Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 Part 9

I can perfectly understand the reserve which was imposed upon you, and which you were forced to impose on yourself.

I confess that I saw with great grief the sudden change in the expressions of the majority of the English, a year ago, respecting our Government. It was then ill consolidated, and in want of the splendid alliance which you offered to it. It was unnecessary that you should praise it, in order to keep it your friend. By doing so you sacrificed honourable opinions and tastes without a motive.

Now things are changed. After you have lost your only army, and our master has made an alliance with Austria, which suits his feelings much better than yours did, he does not depend on you; you, to a certain extent, depend on him. Such being now the case, I can understand the English thinking it their duty to their country to say nothing that can offend the master of France. I can understand even their praising him; I reproach them only for having done so too soon, before it was necessary.

I agree with you that England ought to be satisfied with being the greatest maritime Power, and ought not to aim at being also one of the greatest military Powers.

But the feelings which I described to you as prevalent in France and in Germany, arose not from your want of an army of 500,000 men. They were excited by these two facts.

First, by what was supposed (perhaps falsely) to be the bad military administration of your only army. Secondly, and much more, by your apparent inability to raise another army.

According to continental notions, a nation which cannot raise as many troops as its wants require, loses our respect. It ceases, according to our notions, to be great or even to be patriotic. And I must confess that, considering how difficult it is to procure soldiers by voluntary enlistment, and how easily every nation can obtain them by other means, I do not see how you will be able to hold your high rank, unless your people will consent to something resembling a conscription.

Dangerous as it is to speak of a foreign country, I venture to say that England is mistaken if she thinks that she can continue separated from the rest of the world, and preserve all her peculiar inst.i.tutions uninfluenced by those which prevail over the whole of the Continent.

In the period in which we live, and, still more, in the period which is approaching, no European nation can long remain absolutely dissimilar to all the others. I believe that a law existing over the whole Continent must in time influence the laws of Great Britain, notwithstanding the sea, and notwithstanding the habits and inst.i.tutions, which, still more than the sea, have separated you from us, up to the present time.

My prophecies may not be accomplished in our time; but I should not be sorry to deposit this letter with a notary, to be opened, and their truth or falsehood proved, fifty years hence.

Compiegne, February 23, 1855.

... My object in my last letter was not by any means, as you seem to think, to accuse _your aristocracy_ of having mismanaged the Crimean war.

It has certainly been mismanaged, but who has been in fault?

Indeed I know not, and if I did I should think at the same time that it would not be becoming in a foreigner to set himself up as a judge of the blunders of any other Government than his own.

I thought that I had expressed myself clearly. At any rate what I wanted to say, if I did not say it, is, that the present events created in my opinion a new and great danger for your aristocracy, and that it will suffer severely from the rebound, if it does not make enormous efforts to show itself capable of repairing the past; and that it would be wrong to suppose that by fighting bravely on the field of battle it could retain the direction of the Government.

I did not intend to say more than this.

I will now add that if it persuades itself that it will easily get out of the difficulty by making peace, I think that it will find itself mistaken.

Peace, after what has happened, may be a good thing for England in general, and useful to us, but I doubt whether it will be a gain for your aristocracy. I think that if Chatham could return to life he would agree with me, and would say that under the circ.u.mstances the remedy would not be peace but a more successful war.

Kind regards, &c.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[Footnote 1: An article in the _North British Review_, see p. 107.--ED.]

CONVERSATIONS.

_Paris, Hotel Bedford.--Friday, March_ 2, 1855.--We slept on the 27th at Calais, on the 28th at Amiens, and reached this place last night.

Tocqueville called on us this morning. We talked of the probability of Louis Napoleon's going to the Crimea.

I said, 'that the report made by Lord John Russell, who talked the matter over with him, was, that he certainly had once intended to go, and had not given it up.'

'I do not value,' said Tocqueville, 'Lord John's inferences from anything that he heard or saw in his audiences. All Louis Napoleon's words and looks, are, whether intentionally or not, misleading. Now that his having direct issue seems out of the question, and that the deeper and deeper discredit into which the heir presumptive is falling, seems to put _him_ out of the question too, we are looking to this journey with great alarm.

We feel that, for the present, his life is necessary to us, and we feel that it would be exposed to many hazards. He ought to incur some military risks, if he is present at a battle or an a.s.sault, and his courage and his fatalism, will lead him to many which he ought to avoid. But it is disease rather than bullets that we fear. He will have to travel hard, and to be exposed, under exciting circ.u.mstances, to a climate which is not a safe one even to the strong.'

