David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution

1. Prophetic Parallels and the Counter-Revolutionary Lessons of Hume

Prophet_101-150.indd 103 3/2/12 10:29 PM III From I789 to the Trial ofLouis XVI 1 PROPHETIC PARALLELS AND THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY LESSONS OF HUME Abbe Maury figures most appropriately at the beginning of this chapter dealing in part with examples of Hume's influence on some of the early counter-revolutionary leaders. Maury, generally recognized as the leading orator of the Right in the Assemblee Constituante, had been since 1785 a member of the French Academy and was eventually to be named a cardinal of the Church. He seems to have been a witty, rather forceful person and an extemporary speaker of some brilliance. It is not too inappropriate to contrast him, as contemporaries often did, with Mirabeau, his opposite number on the Left. Like his personal friends Gerdil and Bergier, Maury was fond of quoting Bossuet in defence of the ancien regime but, like them too, he occasionally found it useful to invoke also the authority of that new Bossuet, the historian David Hume. Long before the Revolution he had commended Hume as a loyal and impartial historian worth using to attack the "English bias" of the philosophe Voltaire. In 1777, for example, he quite happily pointed out that 103 Prophet_101-150.indd 104 3/2/12 10:29 PM FROM 1789 TO THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI the Scottish historian disagreed with the greatVoltaire on the quality of English eloquence.1 Voltaire had devoted one of his famous philosophical letters to praising Bacon, and Maury points out at this time-as Joseph de Maistre was to later-that Hume had attacked the inflated reputation of this culture hero of the encyclopedistes and had rightly put him well below Galileo in importance. On at least one occasion we even find the Abbe adducing proofs from Hume in his sermons, as in his panegyric of Saint Louis delivered to the assembled members of the French Academy in the chapel of the Louvre on 25 August 1772.2 Hume is not infrequently mentioned in Abbe Maury's speeches delivered during the early revolutionary debates. Defending the rights of the throne in 1790, he accused the National Assembly ofan illegitimate attempt to deprive the Crown ofits traditional prerogative to declare war and make treaties. The role of the Assembly, as Maury saw it, was not to establish a new constitution but to correct with the help of the king any current abuses in government and to revive, to that end, the ancient constitution of France. History, he asserted, provides a warning to those who dare to attempt more radical reforms and who, wishing to extend illegitimately the powers of popular representatives, reduce the monarch's importance to that of being merely a "republican" figurehead: We know that Cardinal Mazarin, after the tragic death of Charles I, went to great lengths to encourage the English to adopt a purely republican style ofgovernment in their island, Mazarin ... realizing as he did how that form of government, by its slowness of action and its internal divisions, would weaken the political power of the English nation; but the English, after trying, as Mr. Hume has said, to do without a king, realized that their parliament needed counterbalancing by royal authority; with patriotic hands they raised up the throne once more, and for a century now, they have not tried to shake the sacred foundations of their constitution. Is it possible, 1. Discours choisis sur divers sujets de religion et de littemture, par M. !'Abbe Maury, Paris, 1777, p. 132. See also Oeuvres choisies du cardinalf.-Sifrein Maury• , Paris, 1827, II. 142- 51. 2. Ibid., III. 361-62. Maury quotes Hume's portrait of the French king. Prophet_101-150.indd 105 3/2/12 10:29 PM PROPHETIC PARALLELS Gentlemen, that this assembly could forget the great lesson that England has taught Europe?3 A reader of the PoliticalDiscourses as well as the History, Maury cited Hume inJuly 1790 against the fiscal policies ofNecker: He alone, it must be acknowledged, by lending an outward appearance of prosperity to our finances, by maintaining the lie that he was able to sustain the costs ofwar without recourse to additional taxation, brought about the ruin of the kingdom through borrowing at exorbitant rates. The enticements he held out to investors strengthened considerably his own personal credit, which afterwards proved so disastrous for us. Either the nation must destroy public credit, writes Mr. Hume, or...