Col. David Crockett Speaks on Government and Money, Part III

"I have given you," continued Crockett, "an imperfect account of what he said. Long before he was through, I was convinced that I had done wrong. He wound up by saying:

"So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you."

"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition, and this man should go to talking, he would set others to talking, and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and the fact is I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to him:

"Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what you have said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it, than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have given that vote, and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot."

"He laughingly replied: "Yes, Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go round the district, you will tell the people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that way."

"If I don't," said I, "I wish I may be shot; and to convince you that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for it."

"No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, and some to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you."

"Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-by. I must know your name."

"My name is Bunce."

"Not Horatio Bunce?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad that I have met you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend. You must let me shake your hand before I go."

"We shook hands and parted. It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him before, I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition, and been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.

"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.

"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life before.

"It is not exactly pertinent to my story, but I must tell you more about him. When I saw him with his family around him, I was not surprised that he loved to stay at home. I have never in any other family seen a manifestation of so much confidence, familiarity and freedom of manner of children toward their parents mingled with such unbounded love and respect.

"He was not at the house when I arrived, but his wife received and welcomed me with all the ease and cordiality of an old friend. She told me that her husband was engaged in some out-door business, but would be in shortly. She is a woman of fine person; her face is not what the world would at first sight esteem beautiful. In a state of rest there was too much strength and character in it for that, but when she engaged in conversation, and especially when she smiled, it softened into an expression of mingled kindness, goodness, and strength that was beautiful beyond anything I have ever seen.

"Pretty soon her husband came in, and she left us and went about her household affairs. Toward night the children--he had about seven of them-- began to drop in; some from work, some from school, and the little ones from play. They were introduced to me, and met me with the same ease and grace that marked the manner of their mother. Supper came on, and then was exhibited the loveliness of the family circle in all its glow. The father turned the conversation to the matters in which the children had been interested during the day, and all, from the oldest to the youngest, took part in it. They spoke to their parents with as much familiarity and confidence as if they had been friends of their own age, yet every word and every look manifested as much respect as the humblest courtier could manifest for a king; aye, more, for it was all sincere, and strengthened by love. Verily it was the Happy Family.

"I have told you Mr. Bunce converted me politically. He came nearer converting me religiously than I had ever been before. When supper was over, one of the children brought him a Bible and hymn-book. He turned to me and said:

"Colonel, I have for many years been in the habit of family worship night and morning. I adopt this time for it that all may be present. If I postpone it some of us get engaged in one thing and some in another, and the little ones drop off to sleep, so that it is often difficult to get all together."

"He then opened the Bible, and read the Twenty-third Psalm, commencing: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want." It is a beautiful composition, and his manner of reading it gave it new beauties. We then sang a hymn, and we all knelt down. He commenced his prayer "Our Father who art in Heaven." No one who has not heard him pronounce those words can conceive how they thrilled through me, for I do not believe that they were ever pronounced by human lips as by him. I had heard them a thousand times from the lips of preachers of every grade and denomination, and by all sorts of professing Christians, until they had become words of course with me, but his enunciation of them gave them an import and a power of which I had never conceived. There was a grandeur of reverence, a depth of humility, a fullness of confidence and an overflowing of love which told that his spirit was communing face to face with its God. An overwhelming feeling of awe came over me, for I felt that I was in the invisible presence of Jehovah. The whole prayer was grand--grand in its simplicity, in the purity of the spirit it breathed, in its faith, its truth, and its love. I have told you he came nearer converting me religiously than I had ever been before. He did not make a very good Christian of me, as you know; but he has wrought upon my mind a conviction of the truth of Christianity, and upon my feelings a reverence for its purifying and elevating power such as I had never felt before.

"I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him--no, that is not the word--I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year; and I will tell you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.

"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted--at least, they all knew me.

To be continued . . .

