Letters, containing an account of the late Revolution in France, and observations on the constitution, lands, manners and institutions of the English. Written during the author's residence at Paris, Versailles, and London, in the years 1789 and 1790. Translated from the German of Henry Frederic Groenvelt
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- James Scarlett
- author
- Samuel Romilly
- author
- Samuel Romilly
- translator
- Joseph Johnson
- publisher
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- Letters, containing an account of the late Revolution in France, and observations on the constitution, lands, manners and institutions of the English. Written during the author's residence at Paris, Versailles, and London, in the years 1789 and 1790. Translated from the German of Henry Frederic Groenvelt paratext
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Notes
The pseudonym Heinrich Friedrich Groenvelt and the German source text referred to in the title are fictional. In reality the work is partly pseudo-translation, partly self-translation.
The volume is a hybrid work, which combines letters on the French Revolution with observations on the British institutions. Dumont wrote the first twelve letters, and Romilly the final ten, with the thirteenth letter written by Romilly's friend, the barrister John Scarlett. It was completed after Dumont's return to England in March 1790, and was published at the end of 1792.
The conceit of having the letters appear in the guise of a translation from German, allowed the three authors to combine an interpretation of contemporary events in France with a guide to the [British] constitution, whose merits and flaws, they believed ought to be dominating the French discussion. These 'Letters' represented the culmination of Dumont's active involvement in the French Revolution, as they were his final attempt to persuade the French legislators of the need to learn from Britain's recent history in order to maintain internal order. Its view was that Britain's constitution divided powers in such a way as to maintain liberty, and that a state constituted in this way would be more likely to sustain a similar balance at the level of relations between states.
Few copies of the book have survived because Romilly tried to destroy every example he could find soon after its publication, as he believed that it was less critical than it ought to have been of the popular violence in France. The 'Letters' stated that civic disorder was explicable because French citizens were unused to liberty, having lived for centuries under monarchical despotism. In the light of the 1792 September massacres, to which several of their friends fell victim, Romilly lost all faith in the French Revolution and sought any prior sentiments he had publicly expressed in support of it. In private correspondence with Romilly, Dumont condemned murder but refused to disavow the 'Letters'.
See Richard Whatmore, 'Etienne Dumont, the British Constitution, and the French Revolution', in The Historical Journal, vol.50, no.1 (Mar 2007), pp.23-47; also Leech, 'Cosmopolitanism', pp.136-138.
Review in the New Annual Register, vol.35 (1792), p.266.