Discourses on Davila
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Adams#: Adams 170.11 Title: Discourses on Davila : a series of papers, on political history. Written in the year 1790, and then published in the Gazette of the United States
Author: Adams, John
Page: inside front cover
See the Boston Centinel of Feb. 24, 1813.
Paris December 20, 1812
About midnight of the 18th instant, his Majesty the Emperor arrived in this city, and on Sunday the 20th at noon being on his throne, surrounded by the imperial princes, the princes' grand dignitaries, the cardinals, the ministers, the grand eagles of the Legion of Honor, etc., he received the Conservative Senate (composed of about 100 members who are all counts of the Empire, except a few who are princes and dukes and are all appointed by the Emperor) who were introduced by his Excellency, the Grand Marshall (Duroc) and presented by his Serene Highness, the Prince Vice Grand Elector (Talleyrand), His Excellency The Count de
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The writer of this preface is unknown to me. I only furnished the quotation at the bottom from Bolingbroke's Remarks, etc.
John Adams.
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This dull, heavy volume still excites the wonder of its author. First, that he could find, amidst the constant scenes of business and dissipation in which he was enveloped, time to write it. Secondly, that he had the courage to oppose and publish his own opinions to the universal opinion of all America, and indeed of almost all mankind. Not one man in America then believed him. He knew not one then and has not heard of one since who then believed him. The work, however, powerfully operated to destroy his popularity. It was urged as full proof that he was an advocate for monarchy and laboring to introduce an hereditary President and Senate in America.
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Turgot's ideas were equally confused. His "All authority in one center, the nation" is just as good nonsense.
I wish this were true in any establishments, new or old.
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The priests were the first order of their nobility.
See Mr. Walter's review of this work in the anthology. Mr. Walter was "a young man: a forward young man," but he did not know that the first order of nobility among the Franks were priests. It is true. The Salic Laws were made by the nobility. It is also true that they were made by their priests: because the nobility and the priests were the same persons. Mr. Walter's criticism therefore might have been spared.
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Here again is the French jargon of all authority in one center without one clear idea.
Two authorities up: neither supreme.
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Thus the Prince de Conti was in opposition to Louis XV and the Duke of Orleans to Louis XVI.
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How it happened I know not; but this first number ought to have been succeeded by the fourth.
See no 4.
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The Duke of Orleans.
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This is not a chain of being from God to nothing. Ergo, not liable to Dr. Johnson's criticism nor to Mr. Walter's.
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Rivalry, between the Guises and Montmorencys.
Chatillon, whose daughter married William I, Prince of Orange.
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Frederick borrowed this from Fontenelle.
See page 15.
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Desire of fame.
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our mock funerals of Washington, Hamilton, and Ames, our processions, escorts, public dinners, balls, etc., are more expensive, more troublesome, and infinitely less ingenious.
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Logan. Not one drop of Logan's blood remains. Jefferson's notes.
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Spring to activity. Incentive to exertion. Stimulus to industry.
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Disappointed ambition!
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Haud facile emergent, quorum virtutibus obstat, res angusta domi. Juvenal
Johnson.
Fame sought by vice.
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By virtues.
Passions unlimited.
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This is a truth: but by no means a justification of the systems of nobility in France nor in other parts of Europe. Not even in England, without a more equitable representation of the commons in the legislature.
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Sovereignty undefined and uncertain.
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Witness the quintuple Directory and the Triumvirate Consulate.
Witness France and Europe in 1813.
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Pope.
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Ptolemaic system.
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Pope.
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Perseus.
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Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Johnson.
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Johnson.
Pope.
Shakespeare.
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Degree.
Condition.
Rank.
Station.
Situation.
Place.
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The style in these quotations from Shakespeare has little of the fluency and less of that purity which sometimes appear in his writings, but the sense is as immortal as human nature.
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Political chessboard.
Natural alliances and natural enmities in Europe.
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By John Adams.
France has thrown away all advantages by her want of wisdom. 1813.
The Antifederalist.
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How are distinction[s] abolished now, in 1813?
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Pope.
New distinctions enough have been invented as we see in 1813.
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Condorcet.
It was then my intention to have examined those letters at large: but the rage and fury of the Jacobinical journals versus these discourses increased as they proceeded, intimidated the printer John Fenno and convinced me that to proceed would do more hurt than good. I therefore broke off abruptly.
