Like Chenonceaux, it escaped the revolution, and is now, with its furniture of the sixteenth century, the residence of the Marquis de Biancourt, descended from its ancient proprietors.
As we sauntered over the gardens, our conversation turned on the old aristocracy of France.
'The loss of our aristocracy,' said Tocqueville, 'is a misfortune from which we have not even begun to recover. The Legitimists are their territorial successors; they are the successors in their manners, in their loyalty, and in their prejudices ofcaste; but they are not their successors in cultivation, or intelligence, or energy, or, therefore, in influence. Between them and thebourgeoisieis a chasm, which shows no tendency to close. Nothing but a common interest and a common pursuit will bring them together.
'If the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had not made them recoil in terror and disgust from Napoleon, they might have perhaps been welded into one mass with his new aristocracy of services, talents, and wealth. They were ready to adhere to him during the Consulate. During the Restoration they were always at war with thebourgeoisie, and therefore with the constitution, on which the power of their enemies depended. When the result of that war was the defeat and expulsion of their leader, Charles X., their hostility extended from thebourgeoisieand the constitution up to the Crown. Louis Philippe tried to govern by means of the middle classes alone. Perhaps it was inevitable that he should make the attempt. It certainly was inevitable that he should fail. The higher classes, and the lower classes, all equally offended, combined to overthrow him. Under the Republic they again took, to a certain extent, their place in the State. They led the country people, who came to the assistance of the Assembly in June 1848. The Republic was wise enough to impose no oaths. It did not require those who were willing to serve it to begin by openly disavowing their traditionary opinions and principles. The Legitimists took their places in the Conseils-généraux. They joined with thebourgeoisiein local administration, the only means by which men of different classes can coalesce.
'The socialist tendencies which are imputed to this Second Empire, the oath which it most imprudently imposes, its pretensions to form a dynasty and its assertion of the principle most abhorrent to them, elective monarchy, have thrown them back into disaffection. And I believe their disaffection to be one of our great dangers—a danger certainly increased by the Fusion. The principal object of the Fusion is to influence the army. The great terror of the army is division in itself. It will accept anything, give up anything, dare anything, to avoid civil war. Rather than be divided between the two branches, it would have adhered to the Empire. Now it can throw off the Bonapartes without occasioning a disputed succession.'
'When you say,' I asked, 'that the Legitimists are not the successors of the old aristocracy in cultivation, intelligence, or energy, do you mean to ascribe to them positive or relative inferiority in these qualities?'
'In energy,' answered Tocqueville, 'their deficiency is positive. They are ready to suffer for their cause, they are not ready to exert themselves for it. In intelligence and cultivation they are superior to any other class in France; but they are inferior to the English aristocracy, and they are inferior, as I said before, to their ancestors of the eighteenth century. There existed in the highest Parisian society towards the end of that century a comprehensiveness of curiosity and inquiry, a freedom of opinion, an independence, and soundness of judgment, never seen before or since. Its pursuits, its pleasures, its admirations, its vanities, were all intellectual. Look at the success of Hume. His manners were awkward; he was a heavy, though an instructive, converser; he spoke bad French; he would pass now for an intelligent bore. But such was the worship then paid to talents and knowledge—especially to knowledge, and talents employed on the destruction of prejudices—that Hume was, for years, the lion of all the salons of Paris. The fashionable beauties quarrelled for the fat philosopher. Nor was their admiration or affection put on, or even transitory. He retained some of them as intimate friends for life. If the brilliant talkers and writers of that time were to return to life, I do not believe that gas, or steam, or chloroform, or the electric telegraph, would so much astonish them as the dulness of modern society, and the mediocrity of modern books.'
In the evening we discussed the new scheme of throwing open the service of India and of the Government offices to public competition.
'We have followed,' said Tocqueville, 'that system to a great extent for many years. Our object was twofold. One was to depress the aristocracy of wealth, birth, and connexions. In this we have succeeded.
The École Polytechnique, and the other schools in which the vacancies are given to those who pass the best examinations, are filled by youths belonging to the middle classes, who, undistracted by society, or amusement, or by any literary or scientific pursuits, except those immediately bearing on their examinations, beat their better-born competitors, who will not degrade themselves into the mere slaves of success in theconcours. Our other object was to obtain the best public servants. In that we have failed. We have brought knowledge and ability to an average; diminished the number of incompetentemployés, and reduced, almost to nothing, the number of distinguished ones. Continued application to a small number of subjects, and those always the same, not selected by the student, but imposed on him by the inflexible rule of the establishment, without reference to his tastes or to his powers, is as bad for the mind as the constant exercise of one set of muscles would be for the body.
'We have a name for those who have been thus educated. They are called "polytechnisés." If you follow our example, you will increase your second-rates, and extinguish your first-rates; and what is perhaps a more important result, whether you consider it a good or an evil, you will make a large stride in the direction in which you have lately made so many—the removing the government and the administration of England from the hands of the higher classes into those of the middle and lower ones.'
Paris, Sunday, May 14, 1854.
My dear Tocqueville,—I write to youin meditatione fugæ. We start for England in an hour's time. The last news that I heard of you was the day before yesterday from Cousin. He read me your letter, which sounded to me like that of a man in not very bad health or hopes. I trust that the attack of which Madame de Tocqueville wrote to us has quite passed off.
Thiers, who asked very anxiously after you to-day, is earnest that you should be present at the election on the 18th. The Academy, he said, is very jealous.Vous serez très-mal vu, if you do not come.
You are at last going seriously to work in the war. By the end of the year you will have, military and naval, 700,000 men in arms.
I wish that they were nearer to the enemy.
Pray remember us most kindly to Madame de Tocqueville, and let us know where you go as soon as you are decided.
