第18章 Part The First (18)

But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the right of Parliament to withhold the supplies.It will always happen when a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right, and it often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the other, and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war as a matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the supplies as a matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse, than the disease.The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other ties its hands; but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a collusion between the parties, and be made a screen to both.

On this question of war, three things are to be considered.First, the right of declaring it: secondly, the right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of conducting it after it is declared.The French Constitution places the right where the expense must fall, and this union can only be in the nation.The mode of conducting it after it is declared, it consigns to the executive department.Were this the case in all countries, we should hear but little more of wars.

Before I proceed to consider other parts of the French Constitution, and by way of relieving the fatigue of argument, I will introduce an anecdote which I had from Dr.Franklin.

While the Doctor resided in France as Minister from America, during the war, he had numerous proposals made to him by projectors of every country and of every kind, who wished to go to the land that floweth with milk and honey, America; and among the rest, there was one who offered himself to be king.He introduced his proposal to the Doctor by letter, which is now in the hands of M.Beaumarchais, of Paris- stating, first, that as the Americans had dismissed or sent away*[6] their King, that they would want another.Secondly, that himself was a Norman.Thirdly, that he was of a more ancient family than the Dukes of Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, his line having never been bastardised.Fourthly, that there was already a precedent in England of kings coming out of Normandy, and on these grounds he rested his offer, enjoining that the Doctor would forward it to America.But as the Doctor neither did this, nor yet sent him an answer, the projector wrote a second letter, in which he did not, it is true, threaten to go over and conquer America, but only with great dignity proposed that if his offer was not accepted, an acknowledgment of about L30,000 might be made to him for his generosity! Now, as all arguments respecting succession must necessarily connect that succession with some beginning, Mr.Burke's arguments on this subject go to show that there is no English origin of kings, and that they are descendants of the Norman line in right of the Conquest.It may, therefore, be of service to his doctrine to make this story known, and to inform him, that in case of that natural extinction to which all mortality is subject, Kings may again be had from Normandy, on more reasonable terms than William the Conqueror;and consequently, that the good people of England, at the revolution of 1688, might have done much better, had such a generous Norman as this known their wants, and they had known his.The chivalric character which Mr.

Burke so much admires, is certainly much easier to make a bargain with than a hard dealing Dutchman.But to return to the matters of the constitution-The French Constitution says, There shall be no titles; and, of consequence, all that class of equivocal generation which in some countries is called "aristocracy" and in others "nobility," is done away, and the peer is exalted into the MAN.

Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title.The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.It reduces man into the diminutive of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things which are little.It talks about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, and shows its new garter like a child.A certain writer, of some antiquity, says:

"When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things."It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of titles has fallen.It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count and Duke, and breeched itself in manhood.France has not levelled, it has exalted.

It has put down the dwarf, to set up the man.The punyism of a senseless word like Duke, Count or Earl has ceased to please.Even those who possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the rickets, have despised the rattle.The genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him from it.Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity.He lives immured within the Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.

Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not a greater wonder that they should be kept up anywhere? What are they? What is their worth, and "what is their amount?" When we think or speak of a Judge or a General, we associate with it the ideas of office and character;we think of gravity in one and bravery in the other; but when we use the word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it.Through all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Duke or a Count; neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words.Whether they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or the rider or the horse, is all equivocal.What respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript.