Part 2

I have heard it remarked by clear-sighted men who are good observers, that this malady of the mind is decreasing, and that even amongst the labouring classes themselves, false notions as to the conflict of capital and labour, as to the artificial settlement of wages, and the intervention of the State in the distribution of the material means of existence, are in discredit, and that the ambitious aspirings of the people, although continuing to be very democratic, have ceased to assume the form of Socialism. {xxvii} I ardently wish it were so: the passionate feelings which find their field in facts affecting the sphere of material subsistence, are the rudest, the most rebellious, and the most recalcitrant to the principles of the moral order: it is easier to deal with the aspirings of political ambition than with the ardent cravings for physical advantages. But I fear, I confess, that errors such as those which presented themselves under the names of Socialism and Communism, and which recently made so much noise, are not so discarded as we might hope them to be; that they are actually without a mouthpiece is not a sufficient proof of their defeat; materialism, and the evil instincts to which it leads or from which it springs, have penetrated very far amongst us, and a long period of social and moral progress in the midst of a society which has been well ordered will be necessary in order to surmount this danger.

Several years ago I put to a great manufacturer of Manchester, who had been Mayor of that immense centre of industry, the following question: "What amongst you is the proportion between the laborious and well-conducted workmen, who live respectably in their homes, set aside money in the savings' bank, and apply for books at the people's library, and the idle and disorderly workmen who pass their time at taverns, and only work so much as is necessary to furnish them with the means of subsistence?" {xxviii} After a moment's reflection, he replied: "The former are two-thirds of the whole number." After congratulating him, I added, "Allow me to put one more question. If you had amongst you great disorders, seditious assemblages, and riots, what would be the result?" "With us, sir," he said without hesitation, "the honest men are braver than the ill-conditioned ones." I congratulated him this time still more.

In these questions I had touched the root of the evil which afflicts us. It is to their shortcomings in morality, to their disorderly lives, that we must attribute the favour with which the working classes receive the fallacious theories that menace social order. The condition of these classes is hard and full of distressing accidents; whoever regards it closely, and with a little fairness and sympathy, cannot fail to be deeply moved by all the sufferings which they have to support, the privations from which they have no chance of escape, and the efforts which they must make to ensure themselves a living at best monotonous and full of hazard. {xxix} The happy ones of the earth feel sometimes alarm and irritation, when they hear from the pulpit descriptions purer and more true to the life than are to be met with in philanthropical novels, of the precarious state and distresses of the lower orders. Beyond doubt, from pictures of this nature should be scrupulously excluded everything that would seem to excite sentiments of hostility, or that would set one class against another; still as the upper classes must resign themselves to the spectacle, it devolves more especially upon Christian Painters to place it before them. {xxx} Nothing but strong moral convictions, and the habits of well living amongst the labouring classes, can furnish them with efficacious means of struggling against the temptations and resisting the ambitious yearnings, suggested to them by the spectacle of the world which surrounds them,--a world now at length transparent to all, a world of which the stir, the noise, the accidents, the adventures, penetrate with rapidity even to the workshops of our cities and the remotest recesses of our villages. What influence shall protect the masses of the people from the irritating and demoralizing effect of such a sight, unless it be the influence of religious principles, the moral discipline which religion maintains, and the moral serenity which religion diffuses over the rudest existences and the lives subjected to the greatest privations? And it is precisely religious belief and religious discipline, Christian faith and Christian law, which are now being attacked and undermined, and this far more in the obscurer classes, than in the brilliant regions of society!

{xxxi}

These attacks are of a general although of diverse nature, and of unequal violence; they occur in the bosom of Roman Catholicism, of Protestantism, and of scientific philosophy; some are direct, open, impetuous; others indirect and full of reserves, and of a tenderness sometimes affected, sometimes sincere. Christianity counts amongst its enemies fanatics who persecute it in the name of reason and of liberty, as well as adversaries who criticise it with moderation and prudence; the latter admit its practical deservings, are distressed by the wounds which they inflict, and, in the very act of dealing their blows, seek to lessen their force. This diversity of attack is a proof of the trouble, of the incertitude, and of the incoherence which reign in men's opinions, both upon religious questions and upon questions which are only simply political and social; many they are who would be inclined to save such or such a portion of the edifice which they are battering and seeking to destroy. But the upshot is, that all these blows are telling upon the same point, and are concurring to produce the same effect; it is the Christian Religion which receives them all; it is the right and the empire of Christ which, in the world learned and unlearned, is subjected to doubt and exposed to peril.