Ever yours,
N.W. Senior.
St. Cyr, May 21, 1854.
I followed the advice which you were commissioned to give me, my dear Senior. I have just been to Paris, but as I stayed there only twenty-four hours I have not brought back any distinct impressions.
I saw only Academicians who talked about the Academy, and—who knew nothing of politics. It is true that such is now the case with everyone. Politics, which used to be transacted in open day, have now become a secret process into which none can penetrate except the two or three alchemists who are engaged in its preparation.
You heard of course that after your little visit, which we enjoyed so much, I became very unwell, and my mind was only less affected than my body. I spent a month very much out of spirits and very much tired of myself. During the last eight or ten days I have felt much better. My visit to our friends the Beaumonts did me a great deal of good, and I owe a grudge to the Academy for forcing me to shorten it.
I still intend to visit Germany, but the plan depends on the state of my health. When it is bad I am inclined to give up the journey, when I am better I take it up again and look forward to it with pleasure. On the whole I think that I shall go. But it is impossible for me to settle my route beforehand. Even if I were stronger it would be difficult, for such an expedition must always be uncertain.
I am not going to Germany to see any place in particular, but intend to go hither and thither wherever I can find certain documents and people.
I received yesterday a letter from our friend Ampère. He is still in Rome, still more and more enchanted with the place, and using every argument to induce us to spend there with him the winter of 1856. His descriptions are so attractive that we may very likely be persuaded, especially if we had any chance of meeting you there, for you are one of the people whose society always increases the happiness of life. However, we have plenty of time for talking over this plan.
Adieu, dear Senior.
Wildbad, September 19, 1854.
You gave me great pleasure, my dear Senior, by making me acquainted withSir George and Lady Theresa Lewis.
I must really thank you sincerely for it, for the time passed with them has been the most agreeable part of our journey.
You have no doubt heard of the mischance which has put a stop to our peregrinations: my wife was seized two months ago at Bonn by a violent attack of rheumatism. The waters of Wildbad were recommended to her, and she has been taking them for more than twenty-five days without experiencing any relief. We are promised that the effects will be felt afterwards; but these fine promises only half reassure us, and we shall set out again on our travels in very bad spirits.
Our original intention was to spend the autumn in the North of Germany, but in Madame de Tocqueville's condition it is evident that there is nothing else to be done but to return home as fast as we can.
We are somewhat consoled by the arrival of our common friend Ampère. He was returning from Italy, through Germany, and, hearing of our misfortune, he has come to look after us in these wild mountains of the Black Forest amidst which Wildbad is situated. He has been with us a week, and I hope that he will accompany us home.
Our intention is to spend a month or six weeks with my father near Compiègne. Towards the first week in November we shall establish ourselves in Paris for the winter. We hope to see you there at the end of this year or the beginning of next.
Ampère, my wife, and I constantly talk of you. If you could overhear us I think you would not be very much dissatisfied. They insist upon being very particularly remembered to you, and as for me I beg you to believe in my most sincere attachment.
Compiègne, January 22, 1855.
It was a long time since I had seen your handwriting, my dear Senior, and I was beginning to complain of you; your letter therefore was a double pleasure.
I see that you have resumed your intention of visiting Algiers, and I am anxious that you should carry it into effect.
I hope that we shall be in Paris when you pass through. We put off our departure from day to day; not that we are kept by the charms of our present abode; the house is too small for us and scantily furnished, but I find it such a favourable retreat for study, that I have great difficulty in tearing myself away from it.
I hear, as you do, with great satisfaction of the mutual good feeling of our armies in the Crimea. It far exceeds my expectations.
But I am not equally pleased with your management of the war. The English ought to know that what has passed and is passing there has sensibly diminished their moral force in Europe. It is an unpleasant truth, but I ought not to conceal it from you. I see proofs of it every day, and I have been struck by it peculiarly in a late visit to Paris, where I saw persons of every rank and of every shade of political opinion. The heroic courage of your soldiers was everywhere and unreservedly praised, but I found also a general belief that the importance of England as a military Power had been greatly exaggerated; that she is utterly devoid of military talent, which is shown as much in administration as in fighting; and that even in the most pressing circumstances she cannot raise a large army.
Since I was a child I never heard such language. You are believed to be absolutely dependent on us; and in the midst of our intimacy I see rising a friendly contempt for you, which if our Governments quarrel, will make a war with you much easier than it has been since the fall of Napoleon.
I grieve at all this, not only as endangering the English alliance, which, as you well know, I cherish, but as injuring the cause of liberty.
I can pardon you for discrediting it by your adulation of our despotism, but I wish that you would not serve despotism more efficaciously by your own faults, and by the comparisons which they suggest.
It seems also difficult to say what may not be the results of your long intimacy with such a Government as ours, and of the contact of the two armies. I doubt whether they will be useful to your aristocracy.
Remember me to Lord Lansdowne and to the Lewises, who added such pleasure to our German tour.
Compiègne, February 15, 1855.
I conclude that this frightful weather is still keeping you in London, my dear Senior. I am comforted by the fact that I myself shall not reach Paris before the 28th.
I do not wish to act the part of the pedagogue in the fable who preaches to people when his sermon can no longer be of any possible use, but I cannot help telling you that it is a great imprudence on your part to allow yourself to be caught in this way by the winter in England. What you now suffer from is only a trifling malady, but it may become a real illness if you persist in preferring pleasure to health. Pray think of this in the future and do not tempt the devil.
I have not read the article to which you refer.[1]
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 institutions 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 institutions, 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.
Compiègne, February 23, 1855.
… My object in my last letter was not by any means, as you seem to think, to accuseyour aristocracyof 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 circumstances the remedy would not be peace but a more successful war.
