Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time Part 6

At a later period, the popular party, who neither thought nor spoke on the subject in 1817, adopted this argument in their turn, and charged, on this same accusation of political monopoly for the benefit of the middle cla.s.ses, their chief complaint, not only against the electoral law, but against the entire system of government of which that law was the basis and guarantee.

I collect my reminiscences, and call back my impressions. From 1814 to 1848, under the government of the Restoration, and under that of July, I loudly supported and more than once had the honour of carrying this flag of the middle cla.s.ses, which was naturally my own. What did we understand by it? Have we ever conceived the design, or even admitted the thought, that the citizens should become a newly privileged order, and that the laws intended to regulate the exercise of suffrage should serve to found the predominance of the middle cla.s.ses by taking, whether in right or fact, all political influence, on one side from the relics of the old French aristocracy, and on the other from the people?

Such an attempt would have been strangely ignorant and insane. It is neither by political theories nor articles in laws, that the privileges and superiority of any particular cla.s.s are established in a State.

These slow and pedantic methods are not available for such a purpose; it requires the force of conquest or the power of faith. Society is exclusively controlled by military or religious ascendency; never by the influence of the citizens. The history of all ages and nations is at hand to prove this to the most superficial observer.

In our day, the impossibility of such a predominance of the middle cla.s.ses is even more palpable. Two ideas const.i.tute the great features of modern civilization, and stamp it with its formidable activity; I sum them up in these terms:--There are certain universal rights inherent in man's nature, and which no system can legitimately withhold from any one; there are individual rights which spring from personal merit alone, without regard to the external circ.u.mstances of birth, fortune, or rank, and which every one who has them in himself should be permitted to exercise. From the two principles of legal respect for the general rights of humanity, and the free development of natural gifts, ill or well understood, have proceeded, for nearly a century, the advantages and evils, the great actions and crimes, the advances and wanderings which revolutions and Governments have alternately excited in the bosom of every European community. Which of these two principles provokes or even permits the exclusive supremacy of the middle cla.s.ses? a.s.suredly neither the one nor the other. One opens to individual endowments every gate; the other demands for every human being his place and his portion: no greatness is unattainable; no condition, however insignificant, is counted as nothing. Such principles are irreconcilable with exclusive superiority; that of the middle cla.s.ses, as of every other, would be in direct contradiction to the ruling tendencies of modern society.

The middle cla.s.ses have never, amongst us, dreamed of becoming privileged orders; and no rational mind has ever indulged in such dreams for them. This idle accusation is but an engine of war, erected under cover of a confusion of ideas, sometimes by the hypocritical dexterity, and at others by the blind infatuation of party spirit. But this does not prevent its having been, or becoming again, fatal to the peace of our social system; for men are so constructed that chimerical dangers are the most formidable they can encounter: we fight boldly with tangible substances, but we lose our heads, either from fear or anger, when in presence of phantoms.

It was with real dangers that we had to cope in 1817, when we discussed the electoral system of France. We saw the most legitimate principles and the most jealous interests of the new state of society indistinctly menaced by a violent reaction. We felt the spirit of revolution spring up and ferment around us, arming itself, according to old practice, with n.o.ble incentives, to cover the march and prepare the triumph of the most injurious pa.s.sions. By instinct and position, the middle cla.s.ses were the best suited to struggle with the combined peril. Opposed to the pretensions of the old aristocracy, they had acquired, under the Empire, ideas and habits of government. Although they received the Restoration with some mistrust, they were not hostile to it; for under the rule of the Charter, they had nothing to ask from new revolutions. The Charter was for them the Capitol and the harbour; they found in it the security of their conquests, and the triumph of their hopes. To turn to the advantage of the ancient monarchy, now become const.i.tutional, this anti-revolutionary state of the middle cla.s.ses, to secure their co-operation with that monarchy by giving them confidence in their own position, was a line of policy clearly indicated by the state of facts and opinions. Such was the bearing of the electoral bill of 1817. In principle this bill cut short the revolutionary theories of the supremacy of numbers, and of a specious and tyrannical equality; in fact, it brought the new society under shelter from the threats of counter-revolution. a.s.suredly, in proposing it, we had no intention of establis.h.i.+ng any antagonism between the great and small proprietors; but when the question was so laid down, we evinced no hesitation; we supported the bill firmly, by maintaining that the influence, not exclusive but preponderating, of the middle cla.s.ses was confirmed, on one side by the spirit of free inst.i.tutions, and on the other in conformity with the interests of France as the Revolution had changed her, and with the Restoration itself as the Charter had defined when proclaiming it.

The election bill occupied the session of 1816. The bill for recruiting was the great subject and work of the session of 1817. The right-hand party opposed it with vehement hostility: it disputed their traditions and disturbed their monarchical tendencies. But the party had to contest with a minister as imperturbable in his convictions and will as in his physiognomy. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had a powerful, original, and straightforward mind, with no great combination of ideas, but pa.s.sionately wedded to those which emanated from himself. He had resolved to give back to France what she no longer possessed--an army.

And an army in his estimate was a small nation springing from the large one, strongly organized, formed of officers and soldiers closely united, mutually knowing and respecting each other, all having defined rights and duties, and all well trained by solid study or long practice to serve their country effectually when called upon.

Upon this idea of an army, according to the conception of Marshal St.

Cyr, the principles of his bill were naturally framed. Every cla.s.s in the State was required to a.s.sist in the formation of this army. Those who entered in the lowest rank were open to the highest, with a certain advantage in the ascending movement of the middle cla.s.ses. Those who were ambitious of occupying at once a higher step, were compelled in the first instance to pa.s.s certain examinations, and then to acquire by close study the particular knowledge necessary to their post. The term of service, active or in reserve, was long, and made military life in reality a career. The obligations imposed, the privileges promised, and the rights recognized for all, were guaranteed by the bill.

