Gouverneur Morris

THE publication of the Diary of Gouverneur Morris ¹ brings before us one of the soundest minds in the history of our statesmanship. He was most noted as a financier, but the character of his genius was much broader, and it is rather by reason of his knowledge of public affairs in the largest sense, and the justness of his observation upon human nature, than because of his skill in business that these memorials of him are most impressive. The volumes hardly touch the early period of his life, which covered the time of the Revolution and the formation of the Constitution, although he then accomplished his principal service to his own country; they begin practically with his residence in Europe in 1789, whither he had gone in the interest of private speculations, and the most valuable portion of their contents is that which deals with the European situation in the succeeding decade. He was mainly in France, and by his social and financial relations came so near to the current of events that his information was sufficiently accurate and his interest acute. The fullness with which he committed to his diary the incidents of the day and his thoughts on men and measures makes his picture of the contemporary scenes remarkably lively. He mingled with men and women in the governing circles of the leading powers on a familiar footing, and the respect which was paid to his information and opinions gave him great advantages in this society. But his diary has not the value of picturesque memoirs to any unusual degree ; the theatre of history serves rather as the background for the working of his political thought, and as an opportunity for the marking of the characters of the leaders, than for the presentation of personal traits. He was a closer observer of human nature than of men ; he was more attracted by problems of government and the issues of measures than by anything individual; and thus it happens that his general remarks, together with his extraordinary powers of political forecast, make the deepest impression upon the mind of the reader.

Sincerely attached, as he was, to the principles of liberty, and desirous that they should be secured for the French and for other European nations to the fullest extent which circumstances permitted. he was too sensible that modes of government are conditioned upon the moral habit and traditions of a people to allow him to indulge in romantic ideas and that philosophy which he describes as a species of vertigo. He was not less a friend of reform than Jefferson, at the time our minister at Paris ; but while the latter took sides with the revolutionary party, Morris declared himself rather in favor of a strong executive, and drew on himself the remonstrance of Lafayette. As events went on, he continually grew more emphatic in advising the support of royal authority; and seeing that the revolutionary confusions must end in a dictator, he thought it best that. The depository of power should be the traditional office of the king rather than any experimental device of a military usurpation. He was nevertheless not deceived into thinking that the Revolution was the work of a few prominent agitators, instead of the expression of a true movement of history. Speaking of the Princesse Galitzin. he says that she, like others, was “ totally mistaken with respect to the troubles in France. They all supposed, as was supposed in the American Revolution, that there are certain leaders who occasion everything, whereas in both instances it, is the great mass of the people.”And again he writes, “ It is notorious that the great mass of the French nation is less solicitous to preserve the present order of things than to prevent the return of the ancient, oppressions.” At the same time he was unable to believe that any proper popular government could spring from a nation so supremely depraved as he declares the French to be. The materials for a revolution in this country are very indifferent. Everybody agrees that there is an utter prostration of morals, but the general position can never convey to the American mind the degree of depravity. It is not by any figure of rhetoric or force of language that the idea can be communicated. . . . There is a fatal principle that pervades all ranks. It is a perfect indifference to the violation of all engagements. . . . Paris is perhaps as wicked a spot as exists. — incest, murder, bestiality, fraud, rapine, oppression, baseness, cruelty ; and yet this is the city which has stepped forward in the sacred cause of liberty.” The force of these remarks on Morris’s lips can be appreciated only when one is familiar with the thoroughness and tenacity with which he held the view that in government the moral vigor of the nation is all in all. And yet at one time, when he was engaged in a plan by which he should himself enter the ministry, he showed no unwillingness to resort to the usual measures. He says he promised Madame de Flahaut, his friend, one hundred thousand francs if he succeeded, and he quieted the conscience of M. Montmorin, who was " startled at the idea of selling his vote. " by telling him it was not his own but the vote of M. Cannes that he was disposing of.

