CHAPTER X.
La Fayette presented to the Premier Consul—His Interview with Napoleon—La Fayette declines the Office of Senator, and the Post of Ambassador to the United States—La Fayette meets Lord Cornwallis—Interview with Napoleon—La Fayette’s Fearless Loyalty to his Principles—La Fayette and Joseph Bonaparte—La Fayette refuses to vote for the Decree declaring Napoleon First Consul for Life—His Letter to Napoleon, explaining his Reasons—La Fayette’s Comments upon his Opposition to Bonaparte—Klopstock’s Dying Message to the Marquis—Madame de Staël’s Letter from Rome—La Fayette’s Meeting with Charles Fox—La Fayette in Jury—President Jefferson offers to him the Governorship of Louisiana—La Fayette declines—The Emperor Napoleon’s Remarks regarding La Fayette—Joseph Bonaparte offers to the Marquis a Seat in the House of Peers—La Fayette declines—Prince Joseph offers the Grand Cordon—La Fayette courteously declines the Honor—He is chosen a Member of the Chamber of Deputies—La Fayette appointed by the Assembly to meet the Allied Generals, after the Overthrow at Waterloo—Lord Stewart’s Ignominious Proposal—La Fayette’s Indignant Reply—Louis XVIII. again on the Throne—La Fayette retires to La Grange—Descriptions of his Home Life—His Charming Château—His Prosperous Farm—His Model Family—La Fayette again chosen a Member of the Chamber of Deputies—The Charge of Treason—La Fayette’s Fearless Declaration—His Speech in the Chamber—Upon Governmental Expenses—Public Instruction—Examination of the Ancient Régime—La Fayette refuses to claim the Title of Marquis since the Decree abolishing Orders of Nobility.
“This is true Liberty: when freeborn men,Having to advise the public, may speak free;Which he who can and will deserves high praise;Who neither can nor will may hold his peace.What can be juster in a state than this?”—Milton.
“This is true Liberty: when freeborn men,Having to advise the public, may speak free;Which he who can and will deserves high praise;Who neither can nor will may hold his peace.What can be juster in a state than this?”—Milton.
“This is true Liberty: when freeborn men,Having to advise the public, may speak free;Which he who can and will deserves high praise;Who neither can nor will may hold his peace.What can be juster in a state than this?”—Milton.
“This is true Liberty: when freeborn men,
Having to advise the public, may speak free;
Which he who can and will deserves high praise;
Who neither can nor will may hold his peace.
What can be juster in a state than this?”—Milton.
THE account of the death of Madame La Fayette, which occurred in 1807, has taken us a few years beyond the time we had reached in the history of La Fayette’s political career, and we return to the period of his return to France after his long imprisonment. Shortly after this, La Fayette received the painful intelligence of the death of General Washington. He had fondly cherished the hope of again visiting his adored friend at Mt. Vernon, and perhaps taking his wife and family to behold his illustrious American general. The marquis immediately wrote a letter of condolence and sympathy to the family of Washington, and received from them a pair of pistols which General Washington had left to La Fayette in his will.
In 1800 La Fayette and Maubourg were presented to the First Consul at the Tuileries. Napoleon received them with great politeness, and amidst their expressions of personal gratitude to Bonaparte, they added many compliments regarding his Italian campaign. Napoleon sometimes discussed with La Fayette American matters and affairs in Europe.
Napoleon, speaking to La Fayette of his campaigns in America, once remarked, “The highest interests of the whole world were there decided by the skirmishes of patrols.”
One day Bonaparte said to him, “You must have found the French muchcooledon the subject of liberty?”
“Yes,” replied La Fayette; “but they are in a state to receive it.”
“They are disgusted,” answered the First Consul. “Your Parisians—for instance, the shop-keepers—oh, they want no more of it!”
“I did not use the expression lightly, General,” said La Fayette; “I am not ignorant of the effect of the follies and crimes which have defiled the name of liberty; but the French are perhaps more than ever in a state to receive it. It is for you to give it; from you they await it.”
Napoleon proffered to La Fayette the office of senator, but it was declined. The post of ambassador to the United States was then offered him, but as he felt himself almost a citizen of America, he was not willing to go there in such capacity as should force him to watch her with a jealous eye in order to uphold the rights of his own country.
Concerning this offer La Fayette wrote to Masclet: “I shall not go to America, my dear Masclet, at least not in a diplomatic capacity. I am far from abandoning the idea of making private and patriotic visits to the United States, and to my fellow-citizens of the New World, but at present I am much more intent upon farming than upon embassies. It seems to me that were I to arrive in America in any other costume than an American uniform, I should be as embarrassed with my appearance as a savage in breeches.”
In 1802 La Fayette met at a dinner party Lord Cornwallis, the newly appointed British minister to France. During their conversation Cornwallis asked La Fayette’s opinion regarding Napoleon’s administration, as to whether it was consistent with his ideas of liberty. La Fayette boldly replied that it was not. Spies were not long in carrying this daring answer to Bonaparte. Napoleon was displeased; and when next he met LaFayette, he said, “Lord Cornwallis claims that you are not yet corrected.”
