The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE / DANGER TO
As it becomes more and more possible that the Noblesse will go wrong,
I become uneasy for you. Your principles are decidedly with the Tiers
Etat, and your instructions against them. A complaisance to the latter
on some occasions, and an adherence to the former on others, may give
an appearance of trimming between the two parties, which may lose you
both. You will, in the end, go over wholly to the Tiers Etat, because
it will be impossible for you to live in a constant sacrifice of your
own sentiments to the prejudices of the Noblesse. But you would be
received by the Tiers Etat at any future day, coldly, and without
confidence. This appears to me the moment to take at once that honest
and manly stand with them which your own principles dictate. This will
win their hearts forever, be approved by the world, which marks and
honors you as the man of the people, and will be an eternal
consolation to yourself. The Noblesse, and especially the Noblesse of
Auvergne, will always prefer men who will do their dirty work for
them. You are not made for that. They will, therefore, soon drop you,
and the people, in that case, will perhaps not take you up. Suppose a
scission should take place. The Priests and Nobles will secede, the
nation will remain in place, and, with the King, will do its own
business. If violence should be attempted, where will you be? You
cannot then take side with the people in opposition to your own vote,
that very vote which will have helped to produce the scission. Still
less can you array yourself against the people. That is impossible.
Your instructions are, indeed, a difficulty. But to state this at its
worst it is only a single difficulty, which a single effort surmounts.
Your instructions can never embarrass you a second time, whereas an
acquiescence under them will reproduce greater difficulties every day,
and without end. Besides, a thousand circumstances offer as many
justifications of your departure from Your instructions. Will it be
impossible to persuade all parties that (as for good legislation two
Houses are necessary) the placing the privileged classes together in
one House, and the unprivileged in another, would be better for both
than a scission? I own, I think it would. People can never agree
without some sacrifices; and it appears but a moderate sacrifice in
each party, to meet on this middle ground. The attempt to bring this
about might satisfy your instructions, and a failure in it would
justify your siding with the people, even to those who think
instructions are laws of conduct. Forgive me, my dear friend, if my
anxiety for you makes me talk of things I know nothing about. You must
not consider this as advice. I know you and myself too well to presume
to offer advice. Receive it merely as the expression of my uneasiness,
and the effusion of that sincere friendship with which I am, my dear
Sir, yours affectionately.
to Marquis de Lafayette, 6 May 1789
|