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See Napoleon's speech, December 20th 1813, at the end of this book in a blank leaf.
Napoleon still proceeds to exemplify the effects and consequences of rivalries in 1813.
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Oh! That Doctor Price and Doctor Franklin had lived to read the addresses and answers of December 20th 1812, at the end of this volume. Jefferson has lived to see it.
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Read the history of the world from 1790 to 1813 as a comment.
Napoleon is not all this. 1813.
Science extinguishes no passions.
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1813. Frenchmen neither saw, heard, or felt or understood this.
1813. Americans paid no attention or regard to this. And a blind, mad rivalry between the North and South is destroying all morality and sound policy. God grant that division, civil war, murders, assassinations, and massacres may not soon grow out of these rivalries of states, families, and individuals.
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Rights as men, Christians, and subjects. This Boston pamphlet was drawn by the great James Otis.
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The Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776 contained nothing but the Boston Declaration of 1772 and the Congress Declaration of 1774. Such are the caprices of fortune.
This Declaration of Rights was drawn by the little John Adams. The mighty Jefferson by the Declaration of Independence 4 July 1776 carried away the glory both of the great and the little.
Branches of the legislature independent and yet dependent.
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This was a summary of the language of the world in 1790 in newspapers, pamphlets, and conversation. In 1813 we can judge of it as the author of these Discourses judged of it then, to the destruction of all his popularity.
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View France, Europe, and America in 1813 and compare the state of them all with this paragraph written 23 years ago!
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Note.
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Religion versus atheism.
The Dutchess D'Anville, the mother of the Duke de La Rochefaucault. The author heard those words from that lady's own lips: with many other striking effusions of the strong and large mind of a great and excellent female character.
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Voltaire and all other Frenchmen may strive to throw all the blame upon Catherine: but the Guises opposed her to the Bourbons and Montmorencies. Montmorency opposed her and the Guises to the Bourbons. The Bourbons opposed Montmorency to Guises, to the Queen, etc., etc. In short all four parties in their turns opposed La France a La France. In point of public virtue, sincere religion and real principle, there appears no difference between them.
Voltaire.
Montmorency prefers repose.
Guise courts danger.
Compare the conduct of our parties for 24 years. Our Federalists and Antis. Our Republicans and Federalists. How easily the Federalists united with Clinton and Ingersol in 1812 and the New England Republicans with Jefferson and Madison in 1800! State rivalries threaten our tranquility. Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts may keep us in hot water as Valois, Bourbons, Montmorencies, and Guises did France.
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Guise still glorious.
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Mistress of the king.
Unpopular with the queen.
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With what sacrifices of family pride did these two haughty houses court the aid and influence of an harlot?
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Bourbons in obscurity and neglect.
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Intrigues of factions after the death of Henry II.
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Constable duped.
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The French writers all endeavor to lay all the blame upon Catherine: but I can see no more selfishness in her than in Montmorency, the Cardinal, the Duke, Navarre, or Conde. Coligny seems to have had religion, but his conscience was very ambitious. The Admiral seems to have had somewhat of the spirit of martyrdom. But it may be doubted whether Montmorencies, Guises, Bourbons, Chatillons, or Medici believed more than her relation Leo the 10th, who is said to believe "the fabula Christi" to be only an established political institution.
Voltaire.
Here were four families. The King under his mother, the Guises, the Montmorencies and the Bourbons. The coalitions and separations of those four houses all struggling for superiority, all making religion the pretext, deluged France in blood. The King had the crown and the forms of law on his side, which gave him and his mother an advantage and produced the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and others more in number and ferocity than as produced by the other three. The conjunctions and oppositions of these four primary planets disturbed the whole solar system.
Pray, who at this moment, 12th of March 1813, are the four families now in activity? The Higginsons, the Clintons [cont. on next page]
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the Madisons, and the Pinkneys. The Quincys, the Otises, the Livingstons, the Lees, the Randolphs, the Washingtons, the Rutledges, the Middletons are in the background or rather completely subordinate. But where are the Winthrops, the Endicotts, the Winslows, the Mayhews, the Skuylers, the Wellings, the Shipmans, the Penns, the thousand others? Some of these dry bones may resuscitate by and by, rattle and whistle first and then murder and massacre.