The pecuniary corruption of the Assembly is exhibited in the same colors as M. Taine uses, and the spectacle of the rush for riches, obtained by trading in the ruin of the country, is one of the extraordinary traits of the patriotic eras as here drawn. For instance, he relates that Colonel Swan told him, apropos of the tobacco question, that " there is a knot of men in the Assembly who dispose of all things as they list, and who turn everything to account. He speaks of their corruption with horror.” The many large business projects with which Morris was concerned must have given him a true insight in these matters. He was especially engaged in measures for provisioning the country, and in contracting to buy the American debt to France ; and as the troubles of the administration were largely those of supplying food and raising money, it was not strange that he early came into close knowledge of affairs, and that his advice was often asked. In the course of events he is found so intimately engaged in Parisian politics as to be drafting state papers for the use of the king ; and the mere fact that it should have been thought possible that he might take an active part with the authority of a minister in France is proof of the ascendency of his mind. But his participation in affairs was only the plan of an hour, and his criticisms and suggestions had no practical effect. He even drew up a constitution for France, but not without a sense of the audacity of a foreigner’s assuming to have sufficient acquaintance with the national character for such a work. These occupations, however, led him to look with a closer eye upon the men who were the instruments of the time.

Morris’s judgment of Necker stands in the first place, because they were both eminent financiers. The first impression was unfavorable. “ If he is really a great man, I am deceived,” Morris says ; and as he observes further, he finds the popular Frenchman a “ cunning ” man, to deal with whom requires “ great, caution and delicacy ; ” he next sets him down as “ timid,” and shows his own opinion when he mentions Lafayette as trusting Necker, although despising his talents, " as if it were possible to trust a timid man in arduous circumstances.” The full portrait is as follows : “ As to M. Necker, he is one of those men who has obtained a much greater reputation than he has any right to. . . . M. Necker in his public administration has always been honest and disinterested, which proves well, I think, for his former private conduct, or else it proves he has more vanity than cupidity. Be that as it may, an unspotted integrity as minister, and serving at his own expense in an office which others seek for the purpose of enriching themselves, have acquired him deservedly much confidence. Add to this his writings on finance teem with that sort of sensibility which makes the fortune of modern romances, and which is exactly suited to this lively nation, who love to read, but hate to think.

. . . His education as a banker has taught him to make tight bargains, and put him on his guard against projects. But though he understands man as a covetous creature, he does not understand mankind. a defect, which is irremediable. He is utterly ignorant also of politics, by which I mean politics in the great sense, as that sublime science which embraces for its object the happiness of mankind. . . . But what is more extraordinary is that M. Necker is a very poor financier.”

It should be said that Morris’s characterizations of men are usually severe, though not unjust; he had an eye for their weaknesses under the test of actual affairs, and judged them mainly by their practical effectiveness in the conduct of what was entrusted to them. This is especially noticeable in his friendly depreciation of Lafayette, whom he found always “ below the business.” He defines him from the start as a “lover of freedom from ambition, of which there are two kinds, — one born of pride, the other of vanity ; and his partakes most of the latter.” He forecasts his future almost sympathetically: “I have known my friend Lafayette now for many years, and can estimate at the just value both his words and his actions. If the clouds that now lower should be dissipated without a storm, he will be infinitely indebted to fortune ; but if it happen otherwise, the world must pardon much on the score of intention. He means ill to no one. but he hs the besoin de briller. He is very much below the business he has undertaken, and if the sea runs high he will be unable to hold the helm.” Morris continually refers to him as a self-deceiver and as a man whose mind you could convince without controlling his will by the conviction. Lafayette, so far as one can judge, did not regard Morris as sufficiently in sympathy with the Revolution to justify following his advice ; but the career of this most beloved of the French patriots is justly and sadly drawn on these pages. Morris tells one striking anecdote with regard to the discipline of the troops, a point to which he was continually reverting. He asked Lafayette whether his men would obey him, and reports his reply that “ they will not mount guard when it rains, but he thinks they will readily follow him into action.” He says, too, that Lafayette prescribed the applause the king should receive when he brought him in from Versailles. The universal fault which Morris finds in all the men of affairs is that which was in his view the whole character of the king, — weakness. M. Necker told him that they were " frequently under the necessity of doing what they knew to be wrong ; ” and M. Montmorin acknowledged to him that “he had not sufficient vigor of mind to pursue the course which appeared to him to he right.” In connection until this Morris’s own maxim is worth quoting : “ The people will never continue attached to any man who will sacrifice his duty to their caprice.”