Besides these general principles, the bill had an immediate result which St. Cyr ardently desired. It enrolled again in the new army, under the head of veterans and reserve, the remains of the old discharged legions, who had so heroically endured the penalty of the errors committed by their crowned leader. It effaced also, in their minds, that reminiscence of a distasteful past, while by a sort of special Charter it secured their future.

No one can deny that this plan for the military organization of France, embraced grand ideas and n.o.ble sentiments. Such a bill accorded with the moral nature and political conduct of Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who possessed an upright soul, a proud temperament, monarchical opinions, and republican manners; and who, since 1814, had given equal proofs of loyalty and independence. When he advocated it in the tribune, when, with the manly solemnity and disciplined feeling of an experienced warrior, at once a sincere patriot and a royalist, he recapitulated the services and sufferings of that nation of old soldiers which he was anxious for a few years longer to unite with the new army of France, he deeply moved the public and the Chambers; and his powerful language, no less than the excellent propositions of his bill, consecrated it on the instant in the affectionate esteem of the country.

Violently attacked in 1818, Marshal St. Cyr's recruiting bill has been since that date several times criticised, revised, and modified. Its leading principles have resisted a.s.sault, and have survived alteration.

It has done more than last, through soundness of principle; it has given, by facts, an astounding denial to its adversaries. It was accused of striking a blow at the monarchy; on the contrary, it has made the army more devotedly monarchical than any that France had ever known,--an army whose fidelity has never been shaken, either in 1830 or 1848, by the influence of popular opinion, or the seduction of a revolutionary crisis. Military sentiment, that spirit of obedience and respect, of discipline and devotion, one of the chief glories of human nature, and the necessary pledge of the honour as of the safety of nations, had been powerfully fomented and developed in France by the great wars of the Revolution and the Empire. It was a precious inheritance of those rough times which have bequeathed to us so many burdens. There was danger of its being lost or enfeebled in the bosom of peaceful inaction, and during endless debates on liberty. It has been firmly maintained in the army which the law of 1818 established and incessantly recruits. This military sentiment is not only preserved; it has become purified and regulated. By the honesty of its promises and the justice of its arrangements in matters of privilege and promotion, the bill of Marshal St. Cyr has imbued the army with a permanent conviction of its rights, of its own legal and individual rights, and, through that feeling, with an instinctive attachment to public order, the common guarantee of all rights. We have witnessed the rare and imposing sight of an army capable of devotion and restraint, ready for sacrifices, and modest in pretension, ambitious of glory, without being athirst for war, proud of its arms, and yet obedient to civil authority. Public habits, the prevailing ideas of the time, and the general character of our civilization have doubtless operated much upon this great result; but the bill of Marshal St. Cyr has had its full part, and I rejoice in recording this honourable distinction, which, amongst so many others, belongs to my old and glorious friend.

The session of 1818, which opened in the midst of a ministerial crisis, had to deal with another question not more important, but even more intricate and dangerous. The Cabinet determined to leave the press no longer under an exceptional and temporary law. M. de Serre, at that time Chancellor, introduced three bills on the same day, which settled definitively the penalty, the method of prosecution, and the qualification for publis.h.i.+ng, in respect to the daily papers, while at the same time they liberated them from all censors.h.i.+p.

I am one of those who have been much a.s.sisted and fiercely attacked by the press. Throughout my life, I have greatly employed this engine. By placing my ideas publicly before the eyes of my country, I first attracted her attention and esteem. During the progress of my career, I have ever had the press for ally or opponent; and I have never hesitated to employ its weapons, or feared to expose myself to its blows. It is a power which I respect and recognize willingly, rather than compulsorily, but without illusion or idolatry. Whatever may be the form of government, political life is a constant struggle; and it would give me no satisfaction--I will even say more--I should feel ashamed of finding myself opposed to mute and fettered adversaries. The liberty of the press is human nature displaying itself in broad daylight, sometimes under the most attractive, and at others under the most repelling aspect; it is the wholesome air that vivifies, and the tempest that destroys, the expansion and impulsive power of steam in the intellectual system. I have ever advocated a free press; I believe it to be, on the whole, more useful than injurious to public morality; and I look upon it as essential to the proper management of public affairs, and to the security of private interests. But I have witnessed too often and too closely its dangerous aberrations as regards political order, not to feel convinced that this liberty requires the restraint of a strong organization of effective laws and of controlling principles. In 1819, my friends and I clearly foresaw the necessity of these conditions; but we laid little stress upon them, we were unable to bring them all into operation, and we thought, moreover, that the time had arrived when the sincerity as well as the strength of the restored monarchy was to be proved by removing from the press its previous shackles, and in risking the consequences of its enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

The greater part of the laws pa.s.sed with reference to the press, in France or elsewhere, have either been acts of repression, legitimate or illegitimate, against liberty, or triumphs over certain special guarantees of liberty successively won from power, according to the necessity or opportunity of gaining them. The legislative history of the press in England supplies a long series of alternations and arrangements of this cla.s.s.