Kind regards, &c.
[Footnote 1: An article in theNorth British Review, see p. 107.—ED.]
Paris, Hôtel Bedford.—Friday, March2, 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 ofLouis 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 puthimout 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 assault, 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 circumstances, 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—Jérôme 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, 'Jerôme's conduct. It seemed as if he had the ball at his feet. Therôleof an heir is the easiest in the world. He has only to behave decently in order to be popular.'
'Jérôme'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 Constituent.
'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 friendships,' said Tocqueville, 'and so many of my sympathies, are English, that what is passinginyour country, andrespectingyour 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 generalmalaisein 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 institutions. 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 passing 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 shores, 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 héroïque de vos soldats, mais en même temps j'ai trouvé répandu cette croyance, qu'on s'était trompé de l'importance de l'Angleterre dans le monde, comme puissance militaire proprement dite, qui consiste autant àadministrerla guerre qu'à combattre, et surtout qu'il lui était impossible, ce qu'on ne croyait pas jusque là, d'élever de grandes armées, même dans les cas les plus pressants. Je n'avais rien entendu de pareil depuis mon enfance. On vous croit absolument dans notre dépendance, et du sein de la grande inimité qui règne entre les deux peuples, je vois naître des idées qui, le jour où nos deux gouvernements cesseront d'être d'accord, nous précipiteront 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 été un grand partisan), et non moins aussi, je l'avoue, pour la cause de vos institutions libres. Ce qui se passe n'est pas de nature à la relever dans notre esprit. Je vous pardonnerais de déconsidérer vos principes par les louanges dont vous accablez le gouvernement absolu qui règne en France, mais je voudrais du moins que vous ne le fissiez pas d'une manière encore plus efficace par vos propres fautes, et par la comparaison qu'elles suggèrent. Il me semble, du reste, bien difficile de dire ce qui résultera pour vous même du contact intime et prolongé avec notre gouvernement, et surtout de l'action commune et du mélange des deux armées. J'en doute, je vous l'avouerai, que l'aristocratie anglaise s'en trouve bien, et quoique A B ait entonné l'autre jour une véritable hymne en l'honneur de celle ci, je ne crois pas que ce qui passe soit de nature à 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 circumstances. 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 institutions. Passing 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, Saturday, March3.—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 Principalities, she has thrust down Prussia into the second rank, she has emancipated 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?'
'Whatever we have gained,' answered Tocqueville, 'has been dearly purchased, so far as it has consolidated this despotism. For a whole year we have felt that the life, and even the reign, of Louis Napoleon was necessary to us. They will continue necessary to us during the remainder of the war. We are acquiring habits of obedience, almost of resignation. His popularity has not increased. He and his court are as much shunned by the educated classes as they were three years ago; we still repeat "que ça ne peut pas durer," but we repeat it with less conviction.'
We passed the spring in Algeria, and returned to Paris the latter part ofMay.
_Paris, May 26,_1855.—After breakfast I went to the Institut.
M. Passy read to us a long paper on the Art of Government. He spoke so low and so monotonously that no one attended. I sat next to Tocqueville, and, as it was not decent to talk, we conversed a little in writing. He had been reading my Algiers Journal, and thus commented upon it:—
'Il y a tout un côté, particulièrement curieux, de l'Algérie, qui vous a échappé parce que vous n'avez pu ou voulu vous imposer l'ennui de causer souvent avec les colons, et que ce côté-là ne se voit pas en parlant avec les gouvernants; c'est l'abus de la centralisation. L'Afrique peut être considérée comme le tableau le plus complet et le plus extraordinaire des vices de ce système.
'Je suis convaincu que seul, sans les Arabes, le soleil, le désert, et la fièvre, il suffirait pour nous empêcher de coloniser. Tout ce que la centralisation laisse entrevoir de défauts, de ridicules et absurdités, d'oppression, de paperasseries en France, est grossi en Afrique au centuple. C'est comme un pou vu dans un microscope.'
'J'ai causé,' I answered, 'avec Vialar et avec mon hôte aux eaux ferrugineuses. Mais ils ne se sont pas plaints de la centralisation.'
'Ils ne se sont pas plaints,' he answered, 'du mot que, peut-être, ils ne connaissaient pas. Mais si vous les aviez fait entrer dans les détails de l'administration publique, ou même de leurs affaires privées, vous auriez vu que le colon est plus gêné dans tous ses mouvements, et plusgouverné pour son plus grand bienque vous ne l'avez été quand il s'est agi de votre passeport.
'Violar faisait allusion à cela quand il vous a dit que les chemins manquaient parce que le Gouvernement ne voulait pas laisser les gouvernés s'en mêler.'[1]
[Footnote 1: 'One whole side, and that a very curious one, of Algeria, has escaped you, because you could not, or would not, inflict on yourself the bore of talking frequently with the colonists, and this side cannot be seen in conversing with officials—it is the abuse of centralisation. Africa may be considered as the most complete and most extraordinary picture of the vices of this system. I am convinced that it alone, without the Arabs, the sun, the desert and the fever, would be enough to prevent us from colonising. All the defects of centralisation, its oppressions, its faults, its absurdities, its endless documents, which are dimly perceived in France, become one hundred times bigger in Africa. It is like a louse in a microscope.'
'I conversed,' I answered, 'with Violar and with my landlord at the mineral waters, and they did not complain of centralisation.' 'They did not complain,' he answered, 'of the word, which perhaps is unknown to them. But if you had made them enter into the details of the public administration, or even of their own private affairs, you would have seen that the colonist is more confined in all his movements, and moregoverned, for his good, than you were with regard to your passport.
'This is what Violar meant when he told you that roads were wanting, because the Government would not permit its subjects to interfere in making them.']
