Republic of Letters

“ [Within parentheses let me tell thee, that I have often thought, that the little words in the republic of letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most significant. ”

“ But during the five years that these honest wiseacres have been preserving, everything has perished—the Republic, the Consuls, free discussions, free election, the political liberty, and the liberty of the Press; all—all are found nowhere but in old, useless, and rejected codes. They have, however, in a truly patriotic manner taken care of their own dear selves. ”

“ The republic of letters owes it to its own dignity to tolerate no longer offences of that kind.
'To an organization of their national intellect, and to giving it a political control, the countries of Europe are rapidly advancing. They are hastening to satisfy their instinctive tendency. The special form in which they will embody their intentions must, of course, depend to a great degree on the political forms under which they have passed their lives, modified by that approach to homogeneousness, which arises from increased intercommunication.' ”

“ In such a condition as this, there is a wholesome circulation of literature from one state to another, without establishing, however, any thing like a dictatorship in the republic of letters. A salutary rivalry is generated; and a true and genuine patriotism, I must be allowed to assert, will always lead us to foster and stimulate genius, wherever we may perceive symptoms of its development, throughout the limits of that commonwealth to which we are attached. ”

“ No jurist, who has the least regard to his reputation in the republic of letters, will deny that they are entitled to all the essential rights, liberties, privileges and immunities, of his Majesty's natural subjects, born within the realm. ”

“ Indeed, one would like to know how any one in his senses could believe for a moment that any institution of learning could be founded with exclusive tendencies in these times, in this or any other country! If there is an intelligent democracy anywhere it is the Republic of Letters. ”

“ We have lost, my dear Pomponius, not only all the healthy sap and blood of our old constitution, but even its colour and outward show. There is no Republic to give a moment's pleasure or a feeling of security. "And is that, then," you will say, "a satisfaction to you?" Precisely that. For I recall what a fair course the state had for a short time, while I was at the helm, and what a return has been made me! It does not give me a pang that one man absorbs all power. The men to burst with envy are those who were indignant at my having had some power. ”

“ Your business is negotiation abroad, and oratory in the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make, in either case, if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad? Imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it, would, in a very few days, circulate through the whole kingdom, to your disgrace and ridicule. ”

“ Perhaps the advocates of the second may, to a formal declaration of war, prefer general letters of mark and reprisal, because, on a repeal of their edicts by the belligerent, a revocation of the letters of mark restores peace without the delay, difficulties, and ceremonies of a treaty. On this occasion, I think it fair to leave to those who are to act on them, the decisions they prefer, being to be myself but a spectator. ”

“ In literature the tendency was to make letters a concrete part of the national mind, just as the great French revolution called into existence the first notion of national life by investing the people with the controlling power of their country’s interests. ”

“ Letter after letter, protest after protest, bad Latin, worse English, and hideous Low Dutch, were incessantly fulminated upon them, and the four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, which formed his standing army, were worn out by constant campaigning. ”

“ Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. ”

“ It would not be fair to regard as a deduction from the value of those letters which bear on the politics of the day the necessity of confessing that they are not devoid of partiality—that they are coloured with his own views, both of measures and persons. ”

“ Dear Sir,—The insulated state in which France is placed with respect to almost all the world, by the present war, has cut off all means of addressing letters to you through other countries. I embrace the present occasion by a private individual going to France directly, to mention, that since the date of my last public letter, which was April the 24th, and which covered the President's proclamation of April, I have received your Nos. 17 to 24. M. de Ternant notified us of his recall on the 17th of May, and delivered the letter of the Provisory Executive Council to that effect. ”

“ Now, it is hardly to be expected that the letters of a great statesman and the letters of an obscure clerk in the India House should reveal precisely the same interests and information, any more than it is to be expected that the letters of the statesman—who was, after all, a statesman and no more—should equal in literary charm and merit the letters of the clerk who was in addition an immortal genius. ”

“ To this end, it is greatly to be desired, that young men of letters in all the States, especially in the thirteen original States, would undertake the laborious, but certainly interesting and amusing task, of searching and collecting all the records, pamphlets, newspapers, and even handbills, which in any way contributed to change the temper and views of the people, and compose them into an independent nation. ”

“ You revive, my worthy nobles, those times of ancient Rome, when the most distinguished citizens united the culture of the liberal arts with the highest offices in the republic; when, with the same voice with which they enforced the interest of their country, and with the same hand that signed the decrees of the senate, they enlightened their fellow-citizens, and not only adorned their language by the elegance of their own writings, but established its permanency on the certain foundation of unerring rules. What, indeed, is the purity of a language? What is the beauty of style? ”

“ We know how free States indulge in speech with their parliaments and congresses and senates, their public meetings, and so forth: here are a hundred such nations, all with perfect liberty of tongue holding forth unsparingly, and in a language which consists of two or three syllables indefinitely repeated. ”

“ Sir,—The substance of the enclosed letter, so far as is necessary for the satisfaction of our fellow citizens, should be communicated to them. But the letter itself should not be published, nor be permitted to be copied. Because the source from which it comes will occasion every word of it to be weighed by your neighbors on the opposite shore, and every inference to be drawn of which it is susceptible. To aid their information as to our views, would give them an advantage to our own prejudice. ”

“ I took the pamphlet and found a complete paper Constitution stamped with the Imperial Chrysanthemum—an excellent little scheme of representation, reforms, payment of members, budget estimates, and legislation. It is a terrible thing to study at close quarters, because it is so pitifully English. ”