The bills of 1819 had a totally different character. They comprised a complete legislation, conceived together and beforehand, conformable with certain general principles, defining in every degree liabilities and penalties, regulating all the conditions as well as the forms of publication, and intended to establish and secure the liberty of the press, while protecting order and power from its licentiousness;--an undertaking very difficult in its nature, as all legislative enactments must be which spring from precaution more than necessity, and in which the legislator is inspired and governed by ideas rather than commanded and directed by facts. Another danger, a moral and concealed danger, also presented itself. Enactments thus prepared and maintained become works of a philosopher and artist, the author of which is tempted to identify himself with them through an impulse of self-love, which sometimes leads him to lose sight of the external circ.u.mstances and practical application he ought to have considered. Politics require a certain mixture of indifference and pa.s.sion, of freedom of thought and restrained will, which is not easily reconciled with a strong adhesion to general ideas, and a sincere intent to hold a just balance between the many principles and interests of society.

I should be unwilling to a.s.sert that in the measures proposed and pa.s.sed in 1819, on the liberty of the press, we had completely avoided these rocks, or that they were in perfect harmony with the state of men's minds, and the exigencies of order at that precise epoch. Nevertheless, after an interval of nearly forty years, and on reconsidering these measures now with my matured judgment, I do not hesitate to look on them as grand and n.o.ble efforts of legislation, in which the true points of the subject were skilfully embraced and applied, and which, in spite of the mutilation they were speedily doomed to undergo, established an advance in the liberty of the press, properly understood, which sooner or later cannot fail to extend itself.

The debate on these bills was worthy of their conception. M. de Serre was gifted with eloquence singularly exalted and practical. He supported their general principles in the tone of a magistrate who applies, and not as a philosopher who explains them. His speech was profound without abstraction, highly coloured but not figurative; his reasoning resolved itself into action. He expounded, examined, discussed, attacked, or replied without literary or even oratorical preparation, carrying up the strength of his arguments to the full level of the questions, fertile without exuberance, precise without dryness, impa.s.sioned without a shadow of declamation, always ready with a sound answer to his opponents, as powerful on the impulse of the moment as in prepared reflection, and, when once he had surmounted a slight hesitation and slowness at the first onset, pressing on directly to his end with a firm and rapid step, and with the air of a man deeply interested, but careless of personal success, and only anxious to win his cause by communicating to his listeners his own sentiments and convictions.

Different adversaries presented themselves during the debate, from those who had opposed the bills for elections and recruiting the army. The right-hand party attacked the two latter propositions; the left a.s.sailed the measures regarding the press. MM. Benjamin Constant, Manuel, Chauvelin, and Bignon, with more parliamentary malice than political judgment, overwhelmed them with objections and amendments slightly mingled with very qualified compliments. Recent elections had lately readmitted into the a.s.sembly these leaders of the Liberals in the Chamber of the Hundred Days. They seemed to think of nothing but how to bring once more upon the scene their party, for three years beaten down, and to re-establish their own position as popular orators. Some of the most prominent ideas in the drawing up of these three bills, were but little in conformity with the philosophic and legislative traditions which since 1791 had become current on the subject. They evidently comprised a sincere wish to guarantee liberty, and a strong desire not to disarm power. It was a novel exhibition to see Ministers frankly recognizing the liberty of the press, without offering up incense on its shrine, and a.s.suming that they understood its rights and interests better than its old wors.h.i.+ppers. In the opposition of the left-hand party at this period, there was much of routine, a great deal of complaisance for the prejudices and pa.s.sions of the press attached to their party, and a little angry jealousy of a cabinet which permitted liberal innovation. The public, unacquainted with political factions, were astonished to see bills so vehemently opposed which diminished the penalties in force against the press, referred to a jury all offences of that cla.s.s, and liberated the journals from the censors.h.i.+p,--measures which in their eyes appeared too confident. The right-hand party held dexterously aloof, rejoicing to see the Ministers at issue with reviving opponents who were likely soon to become their most formidable enemies.

It was during this debate that I ascended the tribune for the first time. M. Cuvier and I had been appointed, as Royal Commissioners, to support the proposed measures,--a false and weak position, which demonstrates the infancy of representative government. We do not argue politics as we plead a cause or maintain a thesis. To act effectively in a deliberative a.s.sembly, we must ourselves be deliberators; that is to say, we must be members, and hold our share with others in free thought, power, and responsibility. I believe that I acquitted myself with propriety, but coldly, of the mission I had undertaken. I sustained, against M. Benjamin Constant, the general responsibility for the correctness of the accounts given of the proceedings of the Chambers, and, against M. Daunou, the guarantees required by the bill for the establishment of newspapers. The Chamber appeared to appreciate my arguments, and listened to me with attention. But I kept on the reserve, and seldom joined in the debate; I have no turn for incomplete positions and prescribed parts. When we enter into an arena in which the affairs of a free country are discussed, it is not to make a display of fine thoughts and words; we are bound to engage in the struggle as true and earnest actors.

As the recruiting bill had established a personal and political reputation for Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, so the bills on the press effected the same for M. de Serre. Thus, at the issue of a violent crisis of revolution and war, in presence of armed Europe, and within the short s.p.a.ce of three sessions, the three most important questions of a free system--the construction of elective power, the formation of a national army, and the interference of individual opinions in public affairs through the channel of the press--were freely proposed, argued, and resolved; and their solution, whatever might be the opinion of parties, was certainly in harmony with the habits and wishes of that honest and peaceably disposed majority of France who had sincerely received the King and the Charter, and had adopted their government on mature consideration.

