"The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason"

"The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes; to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking of their excesses; and to learn how to recognise and so to destroy, by force of reason, the first seeds of tyranny and superstition, should they ever dare to reappear amongst us."

~ French philosopher & mathematician Marquis de Condorcet, from his 1794 book Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind [hat tip Matthew H]

"The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties"

The French Revolution caused a fundamental schism among Americans whom a decade before fomented their own Revolution: throwing off British rule with the help of the French Crown, who had now been toppled.

Without that help, the American Revolution would have been stillborn. "The French had no no doubt acted in their own self-interest in supporting the United States during the American Revolution," points out intellectual historian C. Bradley Thompson, 

not to mention their centuries-old hatred of Great Britain, but it is likewise true that the Americans almost certainly could not have won their war with Great Britain without the aid of France. In other words, the Americans’ debt of obligation to France was real.

But that royal regime who'd helped had now been swept away by the Parisian mob, and America's Founding Fathers were unsure whether to support the mob's revolutionary cause. Whether the obligation still applied. These were honourable men in a time in which honour mattered, and they wanted to keep their promises. There was one specific point that made answering the question crucial. And that was the question of treaties.

These honourable men began to debate the nature of treaties, and what moral obligations they imposed.

That's what makes their debate — a debate most publicly between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — so relevant to us today in New Zealand.

The specific issue that came to divide America [says Thompson*] concerned its two 1778 treaties with France [particularly once Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain]. During some of the darkest days of the Americans’ war for independence against Great Britain, the infant nation signed a “Treaty of Alliance” and a “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” with France that were important factors in its eventual victory. Sentimentally, morally, and legally, the Americans owed a debt to France. ...
    The two immediate political questions under discussion in 1793 related to the treaties were: 1) were the Gallo-American treaties of 1778 still in effect in 1793, and 2) if they were still actionable, how or in what way did they apply to the current situation?
    What was most remarkable about the ensuing debate in America was that it quickly and automatically turned from a political-diplomatic debate into a moral-political-diplomatic debate about the moral nature and obligations of treaties. Specifically, the fundamental issue was reduced to this question: is the United States morally obliged to fulfill its treaty obligations with France?

That was the question America's first president, George Washington, asked Hamilton and Jefferson to answer. From that question "arose one of the most interesting and complex debates in American political history."

To answer this question, we must step back and ask a series of related or corollary questions. What is a treaty? Are treaties between nations contracts (we’ve already defined what a contract is in “Contracts and the Birth of a Free Society”), and, if so, what kind of contracts are they? If treaties are contracts, must they have identical constituent parts as do other contracts (e.g., property or commercial contracts), or are they a special kind of contract with different conditions and requirements? Who arbitrates treaties when they’re broken? And what were the precise terms of the two treaties signed by France and the United States in 1778 (see above)?
    To understand what a treaty is, we must define its essential characteristics and applications. Samuel Johnson’s 1773 'Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as a “Negotiation; act of treating” and as “A compact of accommodation relating to public affairs.” Noah Webster’s 1828 'American Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as “An agreement, league or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns, formally signed by commissioners properly authorised, and solemnly ratified by the several sovereigns or the supreme power of each state. Treaties are of various kinds, such as treaties for regulating commercial intercourse, treaties of alliance, offensive and defensive, treaties for hiring troops, treaties of peace, etc.”

These definitions encapsulate how treaties were understood in this age.

    By Webster’s definition, we see that treaties are contracts between sovereign nations. Treaties, like contracts, involve an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do or not do certain actions. The promise to do or not do something is a binding moral obligation, and to default on what one has promised is a dereliction of moral responsibility that causes a harm to the other contracting party.
    One major difference between treaties and contracts (at least up until the twentieth century) is that treaties, at least in the context of the eighteenth century, could not be enforced by a neutral third party. There was no international court system in the eighteenth century to adjudicate the violation of treaties. Hence treaties involved honour as the enforcement mechanism, but honour is a weak thread in questions of war and peace.
    Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both viewed treaties as contracts, or at least a certain kind of contract. The main question for Hamilton and Jefferson came down to this: how could the United States remain neutral in the conflict between France and England and still fulfil its treaty obligations to France? More specifically, did the two Gallo-American treaties of 1778 require the United States to defend France’s West Indian possessions? ...

Both Jefferson and Hamilton supported American neutrality. Both Hamilton and Jefferson wanted the new United States to do the honourable thing, to discharge their agreed obligations. And both Jefferson and Hamilton understood that — beyond "the discussion of treaties, alliances, diplomacy, foreign affairs, war, and international law (i.e., the law of nations)" — what their debate was about was "a philosophic contest over the nature of moral obligation," and what those obligations amounted to in this context. In short:

What is America’s moral obligations to uphold it treaties with France? In other words, what is the debt owed by the United States to France?

At bottom, and most relevant to us in New Zealand in the here and now, the question is: what is the nature of a treaty, and what long-lasting obligations does it impose?

Hamilton viewed "contracts with special moral obligations, but he did think treaties between nations were a special kind of contract with their own unique qualities and characteristics and thus with their own unique moral obligations that were somewhat different from those of regular contracts." Jefferson largely agreed. Like Hamilton he 

1) believed that treaties are a species of contract with traits like and unlike contracts between individuals; 

2) viewed treaties as defined by, and grounded in, the sanctity of moral obligations; 

3) supported American neutrality; and 

4) thought that only dire necessity could justify suspending or even renouncing treaties.

By "dire necessity" was meant that only if inevitable destruction would be the outcome. Given the nature the French Revolution, whose violence was only grown and whose outcome was still uncertain, they both came to the conclusion (for differing reasons) that alliance with the revolutionary regime posed too many dangers at present to be prudent.

That said, Jefferson saw the treaties with France as being agreements with the French people, not with the king — "that treaties are made between nations, not between their governments. This meant that nations may change their government or even their form of government without impairing their treaty obligations."

By the moral law of nature, according to Jefferson, the obligations of one man to another in a state of nature are carried forward to the state of society where the aggregate obligations of one society to another mirror those between individuals in and out of society. [Jefferson] argued that treaties between nations carry the same moral obligations via the moral law of nature as do contracts between individuals. But he then admited that some contracts, either between individuals or nations, can be broken when 1) “performance . . . becomes impossible,” and 2) “performance becomes self-destructive to the party.” Non-performance in the former “is not immoral,” according to Jefferson, and the “law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligations” in the latter. ... nations can and should be judges in their own cause in international affairs

There was a "right to self-liberation" from a  treaty, said Jefferson, but it was limited to just three cases:

First, a nation that absolves itself from a treaty must face a “danger” that is “great, inevitable and imminent.” ...
    Second, the right of self-release was limited solely to those clauses in a treaty that would bring “great & inevitable danger on us” but not from the treaty as a whole. ...
    Finally, a nation’s right to self-liberation from a treaty or the relevant parts comes with a moral obligation “to make compensation where the nature of the case admits & does not dispense with it.” Jefferson does not explain what constitutes “compensation” or how or by whom it would be determined, but he does think that a non-fulfilling nation is morally bound to pay some kind of compensation for not fulfilling its treaty obligation.

Hamilton however saw the treaties as being with the banished Bourbon regime, and should be considered therefore "as 'temporarily and provisionally suspended,' particularly if such treaties proved to be “disadvantageous or dangerous.” That the French people had a right to change their government was unarguable; but that right imposed no "right to involve other nations," not even those "with whom it may have had connections, absolutely and unconditionally." 

In such cases, the contracting party had a moral right, according to Hamilton, to “renounce” such treaties as incompatible with and detrimental to their original purposes. In sum, Hamilton argued, “Contracts between nations as between individuals, must lose their force where the considerations fail.”

The two men came to similar conclusions as to what to do, but for different reasons. 

If Hamilton’s strategy were to anticipate future dangers by suspending the treaties or certain articles therein, then Jefferson’s strategy was to delay as much as possible how specific articles of the treaties were to be applied in the present. Here, then, is the core difference between Hamilton and Jefferson: the former wanted to temporarily suspend America’s obligations, whereas the latter wanted to temporarily postpone their obligations.

Importantly, however, neither wanted to repudiate their obligations altogether. They understood there was an agreement, and its terms must be honoured — once action was clear, and not at the cost of their own destruction. As Thompson sums up Hamilton's position: "a treaty is not a suicide pact."

What is most important about the Hamilton-Jefferson debate is not what it tells us about their views on international affairs, diplomacy, foreign policy, or even treaties, but what it tells us about the Founders’ views on the moral status of contracts in a free society. Contracts are the moral ligament that holds a free society together.

* * * * 

* All quotes hereafter from from Thompson's post 'American Schism: The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties'

Bastille Day!