{xxxii}

I have touched upon all the great questions which are agitating the human mind and human societies: questions of public right, questions of political organization, questions of social institutions, questions of religious belief. Everywhere I encounter two facts, facts everywhere the same: a great complication and a great incertitude in man's opinions and in his efforts. Nothing is simple, no one decided. Problems of every kind--doubts of every kind weigh upon the thoughts of men, and oppress their wills; their ambitious aspirings are varied, immense, but everywhere they hesitate. They may be likened to travellers already exhausted with fatigue, yet feebly driving to feel their way through a labyrinth.

Are we then to infer that we are living in an era of decay and impotence? that we have nothing ourselves to do, nothing to hope for, in this situation so complicated and so obscure? that we have only to wait until our lot is decided by that sovereign power called by some Providence, by others Fate?

{xxxiii}

I am far from thinking so.

Of the men distinguished by singleness of views and strength of convictions whom I have known, I consider the Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr in these respects the most remarkable. He was one day detailing his reasons for disapproving of the system of a royal or imperial guard, or of privileged corps, in an army: "Few," said he, "are really brave: the best thing to be done is to disseminate them in the ranks, where each singly, by his presence and example, will make eight or ten more brave men around him." I am no judge as to the value of the Marshal's maxim in a military sense; I do not believe it to be invariably true, or always applicable in the political sense; there are epochs at which, in order to further the progress of which a nation stands in need, to withdraw it from its embarrassments or to rouse it from its apathy, the most urgent thing to be done, and the plan the most efficacious, is to form in its bosom picked bodies of men (the number is immaterial), and then to incorporate with them others possessing distinguished qualities, and animated by the same spirit, decided in their opinions, and resolute in their action, single of purpose, and full of confidence: these would soon attract to themselves as associates many others who would never, without such impulse, begin to move in the same path. {xxxiv} We are, I believe, at an era which calls for such a mode of influencing society, and which authorises us to expect success if we adopt it.

I can never be accused of ignoring or extenuating the evil which torments us upon all the points which I have just indicated, the rights of nations, the civil organization of society and its economy, moral and religious belief. In all these directions an evil wind is blowing, an evil current is hurrying away a part of French society, and it is my constant design so to arouse the moral sense of the people, and its good sense, as to make them attentive to the existence of the ill, and solicitous for its removal. {xxxv} But at the side of this fact, so deplorable and so full of peril, a fact of contrary and salutary nature is occurring and developing itself: a good wind there also is which is blowing, a good current which is impelling us forwards;--at the same time that violent and revolutionary theories are being diffused, the principles of legal order, and of liberties, serving mutually to control and check one another, are proclaimed and maintained; the maxims and the sentiments of the spirit of peace are heard at least as loudly pronounced, as the souvenirs and the traditions of the spirit of adventure and conquest; the sound principles of political economy have defenders no less zealous than the presumptuous and dreamy theories of Socialism; Spiritualism raises its voice high at the side of Materialism; Christianity is advancing at the same time as Incredulity, and with a progress also distinguished by its scientific method and its practical applications. {xxxvi} Following respectively their different objects, there are on both sides groups of men of strong convictions, activity, and influence, who hope for and pursue the triumph of their several causes. Like the ardent huntsman of Bürgers ballad, France is solicited by two Genii, ever at her side, ever present, urgent, contrary. Since the commencement of the nineteenth century, our history is made up of this great struggle and of its vicissitudes, of the series of victories gained and defeats sustained by these two forces, which are disputing the future of our country.

They find a field of action in a people of quick, various, and keen feelings, prone to generous impulses, full of human sympathies and mobility, at this moment chilled and intimidated by the checks imposed upon their ambitious yearnings, by the disappointments which have befallen their hopes, and so brought back by actual experience to confine their aspirations within the modest limits of good sense; more occupied with the perils of their situation than with the rights of thought, but always remarkable for intelligence and sagacity; friendly to liberty even when they dread its abuse, and to order although they only defend it at the last extremity; more touched by virtue than shocked by vice; honest in their instincts and moral judgments in spite of the weakness of their moral belief and their complacent indulgence of men whom they do not esteem; and always ready, in spite of their doubts and their alarms, to recur to the noble desires which they have the air of no longer entertaining.

