as it happens, somewhat unfortunately, that the men who live in the world are very different from those who dwell in the heads of philosophers, it is not to be wondered at if the systems taken out of books are fit for nothing but to be put back into books again." And once more: "They have all that romantic spirit, and all those romantic ideas of government, which, happily for America, we were cured of before it was too late." He shows how they had never had the chance to gain wisdom through experience. "As they have hitherto felt severely the authority exercised in the name of their princes, every limitation of that power seems to them desirable.
Never having felt the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression." Elsewhere he comments on their folly in trying to apply to their own necessities systems of government suited to totally different conditions; and mentions his own att.i.tude in the matter: "I have steadily combated the violence and excess of those persons who, either inspired with an enthusiastic love of freedom, or prompted by sinister designs, are disposed to drive everything to extremity. Our American example has done them good; but, like all novelties, liberty runs away with their discretion, if they have any. They want an American const.i.tution with the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that they have not American citizens to support that const.i.tution.... Whoever desires to apply in the practical science of government those rules and forms which prevail and succeed in a foreign country, must fall into the same pedantry with our young scholars, just fresh from the university, who would fain bring everything to the Roman standard.... The scientific tailor who should cut after Grecian or Chinese models would not have many customers, either in London or Paris; and those who look to America for their political forms are not unlike the tailors in Laputa, who, as Gulliver tells us, always take measures with a quadrant."
He shows again and again his abiding distrust and fear of the French character, as it was at that time, volatile, debauched, ferocious, and incapable of self-restraint. To Lafayette he insisted that the "extreme licentiousness" of the people rendered it indispensable that they should be kept under authority; and on another occasion told him "that the nation was used to being governed, and would have to be governed; and that if he expected to lead them by their affections, he would himself be the dupe." In writing to Washington he painted the outlook in colors that, though black indeed, were not a shade too dark. "The materials for a revolution in this country are very indifferent. Everybody agrees that there is an utter prostration of morals; but this general proposition can never convey to an American mind the degree of depravity. It is not by any figure of rhetoric or force of language that the idea can be communicated. A hundred anecdotes and a hundred thousand examples are required to show the extreme rottenness of every member. There are men and women who are greatly and eminently virtuous. I have the pleasure to number many in my own acquaintance; but they stand forward from a background deeply and darkly shaded. It is however from such crumbling matter that the great edifice of freedom is to be erected here. Perhaps like the stratum of rock which is spread under the whole surface of their country, it may harden when exposed to the air; but it seems quite as likely that it will fall and crush the builders. I own to you that I am not without such apprehensions, for there is one fatal principle which pervades all ranks. It is a perfect indifference to the violation of engagements. Inconstancy is so mingled in the blood, marrow, and very essence of this people, that when a man of high rank and importance laughs to-day at what he seriously a.s.serted yesterday, it is considered as in the natural order of things. Consistency is a phenomenon. Judge, then, what would be the value of an a.s.sociation should such a thing be proposed and even adopted. The great ma.s.s of the common people have no religion but their priests, no law but their superiors, no morals but their interest. These are the creatures who, led by drunken curates, are now on the high road _a la liberte_."
Morris and Washington wrote very freely to each other. In one of his letters, the latter gave an account of how well affairs were going in America (save in Rhode Island, the majority of whose people "had long since bid adieu to every principle of honor, common sense, and honesty"), and then went on to discuss things in France. He expressed the opinion that, if the revolution went no further than it had already gone, France would become the most powerful and happy state in Europe; but he trembled lest, having triumphed in the first paroxysms, it might succ.u.mb to others still more violent that would be sure to follow. He feared equally the "licentiousness of the people" and the folly of the leaders, and doubted if they possessed the requisite temperance, firmness, and foresight; and if they did not, then he believed they would run from one extreme to another, and end with "a higher toned despotism than the one which existed before."
Morris answered him with his usual half-satiric humor: "Your sentiments on the revolution here I believe to be perfectly just, because they perfectly accord with my own, and that is, you know, the only standard which Heaven has given us by which to judge," and went on to describe how the parties in France stood. "The king is in effect a prisoner in Paris and obeys entirely the National a.s.sembly. This a.s.sembly may be divided into three parts: one, called the _aristocrats_, consists of the high clergy, the members of the law (note, these are not the lawyers) and such of the n.o.bility as think they ought to form a separate order.
Another, which has no name, but which consists of all sorts of people, really friends to a good free government. The third is composed of what is here called the _enragees_, that is, the madmen. These are the most numerous, and are of that cla.s.s which in America is known by the name of pettifogging lawyers; together with ... those persons who in all revolutions throng to the standard of change because they are not well.
This last party is in close alliance with the populace here, and they have already unhinged everything, and, according to custom on such occasions, the torrent rushes on irresistibly until it shall have wasted itself." The _literati_ he p.r.o.nounced to have no understanding whatever of the matters at issue, and as was natural to a shrewd observer educated in the intensely practical school of American political life, he felt utter contempt for the wordy futility and wild theories of the French legislators. "For the rest, they _discuss_ nothing in their a.s.sembly. One large half of the time is spent in hallooing and bawling."