 

Round about now France is waking up to the day that commemorates the storming of the Bastille, the beginning of the end of the Ancien Regime, and of everything good and bad that followed thereafter…

Eugene Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People, 1830

“The French Revolution and the Marseillaise should not be symbols of Liberty.
The art about the French Revolution should definitely be . . .”
~ Sandrine Lonchampt

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”  With those words, and a litany of hope and despair to follow, Charles Dickens began his novel of the French Revolution – the Revolution celebrated today on the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille.

It was the best of times – the Revolution overthrew feudalism.  It was the worst of times – it instituted dictatorship.  It was the best of times – it proclaimed liberty.  It was the worst of times – it enforced equality.  

It was both thrilling and blood-chilling – like the anthem of blood lust to which it gave birth, and which it still so well reflects.

Proclaimed an excited Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and to be young was very heaven”  – but he said it with the protection of La Manche between him and The Terror.  He embraced the Bliss; he dismissed the Destruction.

“To destroy is the task,” said Victor Hugo, “to build is the work. Progress demolishes with the left hand; it is with the right hand that it builds. The left hand of Progress is called Force; the right hand is called Mind.” Both hands brought the French Revolution into the light; it was the left hand that eventually took the spoils.

The French Revolution essentially lasted twenty-five years and spread its Terror across every part of Europe. It started in hope, plunging immediately into murder.  It overturned feudal aristocracy, then embraced fifteen years of military dictatorship. It started with freeing the imprisoned, and delivered a war that bled France and Europe dry.

It started in the Tennis Court at Versailles and ended on the field at Waterloo.  It started with liberty, equality and fraternity, and ended in class warfare and the guillotine.

The French Revolution felt the impact of the American revolution, but misunderstood its message.

In the face of a colonial oppressor the American founding fathers raised a flag reading “Don’t Tread on Me”; in the face of a thousand years of feudalism the French Revolution raised the guillotine.  The Americans threw off their colonial ruler and proclaimed a constitutional republic; the French threw off the miasma of feudalism, and replaced it with the the dead weight of dictatorship. The American Revolution threw up Washington and Jefferson; the French threw up Robespierre and St Just.   

The American Revolution proclaimed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and then set out to protect them; the French Revolution proclaimed the “the General Good”  and set up a Committee of Public Safety to protect them.

As Michael Berliner explains, "Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit"; Robespierre and Marat fought for the principle of the rights of the majority, meaning the the principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation’s rulers. The American Revolutionaries fought to set up a government that protected individual rights; the French to set up a dictatorship protecting “collective rights” and killing “class enemies.” The Americans knew about Cromwell’s Protectorate and sought to avoid it; the French had forgotten it, and were fated to emulate it.

The Americans followed John Locke and Montesqieu and have since forgotten both; the French, Rousseau, whose name is lauded still.

The American Revolution was snatched out of the jaws of history, at a time unique in intellectual development; the French disaster just a few years later shows just how short that historical-intellectual window was.  The lesson of the French Revolution, as Ayn Rand says below, “is that political freedom requires much more than the people's wish [to be free]. It requires an enormously complex knowledge of political theory and of how to implement it in practice.”  America’s founding fathers knew it; her patrons and patricians of today have forgotten it; but France’s Committee of Public Safety never ever learned it. Both overturned a tyranny; the former to erect a government of laws, not of men, and wrote a consitution to give it effect; the latter to replace it with mob rule, The Terror and the committe of Public Safety. It is the American Revolution that has lessons to follow today; the French Revolution is one of many with lessons to avoid.

    It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom [observes Ayn Rand]. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbours or his  leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both.
    This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders' motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world.
    Instead, we are deluding the ignorant and the semi-savage by telling them that no political knowledge is necessary—that our system is only a matter of subjective preference—that any prehistorical form of tribal tyranny, gang rule, and slaughter will do just as well, with our sanction and support.
   It is thus that we encourage the spectacle of Algerian workers marching through the streets [in the 1962 Civil War] and shouting the demand: "Work, not blood!"—without knowing what great knowledge and virtue are required to achieve it.
    In the same way, in 1917, the Russian peasants were demanding: "Land and Freedom!"  But Lenin and Stalin is what they got.
    In 1933, the Germans were demanding: "Room to live!" But what they got was Hitler.
    In 1793, the French were shouting: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" What they got was Napoleon.
    In 1776, the Americans were proclaiming "The Rights of Man"—and, led by political philosophers, they achieved it.
    No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal.

Let’s remember the lessons of the French Revolution today, just as we remember the lessons of the American on July 4th – but let us not forget which of them has the lessons and the political philosophy we (and today’s America) might want to emulate.

Jacques-Louis David, The Tennis Court Oath, 1789 (unfinished)

..

