France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
In the Senate-house again, the attitude of the Right Side is that
of calm unbelief. Let an august National Assembly make a
Fourth-of-August Abolition of Feudality; declare the Clergy
State-servants who shall have wages; vote Suspensive Vetos, new
Law-Courts; vote or decree what contested thing it will; have it
responded to from the four corners of France, nay get King’s
Sanction, and what other Acceptance were conceivable,—the Right
Side, as we find, persists, with imperturbablest tenacity, in
considering, and ever and anon shews that it still considers, all
these so-called Decrees as mere temporary whims, which indeed
stand on paper, but in practice and fact are not, and cannot be.
Figure the brass head of an Abbé Maury flooding forth Jesuitic
eloquence in this strain; dusky d’Espréménil, Barrel Mirabeau
(probably in liquor), and enough of others, cheering him from the
Right; and, for example, with what visage a seagreen Robespierre
eyes him from the Left. And how Sieyes ineffably sniffs on him,
or does not deign to sniff; and how the Galleries groan in
spirit, or bark rabid on him: so that to escape the Lanterne, on
stepping forth, he needs presence of mind, and a pair of pistols
in his girdle! For he is one of the toughest of men.
Here indeed becomes notable one great difference between our two
kinds of civil war; between the modern _lingual_ or
Parliamentary-logical kind, and the ancient, or _manual_ kind, in
the steel battle-field;—much to the disadvantage of the former.
In the manual kind, where you front your foe with drawn weapon,
one right stroke is final; for, physically speaking, when the
brains are out the man does honestly die, and trouble you no
more. But how different when it is with arguments you fight! Here
no victory yet definable can be considered as final. Beat him
down, with Parliamentary invective, till sense be fled; cut him
in two, hanging one half in this dilemma-horn, the other on that;
blow the brains or thinking-faculty quite out of him for the
time: it skills not; he rallies and revives on the morrow;
tomorrow he repairs his golden fires! The think that _will_
logically extinguish him is perhaps still a desideratum in
Constitutional civilisation. For how, till a man know, in some
measure, at what point he becomes logically defunct, can
Parliamentary Business be carried on, and Talk cease or slake?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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