Monday, May28.—Tocqueville called on me.
I asked him for criticisms on my article on the State of the Continent in the 'North British Review' of February 1855.[1]
[Footnote 1: See p. 107.]
'Of course,' I said, 'it must be full of blunders. No one who writes on the politics of a foreign country can avoid them. I want your help to correct a few of them.'
'Since you ask me,' he answered, 'for a candid criticism, I will give you one. I accuse you rather of misappreciation than of misstatement. First with respect to Louis Napoleon. After having described accurately, in the beginning of your paper, his unscrupulous, systematic oppression, you end by saying that, after all, you place him high among our sovereigns.'
'You must recollect,' I answered, 'that the article was written for the "Edinburgh Review," the organ of our Government, edited by Lord Clarendon's brother-in-law—and that the editor thought its criticisms of Louis Napoleon so severe, that after having printed it, he was afraid to publish it. I went quite as far as I prudently could. I accused him, as you admit, of unscrupulous oppression, of ignorance of the feelings of the people, of being an idle administrator, of being unacquainted with business himself, and not employing those who understand it, of being impatient of contradiction, of refusing advice and punishing censure—in short, I have praised nothing but his foreign policy—and I have mentioned two errors in that.'
'But I have a graver accusation to bring against you,' replied Tocqueville. 'You couple as events mutually dependent the continuance of the Imperial Government and the continuance of the Anglo-Gallic Alliance. I believe this opinion not only to be untrue, but to be the reverse of the truth. I believe the Empire and the Alliance to be not merely, not mutually dependent, but to be incompatible, except upon terms which you are resolved never to grant The Empire is essentially warlike—and war in the mind of a Bonaparte, and of the friends of a Bonaparte, means the Rhine. This war is merely a stepping stone. It is carried on for purposes in which the mass of the people of France take no interest. Up to the present time its burthens have been little felt, as it has been supported by loans, and the limits of the legal conscription have not been exceeded. But when the necessity comes for increased taxation and anticipated conscriptions, Louis Napoleon must have recourse to the real passions of the Frenchbourgeoisieand peasantry—the love of conquest,et la haine de l'Anglais. Don't fancy that such feelings are dead, they are scarcely asleep. They might be roused in a week, in a day, and theywillbe roused as soon as he thinks that they are wanted.
'What do you suppose was the effect in France of Louis Napoleon's triumph in England?
'Those who know England attributed it to the ignorance and childishness of the multitude. Those who thought that the shouts of the mob had any real meaning either hung down their heads in shame at the self-degradation of a great nation, or attributed them to fear. The latter was the general feeling. "Il faut," said all our lower classes, "que ces gens-là aient grande peur de nous."
'You accuse, in the second place, all the Royalist parties of dislike ofEngland.
'Do you suppose that you are more popular with the others? That the Republicans love your aristocracy, or the Imperialists your freedom? The real friends of England are the friends of her institutions. They are the body, small perhaps numerically, and now beaten down, of those who adore Constitutional Liberty. They have maintained the mutual good feeling between France and England against the passions of the Republicans and the prejudices of the Legitimists. I trust, as you trust, that this good feeling is to continue, but it is on precisely opposite grounds. My hopes are founded, not on the permanence, but on the want of permanence, of the Empire. I do not believe that a great nation will be long led by its tail instead of by its head. My only fear is, that the overthrow of this tyranny may not take place early enough to save us from war with England, which I believe to be the inevitable consequence of its duration.'
We left Paris soon after this conversation.
[The following are a few extracts from the article in the 'North BritishReview.'—ED.]
'The principal parties into which the educated society of Paris is divided, are the Imperialists, Royalists, Republicans, and Parliamentarians.
'The Royalists maybe again subdivided into Orleanists, Legitimists, andFusionists; and the Fusionists into Orleanist-Fusionists, andLegitimist-Fusionists.
'The Imperialists do not require to be described. They form a small party in the salons of Paris, and much the largest party in the provinces.
'Those who are Royalists without being Fusionists are also comparatively insignificant in numbers. There are a very few Legitimists who pay to the elder branch the unreasoning worship of superstition; who adore Henri V. not as a means but as an end; who pray for his reign, not for their own interests, not for the interests of France, but for his own sake; who believe that he derives his title from God, and that when the proper time comes God will restore him; and that to subject his claims to the smallest compromise—to admit, for instance, as the Fusionists do, that Louis Philippe was really a king, and that the reign of Henri V. did not begin the instant that Charles X. expired—would be a sinful contempt of Divine right, which might deprive his cause of Divine assistance.
'There are also a very few Orleanists who, with a strange confusion of ideas, do not perceive that a title founded solely on a revolution was destroyed by a revolution; that if the will of the people was sufficient to exclude the descendants of Charles X., it also could exclude the descendants of Louis Philippe; and that the hereditary claims of the Comte de Paris cannot be urged except on the condition of admitting the preferable claims of the Comte de Chambord.
'The bulk, then, of the Royalists are Fusionists; but though all the Fusionists agree in believing that the only government that can be permanent in France is a monarchy, and that the only monarchy that can be permanent is one depending on hereditary succession; though they agree in believing that neither of the Bourbon branches is strong enough to seize the throne, and that each of them is strong enough to exclude the other, yet between the Orleanist-Fusionists and the Legitimist-Fusionists the separation is as marked and the mutual hatred as bitter, as those which divide the most hostile parties in England.
