PERSONAL POLITICS
‘Ay, every inch a king!’
‘Ay, every inch a king!’
‘Ay, every inch a king!’
‘Ay, every inch a king!’
Many persons are surprised at the conduct of CharlesX.in pushing things to extremities: the wonder would have been, if he had not. All the time of theRestorationunder a charter, he was employed in thinking how to get rid of that charter, to throw off that incubus, to cancel that juggle, to breathe once more the air of divine right. Till this were done—no matter by what delays, after what length of time, by what jesuitical professions, by what false oaths, by what stratagems, by what unmasked insolence, by what loud menaces, by what violence, by what blood—the French monarch (whether Charles or Louis), felt himself ‘cooped, confined, and cabined in, by saucy doubts and fears;’ but this phantom of a constitution once out of the way he would be ‘himself again.’ He would then first cryVive la Charte!without a pang—with his eyes running over, and his heart bursting with laughter. If he had a right to bewherehe was, he had a right to bewhathe was, and what he was born to be. This was the first idea instilled into his mind, the last he would forget. All else was a compromise with circumstances, a base surrender of an inalienable claim, a concession extorted underduresse, so much the more eagerly to be retracted, as an appearance of compliance had been the longer and more studiously kept up. A throne not founded on inherent right was a mockery and insult. All power shared with the people, supposedto be derived from them, for which the possessor was accountable to them, held during pleasure or good behaviour, was pollution to his thoughts, odious to him as the leprosy. Be sure of this, popular right coiled round the sceptre of hereditary kings is like the viper clinging to our hands, which we shake off with fear and loathing. There is in despots (born and bred) a natural and irreconcilable antipathy to the people, and to all obligations to them. The very name of freedom is a screech-owl in their ears. They have been brought up with the idea that they were entitled to absolute power, that there was something in their blood that gave them a right to it without condition or reserve, or being called to account for the use or abuse of it; and they reject with scorn and impatience anything short of this. They will either be absolute or they will be nothing. The Bourbons for centuries had been regarded as the gods of the earth, as a superior race of beings, who had a sovereign right to trample on mankind, and crush them in their wrath or spare them in their mercy. Would CharlesX.derogate from his ancestors, would he be the degenerate scion of that royal line, to wear a tarnished and dishonoured crown, to be raised by the shout of a mob, to wait the assent of a Chamber of Deputies, to owe every thing to the people, to be a king on liking and on sufferance, a sort of state prisoner in his own kingdom, shut up and spell-bound in the nickname of a Constitution? He would as soon consent to go on all-fours. The latter would not shock his pride and prejudices more: would not be a greater degradation in his eyes, or a more total inversion of the order of nature. It is not that the successor to a despotic throne will not, but he cannot be the king of a free people: the very supposition is in his mind a contradiction in terms. It is something base and mechanical, not amounting even to the rank of a private gentleman who does what he pleases with his estate; and kings consider mankind as their estate. If a herd of overloaded asses were to turn against their drivers and demand their liberty and better usage, these could not be more astonished than the Bourbons were when the French people turned against them and demanded their rights. Will these same Bourbons, who have been rocked and cradled in the notion of arbitrary power, and of their own exclusive privileges as a separate and sacred race, who have sucked it in with their mothers’ milk, who inherit it in their blood, who have nursed it in exile and in solitude, and gloated over it once more, since their return, as within their reach, ever be brought to look Liberty in the face except as a mortal and implacable foe, or ever give up the hope of removing that obstacle to all that they have been or still have a fancied right to be? The last thing that they can be convinced of will be to make them comprehend that they aremen. This is a discoveryof the last forty years, that has been forced upon them in no very agreeable manner; by the beheading of more than one of their race, the banishment of the rest, by their long wanderings and unwelcome return to their own country, from whence they have been driven twice since—but up to that period they find no such levelling doctrine inscribed either in the records of history or on their crest and coat of arms or in the forms of religion or in the ancient laws and institutions of the kingdom. Which version will they then believe or