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Edinburgh Review - "The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2"

The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2

E >> Edinburgh Review >> The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2




Yet he had reason to think himself fortunate; for, had all that
is avowed in these Memoirs been known, he would have received
very different tokens of the Imperial displeasure. We learn from
himself that, while publishing daily columns of flattery on
Bonaparte, and while carrying weekly budgets of calumny to the
Tuileries, he was in close connection with the agents whom the
Emperor Alexander, then by no means favourably disposed towards
France, employed to watch all that passed at Paris; was permitted
to read their secret despatches; was consulted by them as to the
temper of the public mind and the character of Napoleon; and did
his best to persuade them that the government was in a tottering
condition, and that the new sovereign was not, as the world
supposed, a great statesman and soldier. Next, Barere, still the
flatterer and talebearer of the Imperial Court, connected himself
in the same manner with the Spanish envoy. He owns that with
that envoy he had relations which he took the greatest pains to
conceal from his own government; that they met twice a day; and
that their conversation chiefly turned on the vices of Napoleon;
on his designs against Spain, and on the best mode of rendering
those designs abortive. In truth, Barere's baseness was
unfathomable. In the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower
deeps. It is bad to be a sycophant; it is bad to be a spy. But
even among sycophants and spies there are degrees of meanness.
The vilest sycophant is he who privily slanders the master on
whom he fawns; and the vilest spy is he who serves foreigners
against the government of his native land.

From 1807 to 1814 Barere lived in obscurity, railing as bitterly
as his craven cowardice would permit against the Imperial
administration, and coming sometimes unpleasantly across the
police. When the Bourbons returned, he, as might have been
expected, became a royalist, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth
the horrors of the system from which the Restoration had
delivered France, and magnifying the wisdom and goodness which
had dictated the charter. He who had voted for the death of
Louis, he who had moved the decree for the trial of Marie
Antoinette, he whose hatred of monarchy had led him to make war
even upon the sepulchres of ancient monarchs, assures us, with
great complacency, that "in this work monarchical principles and
attachment to the House of Bourbon are nobly expressed." By this
apostasy he got nothing, not even any additional infamy; for his
character was already too black to be blackened.

During the hundred days he again emerged for a very short time
into public life; he was chosen by his native district a member
of the Chamber of Representatives. But, though that assembly was
composed in a great measure of men who regarded the excesses of
the Jacobins with indulgence, he found himself an object of
general aversion. When the President first informed the Chamber
that M. Barere requested a hearing, a deep and indignant murmur
ran round the benches. After the battle of Waterloo, Barere
proposed that the Chamber should save France from the victorious
enemy, by putting forth a proclamation about the pass of
Thermopylae and the Lacedaemonian custom of wearing flowers in
times of extreme danger. Whether this composition, if it had
then appeared, would have stopped the English and Prussian
armies, is a question respecting which we are left to conjecture.
The Chamber refused to adopt this last of the Carmagnoles.

The Emperor had abdicated. The Bourbons returned. The Chamber
of Representatives, after burlesquing during a few weeks the
proceedings of the National Convention, retired with the well-
earned character of having been the silliest political assembly
that had met in France. Those dreaming pedants and praters never
for a moment comprehended their position. They could never
understand that Europe must be either conciliated or vanquished;
that Europe could be conciliated only by the restoration of
Louis, and vanquished only by means of a dictatorial power
entrusted to Napoleon. They would not hear of Louis; yet they
would not hear of the only measures which could keep him out.
They incurred the enmity of all foreign powers by putting
Napoleon at their head; yet they shackled him, thwarted him,
quarrelled with him about every trifle, abandoned him on the
first reverse. They then opposed declamations and disquisitions
to eight hundred thousand bayonets; played at making a
constitution for their country, when it depended on the
indulgence of the victor whether they should have a country; and
were at last interrupted, in the midst of their babble about the
rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers
of Wellington and Blucher.