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Rivalry between the Guises and Bourbons.
Condorcet, the friend of Turgot and Rochefoucault.
i.e. of nobility and third estate and clergy.
Napoleon in 1812 and 1813 has determined the question. Indeed he determined it in 1800 or before.
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Punctum Stans.
What is Napoleon in 1813?
Men of Letters! Where are ye? Ask le Harpe what barrier they found.
Remember this was written in 1790. The blood of Louis and the government of Napoleon show to kings and people the truth. 1813.
This was written on Richmond Hill or Church Hill in New York when the author was Vice President and when the grandees, the warriors, and sachems of the Creek nation with MacGillivray at their head were lodged in sight and hearing.
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A silly review of this work was printed in England ,[illegible] in which it was said that the system of nobility in France was justified. Nothing can be more false. There never has been a system of hereditary nobility rationally digested in any nation. That in England has been accidentally brought the nearest to a rational theory. The nobilities of France and Germany have no more judicious arrangements than those of Wabash or Creek Indians, Tartars or Arabs or Chinese. Nature produces nobilities in all nations. But those very nobilities will never suffer themselves to be disciplined or modified or methodized but by despots.
Conde, Ambassador to Spain, to put him out of the way.
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The Guises in power.
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The Guises mortify their rivals.
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Resentment of the Bourbons produce a caucus.
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Voltaire
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Iura negat sibi lata nihil non arrogat armis. On this principle Great Britain claims the legislation of the ocean.
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Navarre deputed to court.
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Crude insinuations.
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Hypocrisy and deceit of the queen.
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Duped.
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How could such a booby beget so sensible a man as Henry IV?
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Conde's harrangue.
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Duties of birth. What a dangerous idea!
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This is the case of United States in 1813. Whose fault?
Cromwell, when defeated with tapsters, forced them and others with Religion. Oh! Religion! Oh! Liberty! Ye ought not to be made stalking horses to ambition.
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The haughty, arrogant insolence of aristocracy: and the feeble timorous patience and humility of democracy, is apparent in this and all other history. But when democracy gets the upper hand, it seems to be conscious that its power will be short and makes haste to glut its vengeance by a plentiful harvest of blood and cruelty, murder, massacre and devastation. Hence despotism! Hence Napoleon! Hence Caesar! Hence Cromwell! Hence Charles II! Hence! Hence! Hence, etc., etc., etc. Hence Genghis! Hence Tamerlane! Hence Kubla Khan! O man! Art thou a rational, a moral, and a social animal?
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Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised. Religious liberty owes it much respect, Servitus not withstanding.
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Voltaire.
Every one of the three parties a mere oligarchical cabal! Cut off the heads of the tallest poppies. Tarquin, and all other heads of parties, Marat, Charlotte Corday, Robespierre, Danton, etc. etc. etc.
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All authority in one center and that center the nation! The clergy, the nobility, and the third estate! Neither had a negative on the other. The representation of the third estate was a mere mockery! The King had no negative on the states. They move upon him. All was uncertainty, confusion and anarchy.
The nation has found a mode of uniting all authority in one center and that center Napoleon, who in 1813 thinks he has cured the ideology of the nation: but he has not. Nor his own.
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The Constitution of 1789.
Elsworth moved in Senate a vote of approbation of this constitution. I was obliged to put the question and it stands upon record. Madison moved a vote of admiration in the House and it was recorded there. Washington, Jefferson, and all admired it. John Adams alone detested it. Talleyrand asked me what I thought of the executive power in it? I answered, The thing is Daniel in the lion's den: if he ever gets out alive it must be by miracle. Talleyrand again asked my opinion of the executive power in a subsequent constitution. I answered it is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. If they escape alive it must be because fire will not burn. This constitution cannot last longer than the others.
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Is it not astonishing that so great a man as Mr. Burke should tell the French nation that this constitution was a very good one?
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Pretexts, cloaks, veils, masques, hypocrisy, duplicity, intrigue, Machiavelism, Jesuitism, pharisaical simulation. So says honest candor. So says naked frankness. But how could simplicity live and treat with such duplicity? How could lambs live with such wolves? How could chickens defend themselves in such kennels of foxes? How could doves feed with such flocks of eagles, hawks, and owls hovering over them?