Morris was constantly touched with pity for the king and queen. He nevertheless treats them with entire mercilessness. The king he speaks of as “a small-beer character,” and asks what “ you will have from a creature who, situated as he is, eats and drinks and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives.” He gives him in another place a very bad paragraph : “ M. de Trudaine mentioned as having heard from young Montmorin that the king is by nature cruel and base. One instance of his cruelty, among others, was, that he used to spit and roast live cats. In riding with Madame de Flahaut, I tell her that I could not believe such things. She tells me that when young he was guilty of such things ; that he is very brutal and nasty, which she attributes to a bad education. This brutality once led him so far, while Dauphin, as to beat his wife, for which he was exiled four days by his grandfather, Louis XV. Until lately he used always to spit in his hand, as being more convenient. It is no wonder that such a beast should be dethroned.” But when the king came to the scaffold Morris was more tender of him, though he despised him no less. He says that “ the monarchic and aristocratic parties wished his death, in the belief that such a catastrophe would shock the national feeling, awaken the hereditary attachment, and turn into the channels of loyalty the impetuous tide of opinion.” Yet Morris declares it as his opinion that the people in general pitied him, and desired that he should he spared.

Mirabeau, who fills a considerable space in the volumes, is never mentioned without disgust and contempt. Morris says that at his death he was pledged to restore absolute authority. Nothing that he remarks upon him, however, is so important as his observation, springing from Mirabeau’s conduct, that “ his understanding is impaired by the perversion of his heart. There is a fact which very few seem to be apprised of, viz.,that a sound mind cannot exist where the morals are unsound. Sinister designs render the view of things oblique.” This moral substratum to Morris’s mind is a continual source of pleasure; seldom distinctly and separately expressed, it always enters into his opinion of men, as when, for example, he condemns Mirabeau as “ venal, shameless, and yet greatly virtuous when pushed by a prevailing impulse, but never truly virtuous, because never under the steady control of reason nor the firm authority of principle.” Yet he observes great discrimination in applying these standards. " Monsieur,” he wisely remarks, " is a very honest man, but he holds a very dishonest opinion, which is common with weak men in regard to public affairs.”

These characterizations of famous men, of which we select only a very few, are naturally interesting, more particularly as being contemporary judgments ; but the value of a book always lies in the strongest part of its author’s mind, and in the case of Morris this was his knowledge of general human nature in its relation to government. His skepticism of the French Revolution proceeded from his distrust of the moral character of the people, and his prescient forecasts of future events were grounded on the causal necessity which is to be observed in organized society, owing to the nature of the men who compose it. He had a considerable contempt for theorists. " La Roehefoucault is terribly puzzled about the affairs of impositions. This is always the ease when men bring metaphysical ideas into the business of the world; none know how to govern but those who have been used to it, and such men have rarely either time or inclination to write about it. The books, therefore, which are to be met with contain mere Utopian ideas.” How human nature is to be learned he intimates in observing that the Duke of Brunswick " wants important qualities of a statesman ; ” he continues: “ Man can judge of man by no other standard than his heart and mind. He who is alive to every sentiment and passion can judge well of others by adding to or diminishing the result of his own emotions, for he differs from his fellows only in degree ; but he who is born insensible can never know mankind ; he is blind in some things, deaf to others ; in short, he wants some of the moral senses.” In another place be states the general truth that " man deceives himself much oftener than he deceives others.” In applying these principles to men in the mass he is often impressive, and reaches a high tone of moral reflection on politics. " Now,” he says, " I have frequently obServed that when men are brought to abandon the paths of justice, it is not easy to arrest their progress at any particular point; ” but this moralizing tendency is usually offset by his practical remarks upon the subject in hand. A profound observation upon the financial condition of Paris, into which, he says, opinion enters as the fundamental element, is less to him, apparently, than the climax to which it is a step, — “ Paper thou art, and to paper thou shall return.”It may be said, in passing, that he loses no opportunity to enlarge upon the evils of paper money and the desperate character of its temporary utilities. The financier speaks again when he criticises the ministry for the feebleness of a report upon the state of the finances: " They appeal to patriotism for aid, but they should, in money matters, apply only to interest. They should never acknowledge such want of resource as to render the aid of patriotism necessary.” But these incisive statements, which illustrate the temper of Morris’s mind too well to be neglected, are almost too disconnected to be brought within the compass of a paragraph.