'The Orleanist-Fusionists are generallyroturiers. They feel towards thenoblessethe hatred which has accumulated during twelve centuries of past oppression and the resentment excited by present insolence. Of all the noble families of France the most noble is that of Bourbon. The head of that house has always called himselfle premier gentilhomme de France. The Bourbons therefore suffer, and in an exaggerated degree, the odium which weighs down the caste to which they belong. It was this odium, this detestation of privilege and precedence and exclusiveness, or, as it is sometimes called, this love of equality, which raised the barricades of 1830. It was to flatter these feelings that Louis Philippe sent his sons to the public schools and to the National Guard, and tried to establish his Government on the narrow foundation of thebourgeoisie. Louis Philippe and one or two of the members of his family, succeeded in obtaining some personal popularity, but it was only in the comparatively small class, thepays légal, with which they shared the emoluments of Government, and it was not sufficient to raise a single hand in their defence when the masses, whom the Court could not bribe or caress, rose against it. The Orleanist-Fusionists are Bourbonists only from calculation. They wish for the Comte de Paris for their king, not from any affection for him or for his family, but because they think that such an arrangement offers to France the best chance of a stable Government in some degree under popular control: and they are ready to tolerate the intermediate reign of Henri V. as an evil, but one which must be endured as a means of obtaining something else, not very good in itself but less objectionable to them than a Bonapartist dynasty or a Republic.
* * * * *
'The Legitimists have been so injured in fortune and in influence, they have been so long an oppressed caste, excluded from power, and even from sympathy, that they have acquired the faults of slaves, have become timid, or frivolous, or bitter. Their long retirement from public life has made them unfit for it. The older members of the party have forgotten its habits and its duties, the younger ones have never learnt them. Their long absence from the Chambers and from the departmental and municipal councils, from the central and from the local government of France, has deprived them of all aptitude for business. The bulk of them are worshippers of wealth, or ease, or pleasure, or safety. The only unselfish feeling which they cherish is attachment to their hereditary sovereign. They revere Henri V. as the ruler pointed out to them by Providence: they love him as the representative of Charles X. the champion of their order, who died in exile for having attempted to restore to them the Government of France. They hope that on his restoration thecanailleof lawyers, andlittérateurs, and adventurers, who have trampled on thegentilshommesever since 1830, will be turned down to their proper places, and that ancient descent will again be the passport to the high offices of the State and to the society of the Sovereign. The advent of Henri V., which to the Orleanist branch of the Fusionists is a painful means, is to the Legitimist branch a desirable end. The succession of the Comte de Paris, to which the Orleanists look with hope, is foreseen by the Legitimists with misgivings. The Fusionist party is in fact kept together not by common sympathies but by common antipathies; each branch of it hates or distrusts the idol of the other, but they co-operate because each branch hates still more bitterly, and distrusts still more deeply, the Imperialists and the Republicans.
'Among the educated classes there are few Republicans, using that word to designate those who actually wish to see France a republic. There are indeed, many who regret the social equality of the republic, the times when plebeian birth was an aid in the struggle for power, and a journeyman mason could be a serious candidate for the Presidentship, but they are alarmed at its instability. They have never known a republic live for more than a few years, or die except in convulsions. The Republican party, however, though small, is not to be despised. It is skilful, determined, and united. And the Socialists and the Communists, whom we have omitted in our enumeration as not belonging to the educated classes, would supply the Republican leaders with an army which has more than once become master of Paris.
'The only party that remains to be described is that to which we have given the name of Parliamentarians. Under this designation—a designation that we must admit that we have invented ourselves—we include those who are distinguished from the Imperialists by their desire for a parliamentary form of government; and from the Republicans, by their willingness that that government should be regal; and from the Royalists, by their willingness that it should be republican. In this class are included many of the wisest and of the honestest men in France. The only species of rule to which they are irreconcilably opposed is despotism. No conduct on the part of Louis Napoleon would conciliate a sincere Orleanist, or Legitimist, or Fusionist, or Republican. The anti-regal prejudices of the last, and the loyalty of the other three, must force them to oppose a Bonapartist dynasty, whatever might be the conduct of the reigning emperor. But if Louis Napoleon should ever think the time, to which he professes to look forward, arrived—if he should ever grant to France, or accept from her, institutions really constitutional; institutions, under which the will of the nation, freely expressed by a free press and by freely chosen representatives, should control and direct the conduct of her governor—the Parliamentarians would eagerly rally round him. On the same conditions they would support with equal readiness Henri V. or the Comte de Paris, a president elected by the people, or a president nominated by an Assembly. They are the friends of liberty, whatever be the form in which she may present herself.'
* * * * *
'Although our author visits the Provinces, his work contains no report of their political feelings. The explanation probably is, that he found no expression of it The despotism under which France is now suffering is little felt in the capital. It shows itself principally in the subdued tone of the debates, if debates they can be called, of the Corps Législatif, and the inanity of the newspapers. Conversation is as free in Paris as it was under the Republic. Public opinion would not support the Government in an attempt to silence the salons of Paris. But Paris possesses a public opinion, because it possesses one or two thousand highly educated men whose great amusement, we might say whose great business, is to converse, to criticise the acts of their rulers, and to pronounce decisions which float from circle to circle, till they reach the workshop, and even the barrack. In the provinces there are no such centres of intelligence and discussion, and, therefore, on political subjects, there is no public opinion. The consequence is, that the action of the Government is there really despotic; and it employs its irresistible power in tearing from the departmental and communal authorities all the local franchises and local self-government which they had extorted from the central power in a struggle of forty years.
'Centralisation, though it is generally disclaimed by every party that is in opposition, is so powerful an instrument that every Monarchical Government which has ruled France since 1789 has maintained, and even tried to extend it.