“ I have, therefore, on a principle of conscience, thought it my duty to withdraw almost entirely from all private correspondence, and chiefly the trans-Atlantic; I scarcely write a letter a year to any friend beyond sea. Another consideration has led to this, which is the liability of my letters to miscarry, be opened, and made ill use of. Although the great body of our country are perfectly returned to their ancient principles, yet there remains a phalanx of old tories and monarchists, more envenomed, as all their hopes become more desperate. ”

“ Written in a plain, pure style, with illustrations and arguments drawn from ecclesiastical, classical and English history, each point proven with telling accuracy and convincing logic, conciliatory to the English people, and filled with expressions of loyalty to the King, these essays, popularly known as the "Farmer's Letters," furnished the basis on which all those who resented the attacks on their liberty were able to unite. ”

“ The continent at present furnishes nothing interesting. I shall hope the favor of your letters at times. The proceedings and views of Congress, and of the Assemblies, the opinions and dispositions of our people in general, which, in governments like ours, must be the foundation of measures, will always be interesting to me; as will whatever respects your own health and happiness, being with great esteem, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant. ”

“ II For thirty-six years there had been in France all sorts of pernicious things,—the tribune, a vociferous thing; the press, an obstreperous thing; thought, an insolent thing, and liberty, the most crying abuse of all. But he came, and for the tribune he has substituted the Senate; for the press, the censorship; for thought, imbecility; and for liberty, the saber; and by the saber and the Senate, by imbecility and censorship, France is saved. ”

“ This is the reason why it is necessary to give new names to things, to speak of the Constitution, not as a constitution, but as a compact, and of the ratifications by the people, not as ratifications, but as acts of accession.
Sir, I intend to hold the gentlemen to the written record. In the discussion of a constitutional question, I intend to impose upon him the restraints of constitutional language. The people have ordained a Constitution; can they reject it without revolution? They have established a form of government; can they overthrow it without revolution? ”

“ For it is often impracticable to make one's language harmonise with one's real sentiments. Then, too, letters from the Emperor to private persons might well lead to their display for bragging and making false pretences when they come into the hands of persons with no sense of propriety, who carry them about like seal-rings and show them to the inexperienced. ”

“ Whatever, therefore, may be thought of the pamphlet which is before you, as a libel, or of the writer or publisher, I most solemnly affirm, that there is no one who more warmly admires the English constitution, as it stands in theory and ought to exist in practice, than myself, nor is there any one who would more willingly shed his blood if it were necessary, or even lose his life in its support. ”

“ Without doubt the law of nations would warrant our extorting from the hands of your highness' subjects, by issuing letters of reprisal, that which we have not been able to obtain after so many years by means of the letters written in favour of our beloved subject and friend; and the deplorable state of the said Roger requires that we should now exact by our own authority that which we have in vain sought to obtain by means of simple communications. ”

“ When we remember the remarkable manner, entirely novel in the history of political science, in which our Constitution creates a new nation and its supreme national government and yet keeps alive the former independent nations and their federation, the next sentence of that letter is of absorbing interest. ”

“ Lors que vous addresserez des lettres à des personnes qui seront dans l'estime publique; vous vous gouuernerez aupres d'eux, selon la coustume du pays & le degré de leur dignité. Quand vous aurez acheué vos lettres, relisez-les, pour en oster les fautes; mettez de la poudre sur l'escriture, lors qu'il en sera besoin & ne pliez iamais vostre papier que les characteres ne soient bien desechez, de crainte qu'ils ne s'effacent. In addressing letters to persons held in public esteem, you will be regulated by the Customs of the country and the degree of their dignity. ”

“ If the government of the Republic picked him saying, "You are wanted, your country takes you"— if the Republic put a stethoscope to his heart and looked at his teeth and tested his eyes and said, "You are a citizen of the Republic and a sound [Pg 43] animal in all parts and functions—the Republic takes you"— then to-day the baskets of flowers are all for the Republic, the roses, the songs, the steamboat whistles, the proclamations of the honorable orators— they are all for the Republic. ”

“ THE STATES OF FRANCE were general assemblies of the three states or orders of the kingdom; the Clergy, the Nobility, and the ‘Tiers Etat’, that is, the people. They used to be called together by the King, upon the most important affairs of state, like our Lords and Commons in parliament, and our Clergy in convocation. Our parliament is our states, and the French parliaments are only their courts of justice. ”

“ Such the Liberty of the Press—there is enough to think of. The right of withholding your individual assent to war, the right of choosing delegates to represent you in the assembly of the nation, and that of freely opposing intellectual power, to any measures of Government of which you may disapprove, are in addition to the indifference with which the legislative and the executive power ought to rule their conduct towards professors of every religion enough to think of. ”

“ The freedom of speech and of the press, and that of assembling together to consult upon and discuss matters of public interest, and to join in petitioning for a redress of grievances, are expressly secured by the constitution. ”

“ In all these and the like Cases it was not justified, but that the strict Letter of the Law might be otherwise construed, and when wisely considerd, fit it should be so, yet that it was not safe either for the Kingdom, or person of the King and His Crown, that it should be in express words Sworn against; for if we shall forswear all Distinctions, which ill Men have made ill use of, either in Rebellion, or Heresy, we must extend the Oath to all the particulars of Divinity, and Politiques. ”