Morris’s career as our minister to France during the Terror was difficult and disagreeable. His friends and the society in which he moved were scattered, and he himself was at times discommoded. He was the only minister to remain in Paris, and in staying he showed both courage and good sense. He was of use to some of those whose property was in danger, and appears to have so far exceeded the propriety of his position as to arrange a plan for the king’s escape, which failed, because at the last moment the king refused to go; and he also received the valuables of the king and of other persons for safe-keeping in his house. He acknowledges that some of the executions may have been just, but he was perhaps more affected by the sights he witnessed than is shown by his diary, which at this time he did not make too full and confidential. He had himself settled down to the conviction that nothing could end the period except a military dictatorship, and for this he waited, with prediction after prediction as to the means by which it would come about. He says that the Allies failed by their misconduct in proclaiming war upon all France and their purpose to punish the men who had engaged in the new régime; whereas, if they had been moderate, they would have found support all over France. As it was, France was unified against aggression, and Morris declares that with a united France he had never doubted the Allies would be defeated. He said so many things that came true that he grew vain of the power, and in later years is more often found claiming to have foreseen accomplished facts than actually prophesying them. He was alone in the opinion that the Spaniards would defeat the French armies, and he declared positively that Prussia would go to pieces at the first assault. He was as confident of Napoleon’s ruin as of his rise. Indeed, he had good reason to pride himself, even when he affected modesty, upon the justness of his opinions upon the current of events. If others would listen to experience, as he did, he said, they would foresee as well; but no other person had his eye for the situation, and the same conviction of the necessity of moral and economical laws. In one sentence he almost seems to cast his gaze forward to an incident of this century when he remarks, “ A dispute with Denmark would favor projects against Hamburg, Lübeck, and Mecklenburg, reserving the entry into Holstein for the moment when Denmark should be sufficiently embarrassed in her affairs to render it a mere parade instead of a campaign.” These predictions, and others like them, were not made at any one time, but sown through the ten years of his residence abroad, during which he visited Germany and Austria, as well as Holland and England, and in all his journeys exhibited the curiosity and the tenacious mind of a true traveler joined with the political speculations of an ever-restless mind. He transferred to his pages many anecdotes and some scandal of the courts he saw, and a series of illustrations of high life might be strung together from his notes which would do little credit to that discreditable age, though they might amuse. We have found nothing more entertaining than his description of Talleyrand doing Madame de Flahaut the courtesy of warming her bed with a warming-pan, and the king of Prussia, then prince royal, waiting, in the garb of a servant, behind Madame Crayen at her wedding dinner in a tavern.