'The Restoration, and the Government of July, were as absolute centralisers as Napoleon himself. The local power which they were forced to surrender they made over to the narrowpays légal, the privileged ten-pounders, who were then attempting to govern France. The Republic gave the election of theConseils générauxto the people, and thus dethroned the notaries who governed those assemblies when they represented only thebourgeoisie. The Republic made the Maires elective; the Republic placed education in the hands of the local authorities. Under its influence the communes, the cantons, and the departments were becoming real administrative bodies. They are now geographical divisions. The Préfet appoints the Maires; the Préfet appoints in every canton a Commissaire de Police, seldom a respectable man, as the office is not honourable; the Gardes champêtres, who are the local police, are put under his control; the Recteur, who was a sort of local Minister of Education in every department, is suppressed; his powers are transferred to the Préfet; the Préfet appoints, promotes, and dismisses all the masters of theécoles primaires. The Préfet can destroy the prosperity of every commune that displeases him. He can displace the functionaries, close its schools, obstruct its public works, and withhold the money which the Government habitually gives in aid of local improvement. He can convert it, indeed, into a mere unorganised aggregation of individuals, by dismissing every communal functionary, and placing its concerns in the hands of his own nominees. There are many hundreds of communes that have been thus treated, and whose masters are now uneducated peasants. The Préfet can dissolve theConseil généralof his department, and although he cannot actually name their successors, he does so virtually. No candidate for an elective office can succeed unless he is supported by the Government. The Courts of law, criminal and civil, are the tools of the executive. The Government appoints the judges, the Préfet provides the jury, andla Haute Policeacts without either. All power of combination, even of mutual communication, except from mouth to mouth, is gone. The newspapers are suppressed or intimidated, the printers are the slaves of the Préfet, as they lose their privilege if they offend; the secrecy of the post is habitually and avowedly violated; there are spies in every country town to watch and report conversation; every individual stands defenceless and insulated, in the face of this unscrupulous executive, with its thousands of armed hands and its thousands of watching eyes. The only opposition that is ventured is the abstaining from voting. Whatever be the office, and whatever be the man, the candidate of the Préfet comes in; but if he is a man who would have been unanimously rejected in a state of freedom, the bolder electors show their indignation by their absence.
'In such a state of society the traveller can learn little. Even those who rule it, know little of the feelings of their subjects. The vast democratic sea on which the Empire floats is influenced by currents, and agitated by ground swells which the Government discovers only by their effects. It knows nothing of the passions which influence these great apparently slumbering masses. Indeed, it takes care, by stifling their expression, to prevent their being known.
'We disapprove in many respects of the manner in which Louis Napoleon employs his power, as we disapprove in all respects of the means by which he seized it; but, on the whole, we place him high among the sovereigns of France. As respects his foreign policy we put him at the very top. The foreign policy of the rulers of mankind, whether they be kings, or ministers, or senates, or demagogues, is generally so hateful, and at the same time so contemptible, so grasping, so irritable, so unscrupulous, and so oppressive—so much dictated by ambition, by antipathy and by vanity, so selfish, often so petty in its objects, and so regardless of human misery in its means, that a sovereign who behaves to other nations with merely the honesty and justice and forbearance which are usual between man and man, deserves the praise of exalted virtue. The sovereigns of France have probably been as good as the average of sovereigns. Placed indeed at the head of the first nation of the Continent, they have probably been better; but how atrocious has been their conduct towards their neighbour! If we go back no further than to the Restoration, we find Louis XVIII. forming the Holy Alliance, and attacking Spain without a shadow of provocation, for the avowed purpose of crushing her liberties and giving absolute power to the most detestable of modern tyrants. We find Charles X. invading a dependence of his ally, the Sultan, and confiscating a province to revenge a tap on the face given by the Bey of Algiers to a French consul. We find Louis Philippe breaking the most solemn engagements with almost wanton faithlessness; renouncing all extension of territory in Africa and then conquering a country larger than France—a country occupied by tribes who never were the subjects of the Sultan or of the Bey, and who could be robbed of their independence only by wholesale and systematic massacre; we find him joining England, Spain, and Portugal in the Quadruple Alliance, and deserting them as soon as the time of action had arrived; joining Russia, Prussia, Austria and England, in the arrangement of the Eastern question, on the avowed basis that the integrity of the Ottoman empire should be preserved, and then attempting to rob it of Egypt. We find him running the risk of a war with America, because she demanded, too unceremoniously, the payment of a just debt, and with England because she complained of the ill-treatment of a missionary. We find him trying to ruin the commerce of Switzerland because the Diet arrested a French spy, and deposing Queen Pomare because she interfered with the sale of French brandies; and, as his last act, eluding an express promise by a miserable verbal equivocation, and sowing the seeds of a future war of succession in order to get for one of his sons an advantageous establishment in Spain.
'The greatest blot in the foreign policy of Louis Napoleon is the invasion of Rome, and for that he is scarcely responsible. It was originally planned by Louis Philippe and Rossi. The expedition which sailed from Toulon in 1849 was prepared in 1847. It was despatched in the first six months of his presidency, in obedience to a vote of the Assembly, when the Assembly was still the ruler of France; and Louis Napoleon's celebrated letter to Ney was an attempt, not, perhaps constitutional or prudent, but well-intentioned, to obtain for the Roman people liberal and secular institutions instead of ecclesiastical tyranny.
'His other mistake was the attempt to enforce on Turkey the capitulations of 1740, and to revive pretentions of the Latins in Jerusalem which had slept for more than a century. This, again, was a legacy from Louis Philippe. It was Louis Philippe who claimed a right to restore the dome, or the portico, we forget which, of the Holy Sepulchre, and to insult the Greeks by rebuilding it in the Latin instead of the Byzantine form. Louis Napoleon has the merit, rare in private life, and almost unknown among princes, of having frankly and unreservedly withdrawn his demands, though supported by treaty, as soon as he found that they could not be conceded without danger to the conceding party.
