France in eighteen hundred and two

In the inaugural address pronounced by the celebrated Montesquieu on his admission to the French Academy, January 24, 1728, he said: “Talents without virtues are fatal presents, only proper to add strength to our vices and to render them more conspicuous.”

Had Montesquieu lived to this day he would have thought in the same spirit.

But he would not have survived the Revolutionary storm unless he had taken refuge in exile.

I well remember a rebuke I once received from Robespierre when I extolled “The Spirit of Laws.”

“The Spirit of Laws,” said he, “is the production of a fanatic and weak mind (imbécile), replete with dogma and prejudice; if Montesquieu were now alive he would very soon be less by a head, car il était un parlementaire, non pas un bon Republicain.” The word parlementaire means, strictly speaking, a Roundhead or a Whig; but such a person was not sufficiently divested of prejudice to be a good Republican in the eyes of Robespierre; besides, as the tyrant continued, “being a member of the ancient parliament of France (he was president of that at Bordeaux) he was necessarily an enemy of Republican Government, for which reason, notwithstanding his dogmas and prejudices in favour of public liberty, he was without doubt worthy of death as an aristocrat and a conspirator.”

When I heard that Montesquieu would have been less by a head had he fallen into Robespierre’s hands, I felt an unpleasant sensation in my throat, and I therefore was immediately convinced that the tyrant’s arguments were correct; but knowing that extremes of servility and opposition were alike obnoxious to him, I endeavoured to appease him with observing that it was very true, the author of “The Spirit of Laws” groped in darkness, especially in the article in which he treats of Influence of Climate, as it was now clear that the enlightened principles of the Revolution were equally applicable to the whole race of man, and that there would probably be a National Convention very soon in China; but still that I could not avoid considering Montesquieu, as well as Machiavel, in the light of a pioneer of liberty! “Machiavel, the pioneer of liberty!” he cried (giving me a fixed look with his two large tigerish eyes and clenching his fists, the usual preliminaries of a warrant of arrest), “you are not acquainted with the true principles, the doctrines of Machiavel established tyranny over the whole of Europe.” Every one who has read Machiavel with attention, which I am persuaded Robespierre never did, if he read him at all, must be satisfied that his book “The Prince,” was written solely to expose the machinations of tyrants, and caution the people of free States against their intrigues.

I have been led to these remarks in order to expose the worthlessness of the literary claims of those political writers and orators who affect a great deal of information when they possess none. No people possess greater facility than the French in persuading the world that they know everything, when in fact they know little or nothing.

When I was about to depart for France I was requested by the proprietors of a long-established daily paper in London to procure if possible some intelligent person in whom they might confide to act as a proper correspondent, to give them authentic information of what was passing in France. When I arrived in Paris I therefore addressed myself to men of approved talents in science, and, as I had been informed, of knowledge in politics.

The sum I was empowered to offer was sufficiently captivating, and they buzzed about me in consequence like so many paupers round the overseer of a parish in the act of distributing bread. With respect to operas, plays, masquerades, concerts, balls and all the other equipage of folly and pleasure, information respecting them was none of my object. I wanted such communications as should prove useful to men of understanding, to the politician, the manufacturer and the merchant; I did not care to learn whether the First Consul slept at Malmaison or the Tuileries. The points upon which accurate information might be of incalculable advantage to the British public were, who was the last person robbed, banished, poisoned, or otherwise murdered by the order of the chief of the State, what measures were in agitation to sap the foundations of any kingdom, and what independent community was next to be overthrown and enslaved.

Accordingly I stated distinctly to my would-be correspondents that we required facts and facts only. Politics were the principal topics of conversation during our interviews, and I was utterly astonished to discover the profound ignorance my new acquaintances displayed.

None of them seemed to have any just notion either of the state of Europe or their own country. After a short intercourse I discovered that with the little information I had gained I already knew more of the affairs of France than they did.

However, that I might not be led away by my own opinions, I suggested to five of those gentlemen, who I selected from the crowd owing to their distinguished credentials, that they should take up their pens and give a specimen of their manner of treating things, that I might forward such writings immediately to the two gentlemen in England who had commissioned me to seek for correspondents. I told this to each applicant separately, and requested he should choose his subject for himself. Two of those individuals were members of the National Institute, one a very celebrated Professor, and the two others distinguished and respected savans! Five hours after the conversation I received an estafette from one of the Institute men, and before two days had elapsed despatches arrived from all the rest. After having read them all over with repeated attention, I decided, for the sake of my own credit, to send none of them to England. They were so puerile that I will stake my honour upon a boy at Eton or Westminster writing more and better to the purpose.