Morris: returned to America in 1798, and lived until 1816. In this period he took an inconsiderable part in politics, although he served a term as Senator from New York. His judgment upon passing affairs in his own country in that time of ferment was less sound than his remarks on foreign affairs had been. He was violently opposed to the Democrats. He thought the Judiciary Act had destroyed the Constitution. He was a friend of the Hartford Convention, and quite ready to dissolve the Union. He expressed very decidedly his preference for monarchic or aristocratic institutions. Democracy he regarded as a transitional state of government, and declared that it " cannot last.” He thought that a man destined to rule from the cradle “ will not, in general, be so unfit as those who are objects of popular choice.” In holding these views he came nearer to Hamilton than to others of his contemporaries. Hamilton, nevertheless, he characterized as “ more a theoretic than a practical man ; ” “not sufficiently convinced that a system may be good in itself and bad in relation to particular circumstances;” “ indiscreet, vain, and opinionated,” and in general more the creature of his opinions than of reason and experience ; a thinker rather than a statesman, and even in his management of the treasury not without radical errors. Washington, it may be said, is the only person upon whom Morris does not make some unfavorable comment, but for him he had the same reverence that was wellnigh universal in that age ; he says that “ few men of such steady, persevering industry ever existed, and perhaps no one who so completely commanded himself.” It was this last quality which most affected Morris. " Thousands have learned to restrain their passions,” he continues, “ though few among them had to contend with passions so violent. But the self-command to which I allude was of higher grade. He could, at the dictate of reason, control his will and command himself to act. Others may have acquired a portion of the same authority, but who could, like Washington, at any moment command the energies of his mind to a cheerful exertion ? ” Just before Washington died he wrote a letter urging him to forego his retirement to private life. With regard to slavery, he was always its foe. “ If you countenance the introduction of slaves, you sign and seal the ruin of the Southern States.” And again he writes: “Time, my dear sir, seems about to disclose the awful secret that commerce and domestic slavery are mortal foes, and, bound together, one must destroy the other. I cannot blame Southern gentlemen for striving to put down commerce, because commerce, if it survives, will, I think, put them down, supposing always the Union to endure.”

If Morris was far from optimistic with respect to the political outlook for his country in the immediate future, he was very clear-sighted as to its material prospects. He was a leader in the scheme of the Erie Canal, and fully committed to the dream of the development of the lake country. “The proudest empire in Europe is but a bubble compared to what America will be, must be, in the course of two centuries, perhaps of one.” And in another place, " I knew as well then [at the formation of the Constitution] as I do now that all North America must at length be annexed to us, — happy, indeed, if the lust of dominion stop there.” He did not, however, look at this increase of material wealth without a keen sense of the dangers which plutocracy would bring. “ When the money influence glows great, the general maxim is, Be rich; if you can, honestly, but be rich. From that moment, may, I believe, be dated the decline of an empire; and although circumstances may check the progress of destruction, though the weakness of surrounding states may lengthen out a feeble existence, yet, the infection taken, it extends a silent but deadly corruption, which few, if any, political constitutions are strong enough to throw off.”A more remarkable passage, and one good for reflection now, is the following : " The strongest aristocratic feature in our political organization is that which Democrats are most attached to. — the right of universal suffrage. This takes from men of moderate fortune their proper weight, and will, in process of time, give undue influence to those of great wealth.” But Morris took a broad view of history, and seems not to have anticipated any different future for America than the Old World had experienced. There is always a counter-current in human affairs which appears alike both good and evil. While the republican form lasts we shall be tolerably well governed, as when we are fairly afloat again on the tempestuous sea of liberty our Cromwell or Bonaparte must so far comply with national habit as to give us an independent judiciary and something like a popular representation. Like the picked, featherless bipeds who have preceded us, our posterity will be shaken into the political form which shall be most suitable to their physical and moral state. They will be born, procreate, and die, like the rest of creation, while here and there some accomplished scoundrel, rari nantes in gurgite vasto, will give their names to the periods of history.”

We have endeavored in this notice to convey some impression of the quality of Morris’s mind, and of the remarkable illustrations winch these volumes afford of the true statesman’s habit of thought; for whatever may be said of Morris’s conclusions or opinions, there is no question that his method is that of the wisest political thinking. It is useful, too, to be reminded of the moral basis of government, the clear and unhesitating conviction of which is fundamental in these pages. This faith was in the air of the Constitution-making era, but here we come home to it in fixed and definite expression. Of Morris himself it is not needful to say anything. His character is declared in his words. He, like some of those whom he criticises, had his weaknesses of vanity, and has given the impression indirectly of a man who felt he had not been employed to the height, of his talents in affairs. He says of himself, when minister at Paris, “I could be popular, but that would be wrong,” and the sentence contains more personal honor than any other in the diary. But certainly he was not greatly tempted to be “popular " in the Terror.

His reputation has undoubtedly gained greatly by this work, but we regret to add that the editing of the correspondence shows unpardonable slovenliness and ignorance, the errors being innumerable.