'With these exceptions, his management of the foreign relations of France has been faultless. To England he has been honest and confiding, to Russia conciliatory but firm, to Austria kind and forbearing, and he has treated Prussia with, perhaps, more consideration than that semi-Russian Court and childishly false and cunning king deserved. He has been assailed by every form of temptation, through his hopes and through his fears, and has remained faithful and disinterested. Such conduct deserves the admiration with which England has repaid it.
'We cannot praise him as an administrator. He is indolent and procrastinating. He hates details, and therefore does not understand them. When he has given an order he does not see to its execution; indeed, he cannot, for he does not know how it ought to be executed. He directed a fleet to be prepared to co-operate with us in the Baltic in the spring. Ducos, his Minister of Marine, assured him that it was ready. The time came, and not a ship was rigged or manned. He asked us to suspend the expedition for a couple of months. We refused, and sailed without the French squadron. If the Russians had ventured out, and we either had beaten them single-handed, or been repulsed for want of the promised assistance, the effect on France would have been frightful. We have reason to believe that it was only in the middle of February that he made up his mind to send an army to Bulgaria. They arrived by driblets, without any plan of operations, and it was not until August that their battering train left Toulon. It ought to have reached Sebastopol in May. In time, however, he must see the necessity of either becoming an active man of business himself, or of ministering, like other sovereigns, through his Ministers. Up to the present time many causes have concurred to occasion him to endeavour to be his own Minister, and to treat those to whom he gives that name as mere clerks. He is jealous and suspicious, fond of power, and impatient of contradiction. With the exception of Drouyn de l'Huys, the eminent men of France, her statesmen and her generals, stand aloof from him. Those who are not in exile have retired from public life, and offer neither assistance nor advice. Advice, indeed, he refuses, and, what is still more useful than advice, censure, he punishes.
'But the war, though it must last longer, and cost, more in men and in money than it would have done if it were managed with more intelligence and activity, must end favourably. Ill managed as it has been by France, it has been worse managed by Russia. It is impossible that that semi-barbarous empire, with its scarcely sane autocrat, its corrupt administration, its disordered finances, and its heterogeneous populations, should ultimately triumph over the two most powerful nations of Europe, flanked by Austria, and disposing of the fanatical valour of Turkey. If Louis Napoleon pleases the vanity of France by military glory, and rewards her exertions by a triumphant peace; if he employs his absolute power in promoting her prosperity by further relaxing the fetters which encumber her industry; if he takes advantage of the popularity which a successful war, an honourable peace, and internal prosperity must confer on him, to give to her a little real liberty and a little real self-government; if he gradually subsides from a [Greek:Týrannos] to a [Greek:Basileús]; if he allows some liberty of the press, some liberty of election, some liberty of discussion, and some liberty of decision; he may pass the remainder of his agitated life in the tranquil exercise of limited, but great and secure power, the ally of England, and the benefactor of France.
'If this expectation should be realised—and we repeat, that among many contingencies it appears to us to be the least improbable—it affords to Europe the best hope of undisturbed peace and progressive civilisation and prosperity. An alliance with England was one of the favourite dreams of the first Napoleon. He believed, and with reason, that England and France united could dictate to all Europe. But in this respect, as indeed in all others, his purposes were selfish. Being master of France, he wished France to be mistress of the world. All that he gave to France was power, all that he required from Europe was submission. The objects for which he desired our co-operation were precisely those which we wished to defeat. The friendship from which we recoiled in disgust, almost in terror, was turned into unrelenting hatred; and in the long struggle which followed, each party felt that its safety depended on the total ruin of the other.
'The alliance which the uncle desired as a means of oppressing Europe, the nephew seeks for the purpose of setting her free. The heavy continued weight of Russia has, ever since the death of Alexander, kept down all energy and independence of action, and even of thought, on the Continent. She has been the patron of every tyrant, the protector of every abuse, the enemy of every improvement. It was at her instigation that the Congress of Verona decreed the enslavement of Spain, and that in the conferences of Leybach it was determined to stifle liberty in Italy. Every court on the Continent is cursed with a Russian party; and woe be to the Sovereign and to the Minister who is not at its head: all the resources of Russian influence and of Russian corruption are lavished to render his people rebellious and his administration unsuccessful. From thispeine forte et durewe believe that Europe will now be relieved; and if the people or the sovereigns of the Continent, particularly those of Germany and Italy, make a tolerable use of the freedom from foreign dictation which the weakness of Russia will give to them, we look forward to an indefinite course of prosperity and improvement. Unhappily, experience, however, forbids us to be sanguine. Forty years ago, an event, such as we are now contemplating, occurred. A Power which had deprived the Continent of the power of independent action fell, and for several years had no successor. Germany and Italy recalled or re-established their sovereigns, and entrusted them with power such as they had never possessed before. How they used it may be inferred from the general outbreak of 1848. A popular indignation, such as could have been excited only by long years of folly, stupidity, and tyranny, swept away or shook every throne from Berlin to Palermo. The people was everywhere for some months triumphant; and its abuse of power produced a reaction which restored or introduced despotism in every kingdom except Prussia and Piedmont, and even in Prussia gave to the King power sufficient to enable him, up to the present moment, to maintain a policy, mischievous to the interests, disgusting to the sympathies, and injurious to the honour of his people. But while the Anglo-Gallic alliance continues, the Continent will be defended from the worst of all evils, the prevention of domestic improvement, and the aggravation of domestic disturbance, by foreign intervention. That alliance has already preserved the liberty of Piedmont. If it had been established sooner, it might have preserved that of Hesse, and have saved Europe from the revolting spectacle of the constitutional resistance of a whole people against an usurping tyrant and a profligate minister crushed by brutal, undisguised violence.