{xxxvii}

We have in all this evidently matter to encourage the good genius of France. The life of nations is neither easier nor less mixed with good and evil, with successes and reverses, than the life of individuals; but assuredly, in spite of what is wanting to it, and in spite of its sorrows, the actual state of our country, as well as its long history, open a wide field to the efforts and the hopes of the men of elevated, resolute, and honest minds, who are occupying themselves in earnest with its destiny.

{xxxviii}

What, in order to attain their object, can be, ought to be, the conduct of the men engaged in this patriotic design, men who have it at heart to second the good current and to stem the evil current, which have both set in amongst us? Upon what conditions and by what means can we hope to pass through the sieve of good sense and of moral sense the confused ideas which plague us, and to find an issue for the public out of the doubts and hesitation which are a source of languor and enervation to the soul?

Political Liberty and Belief in Religion, the movement of society in advance and the impulse of the soul towards eternity, Free Government and Christianity, these are the two forces to which we should recur, and the only ones capable of remedying this disease of trouble and doubt which afflict both our thoughts and our conduct, and which at one time impairs, at another paralyses, our understanding.

{xxxix}

I have no intention here to speak of political liberties in the abstract, and of their necessity either to a country in order to guarantee to it a good administration at home and abroad, or to individuals in order to secure their interests, moral and material. The right of France to these liberties, and their opportuneness to her at this moment, have recently been set in their clearest light, and established in all their force on their highest stage, in the bosom of the legislative body. [Footnote 2] It is solely because of its influence upon that ill of our epoch, the complication of questions and the hesitations of opinion, that I speak here of political liberty; I regard it as one of the two great remedies against this ill.

[Footnote 2: Discourse of M. Thiers, _Sur les libertés nécessaires et sur la liberté de la presse_, in the séances of the 11th January, 1864, 13th February, 1866, 30th January, 7th, 8th, 15th, 21st, and 22nd February, 1868.]

{xl}

When all questions are agitated pell mell, and all minds are perplexed, the first salutary result consequent upon liberty is that it sets all opinions and all intentions in contact and in conflict. At first, and for a time, this simultaneous invasion of so many complex facts, and of so many diverse and contrary ideas, does but add to the perplexity of the questions and to the confusion of minds; but little by little, and quickly too, provided liberty endures, the winnowing process produces its effect upon the questions, and light penetrates into the understandings: the different facts, and problems which these facts suggest, are set in turn in their place, and valued only for as much as they are worth; actors and spectators grow accustomed to them all, and begin to form more precise conceptions of them.

Little by little order takes the place of confusion; opinions define and classify themselves; and instead of the fermentation of opinions in a chaotic confusion, we have a contest in regular form, and upon intelligible issues, I repeat that a result so salutary cannot be obtained unless upon the condition of a liberty universal, real, and durable; partial or transitory, it would serve only to aggravate the perturbation, and to unsettle opinions still more.

{xli}

Political liberty has a second effect, one, perhaps, still more important: it forces all questions to submit to the test of practical experiment. As long as the liberty is only in the thought, it is vain and intemperate; everything seems permitted, and everything possible to those who are not responsible for the effects of an act: man's thought, intoxicated with itself, runs riot in the vagueness of infinite space and time. But when to liberty of thought is superadded political liberty,--when, instead of treating questions speculatively, they have to be virtually solved,--when men are charged as real actors to transform into facts their own opinions or those of the spectators who are looking on,--then it is that the human mind, making its own strength the object of its reflection and examination, is driven to the admission that it does not dispose at its own will of the world, and that even in order to satisfy itself, it must confine itself to the limits imposed by good sense, by justice, and by possibility,--then it is that it learns to govern itself, and to hold itself responsible for its acts. Responsibility engenders discretion, but is itself engendered by liberty alone.

