Richmond Enquirer

COMMUNICATED.

Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Richmond, to his friend in the upper country.

I propose frequently to address you while I am detained here. I do not exactly agree with you with respect to the causes that lead to the revolutions of governments. The causes that have that effect, are blind confidence on the part of the people, and a prodigal abuse of public credit. History gives us a different classification. Its faithful pages assure us that luxury, corruption and standing armies have destroyed the last remains of freedom in every country where they have predominated.

With different appellations affixed to the same things, I shall drive at the same demonstration. I shall not carry my thoughts back to the Roman era, and shew how the exactions laid with a heavy hand on the conquered provinces and then idly dissipated in palaces and brazen images alienated the affections of the people and prepared the way for Anthony, Augustus, and Lepidus to divide and govern the once proud mistress of the world. I will take my illustrations from periods within the recollection of half the present generation, and from events in that country with which we are as well acquainted as we are with our own.

In 1776, the treasury of France was committed to the management of M. Clugny. At the time he entered on his duties, the finances were in a state of disorder from which the talents of M. Turgot his predecessor had not been able to clear them. M. Clugny was bold and resolute in his character and bent on retaining the place which he held by the favour of the French King. Hence he presented no obstacle to the benefices of his monarch, or once conveyed to the royal ear the discontent manifested by the people at the burthens imposed on them to be lavished on the nobility and clergy. During the five years he presided over the finances, the treasury was in confusion and the country the hot bed of faction; and this permit me to say, was to be expected. Man under no circumstances but those of imperious necessity, will suffer the product of his labour to be taken from him, without at least claiming the sad privilege of complaining, and let it be remembered M. Clugny came to the ministry at an era of calm, when the nation had been enjoying a peace of fifteen years duration, at a season which all wise governments seize on as the epoch of retrenchment and economy.

At the end of his ministry, a deficit of a million of pounds sterling was discovered; a sum that as considered enormous. The dismay that a knowledge of this deficit inspired was considerable; and terror it is known produces desperation. The government began to apprehend frightful consequences.

Nothing saved them from the abyss in which they were afterwards precipitated, but the generous Necker who was called to the administration by the king. Necker was a Genevan by birth and a banker of repute. The satisfaction his appointment produced is a proof of his integrity; his administration has raised a monument to his talents that will perish only with the wrecks of matter. Undismayed by the prospects before him, accustomed to the details of a bank, he entered with zeal into his new situation.—Light prevailed where chaos formerly reigned. No new sources of expenditure were opened; some old ones were stopped up; the previous gifts of the king were passed in review; where they were unreasonable, they were curtailed, and the king under his tutelage determined to make no new gift of public money till a year after the petition therefor was presented. What followed might well be anticipated from such a beginning. Public credits revived; the national coffers filled, public burthens lessened, and the people were contented. The deficit at the expiration of the first year vanished: and although France became involved in war, the means of waging it with honour were provided by this faithful minister, and after three years of hostility, he proclaimed the fact, so gratifying to France and so appalling to Great Britain, that the receipts left in the treasury an unexpended balance of half a million, which insured a loan adequate to the expense of two campaigns. As soon as this state of the funds was known, a peace was concluded at Paris, which gave independence to America and honour and glory to the American and French armies. Whatever may be said of the victories in America and the East Indies, the situation of the French funds was the leading reason why peace was concluded. If the way to avoid war, be, to be prepared for it, the best method to procure peace, is to shew the enemy we have the means to prosecute it. It might have been expected that the funds having been put in this flourishing situation, and an honourable peace brought about, Necker would have been retained. But not so. The nobility, when peace gave them security, were disgusted at the plain administration of the government; the superior popularity of the minister was insupportable; he was charged by them to the king of indulging the hope of governing not simply the funds, but the king himself. Lewis the XVI, was the best of men, but the weakest of princes. He listened to the clamours of men, greedy of public plunder, from which they had been withheld by the firmness and virtues of M. Necker. Necker was dismissed and exiled, and the king was undone.

The minister that followed, was Calonne, and shortly after Brienne bishop of Toulouse. The revolution commenced with the short administration of Calonne. His was a system of pillage; that of the bishop, if possible, was still worse. Credit declined: the means employed to support it, would not answer; the national coffers were empty; payments were stopped; in a moment of profound peace loans were attempted by the men who had dissipated by folly the treasures their predecessor had husbanded in time of war by his firmness and wisdom. Now it was, that the king regretted, that he had exiled his best benefactor to make way for men whose mal-administration had awakened against him the eloquence of Barnave, and the feeling of Brissot. Before the administration of Brienne, ceased, blood began to flow, and the altar and the throne became an object of popular hatred.

A treasury without money, a government without credit, oppressed with wants, and a people burthened with taxes, were difficulties too great to be overcome by M. Brienne. The popularity he had acquired with the weak and unthinking by the splendour and dissipation of his administration left him, when the ability to confer favors had ceased. In his fright, he consented to every thing, which the disaffected desired. He convoked the states general; he even acknowledged his incapacity to manage the finances, and implored the King to join Necker with him. This the king did; but Necker refused; then and not till then, did this minister give up his place, after having by his folly and dissipation provoked a revolution which brought the best monarch in Europe to the block and involved half the world in the flames of war.

From the foregoing historical facts the following political aphorisms may be deduced. Economy is as commendable in a public man, as it is praiseworthy in a private gentleman. Of all tyranny next to that which tyrannizes over the personal security of the citizen, the most intolerable is that which tyrannizes over the purse. The great object of rational man is to better his own situation and that of his family.—In attaining this end, he betters the situation of his neighbor. "As his means are increased, he enlarges his comforts, and of course puts it in the power of his neighbors to enlarge his also. In having a hand.