de la Fayette had a second time to interpose between
the parties, the event of which was that the Garde du Corps put on
the national cockade, and the matter ended as by oblivion, after the
loss of two or three lives.
During the latter part of the time in which this confusion was
acting, the King and Queen were in public at the balcony, and neither
of them concealed for safety's sake, as Mr. Burke insinuates. Matters
being thus appeased, and tranquility restored, a general acclamation
broke forth of Le Roi a Paris- Le Roi a Paris- The King to Paris. It
was the shout of peace, and immediately accepted on the part of the
King. By this measure all future projects of trapanning the King to
Metz, and setting up the standard of opposition to the constitution,
were prevented, and the suspicions extinguished. The King and his
family reached Paris in the evening, and were congratulated on their
arrival by M. Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, in the name of the
citizens. Mr. Burke, who throughout his book confounds things,
persons, and principles, as in his remarks on M. Bailly's address,
confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly for calling it "un bon
jour," a good day. Mr. Burke should have informed himself that this
scene took up the space of two days, the day on which it began with
every appearance of danger and mischief, and the day on which it
terminated without the mischiefs that threatened; and that it is to
this peaceful termination that M. Bailly alludes, and to the arrival
of the King at Paris. Not less than three hundred thousand persons
arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles to Paris, and
not an act of molestation was committed during the whole march.
Mr. Burke on the authority of M. Lally Tollendal, a deserter from the
National Assembly, says that on entering Paris, the people shouted
"Tous les eveques a la lanterne." All Bishops to be hanged at the
lanthorn or lamp-posts. It is surprising that nobody could hear this
but Lally Tollendal, and that nobody should believe it but Mr. Burke.
It has not the least connection with any part of the transaction, and
is totally foreign to every circumstance of it. The Bishops had never
been introduced before into any scene of Mr. Burke's drama: why then
are they, all at once, and altogether, tout a coup, et tous ensemble,
introduced now? Mr. Burke brings forward his Bishops and his
lanthorn-like figures in a magic lanthorn, and raises his scenes by
contrast instead of connection. But it serves to show, with the rest
of his book what little credit ought to be given where even
probability is set at defiance, for the purpose of defaming; and with
this reflection, instead of a soliloquy in praise of chivalry, as Mr.
Burke has done, I close the account of the expedition to
Versailles.*[4]
I have now to follow Mr. Burke through a pathless wilderness of
rhapsodies, and a sort of descant upon governments, in which he
asserts whatever he pleases, on the presumption of its being
believed, without offering either evidence or reasons for so doing.
Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts,
principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted,
or denied. Mr. Burke with his usual outrage, abused the Declaration
of the Rights of Man, published by the National Assembly of France,
as the basis on which the constitution of France is built. This he
calls "paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man."
Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then
he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and
that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man? But
if Mr. Burke means to admit that man has rights, the question then
will be: What are those rights, and how man came by them originally?
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity,
respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity.
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