During this time, many other measures of const.i.tutional organization, or general legislation, had been accomplished or proposed. In 1818, an amendment of M. Royer-Collard settled the addition to the budget of an annual law for the supervision of public accounts; and in the course of the following year, two ministers of finance, the Baron Louis and M. Roy, brought into operation that security for the honest appropriation of the revenue. By the inst.i.tution of smaller "Great-books" of the national debt, the state of public credit became known in the departments. Other bills, although laid before the Chambers, produced no result; three, amongst the rest, may be named: on the responsibility of Ministers, on the organization of the Chamber of Peers into a court of justice, and on the alteration of the financial year to avoid the provisional vote of the duty. Others again, especially applicable to the reform of departmental and parochial administrations, and to public instruction, were left in a state of inquiry and preliminary discussion. Far from eluding or allowing important questions to linger, the Government laboriously investigated them, and forestalled the wishes of the public, determined to submit them to the Chambers as soon as they had collected facts and arranged their own plans.

I still preserve a deep remembrance of the State Council in which these various bills were first discussed. This Council had not then any defined official existence or prescribed action in the const.i.tution of the country; politics nevertheless were more prominently argued there, and with greater freedom and effect, than at any other time; every shade, I ought rather to say every variation, of the royalist party, from the extreme right to the edge of the left, were there represented; the politicians most in repute, the leaders of the majority in the two a.s.semblies, were brought into contact with the heads of administration, the old senators of the Empire, and with younger men not yet admissible to the Chambers, but introduced by the Charter into public life.

MM. Royer-Collard, de Serre, and Camille Jordan sat there by the side of MM. Simeon, Portalis, Mole, Berenger, Cuvier, and Allent; and MM. de Barante, Mounier, and myself deliberated in common with MM. de Ballainvilliers, Laporte-Lalanne, and de Blaire, unswerving representatives of the old system. When important bills were examined by the Council, the Ministers never failed to attend. The Duke de Richelieu often presided at the general sittings. The discussion was perfectly free, without oratorical display or pretension, but serious, profound, varied, detailed, earnest, erudite, and at the same time practical. I have heard Count Berenger, a man of disputatious and independent temper, and a quasi-republican under the Empire, maintain there, with ingenious and imposing subtlety, universal suffrage, and distinctions of qualification for voting, against direct election and the concentrated right of suffrage. MM. Cuvier, Simeon, and Allent were the constant defenders of traditional and administrative influence. My friends and I argued strongly for the principles and hopes of liberty strongly based, which appeared to us the natural consequences of the Charter and the necessary conditions for the prosperity of the Restoration. Reforms in criminal legislation, the application of trial by jury to offences of the press, the introduction of the elective principle into the munic.i.p.al system, were argued in the Council of State before they were laid before the Chambers. The Government looked to the Council, not only for a study of all questions, but for a preparatory and amicable experience of the ideas, desires, and objections it was destined to encounter at a later period, in a rougher contest, and a more tumultuous theatre.

The Cabinet, composed as it was at the time when the decree of the 5th of September, 1816, appeared, was not equal to that line of policy, continually increasing in moderation, sometimes resolutely, liberal, and, if not always provident, at least perpetually active. But the same progress which accompanied events, affected individuals. During the course of the year 1817, M. Pasquier, Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, and M. Mole replaced M. Dambray, the Duke of Feltri, and M. Dubouchage in the departments of justice, war, and the marine. From that time the Ministers were not deficient either in internal unity, or in parliamentary and administrative talent. They endeavoured to infuse the same qualities into all the different branches and gradations of government, and succeeded tolerably in the heart of the State. Without reaction or any exclusive spirit, they surrounded themselves with men sincerely attached to a const.i.tutional policy, and who by their character and ability had already won public esteem. They were less firm and effective in local administration; although introducing more changes than are generally believed, they were unable to reconcile them with their general policy. In many places, acts of violence, capricious temper, haughty inexperience, offensive pretension and frivolous alarm, with all the great and little party pa.s.sions which had possessed the Government of 1815, continued to weigh upon the country. These proceedings kept up amongst the tranquil population a strong sentiment of uneasiness, and sometimes excited active malcontents to attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, amplified at first with interested or absurd credulity, repressed with unmitigated rigour, and subsequently discussed, denied, extenuated, and reduced almost to nothing by never-ending explanations and counter-charges. From thence arose the mistakes, prejudices, and false calculations of the local authorities; while the supreme powers a.s.sumed alternately airs of levity or weakness, which made them lose, in the eyes of the mult.i.tude, the credit of that sound general policy from which they, the ma.s.ses, experienced little advantage. The occurrences at Lyons in June 1817, and the long debates of which they became the subject after the mission of redress of the Duke of Ragusa, furnish a lamentable example of the evils which France at this period had still to endure, although at the head of government the original cause had disappeared.

Things are more easily managed than men. These same Ministers, who were not always able to compel the prefects and mayors to adopt their policy, and who hesitated to displace them when they were found to be obstinate or incapable, were ever prompt and effective when general administration was involved, and measures not personal were necessary for the public interest. On this point, reflection tells me that justice has not been rendered to the Government of the day; religious establishments, public instruction, hospital and prison discipline, financial and military administration, the connection of power with industry and commerce, all the great public questions, received from 1816 to 1820 much salutary reform and made important advances. The Duke de Richelieu advocated an enlightened policy and the public good; he took pride in contributing to both. M. Laine devoted himself with serious and scrupulous anxiety to the superintendence of the many establishments included in his department, and laboured to rectify existing abuses or to introduce salutary limitations. The Baron Louis was an able and indefatigable minister, who knew to a point how regularity could be established in the finances of the State, and who employed for that object all the resources of his mind and the unfettered energy of his will. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had, on every branch of military organization, on the formation and internal system of the different bodies, on the scientific schools as well as on the material supplies, ideas at once systematic and practical, derived either from his general conception of the army or from long experience; and these he carried into effect in a series of regulations remarkable for the unity of their views and the profound knowledge of their details. M. Decazes was endowed with a singularly inquiring and inventive mind in seeking to satisfy doubts, to attempt improvements, to stimulate emulation and concord for the advantage of all social interests, of all cla.s.ses of citizens, in connection with the Government; and these combined objects he invariably promoted with intelligent, amiable, and eager activity. In a political point of view, the Administration left much to regret and to desire; but in its proper sphere it was liberal, energetic, impartial, economical from probity and regularity, friendly to progress at the same time that it was careful of order, and sincerely impressed with the desire of giving universal prevalence to justice and the public interest.[14]

