The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FRANCE / REVOLUTION
The sloth of the Assembly (unavoidable from their number) has done
the most sensible injury to the public cause. The patience of a people
who have less of that quality than any other nation in the world, is
worn thread-bare. Time has been given to the, aristocrats to recover
from their panic, to cabal, to sow dissensions in the Assembly, and
distrust out of it.
This being the face of things, troubled as you will perceive, civil
war is much talked of and expected; and this talk and expectation has
a tendency to beget it. What are the events which may produce it? 1.
The want of bread, were it to produce a commencement of disorder,
might ally itself to more permanent causes of discontent, and thus
continue the effect beyond its first cause. The scarcity of bread,
which continues very great amidst a plenty of corn, is an enigma which
can be solved only by observing, that the furnishing the city is in
the new municipality, not yet masters of their trade. 2. A public
bankruptcy. Great numbers of the lower as well as higher classes of
the citizens, depend for subsistence on their property in the public
funds. 3. The absconding of the King from Versailles. This has for
some time been apprehended as possible. In consequence of this
apprehension, a person whose information would have weight, wrote to
the Count de Montmorin, adjuring him to prevent it by every possible
means, and assuring him that the flight of the King would be the
signal of a St. Bartholomew against the aristocrats in Paris, and
perhaps through the kingdom M. de Montmorin showed the letter to the
Queen, who assured him solemnly that no such thing was in
contemplation. His showing it to the Queen, proves he entertained the
same mistrust with the public. It may be asked, what is the Queen
disposed to do in the present situation of things? Whatever rage,
pride and fear can dictate in a breast which never knew the presence
of one moral restraint.
Upon the whole, I do not see it as yet probable that any actual
commotion will take place; and if it does take place, I have strong
confidence that the patriotic party will hold together, and their
party in the nation be what I have described it. In this case, there
would be against them the aristocracy and the faction of Orleans. This
consists, at this time, of only the Catilines of the Assembly, and
some of the lowest description of the mob. Its force,
within the kingdom, must depend on how much of this last kind
of people it can debauch with money from its present bias to the right
cause. This bias is as strong as any one can be, in a class which must
accept its bread from him who will give it. Its resources out of
the kingdom are not known. Without doubt, England will give money
to produce and to feed the fire which should consume this country; but
it is not probable she will engage in open war for that. If foreign
troops should be furnished, it would be most probably by the King of
Prussia, who seems to offer himself as the bull-dog of tyranny to all
his neighbors.
to John Jay, 19 September 1789
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