A new Chamber of Deputies was elected, so bitterly hostile to the
Revolution that there was no small risk of a new Reign of Terror.
It is just, however, to say that the king, his ministers, and his
allies exerted themselves to restrain the violence of the
fanatical royalists, and that the punishments inflicted, though
in our opinion unjustifiable, were few and lenient when compared
with those which were demanded by M. de Labourdonnaye and M. Hyde
de Neuville. We have always heard, and are inclined to believe,
that the government was not disposed to treat even the regicides
with severity. But on this point the feeling of the Chamber of
Deputies was so strong that it was thought necessary to make some
concession. It was enacted, therefore, that whoever, having
voted in January 1793 for the death of Louis the Sixteenth, had
in any manner given in an adhesion to the government of Bonaparte
during the hundred days should be banished for life from France.
Barere fell within this description. He had voted for the death
of Louis; and he had sat in the Chamber of Representatives during
the hundred days.

He accordingly retired to Belgium, and resided there, forgotten
by all mankind, till the year 1830. After the revolution of July
he was at liberty to return to France; and he fixed his residence
in his native province. But he was soon involved in a succession
of lawsuits with his nearest relations--"three fatal sisters and
an ungrateful brother," to use his own words. Who was in the
right is a question about which we have no means of judging, and
certainly shall not take Barere's word. The Courts appear to
have decided some points in his favour and some against him. The
natural inference is, that there were faults on all sides. The
result of this litigation was that the old man was reduced to
extreme poverty, and was forced to sell his paternal house.

As far as we can judge from the few facts which remain to be
mentioned, Barere continued Barere to the last. After his exile
he turned Jacobin again, and, when he came back to France, joined
the party of the extreme left in railing at Louis Philippe, and
at all Louis Philippe's ministers. M. Casimir Perier, M. De
Broglie, M. Guizot, and M. Thiers, in particular, are honoured
with his abuse; and the King himself is held up to execration as
a hypocritical tyrant. Nevertheless, Barere had no scruple about
accepting a charitable donation of a thousand francs a year from
the privy purse of the sovereign whom he hated and reviled. This
pension, together with some small sums occasionally doled out to
him by the department of the Interior, on the ground that he was
a distressed man of letters, and by the department of Justice, on
the ground that he had formerly held a high judicial office,
saved him from the necessity of begging his bread. Having
survived all his colleagues of the renowned Committee of Public
Safety, and almost all his colleagues of the Convention, he died
in January 1841. He had attained his eighty-sixth year.

We have now laid before our readers what we believe to be a just
account of this man's life. Can it be necessary for us to add
anything for the purpose of assisting their judgment of his
character? If we were writing about any of his colleagues in the
Committee of Public Safety, about Carnot, about Robespierre, or
Saint Just, nay, even about Couthon, Collot, or Billaud, we might
feel it necessary to go into a full examination of the arguments
which have been employed to vindicate or to excuse the system of
Terror. We could, we think, show that France was saved from her
foreign enemies, not by the system of Terror, but in spite of it;
and that the perils which were made the plea of the violent
policy of the Mountain were to a great extent created by that
very policy. We could, we think, also show that the evils
produced by the Jacobin administration did not terminate when it
fell; that it bequeathed a long series of calamities to France
and to Europe; that public opinion, which had during two
generations been constantly becoming more and more favourable to
civil and religious freedom, underwent, during the days of
Terror, a change of which the traces are still to be distinctly
perceived. It was natural that there should be such a change,
when men saw that those who called themselves the champions of
popular rights had compressed into the space of twelve months
more crimes than the Kings of France, Merovingian, Carlovingian,
and Capetian, had perpetrated in twelve centuries. Freedom was
regarded as a great delusion. Men were willing to submit to the
government of hereditary princes, of fortunate soldiers, of
nobles, of priests; to any government but that of philosophers
and philanthropists. Hence the imperial despotism, with its
enslaved press and its silent tribune, its dungeons stronger than
the old Bastile, and its tribunals more obsequious than the old
parliaments. Hence the restoration of the Bourbons and of the
Jesuits, the Chamber of 1815 with its categories of proscription,
the revival of the feudal spirit, the encroachments of the
clergy, the persecution of the Protestants, the appearance of a
new breed of De Montforts and Dominics in the full light of the
nineteenth century. Hence the admission of France into the Holy
Alliance, and the war waged by the old soldiers of the tricolor
against the liberties of Spain. Hence, too, the apprehensions
with which, even at the present day, the most temperate plans for
widening the narrow basis of the French representation are
regarded by those who are especially interested in the security
of property and maintenance of order. Half a century has not
sufficed to obliterate the stain which one year of depravity and
madness has left on the noblest of causes.