They were full of flowers, tropes and metaphors, but contained nothing solid; and all overflowed with the commonplace metaphysics of the new Philosophy. My embarrassments now increased, for the Club of Sages, whom the report of my commission collected round me, besieged my lodgings day after day, like suitors in the ante-chamber of Talleyrand; and notwithstanding their courteous carriage and apparent indifference they all asked me anxiously what news I had received by the post. The awkward situation in which I found myself compelled me eventually to say that my colleagues had altered their plans and determined to confide their correspondence to an English gentleman now in Paris—i.e., myself.

But although these philosophers did not obtain any ulterior benefit from my offer, I was enabled by my intercourse with them to obtain considerable information respecting the state of the Press in Paris at the present time, and I here give the result of my inquiries.

Newspapers in France are under the immediate control of the police, and are principally edited by those illuminated children of science, better known under the title of the National Institute.

The Moniteur is the first in order in baseness and infamy. It is considered the official paper of the Government. As all its papers are under the superintendence of the police, they are all official. Its nominal proprietors are Messrs. Roederer[1] and Hautrive,[1] but the profits belong to a club consisting of five Ministers, those of Finance, Interior, Foreign Affairs, War and Police. Roederer receives a stipend of £800 a year (which, with his income of a Councillor of State, gives him £3500 to spend) as a salary for editing the paper, for which he is of course considered the responsible person. All the expenses of paper, printing and publishing, are defrayed by the Treasury.

Hautrive is not a stipendiary or responsible editor, but he writes in the Moniteur, and his articles are well paid. The Decemvir Barrère receives £1000 per annum for his literary assistance, but he is really acting as a private spy for the First Consul, on the operations of the Jacobins. He is likewise engaged as spy upon the Grand Spy, Fouché, Minister of Police.

The different Ministers frequently employ the pens of their subalterns in office. You cannot be mistaken respecting the authors of the articles, as their style convicts them. The following may, however, serve as general rules for the discovery of the distinguished literati engaged.

Ferocious and blustering passages on the power of the Republic, in the style of epic prose.—Treilhard,[1] ex-Avocat, ex-Director, ex-Negotiator, and Councillor of State.

Religious homilies and pious incantations, with much whining about the restoration of the Catholic Faith, but written in good style.—Portales,[1] the Elder Councillor of State, who from a professed atheist, having read the Bible over and over again, as he says, during his exile at Homburgh, has found himself converted, and on his return converted Bonaparte to believe what he believes, and is now a saint as well as his disciple.

Gasconades, calembours, bombast, apostrophes to nature, mothers with infants at their breasts. Hard-hearted men who never had children, heaving bosoms of humanity, all the impure verbiage of the Tribunal of the National Convention.—Barrère, ex-member of the Council of Public Safety. Practical reporter of all its atrocities, who signed the death warrants of about 40,000 of his countrymen, avowing in the Committee that dead men tell no tales; afterwards sentenced to transportation; turned Christian in jail, won the good opinion of his jailer, at whose table he said grace before and after meals. Escaped from prison and secreted himself till Bonaparte attained supreme power, to whom he sent a fulsome address, declaring he was the reporter who made known to astonished Europe the exploits of the hero of Italy; liberated by the commiseration and sympathy of his master, he now licks his feet and is his humble servant; though retired (as his profession requires) he lives in good style, near my lodgings, keeps a girl of his own and is allowed by the First Consul to share in the profits of a house of ill fame which he founded.

Comparisons between Great Britain and the great nations; between porter and burgundy, coals and wood, roast beef and bouillie.—Chaptal,[1] the chemist, Minister of the Interior, one of the basest of slaves.

Surly remarks on the tyrants of the ocean, the insolence and intrigues of British Government, the cravings and jealous disposition of the Nation of Shopkeepers, the National Debt of England, its exhausted resources, bad faith and sincere integrity of France.—Roederer, Councillor of State, member of the National Institute, ex-avocat, has always sided with every party in order to illustrate practically his valuable treatise on making loans and on solving the question whether the State should pay its debts. He was Procureur-General, Syndic of the Department of Paris, during the expiring moments of the Monarchy.

The same in more fluent and easy language.—Hautrive,[1] a pensioner of the Consul and nominal sub-editor of the paper.