“Of what?” asked La Fayette—“of my love of liberty? What should disgust me with that? The extravagances and crimes of terrorist tyranny have only served to make me hate more heartily every arbitrary régime, and attach myself more strongly to my principles.”
“But you have spoken to him of our affairs,” said the Consul, with evident displeasure.
“No one is further than myself,” replied La Fayette, “from seeking a foreign ambassador to censure what is passing in my own country; but if he ask me if this is liberty, I must answer No.”
“I must say to you, General La Fayette,” said Bonaparte,—“and I perceive it with pain,—that, by your manner of speaking of the acts of the government, you give its enemies the weight of your name.”
“What more can I do?” was the fearless reply. “I live in the country in retirement; I avoid, as far as I can, occasions of speaking of public affairs; but when any one demands of me if your administration of the government is conformable to my ideas of liberty, I shall say that it is not. I wish to be prudent, but I cannot be false.”
“But are you not convinced,” replied he, “that in the state in which I found France I was forced to irregular measures?”
“That is not the question,” he answered. “I speak neither of the time, nor of this or that act; it is the tendency—yes, General, it is the tendency of affairs—which pains me and disturbs me.”
“As to the rest,” Napoleon then replied, “I have spoken to you as the chief of the government; and in thatcapacity I complain of you. But as a private individual I ought to be content, because, in all which has been told me concerning you, I have perceived that in spite of your severity upon the acts of government, there has always been on your part personal good will for me.”
“You are right,” he answered. “A free government with you at its head—I should have nothing more to desire.”
One day La Fayette dined at the house of Madame de Staël, with Joseph Bonaparte and some members of that ephemeral opposition, whom Napoleon had not expelled.
“You are dissatisfied,” Joseph said to him, in the midst of the conversation. “You are not with us; but permit me to say to you that you are no more with these gentlemen. They desire a rotation of directors who differ in their striking of the shoulder. To-day it is one man; to-morrow it will be another; in place of that, if we have a régime conformed to your principles, you would be pleased that my brother should remain chief.”
When La Fayette was asked to vote for the decree declaring Napoleon First Consul for life, he replied:—
“I cannot vote for such a magistracy until public liberty has been sufficiently guaranteed. Then I will give my vote to Napoleon Bonaparte.”
JOSEPH BONAPARTE.
JOSEPH BONAPARTE.
JOSEPH BONAPARTE.
La Fayette addressed to the First Consul the following letter at this time:—
“La Grange, May 20, 1802.“General: When a man filled with the gratitude which he owes you, and too much alive to glory not to admire yours, has placed restrictions on his suffrage, those restrictions will be so much the less suspected when it is known that none more than himself would delight to see you chief magistrate for life of a freerepublic. The 18thBrumairesaved France, and I felt that I was recalled by the liberal professions to which you have attached your honor. We afterwards beheld in the consular power that restorative dictatorship, which, under the auspices of your genius, has achieved such great things—less great, however, than will be the restoration to liberty. It is impossible that you, General, the first in that order of men (whom, to quote and compare, would require me to retrace every page of history) can wish that such a revolution, so many victories, so much blood and miseries, should produce to the world and to ourselves no other results than an arbitrary system. The French people know their rights too well to have entirely forgotten them. But perhaps they are better able to recover them now with advantage than in the heat of effervescence; and you, by the power of your character and the public confidence; by the superiority of your talents, your situation, and your fortune, may, by re-establishing liberty, subdue our dangers and calm our inquietudes. I have no other than patriotic and personal motives in wishing for you, as the climax of our glory, a permanent magistrative post; but it is in unity with my principles, my engagements, the actions of my whole life, to ascertain, before I vote, that liberty is established on a basis worthy of the nation and of you. I hope you will now acknowledge, General, as you have already had occasion to do, that to firmness in my political opinions are joined my sincere sentiments of my obligations to you.”
“La Grange, May 20, 1802.
“General: When a man filled with the gratitude which he owes you, and too much alive to glory not to admire yours, has placed restrictions on his suffrage, those restrictions will be so much the less suspected when it is known that none more than himself would delight to see you chief magistrate for life of a freerepublic. The 18thBrumairesaved France, and I felt that I was recalled by the liberal professions to which you have attached your honor. We afterwards beheld in the consular power that restorative dictatorship, which, under the auspices of your genius, has achieved such great things—less great, however, than will be the restoration to liberty. It is impossible that you, General, the first in that order of men (whom, to quote and compare, would require me to retrace every page of history) can wish that such a revolution, so many victories, so much blood and miseries, should produce to the world and to ourselves no other results than an arbitrary system. The French people know their rights too well to have entirely forgotten them. But perhaps they are better able to recover them now with advantage than in the heat of effervescence; and you, by the power of your character and the public confidence; by the superiority of your talents, your situation, and your fortune, may, by re-establishing liberty, subdue our dangers and calm our inquietudes. I have no other than patriotic and personal motives in wishing for you, as the climax of our glory, a permanent magistrative post; but it is in unity with my principles, my engagements, the actions of my whole life, to ascertain, before I vote, that liberty is established on a basis worthy of the nation and of you. I hope you will now acknowledge, General, as you have already had occasion to do, that to firmness in my political opinions are joined my sincere sentiments of my obligations to you.”