Nothing is more ridiculous than the manner in which writers like
M. Hippolyte Carnot defend or excuse the Jacobin administration,
while they declaim against the reaction which followed. That the
reaction has produced and is still producing much evil, is
perfectly true. But what produced the reaction? The spring
flies up with a force proportioned to that with which it has been
pressed down. The pendulum which is drawn far in one direction
swings as far in the other. The joyous madness of intoxication
in the evening is followed by languor and nausea on the morrow.
And so, in politics, it is the sure law that every excess shall
generate its opposite; nor does he deserve the name of a
statesman who strikes a great blow without fully calculating the
effect of the rebound. But such calculation was infinitely
beyond the reach of the authors of the Reign of Terror.
Violence, and more violence, blood, and more blood, made up their
whole policy. In a few months these poor creatures succeeded in
bringing about a reaction, of which none of them saw, and of
which none of us may see the close; and, having brought it about,
they marvelled at it; they bewailed it; they execrated it; they
ascribed it to everything but the real cause--their own
immortality and their own profound incapacity for the conduct of
great affairs.

These, however, are considerations to which, on the present
occasion, it is hardly necessary for us to advert; for, be the
defence which has been set up for the Jacobin policy good or bad,
it is a defence which cannot avail Barere. From his own life,
from his own pen, from his own mouth, we can prove that the part
which he took in the work of blood is to be attributed, not even
to sincere fanaticism, not even to misdirected and ill-regulated
patriotism, but either to cowardice, or to delight in human
misery. Will it be pretended that it was from public spirit that
he murdered the Girondists? In these very Memoirs he tells us
that he always regarded their death as the greatest calamity that
could befall France. Will it be pretended that it was from
public spirit that he raved for the head of the Austrian woman?
In these very Memoirs he tells us that the time spent in
attacking her was ill spent, and ought to have been employed in
concerting measures of national defence. Will it be pretended
that he was induced by sincere and earnest abhorrence of kingly
government to butcher the living and to outrage the dead; he who
invited Napoleon to take the title of King of Kings, he who
assures us that after the Restoration he expressed in noble
language his attachment to monarchy, and to the house of Bourbon?
Had he been less mean, something might have been said in
extenuation of his cruelty. Had he been less cruel, something
might have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for
him, regicide and court-spy, for him who patronised Lebon and
betrayed Demerville, for him who wantoned alternately in
gasconades of Jacobinism and gasconades of servility, what excuse
has the largest charity to offer?

We cannot conclude without saying something about two parts of
his character, which his biographer appears to consider as
deserving of high admiration. Barere, it is admitted, was
somewhat fickle; but in two things he was consistent, in his love
of Christianity, and in his hatred to England. If this were so,
we must say that England is much more beholden to him than
Christianity.

It is possible that our inclinations may bias our judgment; but
we think that we do not flatter ourselves when we say that
Barere's aversion to our country was a sentiment as deep and
constant as his mind was capable of entertaining. The value of
this compliment is indeed somewhat diminished by the circumstance
that he knew very little about us. His ignorance of our
institutions, manners, and history is the less excusable,
because, according to his own account, he consorted much, during
the peace of Amiens, with Englishmen of note, such as that
eminent nobleman Lord Greaten, and that not less eminent
philosopher Mr Mackensie Coefhis. In spite, however, of his
connection with these well-known ornaments of our country, he was
so ill-informed about us as to fancy that our government was
always laying plans to torment him. If he was hooted at Saintes,
probably by people whose relations he had murdered, it was
because the cabinet of St James's had hired the mob. If nobody
would read his bad books it was because the cabinet of St James's
had secured the Reviewers. His accounts of Mr Fox, of Mr Pitt,
of the Duke of Wellington, of Mr Canning, swarm with blunders
surpassing even the ordinary blunders committed by Frenchmen who
write about England. Mr Fox and Mr Pitt, he tells us, were
ministers in two different reigns. Mr Pitt's sinking fund was
instituted in order to enable England to pay subsidies to the
powers allied against the French republic. The Duke of
Wellington's house in Hyde Park was built by the nation, which
twice voted the sum of 200,000 pounds for the purpose. This,
however, is exclusive of the cost of the frescoes, which were
also paid for out of the public purse. Mr Canning was the first
Englishman whose death Europe had reason to lament; for the death
of Lord Ward, a relation, we presume, of Lord Greaten and Mr
Coefhis, had been an immense benefit to mankind.