Sallies respecting Malta and hints respecting Egypt and the Mediterranean.—Regnault de St. Jean d’Angely, Councillor of State, in great favour with Bonaparte, formerly an avocat of Saintogne, a furious royalist as long as Louis XVI. continued to fee him. Intrepid royalist, editor of the Journal de Paris in 1791; violent Jacobinist, editor of the Gazette de Milan under the auspices of Bonaparte in 1796. Member of the Constituent Assembly, in which capacity he was pensioned by the Order of Malta to plead on behalf of its rights; in return for which he betrayed his clients, went to the island as the Commissary of the Directory, and superintended the administration of the plunder. Completely sacked the Palace of the Grand Master, Baron de Homfesch, pilfered all the plate and money he could lay his hands on, composed a Revolutionary Gazette for the Islands of the Archipelago, and returned to France laden with an immense booty, is a member of the National Institute in the class of Political Economy; is a married man with a family, keeps a girl, but is saving and takes care of the main chance.

Barefaced lies and swindling propositions.—Talleyrand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, ex-Bishop of Autun; renounced Christianity and his Order, went to England, 1793, to assist Chauvelin and Moret in lulling the English Government. Trembling for his head remained there after the war broke out. Took lodgings at Mr. Colpus’s, near Highgate Pond, during which time he made a point of eating boiled beef on Fridays, departed for America, whence he humbly sued for permission to return to France. The Directorate, being in want of a dexterous rascal to manage the pillage, sequestration of the German abbeys, and other ecclesiastical possessions, permitted him to return home, and gave him the portfolio of Charles de la Croix; since which he has been actively engaged in the decomposition of Europe and in converting the German Empire into a State Lottery for himself and his masters—takes bribes from all and cheats all, with placid composure. Feels a great reluctance to enter into negotiation without a preliminary douceur (the American commissioners to wit); the greatest swindler in Europe. Rich as Lucullus, has lately resumed Christianity and sent to request the Pope will unfrock him and give him absolution for his past sins. The First Consul has promised to make it his care that his Holiness shall execute this request, and in return for which special grace Talleyrand will richly reward the Pontifical Ambassador for the expenses incurred in negotiating the business.—Keeps Madame Grand, of Indian fame, at the hotel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she acts in every way as if she were his lawful wife. He also keeps a young tit at a little château where he transacts private business.

Is a man of rank, education and princely birth, possesses transcendent abilities, and perhaps is the greatest living rogue and liar in Christendom.

Sensible data on the public law in Europe, afforded though not written for publication, but digested by Roederer for the Press.—Rosensthiel, formerly principal Secretary of Legation to the French Ministers at the farcical congress of Radstadt in 1799, the pupil and friend of Pfeffer, long employed in the diplomatic department under the old Monarchy; devotedly attached to his King, detesting the Revolution, on that account dismissed by Dumouriez, when Minister of Foreign Affairs; having been imprisoned, proscribed and ruined. Father of a large family, he was constrained from the necessity of his circumstances to accept the Consulship of Elsineur in 1796, whence, being the only Frenchman profoundly versed in the history and practice of public law, he was again transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Modest, mild, virtuous and learned, he is therefore not a member of the National Institute.

These are the principal workmen who furnish the Moniteur with leading articles, most of which are a vehicle for blustering and imposture.

The next Parisian newspaper in rank and circulation to the Moniteur is the Journal des Défenseurs de la Patrie. In this paper there are often good articles and useful literary criticisms. But all political reflection is, for obvious reasons, banished from its pages.

One, Joseph la Vallée, without appearing ostensibly to take any interest in this paper, is really paid £260 sterling by the Government for watching its concerns.

I have seen a great deal of la Vallée; he is endowed with great intellectual acquirements. He is a modest, inoffensive man, extremely anxious to oblige, not loquacious, but interesting in conversation.

He is not a member of the National Institute, which may account for his integrity. In one of our conversations he complained bitterly of the English newspapers for their animadversions on the French Government, and particularly on the First Consul, expressing his fears that these attacks might lead to bloodshed between the two countries.

I desired him to name the papers he alluded to; he mentioned the Porcupine and the Morning Post. I explained to him that the Porcupine was nonexistent, having been for some months merged in the True Briton. He was quite confounded by this information, for he had no idea the Porcupine had been relinquished. He observed that the True Briton was however also extremely violent.

“Why then,”, I returned, “do you not, my dear friend, answer them with equal vehemence?” “Because these political discussions are not agreeable to the Government, for if we replied it would be impossible to do so without translating and so publishing the arguments of the enemy, for such discussions would only unsettle the minds of people and might shake the Government.” “Ah, vive la Liberté,” said I. “I thought I was in a free Republic!” He gave no reply, and our conversation abruptly ended.