This memorable letter was never answered.
La Fayette, in his “Mémoires,” thus comments upon his opposition to Napoleon: “It appears that Bonaparte had for a long time preserved his good-will towards me;and even after my letter, when one had declared before him, that there had not been any opposition to the Consulate for life, except from the Jacobin votes:—
“‘No,’ said he, ‘there were the enthusiasts for liberty: La Fayette, for example.’
“M. de Vaines, a member of the Cabinet Council, to whom he addressed his remark, observed that without doubt, I had believed it to be my duty to vote according to my principles, because no one could doubt of my personal attachment to Bonaparte.
“‘Really,’ replied he, ‘he ought to be content with the government.’
“The blame of this rupture has often been laid entirely to my charge; but his resolution and his character left me no hope of being useful. As he advanced farther in his fatal course, the rupture was more inevitable. If any one has the desire of tracing for himself the good will of my feelings towards Bonaparte, he has only to search through my correspondence with my friends. It suffices that these letters, written at different times, free me from all reproach of ambition or caprice.
“The foreigners who most desired to see me in office, were not tardy in feeling that I was right. But I will never despair of liberty.
“‘The character of General La Fayette,’ said Klopstock, a little while after my release from Olmütz, ‘prevents him from well knowing his nation; how could he believe them capable of possessing free institutions?’
“His judgment was an error, which the excesses of the Jacobins had but too far scattered. Later, one of his friends, who was also mine, wrote to me thus: ‘Klopstock died with his old attachment for you. We had together a long conversation regarding you, when I made to him my last, visit; he approved of you, and besoughtme that I should write to you, and salute you most cordially for him. I present to you this last homage, coming, so to speak, from the other world.’
“I was also touched, without doubt, to read in a letter written from Rome (by Madame de Staël): ‘I shall hope always for the human race as long as you exist. I address you this sentiment from the sublime Capitol, and the benedictions of its shades come to you through my voice.’
“To multiply such citations, and to repeat the most flattering opinions from Europe and America, I should have the appearance of giving way to a vanity from which it is easy to defend one’s self after one has acted amidst great circumstances; and particularly, after one has been the butt of some enthusiasm, one feels that there is nothing but a true esteem which is worthy of regard. I have myself said elsewhere, ‘There is, then, some good in my retirement, since it publishes and maintains the idea that liberty is not abandoned without exception and without hope.’”
La Fayette thus describes his meeting with Charles Fox:—
“The Peace d’Amiens brought over a great number of Englishmen. ‘They are all malecontents,’ observed the ambassador Livingston; ‘some have expected to find France wild; they have found her flourishing: the others hoped to see here traces of liberty; all are disappointed.’ I was at Chavaniac when Charles Fox and General Fitzpatrick arrived in Paris. They wished to send for me, as I was one of the principal objects of their visit. I hastened to join them. M. and Madame Fox, Fitzpatrick, MM. John and Trotter, passed several days at La Grange. I met at Paris the Lords Holland and Lauderdale, the new Duke of Bedford, M. Adair, andM. Erskine, whom I pressed in vain to write regarding the jury of England and of France. ‘The first years of the Revolution,’ said they, ‘we had great hopes; but the excesses have ruined the good cause.’
“One day Fox, with his amiable goodness of heart, said to me in the presence of my son, that I should not be too much affected by an unavoidable delay. ‘Liberty will return,’ said he, ‘but not for us; for George, perhaps, and surely for his children.’”
About this time La Fayette met with a severe injury, caused by a fall upon the ice. His hip-bone was broken, and the accident was followed by a long and painful illness.
In 1803 President Jefferson offered to appoint La Fayette governor of the newly acquired territory of Louisiana. The land allotted to La Fayette as a former major-general in the American army was selected from the fertile fields of that territory. But notwithstanding La Fayette’s love for America, he felt constrained to remain in France, and therefore declined the kindly proffered honor.
After Napoleon had been crowned emperor, he is reported to have said to his Council, one day: “Gentlemen, I know your devotion to the power of the throne. Every one in France is corrected; I was thinking of the only man who is not,—La Fayette. He has never retreated from his line. You see him quiet; but I tell you he is quite ready to begin again.”
CHARLES FOX.
CHARLES FOX.
CHARLES FOX.
During the brief reign of Louis XVIII. and the banishment of Napoleon to Elba, La Fayette appeared only once at court. When the sudden return of Bonaparte startled the world, and the trembling King Louis saw his power depart, one of the king’s minister’s exclaimed: “All is lost! There is no endurance, no indignity, to which the king would not submit, to retain his throne.”
