Elsie Godin Canonball

Elsie Godin

03.31.2011

Canonball: "Remonstrance to the French Legislators" (27 April 1796)

The Samuel Taylor Coleridge text provided in Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak’s, British Literature 1780-1830, is limited to his more famous poems, a few political and religious prose, letters to friends (such as Southey, William Godwin and Thomas Poole), and a handful of the lectures he produced. While not every poet is offered a near four page bibliographical entry and a section spanning eighty-three pages long there are still gaps in Coleridge’s most engaging works which is why what is provided needs to be paid special attention to. As the question of Romanticism and what it means becomes a progressively more difficult question to answer it is important to keep in mind the foundation of Romantic period works in perspective. Coleridge’s “Remonstrance to the French Legislator’s” (27 April 1796) is a key foundation piece into the later poems and texts that would be produced.

Coleridge’s “Remonstrance” was first seen in the political newspaper, The Watchman, which was published every eight days to avoid the stamp tax on weekly journals and unfortunately only lived to see ten issues made. The motto of the paper was “That all may know the truth, and that the truth may make us free,” (692) and is quite telling of many of Coleridge’s political beliefs. The Watchman recorded Coleridge’s personal struggle to come to terms with the changing political landscape of Europe after France had lost its allure as a center of advanced social and political experiment and had reverted back to acting as just another tyrannical oppressor of its people and a dangerous aggressor against its neighbors.

It is important to keep in mind, before delving into Coleridge’s “Remonstrance”—which appeared just a few weeks before Watchman ceased publication—, that during the 1795 to ’96 period France saw the abolition of slavery, freedom of worship was established, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of Milan of which resulted in a rampage of pillaging and crimes against the Italian people—Napoleon would later become commander of Italy and take Paris as well—the Treaty of Basel France compelled Spain to withdraw from the anti-France coalition and Spain would later become allies with France, Thomas Paine defended the principal of universal suffrage at the Constitutional Convention in Paris, Spain signed a peace treaty with France and ceded Santo Domingo to France, Napoleon would go to war with Austria and win, and 1796 would end with Napoleon sending a French expedition to Ireland, intending to cause an uprising against England. For France, it was an exceptionally busy two years and for Coleridge, it was a quick decline of the French Revolutionary ideas that had been the burgeoning morals so early expressed by those wishing the disbandment of the monarchy. In response to all this, Coleridge produced “Remonstrance” which was a rejoinder to France’s rejection of England’s proposition to begin peace negotiations. With other prose along the same vein readers of Coleridge have always been confronted with a daunting problem in the sheer volume and incredible variety of his writings. His career as an intellectual figure spans several decades and encompasses major works in—but not limited to—poetry, criticism, philosophy, and theology.

Deeply troubled by reading the correspondence between representatives of the British government and the Directoire, published in English newspapers in mid-April, Coleridge drafted “Remonstrance.” He inferred from the rejection that the French were no longer motivated by the interest of humanity as a whole but rather by ambition that is, by the narrow self-interest and self-glorification of a single nation. “Remonstrance” censures the arrogant rejection of British peace offers and their legal restrictions on the right of assembly and the freedom of the press. Coleridge prophetically warns that the curtailment of civil liberties in France could result in the betrayal of revolutionary ideology, the rise of military dictatorship, and “the slavery of all Europe!” (693). Coleridge’s increasing estrangement with the French Revolution would find its climactic statement in “France, an Ode” (1798), which marks his final renunciation of faith in the revolutionary process.

Throughout “Remonstrance” Coleridge calls on his readers to think of “human kind” and “mankind” (692) and how others have, like “America”, emancipated themselves, “from the oppressive capriciousness of her old and doting Foster-Mother,” (692). He laments the fact that France no longer has “lovers of Mankind” who were “fired and exalted by their [kinsman’s] example: each heart proudly expatriated itself, and we heard with transport of the victories of Frenchmen, as the victories of Human Nature,” (692). Coleridge talks about people as a whole, he does not divide by religion or class or race but appeals to the intellectual mind and that Frances approach should be more universal, it should “[legislate] for the world,” (692). Coleridge talks in a more universal way as if all countries are uniting—and should—under the role of “mankind”.

Coleridge also makes an appeal for the system saying that, “a few years only of Peace would so increase your population and multiply your resources, as to place you beyond all danger of attack,” (693) which is perhaps counterintuitive to the idea of peace in general but also is Coleridge’s way of assuaging the anti-French Revolutionary leaders fear of being double-crossed in the event that they take a passive approach to the current political upheaval. The true depth of Coleridge’s argument comes forward in his quoting of Marquis de Condorcet who wrote in his Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795) that mankind should “dare to foresee in the ages that will succeed us, a knowledge and a happiness of which we can only form a vague and undetermined idea,” (693) to which Coleridge follows up by saying that “[these] are the revolutionary measures which Wisdom prescribes—not the intrigues of your Emissaries, not the terror of your arms,” (693). Coleridge demands his fellow “human kind” who would so quickly jump to arms to ask themselves if the should not, “tremble and weep beneath the stern necessity, that should command [them] to issue the mandate for the death even of one man—alas! what if for the death of perhaps half-a-million?” (692). If they—human kind—are unable to do so without trembling or weeping then in Coleridge’s opinion they should not send their brethren out to fight.

By the end of “Remonstrance” Coleridge asks the French Legislators a series of questions, essentially interrogations of how they can justify banning an army together, of distressing the poor, of how they can let the new generation feel more sympathetic to the recently unsettled royalty, how they can destroy freedom while simultaneously trying to preserve it, and limit the liberty of the press. Coleridge makes a final plea with the Legislators, “in the name of Posterity we adjure you to consider, that misused success is soon followed by adversity, and that the adversity of France may lead, in its train of consequences, [to] the slavery of all Europe!” (693) so that they might remember that he “speaks in the name of human kind” (692) in defense of all of their liberties.

“Remonstrance” is a solid foundation piece in which to begin understanding Coleridge’s beliefs for, after the folding of The Watchman, he begins to have a shift in his beliefs and writings. Coleridge makes no class distinction within “Remonstrance” nor uses religion to appeal to the Legislators better sensibilities and he talks of universal themes that are as nonthreatening as can be to a body that seeks to keep the French Revolution from gaining any more foothold than it all ready has. While “Remonstrance” is not the strongest piece written by Coleridge it is one of the most impassioned because of its proletarian approach. Like Watchman, “Remonstrance” was meant to be as accessible to as many people as possible in order for the largest group to understand the damage in which the Legislator wished to inflict on the progressive tract the country had been following.

Words: 1,322

--Elsiemg 23:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)