It’s Bastille Day!

It might be Germany’s day on the sports field, but it’s France’s day in history…

Eugene Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People, 1830

The French Revolution and the Marseillaise should not be symbols of Liberty.
The Art about the French Revolution should definitely be . . .
- Sandrine Lonchampt

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”  With those words, and a litany of hope and despair to follow, Charles Dickens began his novel of the French Revolution – the Revolution celebrated today on the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille.

It was the best of times – the Revolution overthrew feudalism.  It was the worst of times – it instituted dictatorship.  It was the best of times – it proclaimed liberty.  It was the worst of times – it enforced equality.  

It was both thrilling and blood-chilling – like the anthem of blood lust to which it gave birth, and which it still so well reflects.

Proclaimed an exited Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and to be young was very heaven”  – but he said it with the protection of La Manche between him and The Terror.  He embraced the Bliss; he dismissed the Destruction.

“To destroy is the task,” said Victor Hugo, “to build is the work.  Progress demolishes with the left hand; it is with the right hand that it builds.  The left hand of Progress is called Force; the right hand is called Mind.”  Both hands raised the French Revolution into the light, but it was the left hand that eventually took the spoils.

The French Revolution essentially lasted twenty-five years, and spread its terror across every part of Europe. It started in hope, plunging immediately into murder.  It overturned feudal aristocracy, then embraced fifteen years of military dictatorship and a war that bled France and Europe dry.

It started in the Tennis Court at Versailles and ended on the field at Waterloo.  It started with liberty, equality and fraternity, and ended in class warfare and the guillotine.

The French Revolution felt the impact of the American revolution, but misunderstood its message.

In the face of a colonial oppressor the American founding fathers raised a flag reading “Don’t Tread on Me”; in the face of a thousand years of feudalism the French Revolution raised the guillotine.  The Americans threw off their colonial ruler and proclaimed a constitutional republic; the French threw off the miasma of feudalism, and replaced it with the the dead weight of dictatorship.  The American inspiration was John Locke; the French was Rousseau. The American Revolution threw up Washington and Jefferson; the French threw up Robespierre and St Just.   

The American Revolution proclaimed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and then set out to protect them; the French Revolution proclaimed the “the General Good”  and set up a Committee of Public Safety to protect them.

As Michael Berliner explains, "Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit"; Robespierre and Marat fought for the principle of the rights of the majority, meaning the the principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation’s rulers. The American Revolutionaries fought to set up a government that protected individual rights; the French to set up a dictatorship that protected “collective rights” – and killed class enemies.  The Americans knew about Cromwell’s Protectorate and sought to avoid it; the French had forgotten it, and were fated to emulate it.

The lesson of the French Revolution, as Ayn Rand says below, “is that political freedom requires much more than the people's wish [to be free]. It requires an enormously complex knowledge of political theory and of how to implement it in practice.”  America’s founding fathers knew it; her patrons and patricians of today have forgotten it; but France’s Committee of Public Safety never learned it.  It is the American Revolution that has lessons to follow today; the French Revolution is one of many that has lessons to avoid.

    It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom [observes Ayn Rand]. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbours or his  leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both.
    This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders' motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world.
    Instead, we are deluding the ignorant and the semi-savage by telling them that no political knowledge is necessary—that our system is only a matter of subjective preference—that any prehistorical form of tribal tyranny, gang rule, and slaughter will do just as well, with our sanction and support.
   It is thus that we encourage the spectacle of Algerian workers marching through the streets [in the 1962 Civil War] and shouting the demand: "Work, not blood!"—without knowing what great knowledge and virtue are required to achieve it.
    In the same way, in 1917, the Russian peasants were demanding: "Land and Freedom!"  But Lenin and Stalin is what they got.
    In 1933, the Germans were demanding: "Room to live!" But what they got was Hitler.
    In 1793, the French were shouting: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" What they got was Napoleon.
    In 1776, the Americans were proclaiming "The Rights of Man"—and, led by political philosophers, they achieved it.
    No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal.

Let’s remember the lessons of the French Revolution today, just as we remember the lessons of the American on July 4th – but let us not forget which of them has the lessons and the political philosophy we (and today’s America) might want to emulate.

Jacques-Louis David, The Tennis Court Oath, 1789 (unfinished)

It’s Bastille Day! [updated]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” They were the words with which Charles Dickens began his novel of the French Revolution – the Revolution celebrated today on the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille.

