Sketches of the internal state of France. Second edition

Preface

. THE following extract, which forms so ap propriate an introduction to our translation of Mr. Faber's work, is taken from an account of it written by the ingenious Mr. Walsh of America, to whom the British public are indebted for the first detailed exposure ofthe tyrannical " Code of Conscrip tions and subsequently, for a most valuable pamphlet " On the Genius and Disposition of the French Government." " This work claims, from the nature and importance of the contents, no inconsiderable share of attention. Its purport is to develope the character, and to paint in appropriate colours, the internal administration of the present government of France. We have examined it carefully, and find it replete with facts and observations, which entirely accord with the result of our own personal experience on this bead, and which well deserve to be communicated.

We need not, we trust, apologize for sounding so often the same harsh strain, of the impostures and vices of the French government. The rights of history, with which the welfare of the human race is intimately connected, call upon us to inregister with care whatever tends to elucidate the genius of a power, which, — upon calculations by no means to be despised, — aims at universal dominion. If that power be, as we represent it, not only the most exorbitant in strength and the most consummate in audacity, but tbe most profligate, fraudulent and tyrannical, which the faculties and the vices of human nature ever contributed to frame, every man must be at once sensible of the importance of unveiling its full deformity to such of the nations of the world as are still able to assert and to maintain their independence.

If to stifle the press, and thus to extinguish the voice of truth and honour, be, as it undoubtedly is, one of the leading objects of the Imperial despotism of France, we are bound in duty to take immediate advantage of the freedom of expression which we still enjoy, in order to counteract tbe entire accomplishment of a design alike fatal to the interests of our contempo- V raries, and to those of posterity. While the liberty of the press yet survives in any quarter of the globe, it should be employed without delay or remission in unmasking the vile hypocrisy and denouncing the baneful views of the implacable enemy of all moral excellence, and of all social happiness. *' We shall beg leave to pronounce an opinion on the general character of this work, and to state the circumstances under which it was published, as they are calculated to add considerable weight to its in trinsic evidence ot authenticity.

The author — M. Faber — a German by birth, a person of liberal edu cation, and of very respectable connections, was seized with the epidemic fanaticism of democracy at the commencement of the French revolution, and repaired to Paris, in order, as he supposed, to pro mote the happiness of mankind, by enlisting himself in the service of the new republic. He was received with distinction, and succeeded in obtaining several important posts in the civil administration, which he continued to fill until the year 1S07- The feelings of remorse which he experienced, from the consci ousness of being, after the accession of Bonaparte to the supreme power, in all instances a mere passive organ of imposture — uniformly an instrument of op pression, and never of benevolence — determined him at length to reject the offers of advancement made to him, and to abandon his adopted country.

" He took refuge in St. Petersburg, where he wrote, VI and attempted to publish, a work which he consider ed as due to the world, and which he has entitled " Sketches ofthe internal State of France." It con sisted of two volumes, one of which alone was com mitted to the press, when the influence of Bonaparte was successfully exerted to procure an order from Alexander for the suppression of the second. The circulation of the first — that which we now have be fore us — was immediately and entirely arrested on the continent of Europe. A copy, however, was conveyed to England. " M. Faber bas executed his task with great ability, and states, as we think, without exaggeration, the disgusting facts of which he was an eye-witness, and the flagitious motives and views of which his official situation particularly qualified him to judge.

The contents of this volume prove the author to be a man of warm sensibility, of considerable information, of uncommon acuteness, and of very diligent observation. His general style is somewhat heavy and de clamatory, but h s descriptions are powerfully drawn, and his remarks for the most part equally striking and just. We rejoice not a little to possess so strong a confirmation as that which his testimony affords of tbe opini ns we have uttered on various occasions, concerning the stupendous iniquity of the French rulers a.id the grinding oppression which they in variably exercise. He :,nd every man who has wit nessed the state of France under the dominion of the military chief, may well repeat in reference to that unhappy country the verses of the Latin poet, con cerning the horrors ofa region, to which, in a moral point of view, it may be said to be closely assimilated: Non mihi si linguae centum, sint oraque centum Ferrea vox, omnes scelerum comprendere format, Omnia pœnarum percurrere nomina possim *.

"The volume is divided into chapters, which discuss separately, — the general character of Bonaparte's domestic government — the administration of justice in France — the effects of the conscription, and vari ous other topics in relation to the leading purpose of the author. The first part of the volume, which un folds the genius and artifices of the domestic administration, is exceedingly curious, and may serve as a sure glossary, on the official and pompous repre sentations daily made to the world, with regard to the internal proceedings of the French government. " It is not in France alone that her military despotism displays that character, and inflicts th >se ills which M. Faber has so accurately and forcibly de scribed. Wherever the same power has been ex tended, it has manifested the same spit it, and has been productive of consequences equally disastrous.