Here was undoubtedly a sensible and sound Government, in very difficult and lamentable circ.u.mstances; and under such rule the country had no occasion to lament the present or despair of the future. Nevertheless this Government gained no strength by permanence; its enemies felt no discouragement, while its friends perceived no addition to their power or security. The Restoration had given peace to France, and laboured honestly and successfully to restore her independence and rank in Europe. Under this flag of stability and order, prosperity and liberty sprang up again together. Still the Restoration was always a disputed question.

If we are to believe its enemies, this evil was inherent and inevitable.

According to them the old system, the emigrants, the foreigners, the hatreds and suspicions of the Revolution devoted the House of Bourbon to their obstinately precarious situation. Without disputing the influence of such a fatal past, I cannot admit that it exercised complete empire over events, or that it suffices in itself to explain why the Restoration, even in its best days, always was and appeared to be in a tottering state. The mischief sprang from more immediate and more personal causes. In the Government of that date there were organic and accidental infirmities, vices of the political machine and errors of the actors, which contributed much more than revolutionary remembrances to prevent its firm consolidation.

A natural and important disagreement exists between the representative government inst.i.tuted by the Charter, and the administrative monarchy founded by Louis XIV. and Napoleon. Where administration and policy are equally free, when local affairs are discussed and decided by local authorities or influences, and neither derive their impulse nor solution from the central power, which never interferes except when the general interest of the State absolutely requires it to do so,--as in England, and in the United States of America, in Holland and Belgium, for instances,--the representative system readily accords with an administrative Government which never appeals to its co-operation except on important and rare occasions. But when the supreme authority undertakes at the same time to govern with freedom, and to administer by centralization,--when it has to contend, at the seat of power, for the great affairs of the State, and to regulate, under its own responsibility, in all the departments, the minor business of every district,--two weighty objections immediately present themselves: either the central power, absorbed by the care of national questions, and occupied with its own defence, neglects local affairs, and suffers them to fall into disorder and inaction; or it connects them closely with general questions, making them subservient to its own interests; and thus the whole system of administration, from the hamlet to the palace, degenerates into an implement of government in the hands of political parties who are mutually contending for power.

I am certainly not called upon today to dwell on this evil; it has become the hackneyed theme of the adversaries of representative government, and of political liberty. It was felt long before it was taken advantage of; but instead of employing it against free inst.i.tutions, an attempt was made to effect its cure. To achieve this end, a double work was to be accomplished; it was necessary to infuse liberty into the administration of local affairs, and to second the development of the local forces capable of exercising authority within their own circle. An aristocracy cannot be created by laws, either at the extremities or at the fountain-head of the State; but the most democratic society is not stripped of natural powers ready to display themselves when called into action. Not only in the departments, but in the divisions, in the towns.h.i.+ps and villages, landed property, industry, employments, professions, and traditions have their local influences, which, if adopted and organized with prudence, const.i.tute effectual authority. From 1816 to 1848, under each of the two const.i.tutional monarchies, whether voluntarily or by compulsion, the different cabinets have acted under this conviction; they have studied to relieve the central Government, by remitting a portion of its functions, sometimes to the regular local agents, and at others to more independent auxiliaries. But, as it too often happens, the remedy was not rapid enough in operation; mistrust, timidity, inexperience, and routine slackened its progress; neither the authorities nor the people knew how to employ it with resolution, or to wait the results with patience. Thus compelled to sustain the burden of political liberty with that of administrative centralization, the newly-born const.i.tutional monarchy found itself compromised between difficulties and contradictory responsibilities, exceeding the measure of ability and strength which could be reasonably expected from any Government.

Another evil, the natural but not incurable result of these very inst.i.tutions, weighed also upon the Restoration. The representative system is at the bottom, and on close a.n.a.lysis, a system of mutual sacrifices and dealings between the various interests which coexist in society. At the same time that it places them in antagonism, it imposes on them the absolute necessity of arriving at an intermediate term, a definite measure of reciprocal understanding and toleration which may become the basis of laws and government. But also, at the same time, by the publicity and heat of the struggle, it throws the opposing parties into an unseemly exaggeration of vehemence and language, and compromises the self-love and personal dignity of human nature. Thus, by an inconsistency teeming with embarra.s.sment, it daily renders more difficult that agreement or submission which, in the end, it has also made indispensable. Herein is comprised an important difficulty for this system of government, which can only be surmounted by a great exercise of tact and conciliation on the part of the political actors themselves, and by a great preponderance of good sense on that of the public, which in the end recalls parliamentary factions and their leaders to that moderation after defeat, from which the inflated pa.s.sion of the characters they have a.s.sumed too often tends to estrange them.

This necessary regulator, always difficult to find or inst.i.tute, was essentially wanting to us under the Restoration; on entering the course, we were launched, without curb, on this precipice of extreme demonstrations and preconceived ideas, the natural vice of parties in every representative government. How many opportunities presented themselves from 1816 to 1830, when the different elements of the monarchical party could, and in their struggle ought to have paused on this brink, at the point where the danger of revolution commenced for all! But none had the good sense or courage to exercise this provident restraint; and the public, far from imposing it on them, excited them still more urgently to the combat,--as at a play, in which people delight to trace the dramatic reflection of their own pa.s.sions.