Col. David Crockett Speaks on Government and Money, Part II

Previous engagements preventing me from seeing Crockett that night, I went early to his room the next morning, and found him engaged in addressing and franking letters, a large pile of which lay upon his table.

I broke in upon him rather abruptly, by asking him what devil had possessed him to make that speech and defeat that bill yesterday. Without turning his head or looking up from his work, he replied :

"You see that I am very busy now; take a seat and cool yourself. I will be through in a few minutes, and then I will tell you all about it."

He continued his employment for about ten minutes, and when he had finished it turned to me and said:

"Now, sir, I will answer your question. But thereby hangs a tale, and one of considerable length, to which you will have to listen."

I listened, and this is the tale which I heard:

"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. When we got there I went to work, and I never worked as hard in my life as I did there for several hours. But, in spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made houseless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them, and everybody else seemed to feel the same way."

"The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business, and rushed it through as soon as it could be done. I said everybody felt as I did. That was not quite so; for, though they perhaps sympathized as deeply with the sufferers as I did, there were a few of the members who did not think we had the right to indulge our sympathy or excite our charity at the expense of anybody but ourselves. They opposed the bill, and upon its passage demanded the yeas and nays. There were not enough of them to sustain the call, but many of us wanted our names to appear in favor of what we considered a Praiseworthy measure, and we voted with them to sustain it. So the yeas and nays were recorded, and my name appeared on the journals in favor of the bill."

"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up, and I thought it was best to let the boys know that I had not forgot them, and that going to Congress had not made me too proud to go to see them."

"So I put a couple of shirts and a few twists of tobacco into my saddle-bags, and put out. I had been out about a week, and had found things going very smoothly, when, riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up I spoke to the man. 

He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly, and was about turning his horse for another furrow, when I asked him if he could give me a chew of tobacco.

"Yes," said he, "such as we make and use in this part of the country; but it may not suit your taste, as you are probably in the habit of using better."

"With that he pulled out of his pocket part of a twist in its natural state, and handed it to me. I took a chew, and handed it back to him. He turned to his plow, and was about to start off. I said to him: "Don't be in such a hurry, my friend; I want to have a little talk with you, and get better acquainted," He replied:

"I am very busy, and have but little time to talk, but if it does not take too long, I will listen to what you have to say."

"I began: "Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and---"

"Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I shall not vote for you again."

"This was a sockdologer. I had been making up my mind that he was one of those churlish fellows who care for nobody but themselves, and take bluntness for independence. I had seen enough of them to know there is a way to reach them, and was satisfied that if I could get him to talk to me I would soon have him straight. But this was entirely a different bundle of sticks. He knew me, had voted for me before, and did not intend to do it again. Something must be the matter; I could not imagine what it was. I had heard of no complaints against me, except that some of the dandies about the village ridiculed some of the wild and foolish things that I too often say and do, and said that I was not enough of a gentleman to go to Congress. I begged him to tell me what was the matter.

"Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest."

"Thank you for that, but you find fault with only one vote. You know the story of Henry Clay, the old huntsman and the rifle; you wouldn't break your gun for one snap."

"No, nor for a dozen. As the story goes, that tack served Mr. Clay's purpose admirably, though it really had nothing to do with the case. I would not break the gun, nor would I discard an honest representative for a mistake in judgment as a mere matter of policy. But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is."

"I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional question."

"No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live here in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true!"

"Certainly it is, and I thought that was the last vote for which anybody in the world would have found fault with."

"Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity!"

"Here was another sockdologer; for, when I began to think about it, I could not remember a thing in the Constitution that authorized it. I found I must take another tack, so I said:

"Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did."

"It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the Government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the Government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive, what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life. The Congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."

To be continued . . .

Col. David Crockett Speaks on Government and Money, Part I

This narrative is related in "The Life of Colonel David Crockett," by Edward S. Ellis.  Now in the public domain; retrieved from TheAdvocates.org.