“What!” said another; “even La Fayette?”
“Yes,” replied the first; “even La Fayette himself.”
When Napoleon again resumed the reins of power and re-established an hereditary peerage, La Fayette was pressed to take his seat by Joseph Bonaparte, who had been sent to the marquis by Napoleon; but La Fayette’s reply to the offered honor was consistent with all his former actions.
“Should I ever again appear on the scene of public life,it can only be as the representative of the people.”
Regarding the efforts of Joseph Bonaparte in his behalf, La Fayette says: “I was preparing to return to Chavaniac in September, 1804, when my relative and friend, Ségur, Grand Master of Ceremonies, wrote to me that Joseph Bonaparte had charged him with a message for me.
“‘The Prince Joseph,’ said he to me, at Paris, some time afterwards, ‘wishes to attribute your retirement to a sentiment of the philosopher; but he observes with pain and disquietude that his brother regards it as a state of hostility. The friendship of Prince Joseph for you, presses you to place a limit to this situation. He regretted that you have not wished to be a senator. He asked only your name. You would not have to leave La Grange. His idea to-day is still less exceptional. There is a question of your being one of the dignitaries of the Legion of Honor; in short, said he, your military record in America and Europe is such as gives this thing but the consequence adapted to your retirement, which in refusing will have a hostile effect. But before going farther, he wished to be assured that you will not refuse it.’
“I began to reply, but Ségur besought me to reflect,and the following is what I repeated the next day: ‘I am greatly touched by the good will of Prince Joseph; but he will permit me to observe to him that in my singular position, the Grand Cordon, although I am well pleased that he should offer it, would seem to me to be ridiculous, admitting even that it were the accompaniment of an office. But it follows that I am to be nothing, and in being that, it follows so much the more, as this is nothing more than the chivalry of an order of things contrary to my principles; I cannot therefore accept it. The qualification given to my retirement is strange when one compares the imperial power to my little influence; but if it is indispensable that I should be something, I should be less repugnant to the Senate; where, however, my opinions would oblige me to incur, on the other hand, a more just title of reproach than the emperor gives to me. I demand, then, that the friendship of his brother should remove from me all these conditions.’
“My response was well carried. ‘For the present,’ said Prince Joseph, ‘when I know the intentions of M. de La Fayette, I will profit by the occasions to serve him, but in accordance with his opinions.’”
Having thus declined the peerage, La Fayette being warmly urged by the inhabitants of his district, accepted the appointment as their representative to the elective body, instituted to sit in connection with the Peers. As a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he continued to maintain and uphold his liberal principles with fearless eloquence whenever occasion demanded it. After the overthrow at Waterloo, La Fayette stipulated in the Assembly that the liberty and life of Napoleon should be guaranteed by the nation, and endeavored to obtain for him two frigates to conduct Bonaparte safely to theUnited States; but it was too late. La Fayette was sent by the Assembly to meet the victorious generals, and prevent, if possible, their coming to Paris, by proposing terms of capitulation. Lord Stewart said to La Fayette: “I must inform you, sir, that there can be no peace with the allied powers, unless you deliver up Bonaparte to us.” “I am surprised,” replied La Fayette, with calm dignity and suppressed scorn, “that to propose so base an act to the French nation, you address yourself by choice to a prisoner of Olmütz.”
Louis XVIII. was again forced upon the French people by the allies, contrary to the wishes of both the nation and La Fayette; and the marquis accordingly once again retired to La Grange. Here he received his many friends and visitors with the most stately and yet warm-hearted cordiality, blending the courtesy of the gentleman of noble family with the sincerity and frankness of the man of the people.
An English lady who enjoyed the pleasure of being a guest at La Grange in 1818 thus pictures the life there:—
“Charming days, more charming evenings, flow on in a perpetual stream of enjoyment here. In the mornings Madame George La Fayette, the Countess Lasteyrie, and the Countess Maubourg are busy with the children, and do not appear. The visitors amuse themselves or are with the general, unless his occupations prevent. Then comes a walk or drive—sometimes a long excursion. After dinner at four o’clock, conversation; in the evening, music or talking. Before breakfast I find all the young people at their easels, painting from models in the anteroom; then they go to their music (there are three pianos, and a music-master and an English governess live in the house); then they all turn out into the beautiful park for two hours, and then resume their studies fortwo hours more. But I never saw such happy children; they live without restraint, and except while at their lessons, are always with the grown people. If the little ones are noisy, they are sent into the anteroom; but their gentleness and good conduct are astonishing, considering, too, that eleven of the twelve are always with us.” All of La Fayette’s children continued to make their home with him until the time of his death; and his grandchildren were a constant source of delight to him.