A mischievous, although inevitable, distribution of parts between the opposing parties aggravated still more, from 1816 to 1820, this want of forecast in men, and this extravagance of public pa.s.sions. Under the representative system, it is usually to one of the parties distinctly defined and firmly resolved in their ideas and desires, that the government belongs: sometimes the systematic defenders of power, at others the friends of liberty, then the conservatives, and lastly the innovators, direct the affairs of the country; and between these organized and ambitious parties are placed the uncla.s.sed opinions and undecided wishes, that political chorus which is ever present watching the conduct of the actors, listening to their words, and ready to applaud or condemn them according as they satisfy or offend their unfettered judgment. This is, in fact, the natural bias and true order of things under free inst.i.tutions. It is well for Government to have a public and recognized standard, regulated on fixed principles, and sustained in action by steady adherents; it derives from that position, not only the strength and consistent coherence that it requires, but the moral dignity which renders power more easy and gentle by placing it higher in the estimation of the people. It is not the chance of events or the personal ambition of men alone, but the interests and inclination of the public, which have produced, in free countries, the great, acknowledged, permanent, and trusty political parties, and have usually confided power to their hands. At the Restoration it was impossible, from 1816 to 1820, to fulfil this condition of a Government at once energetic and restrained. The two great political parties which it found in action, that of the old system and of the revolution, were both at the time incapable of governing by maintaining internal peace with liberty; each had ideas and pa.s.sions too much opposed to the established and legal order they would have had to defend; they accepted with great reluctance, and in a very undefined sense, the one the Charter, and the other the old Monarchy. Through absolute necessity, power returned to the hands of the political choir; the floating and impartial section of the Chambers, the centre, was called to the helm. Under a free system, the Centre is the habitual moderator and definitive judge of Government, but not the party naturally pretending to govern. It gives or withholds the majority, but its mission is not to conquer it. And it is much more difficult for the centre than for strongly organized parties to win or maintain a majority; for when it a.s.sumes government, it finds before it, not undecided spectators who wait its acts to pa.s.s judgment on them, but inflamed adversaries resolved to combat them beforehand;--a weak and dangerous position, which greatly aggravates the difficulties of Government, whether engaged in the display of power, or the protection of liberty.

Not only was this the situation of the King's Government from 1816 to 1820, but even this was not regularly and powerfully established. Badly distributed amongst the actors, the characters were doubtfully filled in the interior of this new and uncertain party of the centre, on whom the government, through necessity, devolved. The princ.i.p.al portion of the heads of the majority in the Chambers held no office. From 1816 to 1819, several of those who represented and directed the centre, who addressed and supported it with prevailing influence, who defended it from the attacks of the right and left-hand parties, who established its power in debate and its credit with the public, MM. Royer-Collard, Camille Jordan, Beugnot, and de Serre, were excluded from the Cabinet. Amongst the eminent leaders of the majority, two only, M. Laine and M. Pasquier were ministers. The Government, therefore, in the Chambers, relied on independent supporters who approved of their policy in general, but neither bore any part in the burden, nor acknowledged any share in the responsibility.

The doctrinarians had acquired their parliamentary influence and moral weight by principles and eloquence rather than by deeds; they maintained their opinions without applying them to practice; the flag of thought and the standard of action were in different hands. In the Chambers, the Ministers often appeared as the clients of the orators; the orators never looked upon their cause as identical with that of the Ministers; they preserved this distinction while supporting them; they had their own demands to make before they a.s.sented; they qualified their approval, and even sometimes dissented altogether. As the questions increased in importance and delicacy, so much the more independence and discord manifested themselves in the bosom of the ministerial party, with dangerous notoriety. During the session of 1817, M. Pasquier, then Chancellor, presented a bill to the Chamber of Deputies, which, while temporarily maintaining the censors.h.i.+p of the daily papers, comprised in other respects some modifications favourable to the liberty of the press. M. Camille Jordan and M. Royer-Collard demanded much greater concessions, particularly the application of trial by jury to press offences; and the bill, reluctantly pa.s.sed by the Chamber of Deputies, was thrown out by the Chamber of Peers, when the Duke de Broglie urged the same amendments on similar principles. In 1817 also, a new Concordat had been negotiated and concluded at Rome by M. de Blacas. It contained the double and contradictory defect of invading by some of its specifications the liberties of the old Gallican Church; while, by the abolition of the Concordat of 1801, it inspired the new French society with lively alarms for its civil liberties. Little versed in such matters, and almost entirely absorbed in the negotiations for relieving France from the presence of foreigners, the Duke de Richelieu had confided this business to M. de Blacas, who was equally ignorant and careless of the importance of the old or new liberties of France, whether civil or religious. When this Concordat, respecting which the Ministers themselves were discontented and doubtful when they had carefully examined it, was presented to the Chamber of Deputies by M. Laine, with the measures necessary for carrying it into effect, it was received with general disfavour. In committee, in the board appointed to report on it, in the discussions in the hall of conference, all the objections, political and historical, of principle or circ.u.mstance, that the bill could possibly excite, were argued and explained beforehand, so as to give warning of the most obstinate and dangerous debate. The doctrinarians openly declared for this premature opposition; and their support produced a strong effect, as they were known to be sincere friends to religion and its influences. It is true, M. Royer-Collard was accused of being a Jansenist; and thus an attempt was made to depreciate him in the eyes of the true believers of the Catholic Church. The reproach was frivolous. M. Royer-Collard had derived, from family traditions and early education, serious habits, studious inclinations, and an affectionate respect for the exalted minds of Port-Royal, for their virtue and genius; but he neither adopted their religious doctrines nor their systematic conclusions on the relative ties between Church and State. On all these questions he exercised a free and rational judgment, as a stranger to all extreme pa.s.sion or sectarian prejudice, and not in the least disposed, either as Catholic or philosopher, to engage in obscure and endless quarrels with the Church. "I seek not to quibble with religion," he was wont to say; "it has enough to do to defend itself and us from impiety." The opposition of M. Royer-Collard to the Concordat of 1817 was the dissent of a politician and enlightened moralist, who foresaw the mischief which the public discussion, and adoption or rejection of this bill, would inflict on the influence of the Church, the credit of the Restoration, and the peace of the country. The Cabinet had prudence enough not to brave a danger which it had created, or suffered to grow on its steps. The report on the bill was indefinitely adjourned, and a fresh negotiation was opened with Rome by sending Count Portalis on a special mission, which ended in 1819 by the tacit withdrawal of the Concordat of 1817.