turn a deaf ear to: that which represents them as God’s vicegerents upon earth, or that which holds them up as the enemies of the human race and the scoff and outcasts of their country? Every, the meanest individual has a standard of estimation in his own breast, which is that he is of more importance than all the rest of the world put together; but a king is the only person with respect to whom all the rest of the world join or have ever joined in the same conclusion; and be assured that having encouraged him in this opinion, he will do every thing in his power to keep them to it till his last gasp. You have sworn to a man that he is a god: this is indeed the most solemn of compacts. Any attempt to infringe it, any breath throwing a doubt upon it, is treason, rebellion, impiety. Would you be so unjust as to retract the boon, he will not be so unjust to himself as to let you. He would sooner suffer ten deaths and forfeit twenty kingdoms than patiently submit to the indignity of having his right called in question. It is said, CharlesX.is a good-natured man: it may be so, and that he would not hurt a fly; but in that quarrel he would shed the blood of millions of men. If he did not do so, he would consider himself as dead to honour, a recreant to fame, and a traitor to the cause of kings. Touch but that string, the inborn dignity of kings and their title to ‘solely sovereign sway and masterdom,’ and the milk of human kindness in the best-natured monarch turns to gall and bitterness. You might as well present a naked sword to his breast, as be guilty of a word or look that can bear any other construction than that of implicit homage and obedience. There is a spark of pride lurking at the bottom of his heart, however glozed over by smiles and fair speeches, ever ready (with the smallest opposition to his will) to kindle into a flame, and desolate kingdoms. Let but the voice of freedom speak, and to resist ‘shall be in him remorse, what bloody work soever’ be the consequence. Good-natured kings, like good-natured men, are often merely lovers of their own ease who give themselves no trouble about other people’s affairs: but interfere in the slightest point with their convenience, interest, or self-love, and a tigress is not more furious in defence of her young. While the Royal Guards were massacring the citizens of Paris, CharlesX.was partridge-shootingat St. Cloud, to show that the shooting of his subjects and the shooting of game were equally among themenus plaisirsof royalty. This is what is meant by mild paternal sway, by the perfection of a good-natured monarch, when he orders the destruction of as great a number of people as will not do what he pleases, without any discomposure of dress or features. Away with such trifling! There is no end of the confusion and mischief occasioned by the application of this mode of arguing from personal character and appearances to public measures and principles. If we are to believe the fashionable cant on this subject, a man cannot do a dirty action because he wears a clean shirt: he cannot break an oath to a nation, because he pays a gambling debt; and because he is delighted with the universal homage that is paid him, with having every luxury and every pomp at his disposal, he cannot, under the mask of courtesy and good humour, conceal designs against a Constitution, or ‘smile and smile and be atyrant!’ Such is the logic of theTimes. This paper, ‘ever strong upon the stronger side,’ laughs to scorn the very idea entertained by our ‘restless and mercurial neighbours’ (as if theTimeshad nothing of thetourniquetprinciple in its composition) that so amiable, so well-meaning and prosperous a gentleman as CharlesX.should nourish an old and inveterate grudge against the liberties of his country or wish to overturn that happy order of things which theTimeshad so great a share in establishing. But he no sooner verifies the predictions of the French journalists and is tumbled from his throne, than theTimeswith its jolly, swaggering,thrasonicalair falls upon him and calls him all thevagabondsit can get its tongue to. We do not see the wit of this, any more than of its assuring us, with unabated confidence, that there is not the least shadow of foundation for the apprehensions of those who are perverse enough to think, that a Ministry that have set up and countenanced the Continental despotisms, and uniformly shown themselves worse than indifferent to the blood and groans of thousands of victims in foreign countries (sacrificed under their guarantee of thedeliverance of mankind) may have anarrière-penséeagainst the liberties of their own. We grant the premises of theTimesin either case, that the French king was good-humoured and that the Duke has a vacant face; but these favourable appearances have not prevented a violent catastrophe in the one case and may not in the other. Mr. Brougham a short time ago, in a speech at a public meeting, gave his hearty approbation of the late