A curious incident took place a few years ago here. It was common talk the Senate (Législatif Conseil) were to pass a decree continuing Bonaparte in the Consulate for life. A paper was circulated containing remarks upon the meanness of such a project, declaring national gratitude should proclaim Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the Gauls, and make the throne hereditary to his race.

The very next day there appeared in the Journal des Défenseurs a well-written article in the true spirit of a Republican against not only the Imperial project, but also against that of making the Consulate a life-long appointment. Soon after I had read it la Vallée called on me. “You see,” said he, “Frenchmen can write as they please. Nothing shall deter me,” continued the indignant Republican. “I never disliked the late King, nor shared in the events of the Revolution; but rather than see any one of my fellow citizens upon the throne of France, I would burn this hand if I did not write against him!”

Two days after this animated declaration, I took up the same journal and read a long laboured dissertation on the innumerable advantages the Republic would obtain by conferring the Consulate for life “on the genius of victory and peace.” I became extremely desirous of another interview with the intrepid Republican. But he never came near us for several days. At length we met him at a dinner party, consisting of twenty persons. He betrayed on seeing me some confusion and sheepishness. I shook him heartily by the right hand, whispering in his ear, “I am happy to find you have not burnt it.” I was sorry I gave way to this not ill-natured jest, for a visible dejection overspread his features, and he remained depressed and dispirited during the whole time he was in my company that evening.

Le Chef du Cabinet, the best printed of the Parisian journals, is compiled with care, and gives in general a fairly faithful account of continental news.

One of the principal writers in this paper and in Le Publiciste is Garot, member of the Senate, and also of the National Institute. Before the Revolution he was what the French call homme des lettres, i.e., a poor lawyer without practice. In England, our men of letters, successful or otherwise, are almost invariably men of a classical education and cultivated talents. But in France, a mere smattering of Greek and Latin, learnt principally through the medium of translations, constitute their principal studies.

He began his career with writing paragraphs for the Mercure. He was next a member of the Constitutional Assembly, in which his talents were considered in so contemptible a light that he was never noticed.

But in later years he attributed his silence in that Assembly to his philosophy. He then became editor of the Journal de Paris. Here he seems to have been most liberally paid, as out of six months’ savings, he managed to find 32,000 livres (£1280 sterling), with which he purchased a house and garden.

In April 1792, he arrived in England, in the suite of the French Embassy. After the memorable 10th of August in the same year, he having returned to France, was made by the Convention Editeur de la Gazette Nationale.

Less than two months later, on October 9, he was appointed Minister of Justice. Here was a leap!

During his short ministry, he truckled to every faction, and courted the goodwill of every demagogue. He was nevertheless pronounced an imbecile, deposed, arrested for a day, and released. He next composed a book, in which he compared himself to Sully, Turgot, and our Lord Jesus Christ. He was appointed Commissary of Public Instruction, but shortly afterwards cashiered. Then sent as French Ambassador to the Court of Naples, in order to pave the way for the irruption of a Republican army.

Recalled and nominated a member of the Council of the Ancients, dismissed by Bonaparte—he retired into a corner, and quitted his obscurity for a seat among the Mutes. He then became the apologist of Bonaparte, as he had before been of Robespierre and Danton—gets a pension of £3000 sterling per annum of the public spoils, and finally becomes a member of the National Institute. He, now, in a work of his lately published, calls Robespierre un monstre, un fou, scélérat, étranger à une bonne logique, having a soul filled with suspicion, terror, vanity and vengeance. His elocution, he pronounces to have been senseless babbling, eternal and tiresome repetition of the same sentiments for the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people on principles of which he incessantly harangued without ever propounding a new or correct idea.

The following epistle was found among the papers of Robespierre after his execution; it was a letter, written by this very Garot to the man whom he afterwards described as given above.

Le Citoyen Français is the most independent paper in Paris. Before the usurpation of Bonaparte, Thomas Paine frequently furnished it with articles, but since that event he has withdrawn his assistance.

Le Journal de Commerce is under the direction of Monsieur Penchet, member of the Commercial Council and the Board of Commerce. He is a respectable man, possessed of enlightened views and scientific and practical knowledge.

The Publiciste, the Gazette de France, Journal des Débats are the remaining newspapers, worthy of notice. It is refreshing to the national pride of an Englishman to contrast the wretched state of the craven French Press with the free and vigorous reasoning which appears in the London journals; I become hourly more enamoured of my country and more disgusted with the Republic.

Louis XIV. during the whole of his reign never degraded the Press of his country as it is now degraded. But with respect to other branches of literature, the French still shine with uncommon brilliancy, and as no man is more ready than myself to do them justice, when they deserve it, I will describe some of those publications in my next letter.