The Duke de Richelieu, pressed by his colleagues, and his own tardy reflections, coincided in this retrograde movement; but he maintained a feeling of displeasure at the opposition of the doctrinarians and others on this occasion, which he sometimes gratified himself by indulging. In the month of March, 1818, some one, whose name I have forgotten, demanded of him a trifling favour. "It is impossible," replied he sharply; "MM. Royer-Collard, de Serre, Camille Jordan, and Guizot will not suffer it."

I had no reason to complain that my name was included in this ebullition. Although not a member of the Chamber, I openly adopted the opinions and conduct of my friends; I had both the opportunity and the means, in the discussions of the Council of State, in the drawing-room, and through the press,--channels which all parties employed with equal ardour and effect. In spite of the shackles which restrained the papers and periodical publications, they freely exercised the liberty which the Government no longer attempted to dispute, and to which the most influential politicians had recourse, to disseminate far and wide the brilliant flames or smouldering fire of their opposition.

M. de Chateaubriand, M. de Bonald, M. de Villele, in the 'Conservative,'

and M. Benjamin Constant in the 'Minerva,' maintained an incessant a.s.sault on the Cabinet. The Cabinet in its defence, multiplied similar publications, such as the 'Moderator,' the 'Publicist,' and the 'Political and Literary Spectator.' But, for my friends and our cause, the defences of the Cabinet were not always desirable or sufficient; we therefore, from 1817 to 1820, had our own journals and periodical miscellanies,--the 'Courier,' the 'Globe,' the 'Philosophical, Political, and Literary Archives,' and the 'French Review;' and in these we discussed, according to our principles and hopes, sometimes general questions, and at others the incidental subjects of current policy, as they alternately presented themselves. I contributed much to these publications. Between our different adversaries and ourselves the contest was extremely unequal: whether they came from the right or the left, they represented old parties; they expressed ideas and sentiments long in circulation; they found a public predisposed to receive them.

We were intruders in the political arena, officers seeking to recruit an army, moderate innovators. We attacked, in the name of liberty, theories and pa.s.sions long popular under the same denomination. We defended the new French society according to its true rights and interests, but not in conformity with its tastes or habits. We had to conquer our public, while we combated our enemies. In this difficult attempt our position was somewhat doubtful: we were at the same time with and against the Government, royalists and liberals, ministerialists and independents; we acted sometimes in concert with the Administration, sometimes with the Opposition, and we were unable to avail ourselves of all the weapons of either power or liberty. But we were full of faith in our opinions, of confidence in ourselves, of hope in the future; and we pressed forward daily in our double contest, with as much devotion as pride, and with more pride than ambition.

All this has been strenuously denied; my friends and I have often been represented as deep plotters, greedy for office, eager and shrewd in pus.h.i.+ng our fortunes through every opening, and more intent on our own ascendency than on the fate or wishes of the country,--a vulgar and senseless estimate, both of human nature and of our contemporary history. If ambition had been our ruling principle, we might have escaped many efforts and defeats. In times when the most brilliant fortunes, political or otherwise, were easily within reach of those who thought of nothing else, we only desired to achieve ours on certain moral conditions, and with the object of not caring for ourselves.

Ambition we had, but in the service of a public cause; and one which, either in success or adversity, has severely tried the constancy of its defenders.

The most clear-sighted of the cabinet ministers in 1817, M. Decazes and M. Pasquier, whose minds were more free and less suspicious than those of the Duke de Richelieu and M. Laine, were not deceived on this point: they felt the necessity of our alliance, and cultivated it with anxiety.

But when it becomes a question of how to govern in difficult times, allies are not enough; intimate a.s.sociates are necessary, devoted adherents in labour and peril. In this character, the doctrinarians, and particularly M. Royer-Collard, their leader in the Chambers, were mistrusted. They were looked upon as at once imperious and undecided, and more exacting than effective. Nevertheless, in November, 1819, after the election of M. Gregoire and in the midst of their projected reforms in the electoral law, M. Decazes, at the strong instigation of M. de Serre, proposed to M. Royer-Collard to join the Cabinet with one or two of his friends. M. Royer-Collard hesitated at first, then acceded for a moment, and finally declined. "You know not what you would do,"

said he to M. Decazes; "my method of dealing with affairs would differ entirely from yours: you elude questions, you s.h.i.+ft and change them, you gain time, you settle things by halves; I, on the contrary, should attack them in front, bring them into open view, and dissect them before all the world. I should compromise instead of a.s.sisting you."