Another delightful description of the home life at La Grange is given by Lady Morgan, who visited France about this time. She says:—
“General La Fayette has not appeared in Paris since the return of the Bourbon dynasty to France. And I should have left that country without having seen one of its greatest ornaments, had not a flattering invitation from the Château La Grange enabled me to gratify a wish, long and devoutly cherished, of knowing, or at least of beholding, its illustrious master. Introduced by proxy to the family of La Fayette, by the young and amiable Princess Charlotte de B——, we undertook our journey to La Grange with the same pleasure as the pilgrim takes his first unwearied steps to the shrine of sainted excellence.
“In the midst of a fertile and luxuriant wilderness, rising above prolific orchards and antiquated woods, appeared the five towers of La Grange, tinged with the golden rays of the setting sun. Through the branches of the trees appeared the pretty village of Aubepierre, once, perhaps, the dependency of the castle, and clustering near the protection of its walls. A remoter view of the village of D’Hieres, with its gleaming river and romantic valley, was caught and lost alternately in the serpentine mazes of the rugged road; which, accommodatedto the grouping of the trees, wound amidst branches laden with ripening fruit, till its rudeness suddenly subsided in the velvet lawn that immediately surrounded the castle. The deep moat, the drawbridge, the ivied tower and arched portals, opening into the square court, had a feudal and picturesque character; and combined with the reserved tints and fine repose of evening, associated with that exaltation of feeling which belonged to the moment, preceding a first interview with those on whom the mind has long dwelt with admiration or interest.
“We found General La Fayette surrounded by his patriarchal family—his excellent son and daughter-in-law, his two daughters (the sharers of his dungeon in Olmütz) and their husbands, eleven grandchildren, and a venerable granduncle, the ex-grand prior of Malta, with hair as white as snow, and his cross and his order worn as proudly as when he had issued forth at the head of his pious troops against the ‘paynim foe,’ or Christian enemy.
“Such was the group that received us in thesalonof La Grange; such was the close-knit circle that made our breakfast and our dinner party, accompanied us in our delightful rambles through the grounds and woods of La Grange, and constantly presented the most perfect unity of family interests, habits, tastes, and affections.
“We naturally expect to find strong traces of time in the form of those with whose names and deeds we have been long acquainted, of those who had obtained the suffrages of the world, almost before we had entered it. But, on the person of La Fayette, time has left no impression; not a wrinkle furrows the ample brow; and his unbent and noble figure is still as upright, bold, and vigorous as the mind that informs it. Grace, strength,and dignity still distinguish the fine person of this extraordinary man; who, though more than forty years before the world, engaged in scenes of strange and eventful conflict, does not yet appear to have reached his climacteric.
“Bustling and active in his farm, graceful and elegant in hissalon, it is difficult to trace, in one of the most successful agriculturists, and one of the most perfectly fine gentlemen that France has produced, a warrior and a legislator. The patriot, however, is always discernible.
“In the full possession of every faculty and talent he ever possessed, the memory of M. La Fayette has all the tenacity of unworn youthful recollections; and, besides these, high views of all that is most elevated in the mind’s conception. His conversation is brilliantly enriched with anecdotes of all that is celebrated, in character and event, for the last fifty years. He still talks with unwearied delight of his short visit to England, to his friend Mr. Fox, and dwelt on the witchery of the late Duchess of Devonshire with almost boyish enthusiasm. He speaks and writes English with the same elegance he does his native tongue. He has made himself master of all that is best worth knowing in English literature and philosophy.
“I observed that his library contained many of our most eminent authors upon all subjects. His elegant and well-chosen collection of books occupies the highest apartments in one of the towers of the château; and, like the study of Montaigne, hangs over the farm-yard of the philosophical agriculturist. ‘It frequently happens,’ said M. La Fayette, as we were looking out of the window at some flocks which were moving beneath, ‘it frequently happens that my merinos and my hay cartsdispute my attention with your Hume or our own Voltaire.’
“He spoke with great pleasure of the visit paid him at La Grange some years ago by Mr. Fox and General Fitzpatrick. He took me out, the morning after my arrival, to show me a tower richly covered with ivy. ‘It was Mr. Fox,’ he said, ‘who planted that ivy! I have taught my children to venerate it.’
“The Château La Grange does not, however, want other points of interest.... Founded by Louis Le Gros, and occupied by the Princes of Lorraine, the mark of a cannon-ball is still visible in one of its towers, which penetrated the masonry, when attacked by Maréchal Turenne. Here in the plain, but spacious,salon-à-manger, the peasantry of the neighborhood and the domestics of the castle assemble every Sunday evening in winter to dance to the violin of theconcierge, and are regaled with cakes andeau sucrée. The general is usually, and his family are always, present at these rustic balls. The young people occasionally dance among the tenantry, and set the example of the new steps, freshly imported by their Paris dancing-master.
“In the summer this patriarchal reunion takes place in the park, where a space is cleared for the purpose, shaded by the lofty trees which encircle it. A thousand times, in contemplating La Fayette, in the midst of his charming family, the last years of the life of the Chancellor de l’Hopital recurred to me, ... he whom thenaïveBrantome likens to Cato! and who, loving liberty as he hated faction, retired from a court unworthy of his virtues, to his little domain of Vignay, which he cultivated himself.”