'But,' I said, 'he will not be exposed to it long. I have heard thirty, or at most forty, days proposed as the length of his absence.'

'Who can say that?' answered Tocqueville. 'If he goes there, he must stay there until Sebastopol falls. It will not do for him to leave Paris in order merely to look at the works, pat the generals on the back, compliment the army, and leave it in the trenches. Unless his journey produces some great success--in short, unless it gives us Sebastopol--it will be considered a failure; and a failure he cannot afford. I repeat that he must stay there till Sebastopol falls. But that may be months.

And what may months bring forth in such a country as France? In such a city as Paris? In such times as these? Then he cannot safely leave his cousin--Jerome Plon swears that he will not go, and I do not see how he can be taken by force.'

'I do not understand,' I said, 'Jerome's conduct. It seemed as if he had the ball at his feet. The _role_ of an heir is the easiest in the world.

He has only to behave decently in order to be popular.'

'Jerome's chances,' answered Tocqueville, 'of the popularity which is to be obtained by decent behaviour were over long before he became an heir.

His talents are considerable, but he has no principles, and no good sense. He is Corsican to the bone. I watched him among his Montagnards in the Const.i.tuent.

'Nothing could be more perverse than his votes, nor more offensive than his speeches. He is unfit to conciliate the sensible portion of society, and naturally throws himself into the arms of those who are waiting to receive him--the violent, the rapacious, and the anarchical: this gives him at least some adherents.'

'What do you hear,' I asked, 'of his conduct in the East?'

'I hear,' said Tocqueville, 'that he showed want, not so much of courage, as of temper and of subordination. He would not obey orders; he would not even transmit them, so that Canrobert was forced to communicate directly with the officers of Napoleon's division, and at last required him to take sick leave, or to submit to a court-martial.'

'I thought,' I said, 'that he was really ill.'

'That is not the general opinion,' said Tocqueville. 'He showed himself at a ball directly after his return, with no outward symptoms of ill health.'

The conversation turned on English politics.

'So many of my friends.h.i.+ps,' said Tocqueville, 'and so many of my sympathies, are English, that what is pa.s.sing _in_ your country, and _respecting_ your country, gives me great pain, and greater anxiety. To us, whom unhappily experience has rendered sensitive of approaching storms, your last six months have a frightfully revolutionary appearance.

'There is with you, as there was with us in 1847, a general _malaise_ in the midst of general prosperity. Your people seem, as was the case with ours, to have become tired of their public men, and to be losing faith in their inst.i.tutions. What else do these complaints of what is called "the system" mean? When you complain that the Government patronage is bartered for political support, that the dunces of a family are selected for the public service, and selected expressly because they could not get on in an open profession; that as their places are a sort of property, they are promoted only by seniority, and never dismissed for any, except for some moral, delinquency; that therefore the seniors in all your departments are old men, whose original dulness has been cherished by a life without the stimulus of hope or fear, you describe a vessel which seems to have become too crazy to endure anything but the calmest sea and the most favourable winds. You have tried its sea-worthiness in one department, your military organisation, and you find that it literally falls to pieces. You are incapable of managing a line of operations extending only seven miles from its base. The next storm may attack your Colonial Administration. Will that stand any better? Altogether your machinery seems throughout out of gear. If you set to work actively and fearlessly, without reference to private interests, or to private expectations, or to private feelings, to repair, remove and replace, you may escape our misfortunes; but I see no proofs that you are sufficiently bold, or indeed that you are sufficiently alarmed. Then as to what is pa.s.sing here. A year ago we probably overrated your military power. I believe that now we most mischievously underrate it. A year ago nothing alarmed us more than a whisper of the chance of a war with England. We talk of one now with great composure. We believe that it would not be difficult to throw 100,000 men upon your sh.o.r.es, and we believe that half that number would walk over England or Ireland. You are mistaken if you think that these opinions will die away of themselves, or will be eradicated by anything but some decisive military success. I do not agree with those who think that it is your interest that Russia should submit while Sebastopol stands. You might save money and men by a speedy peace, but you would not regain your reputation. If you are caught by a peace before you have an opportunity of doing so, I advise you to let it be on your part an armed peace. Prepare yourselves for a new struggle with a new enemy, and let your preparations be, not only as effective as you can make them, but also as notorious.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Note inserted by M de Tocqueville in my Journal, after reading the preceding conversation.