It was the best of times – the Revolution overthrew feudalism.  It was the worst of times – it instituted dictatorship.  It was the best of times – it proclaimed liberty.  It was the worst of times – it enforced equality.   It was both thrilling and blood-chilling – like the anthem of blood lust to which it gave birth, and which it still so well reflects. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and to be young was very heaven,” said Wordsworth – but he said it with the protection of La Manche between him and The Terror.  He embraced the Bliss; he dismissed the Destruction.

“To destroy is the task,” said Victor Hugo, “to build is the work.  Progress demolishes with the left hand; it is with the right hand that it builds.  The left hand of Progress is called Force; the right hand is called Mind.”  Both hands raised the French Revolution into the light, but it was the left hand that eventually took the spoils.

The French Revolution essentially lasted twenty-five years. It started in hope, and plunged immediately into bloodshed and murder.  It overturned feudal aristocracy and ended in fifteen years of military dictatorship and war all over Europe. It started in the Tennis Court at Versailles and ended on the field at Waterloo.  It started with liberty, equality and fraternity, and ended in class warfare and the guillotine.

The French Revolution felt the impact of the American revolution, but misunderstood its message.

In the face of a colonial oppressor the American founding fathers raised a flag reading “Don’t Tread on Me”; in the face of a thousand years of feudalism the French Revolution raised the guillotine.  The Americans threw off their colonial ruler and proclaimed a constitutional republic; the French threw off the miasma of feudalism, and replaced it with the the dead weight of dictatorship.  The American inspiration was John Locke; the French was Rousseau. The American Revolution threw up Washington and Jefferson; the French threw up Robespierre and St Just.    The American Revolution proclaimed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and then set out to protect them; the French Revolution proclaimed the “the General Good”  and set up a Committee of Public Safety to protect them. As Michael Berliner explains, "Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit"; Robespierre and Marat fought for the principle of the rights of the majority, meaning the the principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation’s rulers. The American Revolutionaries fought to set up a government that protected individual rights; the French to set up a dictatorship that protected “collective rights” – and killed class enemies.  The Americans knew about Cromwell’s Protectorate and sought to avoid it; the French had forgotten it and were fated to emulate it.

The lesson of the French Revolution, as Ayn Rand says below, “is that political freedom requires much more than the people's wish. It requires an enormously complex knowledge of political theory and of how to implement it in practice.”  America’s founding fathers knew that; France’s Committee of Public Safety did not.  It is the American Revolution that has lessons to follow today; the French Revolution is one of many that has lessons to avoid.

    It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his  leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both.
    This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders' motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world.
    Instead, we are deluding the ignorant and the semi-savage by telling them that no political knowledge is necessary—that our system is only a matter of subjective preference—that any prehistorical form of tribal tyranny, gang rule, and slaughter will do just as well, with our sanction and support.
   It is thus that we encourage the spectacle of Algerian workers marching through the streets [in the 1962 Civil War] and shouting the demand: "Work, not blood!"—without knowing what great knowledge and virtue are required to achieve it.
    In the same way, in 1917, the Russian peasants were demanding: "Land and Freedom!"  But Lenin and Stalin is what they got.
    In 1933, the Germans were demanding: "Room to live!" But what they got was Hitler.
    In 1793, the French were shouting: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" What they got was Napoleon.
    In 1776, the Americans were proclaiming "The Rights of Man"—and, led by political philosophers, they achieved it.
    No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal.

Let’s remember the lessons of the French Revolution today, just as we remember the lessons of the American on July 4th – bet let us not forget which of them has lessons and the political philosophy we might want to emulate.

UPDATE:  I love Sandrine’s wonderful, and true, point:

The French Revolution and the Marseillaise should not be symbols of Liberty.
The Art about the French Revolution should definitely be . . .

Which says a whole lot about both art and revolution, when you think about it.

Tricoteuse – William Bougereau (1879)

‘Tricoteuse’ is the French word for someone, especially a woman, who knits.  Someone such as the old women who famously sat and knitted while above them Madame Guillotine carried out her daily shaving  of heads – a ceremony called by some enthusiasts “the red mass.”

So is this just a young girl knitting?  Or, since nothing in art is unintentional, is something more intended?  What clues are there in the painting?

Tennis Court Oath – Jacques Louis David

The Tennis Court Oath, taken by the French National Assembly on June 20 1789, “considering that it has been summoned to establish the constitution of the kingdom.” It ended in a victory for “The Third Estate,” and the beginning of the end for the Monarchy. And lo, a terrible beauty was born.

You can almost see the winds of change blowing through . . .