David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution

2. The Long Parliament: Brissot Versus Clermont-Tonnere

Prophet_101-150.indd 123 3/2/12 10:29 PM THE LONG PARLIAMENT lessons of Voltaire. Now traditionalists almost religiously sought out other examples from across the Channel. These were the lessons of David Hume. 2 THE LONG PARLIAMENT: BRISSOT VERSUS CLERMONT-TONNERRE To illustrate the intensity of the revolutionary debates provoked by differing views of Stuart history and, what is more important, to show how Stuart history influenced in an immediate sense the formulation by both sides of many political problems of the day, let us examine at some length a controversy on the subject which raged during the summer of I 790 between the two important figures, Clermont-Tonnerre and Brissot. Brissot is a particularly good example to choose here as representing the Left, since he was probably influenced more than any other French revolutionary strategist by the examples of English civil-war history. We have already noted in our chapter on Hume's pre-revolutionary fortunes that the Girondin leader was one of the first in France to reject Hume's royalist interpretation of that period . His own admiration for English parliamentary heroes knew no bounds. His very name, Brissot de Warville-anglicized from the French place name Ouarville where his family held propertyis a youthful tribute to his long-standing political anglomania. In its essentials, this anglomania remained as one of his most notable characteristics until his death by decapitation in Paris in 1793. Also destined to be a victim of the Revolution, Stanislas Clermont-Tonnerre represents equally well, as a constitutional monarchist, that section of the rightist opposition most strongly influenced by the familiar Hume version of Stuart history. A dispute over the famous Comites de recherches, the new tribunals that Burke would also attack as likely to extinguish the last traces ofliberty in France and bring about "the most dreadful and 123 Prophet_101-150.indd 124 3/2/12 10:29 PM FROM 1789 TO THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI arbitrary tyranny ever known in any nation," was the original issue that sparked their important debate, especially valuable to us as an illustration ofhow the lines of battle on the current significance of the English revolution were drawn up. The controversy also shows the extent to which Hume's account for many traditionalists had come to be more than merely one man's history of that revolution but rather a body of essential, undeniable political facts, the profound appreciation ofwhich was absolutely necessary for a correct understanding of the revolution in France. The Comite de recherches of which Brissot was a member had been established by the Assembly in October 1789 and authorized to receive denunciations and evidence ofconspiracies as well as to arrest, to question, and to hold suspects. Brissot had already defended his committee on several occasions against the accusations ofvarious critics.49 In August 1790 he found it necessary to return once more to this defence against charges made by ClermontTonnerre that such committees represented an inquisitorial device of despotism and had a public effect rather similar to what might be expected from a re-establishment of the Bastille. Quite to the contrary, Brissot maintained, the powers of the committee were legal and constitutional, the popular party approved of them, they did not in any way resemble those of the Inquisition or the horrors of the Bastille and, finally, such extraordinary measures of security were necessary in a time of crisis when the Revolution had so many enemies. "How could you have believed," he asks Clermont-Tonnerre, "that men stripped of their ill-gotten privileges which they had been enjoying for many centuries would, with heroic patience, simply submit to the will of those they had formerly oppressed? How could you not have seen that they would rebel against an equality of rights that brought them down to the level of other men? ..."50 Brissot continued his self-apology by giving Clermont49 · See, for example, Le Patriote Fran~ais, 25 November 1789, 30J anuary and 25 February 1790. 50. J.-P B1issot, membre du Comite de Recherches de La municipalite aStanislas Clermont (ci-devant Clermont-Tonnerre) membre de l'Assemblee Nationale . . . , Paris, 28 aout 1 790, p. 8. 124 Prophet_101-150.indd 125 3/2/12 10:29 PM THE LONG PARLIAMENT Tonnerre one of those classically familiar revolutionary lessons on how people sometimes have to be forced to be free and even killed to be made equal: "Remember...