In 1819 La Fayette was again chosen a member of the Chamber of Deputies. His many stirring and eloquentspeeches in favor of liberty, and his fearless denunciations of despotic tyranny, aroused the fear and hatred of Louis XVIII. In 1823 the king ordered his solicitor-general to accuse La Fayette of treason. The charge was made publicly in the Chamber of Deputies, and for a moment was received with profound silence. Then La Fayette slowly rose from his seat, and with calm and commanding dignity took his stand upon the tribune. With folded arms he surveyed the assembly with unquailing eye; and then he spoke: “In spite of my habitual indifference to party accusations and animosities, I still think myself bound to say a single word upon this occasion. During the whole course of a life entirely devoted to liberty, I have constantly been an object of attack to the enemies of that cause; under whatever form, despotic, aristocratic, or anarchic, they have endeavored to combat it. I do not complain, then, because I observe some affectation in the use of the word ‘proved,’ which the solicitor-general has employed against me; but I join my honored friends in demanding a public inquiry, within the walls of this chamber, and in the face of the nation. Then, I and my adversaries, to whatever rank they belong, may declare, without reserve, all that we have mutually had to reproach each other with for the last thirty years.”
His accusers recoiled from such a daring, and to them condemnatory, challenge, and La Fayette was acquitted; but the government, by intrigues and bribery, defeated his re-election.
The following speech of La Fayette, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies in 1821, and published in theNew York American, of July, that same year, will give some idea of the fearless eloquence of the marquis, whichdauntless frankness so incensed the corrupt court and enraged the Bourbon king.
TheNew York Americanthus comments upon the speech:—
“We have allotted a considerable portion of our paper to-day to a speech of General La Fayette, delivered last month in the French Chamber of Deputies; and, in doing so, we shall gratify, as we hope, that deep feeling of interest with which every act of that ‘soldier of America,’ as he proudly calls himself, is looked upon by his fellow-citizens of the United States. It will be seen that, true to his early principles, this veteran friend of freedom still maintains the doctrines to which this country owes its existence and glory, and which, shackled and fettered indeed, but still prevailing, he has the high honor of having transplanted, sheltered, and under all changes adhered to in France. It has, indeed, been truly and beautifully said of La Fayette that he was among those who took an active part in the French Revolution, perhaps the only one ‘who had nothing to ask of oblivion.’ Pure and disinterested in his views and in his conduct, the public good has ever been his object and his sole aim; and the blessings of this great nation, in whose favor he early drew his noble sword, and the respect of every lover of liberty in every clime, bear testimony to the consistency of a life which, midst every variety of changes and perils, has never been sullied by meanness nor dishonored by crime.”
General La Fayette’s Speech.
During the discussions on the budget on the 4th of June, which, in making appropriations for the expenditures of the country, laid open to remark all the various interests of France, M. La Fayette, having been calledon to speak, presented himself at the tribune, and, after the lively expressions of interest which his presence there excited in the Chamber had subsided, spoke as follows:—
“The general discussion of the budget gives us the right of making some summary remarks upon each of its provisions. The public debt, however contracted, is sacred. I regret, in common with others, its recent increase; but without recriminations here, as the errors of the first restoration, which produced the 20th March, or as to the fatal landing which came to mingle itself with the progress of a more salutary and less turbulent resistance, or as to the conditions of the last treaty of peace, stipulated exclusively between the powers at war with France and the august ally of those powers, I will confine myself to drawing from the past an important lesson for the future, which is, that it would have cost, as I said at the time, much less to expel the coalition of foreigners than to treat with it; and that, if ever such a state of things should recur, and that, following the example of Napoleon and the provisional government, the rulers of France should hesitate to call out the peopleen masse, it would be alike the duty and the safety of that people themselves to leap to their arms, and combining with one accord the million arms of her warlike generation and devoted youth, to bury beneath them, as she might do, the violators of her independence.
“The civil list has been voted for the whole duration of this reign; but when, in consequence of encroachments and dilapidations forty million francs of personal revenue for the monarch and his family begin to be considered as insufficient, it is allowable to look at—I will not say that country of ten millions of inhabitants, where the salary of the chief magistrate is not equal to that ofa French minister, but at the monarchical, aristocratic, and expensive government of England; where, nevertheless, the provision for the princes is smaller than in France; and where more than half the civil list is employed in paying the diplomatic corps, ministers, and judges; where the sum for which the king is not bound to account does not exceed a million and a half of francs.... Whatever may have been the losses and the pressure caused by a just defence against the aggressions of European cabinets, and which the ambition of a conqueror provoked, it must be owned, by more than one act of perfidy on the part of those courts, has since immeasurably increased; the enormous amount of the pension list arises from other causes. These are to be found in the rapid succession of the different governments in France, each anxious to create vacancies in favor of its friends; and, above all, in the recent irruption of a crowd of pretenders, all claiming rewards for having, either in will or in deed, in foreign pay or in domestic insurrections, on the highways or in obscure idleness, and even beneath the imperial liveries, manifested or dissembled their opposition to those governments which, each flattered in its turn, are now all called illegitimate. It is thus, that by deviations and apostasies from a revolution of liberty and equality, we have finished by seeing Europe during some years inundated with two complete assortments of dynasties,—nobility and privileged classes....