I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support, rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put the question, when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support of the bill. He commenced:

"Mr. Speaker -- I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the Government was in arrears to him. This Government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the war of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor, and if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of; but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The Government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

Like many other young men, and old ones too, for that matter, who had not thought upon the subject, I desired the passage of the bill, and felt outraged at its defeat. I determined that I would persuade my friend Crockett to move a reconsideration the next day.

To be continued . . .

Magpul Releases AFG

Yesterday, DrDrake (username) of Magpul announced a very intriguing new product over on M4Carbine.net.  It's called the Magpul AFG - AFG for Angled Vertical Foregrip.  I was talking to some fellows recently about the best solution for a forward rail index point; we agreed that vertical fore grips (VFGs) don't exactly cut the mustard, and a standard handstop, such as that offered by Knight's Armament Co., is A) expensive and B) rather one-dimensional. As they have before, in steps Magpul with what appears to be a very viable solution.  To quote DrDrake:    

"The AFG falls into the category of “Theory Based" products. Simply put, these products are designed to enhance weapon performance and user interface beyond what is currently available. Because these products do not simply replace an existing weapon component, there is an understanding with Theory Based Products that simple plug and play doesn’t apply. They require education by way of instructions, training, and familiarization with the product to become proficient, and only then will the benefits be realized. In addition to the AFG, other products in this category are the B.A.D. Lever, MS2, and ASAP.

The primary difference between the AFG and standard vertical foregrips is weapon controllability. This is a direct result of hand position, grip style and body mechanics. Below is a detailed description of the Theory behind the AFG."

A pic:

A page from the slideshow description found here:

Several more great "live action" pics of Travis Haley using the AFG can be seen here.

Appears to me the AFG is sort of a modified MIAD grap integrated with a KAC Handstop.  A few more details (Again, from DrDrake):

• Retail price $34.95

• Available colors Black, Flat Dark Earth, OD Green and Foliage Green

• Timeline, available in mid December

Oh yeah, it works for AKs and shotguns . . .

Hornady to Manufacture 6.5 Grendel

Very interesting, just found out about this 5 min ago.  It seems this little cartridge is catching on . . . let's see:

1) Bullets - made by anybody and everybody (6.5 is a popular caliber)

2) Brass - Lapua, Hornady (I assume Hornady makes their own)

3) Complete Cartridges - Alexander Arms, Wolf, and now Hornady

Check out the new round here.

The French Revolution: Good or Bad?

Following is an essay I wrote for World History this past spring semester.  Bear in mind this was written for the benefit of a Liberal Arts professor; couple that with the fact that I just generally had fun writing this, it's a rather flowery paper.  I genuinely enjoyed the research; unfortunately, the footnotes I had generously scattered throughout did not translate to Blogger, so you'll have to guess about which information comes from where.  Hope you all will find some of the information beneficial.    

  The question before us is one disputed by historians, would-be philosophers and socio-political theorists alike.  It deals with a national revolution, and the positive consequences - or lack thereof - that resulted from the catastrophic upheaval of one governmental system, a period of terror, and finally the evolution of a new government that was not, in the end, so terribly unlike the first.  The revolution referred to is none other than the French Revolution of 1789; the question: what were the positive consequences of said revolution?  This essay will argue that there were in fact no positive consequences promulgated that justified revolution; while select Revolutionary ideas, such as the Metric system of measurement, have since been employed usefully, certainly nine years of tumult was unnecessary to their invention.  

 

The French Revolution was initially heralded with joy by most in the newly born United States.  The American people, so lately indebted to the French for the securement of their own liberty, were appropriately enthused to learn the French were following suit.  According to one William Maclay, the fall of the Bastille, and the bloody chaos precipitated thereby, were merely the necessary pains that accompanied the beginning of every new life.  “France seems travailing in the birth of freedom,” he wrote.  “Her throes and pangs of labor are violent.  God give her a happy delivery!  Royalty, nobility and vile pageantry . . . seem like to be demolished with their kindred Bastille, which is said to be laid in ashes.”  In England, the Constitutional and Revolution Societies of London conferred their “solemn public seal of sanction” upon the overthrow of the Ancien Regime.