Ignorant, however, as Barere was, he knew enough of us to hate
us; and we persuade ourselves that, had he known us better, he
would have hated us more. The nation which has combined, beyond
all example and all hope, the blessings of liberty with those of
order, might well be an object of aversion to one who had been
false alike to the cause of order and to the cause of liberty.
We have had amongst us intemperate zeal for popular rights; we
have had amongst us also the intemperance of loyalty. But we
have never been shocked by such a spectacle as the Barere of
1794, or as the Barere of 1804. Compared with him, our fiercest
demagogues have been gentle; compared with him, our meanest
courtiers have been manly. Mix together Thistlewood and Bubb
Doddington; and you are still far from having Barere. The
antipathy between him and us is such, that neither for the crimes
of his earlier nor for those of his later life does our language,
rich as it is, furnish us with adequate names. We have found it
difficult to relate his history without having perpetual recourse
to the French vocabulary of horror, and to the French vocabulary
of baseness. It is not easy to give a notion of his conduct in
the Convention, without using those emphatic terms, guillotinade,
noyade, fusillade, mitraillade. It is not easy to give a notion
of his conduct under the Consulate and the Empire without
borrowing such words as mouchard and mouton.

We therefore like his invectives against us much better than
anything else that he has written; and dwell on them, not merely
with complacency, but with a feeling akin to gratitude. It was
but little that he could do to promote the honour of our country;
but that little he did strenuously and constantly. Renegade,
traitor, slave, coward, liar, slanderer, murderer, hack writer,
police-spy--the one small service which he could render to
England was to hate her: and such as he was may all who hate her
be!

We cannot say that we contemplate with equal satisfaction that
fervent and constant zeal for religion which, according to M.
Hippolyte Carnot, distinguished Barere; for, as we think that
whatever brings dishonour on religion is a serious evil, we had,
we own, indulged a hope that Barere was an atheist. We now
learn, however, that he was at no time even a sceptic, that he
adhered to his faith through the whole Revolution, and that he
has left several manuscript works on divinity. One of these is a
pious treatise, entitled "Of Christianity, and of its Influence."
Another consists of meditations on the Psalms, which will
doubtless greatly console and edify the Church.

This makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are false,
whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust,
whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are hateful,
whatsoever things are of evil report, if there be any vice, and
if there be any infamy, all these things, we knew, were blended
in Barere. But one thing was still wanting; and that M.
Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such an assemblage of
qualities a high profession of piety is added, the effect becomes
overpowering. We sink under the contemplation of such exquisite
and manifold perfection; and feel, with deep humility, how
presumptuous it was in us to think of composing the legend of
this beatified athlete of the faith, St Bertrand of the
Carmagnoles.

Something more we had to say about him. But let him go. We did
not seek him out, and will not keep him longer. If those who
call themselves his friends had not forced him on our notice we
should never have vouchsafed to him more than a passing word of
scorn and abhorrence, such as we might fling at his brethren,
Hebert and Fouquier Tinville, and Carrier and Lebon. We have no
pleasure in seeing human nature thus degraded. We turn with
disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos of the fiction; and
the filthiest and most spiteful Yahoo of the fiction was a noble
creature when compared with the Barere of history. But what is
no pleasure M. Hippolyte Carnot has made a duty. It is no light
thing that a man in high and honourable public trust, a man who,
from his connections and position, may not unnaturally be
supposed to speak the sentiments of a large class of his
countrymen, should come forward to demand approbation for a life
black with every sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by a single
virtue. This M. Hippolyte Carnot has done. By attempting to
enshrine this Jacobin carrion, he has forced us to gibbet it; and
we venture to say that, from the eminence of infamy on which we
have placed it, he will not easily take it down.

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