“I come now, gentlemen, to the second part of our expenses, the contingent part of the budget; but before remarking upon its items separately, I would ask how we can conscientiously support, by voting the ways and means, a government so scandalously expensive, and of which the system is hostile to the rights and to the wishes of almost all those who contribute to its support; and who,doubtless, only pay these contributions with a view to be honestly served, and by those who will study the national interest. It is to be hoped that this year the special application of every sum to the object for which it was voted will be closely scrutinized, as is the case in other countries....
“My unwillingness to vote for the expenses of foreign affairs arises from the conviction that our diplomacy at present is an absurdity. In truth, gentlemen, the system, the agents, the language, all appear to me foreign to regenerated France; she is again subjected to doctrines that she had branded, to powers she had so often conquered, to habits contracted among her enemies, to obligations for which, on her own account at least, she has no cause to blush. In the meanwhile, Europe, aroused by us thirty years ago to liberty, checked indeed since, as it must be confessed, by the view of our excesses and the abuse of our victories, has resumed, and will preserve, notwithstanding recent misfortunes, that great march of civilization, at the head of which our French place is marked, a place in which the eyes of all people who are free, or aspiring to become so, should not seek us in vain.
“Well, gentlemen, in this division of Europe between two banners,—on the one side, despotism and aristocracy; on the other, liberty and equality,—that liberty and equality which we first proclaimed there,—where do we find thesoi-disantorgans of France? exempt, it is true, and I am happy to acknowledge it, from a hostile co-operation, in the aggression of the satellites of Troppau and Laybach, whom a success of little duration, as I hope, will only render more odious; they are also entitled to our thanks for not having insulted France by any positive participation in those recent declarations ofthe three powers, which, in order not to offend the majority in this house, I will only characterize by repeating my ardent wishes, the wishes of my life, for the emancipation of the people, the independence of nations, and the morality and dignity of the true social order. We have, nevertheless, seen the agents of the French government, in their subaltern participation in the first deliberation of these congresses, not even to raise themselves to the level, so easily attained, of liberality evinced by the British diplomatists....
“Such are not the doctrines of France. I speak not now of my personal incredulity of the doctrine of the divine right of kings; but I recall to you that already, long before ’89, the era of the European revolution, when weSoldiers of Americafelt honored by the name ofrebelsand insurgents then lavished upon us, all in virtue of social order by the English government, Louis XVI. and his ministers had expressly recognized the sovereignty of the United States, founded as it was upon the principles of their immortal declaration of independence.
“These principles, since received into the bosom of the constituent assembly, proclaimed in a degree, sworn to by the king and his august brother amidst the greatest of our patriotic solemnities, have been since acknowledged, even in the usurpations of the imperial despotism,—they were since repeated from this tribune as a protecting truth by the friends of the charter and the royal throne on the 19th of March, 1815, for then it was not said that the charter was the counter-revolution; and, indeed, in order to ascertain the share due to the revolution of the rights recognized by the charter, that share which has so often been denied, it would suffice to read again an august proclamation, dated from Veronain July, 1795. These principles, professed at this day among that people who are our natural allies, outweigh all the exploded pretensions which we have since renewed, the moment that a noble effort of the nations subjected by our arms had forced their old governments in spite of themselves to recover the independence which they had so completely, so servilely, so affectionately alienated for the benefit of their conqueror; to whom, in a recent note from Troppau, they have preserved the noblest title he ever bore, in calling him thesoldier of the Revolution.
“In truth, gentlemen, the crimes and misfortunes which we deplore are no more the Revolution than the Saint Bartholomew was religion, or those you would call monarchical, the eighteen thousand judicial murders of the Duke of Alva....
“I will only make one remark as to the public instruction. The constitution of ’91 said, ‘There shall be organized a system of public instruction open to all citizens, gratuitous with respect to the indispensable parts of education, and widely disseminated.’ Your committee, on the contrary, exalting themselves to the height of the emperor of Austria’s address to the professors at Laybach, look upon gratuitous instruction as asocial disorder, and are particularly desirous to suppress the amount destined for the encouragement of elementary instruction, principally because it serves to favor the Lancasterian system, which your committee does not think will harmonize with the spirit of our institutions. Now, gentlemen, the Lancasterian system is, since the invention of printing, the greatest step which has been made for the extension of prompt, easy, and popular instruction....