          But there were those who viewed the Revolution with concern.  It seemed to them as though the Revolution had begun in a rather spontaneous, almost “seat of the pants” manner, with nobody really in control of anything and mostly unordered chaos prevailing.  The first news of it was, as historian David McCullough says, “a bolt out of the blue, catching everyone by surprise.”  “Everyone” even includes the newly organized French National Assembly, which was nominally the head of efforts to press for monarchial reform and popular liberty.  Indeed, the storming of the Bastille was far from an organized, glorious assault launched upon the bastions of aristocracy to initiate revolution; it was more the natural consequence of a wildly excited mob - “in which capitalists who wanted to defend their money were mixed with gaol-birds who were only waiting for the opportunity to rob them of it” - suddenly finding itself in possession of some thirty thousand hastily manufactured pikes and thirty thousand hastily appropriated muskets.  One self-proclaimed “conqueror of the Bastille” affirmed that the mob acted without authority or command when he glowingly described the “prodigies of valor” displayed by “this leaderless multitude of persons.”

   It was this very ungoverned mob action that sounded a warning note.  John Adams of the United States, himself a former revolutionary, hoped sincerely “The French Revolution will . . . produce effects in favor of liberty, equity, and humanity as extensive as this whole globe and as lasting as all time;” but he had “learned by awful experience to rejoice with trembling,” for it was in just such tumultuous upheavals as the one in France that “the most fiery spirits and flighty geniuses frequently obtained more influence than men of sense and judgement; and the weakest man may carry foolish measures in opposition to wise ones proposed by the ablest.”

   In England, Irish statesman Edmund Burke had made a name for himself defending the American Revolution in Parliament, but the method fixed upon by the French for ushering in their own liberty struck him as singularly ineffective.  “In one summer they have done their business . . . they have completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufacturers.”  More importantly, the French had “destroyed all balances and counterpoises which serve to fix a state and give it steady direction, and then they melted down the whole into one incongruous mass of mob and democracy [emphasis added].”

If the actions of the mob sounded a warning note, the form taken by the newly established Revolutionary government set clanging a whole host of alarm bells for both Adams and Burke.  According to David McCullough, Adams could not avoid predicting “a tragic outcome, in that a single legislative assembly, as chosen by the French, could only mean ‘great and lasting calamities.’”  Before the Revolution was even underway, Adams had voiced concern over the political philosophies of the French philosophe Turgot, who espoused “collecting all authority into one center, that of the nation,” in a perfect democracy and single legislative body.  As far as Adams could read his history, no perfect democracy had yet existed; from his own experience he knew the utter impracticality of trusting the whole people to decide much of anything - even on the small scale of a village, let alone a nation of thirty million inhabitants.  Edmund Burke agreed: “I do not know under what description to class the present ruling authority in France.  It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy.”  Burke conceded that under the right conditions, and in the right place, a pure democracy might be necessary, even desirable.  But like Adams, he saw no place in history that gave evidence of a successful democracy, even of a “pure” one.  “If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny.”

   Thus we see the early concerns for the direction of the Revolutionary movement.  Have not they been justified?  In the utter debauchery of The Terror, do we not see plainly evidenced the tyrannical reign of a select few over a bloodbath?  It is truly ironic when a revolution in the name of liberty for all proceeds to stamp out with diligent malignancy the liberty of all but a few.  By 1793, France ceased to be a democracy; she now claimed Republican status, though of a definition perhaps never before voiced.  According to Saint-Just, one of the most powerful men in Revolutionary France during the initial Terror, “That which constitutes a republic, is the destruction of all that is opposed to it.”  Precisely as John Adams and Edmund Burke had feared, tyranny was quickly rearing its ugly head.  The infamous Robespierre, when requesting temporary dictatorship, affirmed Saint-Just by declaring, “The principle of the republican government is virtue, and the means required to establish virtue is terror.”