In every country over which the conqueror has * Had I a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, A voice of brass, and adamantine lungs; Not half the frightful scene could I disclose, Repeat the crimes, or count the dreadful woes. Pitt. established his sway, he has blighted all the glowing beneficence of nature, and labours to debase and em brute the minds of men. All the victims of his power are sunk into a state of the most calamitous and de spondent vassalage ; all the noblest fabrics of human wisdom and virtue — all the most estimable ofthe in stitutions of civil order— all the generous attachments and the ennobling decorums of life, are struck, as it were, with the damp of death, as soon as they fall under the influence of his new system of regeneration. What M. Faber describes as happening in France, we have seen in Holland and in Flanders, and it is alike visible in Italy, in Westphalia, and in every other country which he has brought under the yoke.

In Flanders, and in the departments of the Rhine an nexed to the French empire within the few years past, we have witnessed repeatedly the ghastly processions of refractory conscripts which M. Faber depicts in colours strong indeed, but not sufficiently vivid to convey an adequate idea ofthe horrible nature ofthe spectacle. We have seen in the territories which the French emperor declares, by a most insolent and profligate abuse of language, that he has made happy, in uniting their destinies with those of France, the same misery arising from the weight of the taxes, the same devices of fraud and extortions of rapine, as are mentioned in the pages of our author. The pressure of French support is every where intolerable : — every effusion of French amity operates like a mildew. Wherever the French emperor appears, either in the guise of an ally, of a sovereign, or of an invader, he reminds you of the description which the poet gives of the march of a tyrant of old, " Amazement in his van, with flight combin'd And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind."

" There are, we believe, but few among us who have not enough of observation or sagacity to discern, although there may be many who have not the can dour to acknowledge, that the foreign policy of Bo naparte has the same character as his domestic ; that plunder and power are his invariable ends ; fraud and violence his favourite means, in all his external relations. There can be no man of any intelligence, who has attended to the history x)f the world during the last ten years, so far dazzled by the splendid pro fligacy of military usurpation, or duped by the pompous hypocrisy of the official assertions of the French government, as not to be fully sensible that there never has existed a power more contemptu ously regardless of the obligations of good faith, more insatiably ambitious, or more savagely cruel.

" The single case of Spain — not to cite that of every other country of the world with which the military despotism of France has held any intercouse — is alone sufficient to warrant us in applying to that de spotism every epithet of reprobation which language can furnish — every image of moral deformity which the imagination can mould, to stigmatize and to U X pourtray the excesses of tyranny and the utmost possible guilt of unprincipled ambition. In the original proceedings of Bonaparte towards Spain, and in the conduct of the war which he now wages upon the unhappy Spaniards, there is a complication of atro city such as never before stained the annals of our species, or could have fallen within the range of the most misanthropic and inventive fancy. The crimes which mark out and distinguish this particular usurpation from any other on the records of history ap per almost too stupendous for human wickedness to perpetrate, as they are certainly too heinous for hu man vengeance to punich.

The blood now flowing from the Spaniards m.;st ascend to the tribunal of eternal Justice, and claim retribution for their unpa ralleled wrongs. In the final proportions of that justice, those wrongs will be duly appreciated, and the cause of the oppressed asserted and avenged. There remains for them, and for all those in whom the moral sense and our inborn hatred of vice are not utterly extinguished, this consolatory assur ance, wha;ever success may attend the present career of the oppressor, or however slow may be his con temporaries to feel or to acknowledge the whole in tensity of his guilt. " When we review the history of the first invasion of South America by the Spaniards, and the horrible war of ambit on and avarice which they there prosecut ed against an innocent and unoffending race, and then meditate on that of which Spain is now the frightful theatre, we almost think we can trace in the latter the hand of an avenging Providence to whom ages are but as minutes, visiting the usurpations and the murders of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru upon the heads of their unhappy descendants.

An inscrutable wisdom may thus one day retaliate upon France, and turn against her, with an aggravated sting, the same hellish and desolating passions, of which she is now the suitable agent to scourge and lacerate her wretched neighbour. " Should mankind in another age revert to a due sense of right — should the virtues and the charities of the heart ever regain a general influence — the story of the present war in Spain may be discredited as the fiction of an extravagant romance ; the perfidy and the ravages of the usurper will appear to belong, not to a monarch of the nineteenth century, the boasted era of heroic courage, of refined philanthro py and philosophical light, but to some fabled mon ster, formed, as a great orator has expressed it, ' in the eclipse of reason, and in a season of political dis may and moral abjection.' " CON T E N T S. Chap. Page I. The French - - - ■ 1 II.

Administration - • - 13 III. Public opinion - - .85 IV. The throne and the altar - - 103 V. Old times and new times - - 132 VI. Public instruction - - 140 VII. Justice ... - i65 VIII. Bonaparte on his travels - - 185 IX. The conscription - - - 224 X. Thi national guard - SKETCHES OF THE INTERIOR OF FRANCE.