'We repeat that we are not sanguine, that we do not expect the tranquil, uninterrupted progress which would be the result of the timely concession on the part of the sovereigns, and of the forbearance and moderation on the part of their subjects, which, if they could profit by the lessons of history, would be adopted by both parties. The only lesson, indeed, which history teaches is, that she teaches none either to subjects or to sovereigns. But we do trust that when the ruler and his people are allowed to settle their own affairs between one another, they will come from time to time to coarse and imperfect, but useful arrangements of their differences. Rational liberty may advance slowly and unequally; it may sometimes be arrested, it may sometimes be forced back, but its march in every decennial period will be perceptible. Like an oak which has grown up among storms, its durability will be in proportion to the slowness of its progress.'
Tocqueville, June 30, 1855.
I have only just arrived here, my dear Senior, after wandering for nearly a month from friend to friend all through the Touraine and the Maine. As you may think, I am, on returning home after so long an absence, overpowered with trifling business. I cannot, therefore, comply to-day with your request and write to you the letter you ask for: I will write it after much thought and at length. The subject is well worthy of the trouble. Shall I at the same time send back to you the conversation which I have corrected, and in what way? The post would be very unsafe and expensive. Give me, therefore, your instructions on this point. But above all, give us news of yourselves and of all our friends.
My wife has borne the journey better than I expected, and the delight we feel in finding ourselves here once more will completely restore her.
This delight is really very great and in proportion to the annoyance of wandering about as we have done for three years without ever finding a place which entirely suited us.
As to public news, I have heard none since I left Paris. The only spot which a single ray of light can ever reach is Paris. All the rest is in profound darkness. If you hear anything important, pray tell me.
Adieu, dear Senior. Remember me to Mrs. and Miss Senior, and believe in our long and very sincere affection,
Tocqueville, July 25, 1855.
I wrote to you yesterday, my dear Senior, a long letter according to my promise.
But when I read it over I felt that it was absurd to send such a letter by the post, especially to a foreigner, and I burnt it.
Since the assault of the 18th,[1] the interference of the police in private correspondence has become more active. Many of my friends as well as I myself have perceived it. More letters have been kept back and more have been stopped. Two of mine have been lost. You may remember that two letters from me failed to reach you, three years ago. The danger is greater in the country, where handwritings are known, than in Paris. You advise me to put my letters into a cover directed to your Embassy, which will forward them. But this is no security. If a letter be suspected, it is easy to open and re-seal it, and still easier simply to suppress it.
And, in fact, after all, you have lost little. I wrote to you only what I have a hundred times said to you. We have lived so much together, and with such perfect mutual confidence, that it is difficult for either of us to say anything new to the other.
Besides, on reading over again, with attention, your note of our last conversation,[2] I have nothing to alter. All that I could do would be to develope a little more my opinions, and to support them by additional arguments. I feel more and more their truth, and that the progress of events will confirm them much more than any reasonings of mine can do.
We are annoyed and disturbed, having the house full of workmen. I am trying to warm it by hot air, and am forced to bore through very old and very thick walls; but we shall be repaid by being able to live here during the winter.
I am amusing myself with the letters which our young soldiers in the East, peasants from this parish, write home to their families, and which are brought to me. This correspondence should be read in order to understand the singular character of the French peasant. It is strange to see the ease with which these men become accustomed to the risks of military life, to danger and to death, and yet how their hearts cling to their fields and to the occupations of country life. The horrors of war are described with simplicity, and almost with enjoyment. But in the midst of these accounts one finds such phrases as these: "What crop do you intend to sow in such a field next year?" "How is the mare?" "Has the cow a fine calf?" &c. No minds can be more versatile, and at the same time more constant. I have always thought that, after all, the peasantry were superior to all other classes in France. But these men are deplorably in want of knowledge and education, or rather the education to which they have been subjected for centuries past has taught them to make a bad use of their natural good qualities.
It seems to me that Lord John's resignation will enable your Cabinet to stand, at least for some time. All that has passed in England since the beginning of the war grieves me deeply. Seen from a distance, your Constitution appears to me an admirable machine which is getting out of order, partly from the wearing out of its works, partly from the unskilfulness of its workers. Such a spectacle is useful to our Government.
I asked you some questions, which you have not answered. Is Mrs. Grote returned from Germany? Is she well? Has she received my letter addressed to her at Heidelberg? The last question is always doubtful when one writes from France.
I send you a letter from the Count de Fénelon, which I think will interest you. You will give it me back when we meet.
I am very curious to know what you will think of Egypt; and I hope that we shall be established in Paris when you return.
[Footnote 1: On the 18th June, 1855, the French and English made an unsuccessful assault on Sebastopol.—ED.]
[Footnote 2: That of the 28th May, 1855.—ED.]
Tocqueville, September 19, 1855.
Your letter, my dear Senior, of the 26th of August, has much interested me. I see that you are resolved on your great journey. I could say like Alexander, if the comparison were not too ambitious, that I should wish to be in your place if I were not in my own; but I cannot get satiated with the pleasure of being at home after so long an absence. Everything is pleasure in this country life, among my own fields. Even the solitude is charming; but were I anywhere else, I should envy you your tour.
Everything in Egypt is curious: the past, the present, and the future. I hope to learn much from your Journal, which I trust that I shall have. We shall certainly meet you in Paris.
The noise made by the fall of Sebastopol has echoed even to this distant corner of France. It is a glorious event, and has delighted every Frenchman of every party and of every opinion, for in these matters we are one man.
I fear that the victory has been bought dearly. There is not a neighbouring village to which the war has not cost some of its children. But they bear it admirably. You know, that in war we show the best side of our character. If our civilians resembled our soldiers we should long ago have been masters of Europe.