Sixty years later, Frenchman Frederic Bastiat would scathingly write,

“At what a tremendous height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre here place himself! . . . he himself will remake mankind, and by means of terror . . . he wants a dictatorship in order that he may use terror to force upon the country his own principles of morality . . . [and] not until he, Robespierre, shall have accomplished these miracles, as he so rightly calls them, will he permit the law to reign again.”

   

The practical outcome of such views would be the senseless butchery - it can hardly be called murder - of thousands of French people, many of whom were the same poor commoners to whom the Revolution was supposed, originally, to provide succor.  Their crime?  Possibly, in a fit of exasperation, they spoke negatively of the Assembly, or the Revolution itself.  Perhaps, while literally starving, they complained about the high price of bread - or were simply not publicly enthusiastic about said price.  Maybe they wished aloud that it were not quite so necessary to send so many to the guillotine.  Any one of the above was cause enough to be reported, and packed away to prison.  Under such conditions, the prisons became astonishingly full astonishingly quick; the most effective manner of dealing with the situation was simply to convict the prisoners, execute them, and continue the institution of good morals and Republicanism.  According to historian Pierre Gaxotte,

“Fish wives were condemned to death for showing want of respect to the members of popular society, and firemen because they had put out a fire during the siege . . . On the 4^th of December . . . sixty-four young men, bound together two by two, were stood between two parallel ditches which had been dug to serve as their graves.  Facing them were the cannon of the Revolutionary Army . . . the gunners fired, and the condemned men fell in heaps, like a crop that had grown too heavy.  Most of them were only wounded, and the soldiers finished them off with their swords.  Next day there was a fresh massacre, but this time the executioners had larger ideas, for two hundred and nine inhabitants of Lyons were dragged to the fatal spot . . . those whom the grapeshot had spared were smashed to pieces with pickaxes or hatchets.”

   

Such was the virtue imposed by the Revolutionaries!  By the end of the century, it would be their undoing, as both Robespierre and Saint-Just died as they had condemned so many others to die: by that uniquely Revolutionary killing device, the guillotine.  France had passed through fire, sword, and blood, and yet what had been accomplished? “In the course of ten years,” writes French historian Pierre Gaxotte, “the Revolution had falsified all calculations and disappointed all hopes.  The benefits which had been expected of it were an ordered and stable government, sound finance, wise laws, peace abroad and tranquility at home.  Instead of which there had been anarchy, war, communism, the Terror, insolvency, famine and two or three bankruptcies.”  At the beginning of it all, John Adams had questioned, “Will the struggle in Europe be anything other than a change in impostors?”  One might well argue that this was exactly the sum total of what occurred; a monarchy was exchanged for anarchy, then despotism; one flawed way of thinking cashiered for another equally as flawed.  When Napoleon seized the reigns of governance, the Revolution had come full circle: it had begun by toppling the rule of a single man in the name of rule by the people, and it now ended by declaring a single man ruler in the name of the people.  

Frederic Bastiat wrote in the 1840s:

“Frenchmen have led all other Europeans in obtaining their rights - or, more accurately, their political demands.  Yet this fact has in no respect prevented us from being the most governed, the most regulated, the most imposed upon, the most harnessed, and the most exploited people in Europe.  France also leads all other nations as the one where revolutions are constantly to be anticipated.”

This seems hardly a description of a prosperous and bountiful land shepherded by “an ordered and stable government.”  Rather, it describes a land that has yet to recover an even political keel, and is in recurring danger of yet more fighting, yet more bloodshed.  Not surprisingly, France has had no less than eleven constitutions since 1793 - an indication of instability if ever one existed.