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Poor Louis XVI. His queen, his sister, son, etc. soon exemplified this observation.
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What an artful hyena.
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Dutchess Montpensier. One fair character!
How deep a dungeon is the human heart?
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How artfully Davila insinuates that the Protestantism of this house was produced by the fulmination of the Pope, Julius II, against France and its allies.
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The keys of the palace, one spark.
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Precedence, another spark.
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A flame. A hornet's nest disturbed.
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A harlot preaches popery. Not the first, neither, nor the last.
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The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's planned.
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France has tried another experiment more tragic to all Europe as well as to herself, as we see in the history of Napoleon in 1813. Similar causes have produced similar effects and always will.
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The reign of the men of blood soon followed the writing of this and produced horrors, massacres, drownings, guillotines, and butcheries much worse than St Bartholomy's Day.
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And better still in 1813 from the history of Napoleon. Not forgetting LaFayette, Dumourier, Pichegru: nor Marat, Robespierre, Seyeges or Talleyrand. Nor should our own country be forgotten.
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1813. March 3. The contents of the foregoing volume summarily comprehended in a few sentences in the following comment by Napoleon, Emperor of France.
On the 20th of December, 1812, the Emperor Napoleon made the following answer to an Address.
It is to ideology, to that obscure metaphysics which, searching with subtlety after first causes, wishes to found upon them the legislation of nations, instead of adapting the laws to the knowledge of the human heart and to the lessons of history: that we are to attribute all the calamities that our beloved France has experienced. Those errors necessarily produced the government of the men of blood. Indeed who proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty? Who flattered the people by proclaiming for them a sovereignty which they were incapable of exercising? Who destroyed the Senate and the respect to the laws by making them to depend not upon the sacred principles of justice, upon the nature of things, and upon civil justice; but only upon the will of an assembly of men composed of men, strangers to the knowledge of the civil, criminal, administrative, political and military laws? When we are called to regenerate a state, we must act upon opposite principles. History paints the human heart. It is in history that we are to seek for the advantages and disadvantages of different systems of laws. These are the principles of which the council of state of a great empire ought never to lose sight. It ought to add to them a courage equal to every emergency, and like the Presidents Harlay and Mole, be ready to perish in defense of the sovereign, the throne and the laws.
Comment on the Comment.
Napoleon! Mutato Nomine, de te Fabula narratur! This book is a prophecy of your empire before your name was heard.
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The political and literary world are much indebted for the invention of the new word Ideology. Our English words Ideocy or Ideotism express not the force or meaning of it. It is presumed its proper definition is the science of Idiocy. And a very profound abstruse and mysterious science it is. You must descend deeper than the diverse in the Dunciad to make any discoveries, and after all you will find no bottom. It is the bathos, the theory, the art, the skill of diving and sinking in government. It was taught in the school of folly. But alas. Franklin, Turgot, Rochefaucault, and Condorcet, under Tom Paine, were the great masters of that academy!
It may be modestly suggested to the Emperor to coin another word in his new mint in conformity or analogy with Ideology; and call every constitution of government in France from 1789 to 1799 an Idiocracy.
Quincy, December 6, 1814. This volume was returned yesterday from Mr Colman of Hingham, who has had it almost a year. The events in Europe since March 3, 1813 are remarkable. Napoleon is now in Elba and Talleyrand at Vienna! Let us read Candide and Zadig and Rasselas and see if there is anything extravagant in them!
Have not philosophers been as honest and as mad as popes, Jesuits, priests, emperors, kings, heroes, conquerors? Has the Inquisition been more cruel than Robespierre or Marat or Napoleon?
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Man ought to "drop into himself"!
The Inquisition is now revived and the order of the Jesuits is restored. Sic transit Gloria Phylosophia! Even Gibbon was for restoring the Inquisition! Philosophy is now as distracted as it was at Alexandria, during the seige of Jerusalem! And where is our New England bound? To Hartford Convention! And how many Paines and Callenders, Robespierres and Napoleons are to be begotten by that assemblage? Vide Rasselas, Candide, Zadig, Jenni, Scarmontado. Micromegas, the Huron, etc.
Ridendo dicere verum, quid vetat?