“The expenses of the navy department are enormous. The navy of the United States has already been cited toyou; that navy, whose flag, since its establishment and during two spirited wars against the flag of Britain, has never once failed with equal, and often with inferior, force, to gain the advantage. The provisions, the pay,—everything there, as has been observed to you,—are higher than with us. Its cruisers amounted lately to two ships of the line, nine frigates and fifteen smaller vessels, protecting a commerce of more than 1,200,000 tons, without including the fisheries or the coasting trade. The expenses of their navy department were fixed last session at two and one-half millions of dollars, and half a million more to build new vessels, making sixteen millions of francs, calculated, indeed, for twelve vessels of the line and twenty frigates, etc. But what a difference between this sum and fifty millions of francs, which are said to be insufficient for our navy!...
“I shall not consider it as a departure from the question under discussion as to the general administration of the kingdom, if, by a rapid examination of the ancient régime, I shall endeavor to furnish an answer to the wishes and regrets of which it still seems the object. It was from the destruction of this régime that we saw disappear that corporation of clergy which, exercising all sorts of influences and refusing all share in the common burdens, increased continually and never alienated its immense riches, but divided them among themselves; which, rendering the law an accomplice in vows too frequently forced, covering France with monastic orders devoted to a foreign head, collected contributions both in the garb of wealth and mendicity; and which, in its secular organization, formed so considerable a portion of the idle and unproductive class that the daily ministers of the altar were the most insignificant portion of what was called the first order of the state.
“We saw disappear that corporation of sovereign courts where the privilege of judging was venal of right, and, in fact, hereditary in the nobility; when feudal judges, chosen and revocable by theirseigneurs, presided; when the diversity of codes and the laws of arrests made you lose before one tribunal the cause you had gained before another.
“We saw disappear that financial corporation oppressing France beyond endurance, and by leases, whose monstrous government exceeded in expense and profit the receipts of the royal treasury, whose immense code, now here recorded, formed an occult science which its agents alone had the right or the means of interpreting, and which, in rewarding perjury and informers, exercised over all unprotected men a boundless and remorseless tyranny.
“We saw disappear those distinctions of provinces,French,conquered,foreign, etc., each surrounded with a double row of custom-house officers and smugglers, from whose intestine war the prisons, the galleys, and the gibbet were recruited at the will of the stipendiaries of him whofarmed the revenue, and those other distinctions of noble or common property; when the parks and gardens of the rich paid nothing, while the land and the person of the poor man were taxed in proportion to his industry; when the tax upon the peasant and upon his freehold recalled to nineteen-twentieths of the citizens that their degradation was not only territorial, but individual and personal.
“By its destruction, that constitutional equality was consecrated which makes the general good the only foundation of distinctions acknowledged by law. The privileged class lost the right of distributing among themselves exclusive privileges, and of treating with contemptall other classes of their fellow-citizens. No Frenchman was now excluded from office because he might not come of noble blood; or degraded, if noble, by the exercise of a useful profession....
“What more is there to regret? Is it the scheme of taxation, regulated by the king at the will of a minister of finance, whom I myself have seen changed twelve times in fourteen years, and which taxation was distributed arbitrarily among the provinces, and even among the contributors?...
“Is it the capitation tax, established in 1702, to achieve the peace, and never afterwards repealed? The two-twentieths diminished on the contributions of the powerful and made heavier on those of the poor; the land tax, of which the basis was in Auvergne, nine sous out of twenty, and amounting sometimes to fourteen, onaccount of the vast increase of privileged persons created by traffic in places? Finally, is it the odious duties on consumption, more odious than thedroits réunisof Napoleon? Is it the criminal jurisprudence, when the accused could neither see his family, his friends, his country, nor the documents by which he was to be tried?... When the verdict, obscurely obtained, might be aggravated at the pleasure of the judges by torture? for the torture preparatory to the examination had been alone abolished....”
TheNew York American, of April, 1824, relates the following: “Our La Fayette has, it seems, given fresh offence lately to the ultra-royalists, which the following translation will explain. He had been summoned as a witness on a trial; the crier being ordered to call over the witnesses, the following scene occurred:—
“Crier.The Marquis de La Fayette.
“Mr. La Fayette.I beg to observe to the court, that in the list of witnesses I am named by a title which, sincethe decree of the Constituent Assembly in 1791 (the decree abolishing orders of nobility), I have ceased to bear.
“President of the Tribunal.Crier, call Mr. La Fayette.
“This simple declaration has drawn down on the veteran all the wrath of the ultra presses; and he has been seriously accused of having in making it, violated the charter or constitution. This notable instrument, it seems, sets forth ‘that the ancient nobility resume their rights’; and because the soldier of liberty refuses to be confounded in title with the thousand littlemarquisesabout the court, he is charged with an offence against the constitution of his country. The servile flatterers of power, whether wielded by the self-made Corsican or the son of St. Louis, may well rail at an example of consistency which shames their rapid and oft-repeated tergiversations.
“It may be interesting to many to add, that on his examination in giving his name and age, as is usual in French trials, General La Fayette states himself to be sixty-six years old.
“We regretted at the time to observe in the resolutions passed by Congress, that our early friend was mentioned by his title, and we see the more reason to regret it now, as it will furnish an occasion for the taunts of the French press, as contrasted with the declaration above stated.”