'J'ai entendu universellement louer sans restriction le courage heroque de vos soldats, mais en meme temps j'ai trouve repandu cette croyance, qu'on s'etait trompe de l'importance de l'Angleterre dans le monde, comme puissance militaire proprement dite, qui consiste autant a _administrer_ la guerre qu'a combattre, et surtout qu'il lui etait impossible, ce qu'on ne croyait pas jusque la, d'elever de grandes armees, meme dans les cas les plus pressants. Je n'avais rien entendu de pareil depuis mon enfance.

On vous croit absolument dans notre dependance, et du sein de la grande inimite qui regne entre les deux peuples, je vois naitre des idees qui, le jour ou nos deux gouvernements cesseront d'etre d'accord, nous precipiteront dans la guerre contre vous, beaucoup plus facilement que cela n'eut pu avoir lieu depuis la chute du premier Empire. Cela m'afflige, et pour l'avenir de Alliance anglaise (dont vous savez que j'ai toujours ete un grand partisan), et non moins aussi, je l'avoue, pour la cause de vos inst.i.tutions libres. Ce qui se pa.s.se n'est pas de nature a la relever dans notre esprit. Je vous pardonnerais de deconsiderer vos principes par les louanges dont vous accablez le gouvernement absolu qui regne en France, mais je voudrais du moins que vous ne le fissiez pas d'une maniere encore plus efficace par vos propres fautes, et par la comparaison qu'elles suggerent. Il me semble, du reste, bien difficile de dire ce qui resultera pour vous meme du contact intime et prolonge avec notre gouvernement, et surtout de l'action commune et du melange des deux armees. J'en doute, je vous l'avouerai, que l'aristocratie anglaise s'en trouve bien, et quoique A B ait entonne l'autre jour une veritable hymne en l'honneur de celle ci, je ne crois pas que ce qui pa.s.se soit de nature a rendre ces chances plus grandes dans l'avenir'--_A de Tocqueville_.

'I heard universal and unqualified praise of the heroic courage of your soldiers, but at the same time I found spread abroad the persuasion that the importance of England had been overrated as a military Power properly so called--a Power which consists in administering as much as in fighting; and above all, that it was impossible (and this had never before been believed), for her to raise large armies, even under the most pressing circ.u.mstances. I never heard anything like it since my childhood. You are supposed to be entirely dependent upon us, and from the midst of the great intimacy which subsists between the two countries, I see springing up ideas which, on the day when our two Governments cease to be of one mind, will precipitate our country into a war against you, much more easily than has been possible since the fall of the first Empire. This grieves me, both on account of the duration of the English Alliance (of which you know that I have always been a great partisan), and no less, I own, for the sake of your free inst.i.tutions. Pa.s.sing events are not calculated to raise them in our estimation. I forgive you for discrediting your principles by the praise which you lavish on the absolute government which reigns in France, but I would have you at least not to do so in a still more efficacious manner by your own blunders and by the comparisons which they suggest. It seems to me, however, very difficult to predict the result to yourselves of the long and intimate contact with, our Government, and, above all, of the united action and amalgamation of the two armies. I own that I doubt its having a good effect on the future of the English aristocracy, and although A.B. struck up the other day a real hymn in its praise, I do not think that present events are of a nature to increase its chance in the future.']

_Paris, Sat.u.r.day, March_ 3.--Tocqueville called on us soon after breakfast.

We talked of the loss and gain of Europe by the war. We agreed that Russia and England have both lost by it. Russia probably the most in power, England in reputation. That Prussia, though commercially a gainer, is humiliated and irritated by the superiority claimed by Austria and conceded to her.

'You cannot,' said Tocqueville, 'estimate the opinions of Germany without going there. There is a general feeling among the smaller Powers of internal insecurity and external weakness, and Austria is looked up to as the supporter of order against the revolutionists, and of Germany against Russia. Austria alone has profited by the general calamities. Without actually drawing the sword she has possession of the Princ.i.p.alities, she has thrust down Prussia into the second rank, she has emanc.i.p.ated herself from Russia, she has become the ally of France and of England, and even of her old enemy Piedmont, she is safe in Italy. Poland and Hungary are still her difficulties, and very great ones, but as her general strength increases, she can better deal with them.'

'Has not France, I said, 'been also a gainer, by becoming head of the coalition against Russia?'