So what were the consequences of the Revolution?  It tolled the death knell of the Ancien Regime; it introduced, as Pierre Gaxotte said, communism, and must certainly be reckoned a precursor to the socialist philosophies of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  In 1909, on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, Prince Petr Kropotkin would write, “What we learn from the study of the Great [French] Revolution is that it was the source of all the present communist, anarchist and socialist conceptions.”  One man has said it thus: “If the French Revolution was the end of monarchy and aristocratic privilege . . . it was also the beginnings of modern totalitarian government and large-scale executions of ‘enemies of the People’ by impersonal government entities.”

   

I believe it well safe to say, there were no positive consequences of the French Revolution.

Bibliography:

Bastiat, Frederic. The Law.  Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 2001.

Burke, Edmund, and Thomas Paine. Reflections On The Revolution In France and The Rights Of Man. Garden City: Dolphin Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961.

Gaxotte, Pierre. Translated by Walter Alison Phillips, Litt.D. The French Revolution. London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932.

Keversau, ‘A Conqueror of the Bastille Speaks’, Exploring the French Revolution,

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/searchfr.php? function=find&keyword=bastille&x=0&y=0# (accessed 30 January 2009).

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Rich Geib’s Universe. The French Revolution. 

http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/ french/french.html (accessed 30 January 2009).

ACR Update

Thought some of you fellows might be interested in this.  In a recent e-mail, Bushmaster announced:

"The ACR testing and analysis programs are running right on schedule. We are running it through every imaginable scenario to ensure that it’s absolutely ready to be released. Each day brings us closer and closer to the official launch, which is tentatively in the first half of 2010."

Note that the e-mail comes from Bushmaster, but Remington is the company with the pictures and gun specs online.  I don't know what to call this thing anymore . . . Magpul/Bushmaster/Remington Masada/ACR.  Some guys online are saying that Remington will handle the military contracts, Bushmaster will take care of the civilians.    

By the by, I just checked Bushmaster’s webpage, and they have updated the “ACR Product Update” tab to include the above statement with a new picture of the ACR that looks like it’s straight from Remington’s Military site.  So far as I know, this has been done fairly recently - within the last week or so, maybe two.    

Anyhow, it's an interesting rifle, a bit less novel now than when Magpul first announced its development at SHOT way back in 2007.  One of the main distinguishing characteristics of Magpul's original design was the capability to fire either 5.56x45 NATO or 7.62x39 "Commie" ammo with just a few parts swaps, and the very neat ability (as I understand it) to utilize standard Kalashnikov magazines, rather than the NATO modified type of the sort used in most 7.62x39 AR-15 style rifles.  

I don't know that Remington/Bushmaster will retain this intriguing function, but I will definitely be looking forward to the ACR release nonetheless.    

A brief history in pics:

"Bagman" promo from SHOT 2007.  This was based on the 5.56/7.62 concept originally developed by Magpul.  According to a Discovery Channel "FutureWeapons" episode featuring the (then) Masada, the idea was that US operators or their allies could leave a very "light footprint" in hostile territory by using the enemy's ammunition.  No 5.56 NATO brass laying around means it is much easier to "blend in" to your surroundings and remain anonymous - thus becoming a sort of "bagman."  For some reason, Picasa inverts the colors - weird, but I think you can get the general idea.

Poster by Magpul comparing the Masada to the other primary competitors of yesteryear - the M4, the SCAR, and the XM8.  The HKXM8 is no more; but the M4 and the SCAR are definitely out there.  PDF files won't upload to blogger, but go here and you can see it.

A pic of the Masada.

Very neat folding stock.  

Note the rail system.  The Magpul Masada originally had a forward handgrip that reminds me of the MOE - doesn't come with rails, but you can attach them yourself.

The Bushmaster flyer for what had become the "Bushmaster ACR"

The current flyer for the "Remington ACR."  Whereas the Masada had different forward grips for different configurations, the ACR apparently has a one-size-fits all grip.  Integral rails come standard.

Some action shots

Here's hoping the ACR will finally come to fruition.