M. Royer-Collard was in the right, and defined himself admirably, perhaps more correctly than he imagined. He was more calculated to advise and contest than to exercise power. He was rather a great spectator and critic than an eminent political actor. In the ordinary course of affairs he would have been too absolute, too haughty, and too slow. In a crisis, I question whether his mental reservations, his scruples of conscience, his horror of all public excitement, and his prevailing dread of responsibility, would have permitted him to preserve the cool self-possession, with the firm and prompt determination, which circ.u.mstances might have required. M. Decazes pressed him no further.

Even at this moment, after all I have seen and experienced, I am not p.r.o.ne to be discouraged, or inclined to believe that difficult achievements are impossible. However defective may be the internal const.i.tution and combinations of the different parties who co-operate in carrying on public affairs, the upright conduct of individuals may remedy them; history furnishes more than one example of vicious inst.i.tutions and situations, the evil results of which have been counteracted by the ability of political leaders and the sound sense of the public. But when to the evils of position, the errors of men are added,--when, instead of recognizing dangers in their true tendency, and opposing firm resistance, the chiefs and followers of parties either yield to or accelerate them, then the mischievous effects of pernicious courses inevitably and rapidly develop themselves. Errors were not wanting from 1816 to 1820 in every party, whether of Government or Opposition, of the centre, the right, or the left, of the ministers or doctrinarians. I make no parade of impartiality; in spite of their faults and misfortunes, I continue, with a daily increasing conviction, to look upon the Government I served, and the party I supported, to have been the best; but, for our own credit, let leisure and reflection teach us to acknowledge the mistakes we committed, and to prepare for our cause--which a.s.suredly will not die with us--a more auspicious future.

The centre, in its governing mission, had considerable advantages; it suffered neither from moral embarra.s.sments nor external clogs, it was perfectly free and unshackled,--essential qualifications in a great public career, and which at that time belonged neither to the right nor to the left-hand party.

The right had only accepted the Charter on the eve of its promulgation, and after strenuous resistance; a conspicuous and energetic section of the party still persisted in opposing it. That division which had seats in the Chambers, sided from day to day with the const.i.tutional system,--the officers as intelligent and reflecting men, the soldiers as staunch and contented royalists; but neither, in these recognized capacities, inspired confidence in the country, which looked upon their adhesion to the Charter as constrained or conditional, always insincere and covering other views. The right, even while honestly accepting the Charter, had also party interests to satisfy; when it aspired to power, it was not solely to govern according to its principles, and to place the restored monarchy on a solid basis: it had private misfortunes to repair and positions to re-a.s.sume. It was not a pure and regular party of Tory royalists. The emigrants, the remains of the old court and clergy, were still influential amongst them, and eagerly bent on carrying out their personal expectations. By its composition and reminiscences, the party was condemned to much reserve and imprudence, to secret aspirations and indiscreet ebullitions, which, even while it professed to walk in const.i.tutional paths, embarra.s.sed and weakened its action at every step.

The situation of the left was no less confused. It represented, at that exact epoch, not the interests and sentiments of France in general, but the interests and sentiments of that portion of France which had ardently, indistinctly, and obstinately promoted and sustained the Revolution, under its republican or imperial form. It cherished against the House of Bourbon and the Restoration an old habit of hostility, which the Hundred Days had revived, which the most rational of the party could scarcely throw off, the most skilful with difficulty concealed, and the gravest considered it a point of honour to display as a protest and corner-stone. In November 1816, a man of probity, as sincere in the renunciation of his opinions of 1789 as he had formerly been in their profession, the Viscount Matthieu de Montmorency, complained, in a drawing-room of the party, that the Liberals had no love for legitimacy.

A person present defended himself from this reproach. "Yes," said M. de Montmorency, with thoughtless candour, "you love legitimacy as we do the Charter." A keen satire on the false position of both parties under the government of the Charter and of legitimacy!

But if the right-hand party or the left, if the members of either in the Chambers, had followed only their sincere convictions and desires, the greater portion, I am satisfied, would have frankly accepted and supported the Restoration with the Charter, the Charter with the Restoration. When men are seriously engaged in a work and feel the weight of responsibility, they soon discover the true course, and would willingly follow it. But, both in the right and left, the wisest and best-disposed feared to proclaim the truth which they saw, or to adopt it as their rule of conduct; both were under the yoke of their external party, of its pa.s.sions as of its interests, of its ignorance as of its pa.s.sions. It has been one of the sorest wounds of our age, that few men have preserved sufficient firmness of mind and character to think freely, and act as they think. The intellectual and moral independence of individuals disappeared under the pressure of events and before the heat of popular clamours and desires. Under such a general slavery of thought and action, there are no longer just or mistaken minds, cautious or rash spirits, officers or soldiers; all yield to the same controlling pa.s.sion, and bend before the same wind; common weakness reduces all to one common level; hierarchy and discipline vanish; the last lead the first; for the last press and drive onwards, being themselves impelled by that tyranny from without, of which they have been the most blind and ready instruments.

As a political party, the centre, in the Chambers from 1816 to 1820, was not tainted by this evil. Sincere in its adoption of the Restoration and the Charter, no external pressure could disturb or falsify its position.

It remained unfettered in thought and deed. It openly acknowledged its object, and marched directly towards it; selecting, within, the leaders most capable of conducting it there, and having no supporters without who looked for any other issue. It was thus that, in spite of its other deficiencies for powerful government, the centre was at that time the fittest party to rule, the only one capable of maintaining order in the State, while tolerating the liberty of its rivals.