Revolution in France, and clenched his argument by asking what fate an English monarch would merit, and probably meet, who acted in the same manner as the besotted Charles; who annulled the liberty of the press, who prevented the meeting of the representatives of the people, who disfranchised four-fifths of theelectors by an arbitrary decree, and proposed to reign without law, and raise the taxes without a Parliament? This is not exactly the point at issue. A morehomequestion would be, what fate a king of England would deserve, not who did or attempted all this in his own person, but who fearing to do that, as the next best thing and to show which way his inclinations tended, aided and abetted with all the might and resources of a people calling itself free, and tried to force back upon a neighbouring state, by a long and cruel war and with the ruin of his own subjects, a king like CharlesX., who by every act and circumstance of his life had shown himself hostile to the welfare and freedom of his country, and whose conduct, if repeated here, would justly incur the forfeiture of his own crown? It would be ‘premature,’ in the judgment of some, to give an opinion on this subject till after the thing has happened, and then it would be neither loyal nor patriotic to condemn the conduct of our own cabinet; but we hope at least that the next time the English government undertake to force a king upon the French people, they will send them a baboon instead of a Bourbon, as the less insult of the two!—To return to the question ofpersonal politics. Our last king but one was a good domestic character; but this had little or nothing to do with the wisdom or folly of his public measures. He might be faithful to his conjugal vows, but might put a construction on some clause in his Coronation-oath fatal to the peace and happiness of a large part of his subjects. He might be an exceedingly well-meaning, moral man, but might have notions instilled into him in early youth respecting the prerogatives of the crown and the relation between the sovereign and the people, that might not quit him to his latest breath, and might embroil his subjects and the world in disastrous wars and controversies during his whole reign. His son succeeded him without the same reputation for domestic virtue, but adopted all the measures of his father’s ministers. If the private character and the public conduct were to be submitted to the same test, this could not have happened. But the late king was cried up for his elegant accomplishments, and as thefine gentlemanof his family; and this, with equally sound logic, atoned for the absence of less shewy qualities, and stamped his public proceedings with the character of a wise and liberal policy. We are already assured of a fortunate and peaceful reign, because the present king looks pleased and good-humoured on his accession to the crown; though the smallest cloud in the political horizon may scatter the ruddy smiles and overcast the whole prospect. Mr. Coleridge complains, somewhere, of politicians who pretend to guide the state, and yet have ruined their own affairs. Would the author of theAncient Marinerapply the same rule to other things, andaffirm that no one could be a poet or a philosopher who had not made his fortune? One would suppose, that all the people of sense and worth were confessedly on one side of the question in the great disputes in religion or politics that have agitated and torn the world in pieces, and all the knaves and fools on the other. This is hardly tenable ground. CharlesIX., of happy memory was we believe a good-tempered man and a most religious prince: this did not hinder him from authorising the massacre of St. Bartholomew and shooting at the Huguenots out of the palace-windows with his own hands. This was the prejudice of his time: we have still certain prejudices to contend with in ours, which have nothing to do with the looks, temper, or private character of those who hold them. We wonder at the cruelties and atrocities of religious fanatics in former times, and would not have them repeated: were none of these persecutors honest, conscientious men? Take any twelve inquisitors: six of them shall be angels and the other six scoundrels, yet they will all agree in one unanimous verdict, condemning you or me to the flames for not believing in the infallibility of the Pope. This is the thing to be avoidedby all means; and not to lose our time in idle discussions about the amiableness of the characters of these pious exterminators, nor in admiring the fineness of their countenances, nor the picturesque effect of the scenery andcostume. CharlesX., the gay and gallant Count d’Artois, wears a hair-shirt, is fond of partridge-shooting, and wanted to put a yoke on the necks of his subjects. The last is that on which issue was joined. Let him go where he chooses, with a handsome pension; but let him not be sent back again (as he was once before) at the expense of millions of lives![65]