{xlii}

Our own times have furnished us with three great examples of the salutary empire exercised by political liberty in furnishing an escape from the embarrassment of situations, and in solving questions the most different--I might say the most contrary--in their nature. We have only to cast our eyes over the contemporary histories of England, of the United States of America, and of France herself, to discover their examples and their authority as precedents.

From 1792 to 1818, England was engaged in struggles first against the spirit of Revolution, and then against that termed by M. Benjamin Constant the spirit of usurpation and of conquest. With what forces and with what arms did England support these two formidable struggles? With the forces and the arms of political liberty. {xliii} It was by the elections, by publicity, by discussions continued in the midst of the energetic manifestations of all the parties, --it was by appeals to public sentiments and opinions,--it was by setting in action all the springs of a free and representative government, that England succeeded in her resistance to the most potent revolutionary and military movement which ever agitated Europe. That struggle over, after the lapse of a few years, during which the presiding policy prolonged its tenure of office by pursuing a pacific course, England entered upon quite a different path; sometimes under the Government of Liberals, sometimes of Conservatives, the policy of Reform took the place of the policy of resistance; and since 1828, it is in this path that England is progressing; it is in favour of innovations, sometimes prudent, sometimes daring, and sometimes, perhaps, improvident, that she is exerting to the utmost all the forces of the country, all the strength of its government. Political Liberty has in turn, and with similar efficacy, served the cause and assured the success, at one time of a policy of resistance, at another of that of progress.

{xliv}

The United States of America have been subjected to a still ruder trial. Their government has had to struggle against the insurrection of a notable portion of their people, and against a civil war entered upon in the name of a principle, popular independence. The central power of the Confederation has resisted an insurrection radically illegitimate, which was entered upon to maintain the slavery of a part of the human race; it defended the national existence of the State against the attempts which were made to dislocate it, and which were founded upon the same motive; and after a civil war which endured four years, in the course of which each side was prodigal of efforts and sacrifices, and displayed an equal energy, the policy of resistance triumphed by the medium of a republican power, and the liberal idea of the abolition of slavery vanquished the revolutionary idea of the right of insurrection. {xlv} It is to political liberty, and to the potent force of the institutions and manners founded under her influence, that this victory of the great right of humanity was due; and, the war once over, the civil _régime_ of American society resumed its action, still stormy and perilous, but free from every anarchical usurpation or military tyranny.

Newer to France, its principles less understood by it, and not so well applied, Political Liberty has not on these accounts remained without producing there some fruits. In 1830 and in 1848 France passed through two revolutions, one of which had been preceded by sixteen the other by eighteen years of civil liberty. Neither of the _régimes_ in operation immediately previous to each revolution sufficed to prevent it, but they greatly changed its character and weakened its effects. In 1830, thanks to the instantaneous intervention of the public authorities which owed their existence to the previous _régime_, a regular government was promptly established, and a new constitutional monarchy succeeded to that which had just fallen. {xlvi} On the instant it set itself in opposition to the revolutionary movement which had given it birth; but the principle of respect for the Law and for Liberty exercised, as yet, so incomplete and feeble an empire upon men's minds, that the anarchical fermentation of opinions prolonged themselves even after the victory. The doctrine of Religious Liberty, in particular, was more than once lost sight of and violated: in February, 1831, the funeral ceremonies in the church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, celebrated in commemoration of the Duke de Berri, who had been assassinated eleven years previously, was not allowed to be tranquilly celebrated; a violent and riotous mob sacked the archiepiscopal palace of Paris, and was the cause of the church, which had furnished them with a pretext for violence, being closed for many months. {xlvii} In 1848, on the contrary, during a revolutionary crisis which set men's passions far more furiously in movement, and which was more profound than that of 1830, neither the liberty of Religion nor the peace of the churches was disturbed; the ruling authorities were exposed to anarchy for a longer period, but the rights of the individual were respected, and he might affirm himself free even in the midst of the public troubles and perils. Thirty-four years of civil Liberty have not disappeared with the governments which were then in force without leaving their traces; their traditions and their examples have evidently exercised a salutary influence both upon the last Revolution, and upon the Reaction which put an end to it.

That this influence may still surmount the great trials through which governments and people may have both to pass, two things are necessary: the one is, that civil liberty should form real citizens, that nations as well as governments should learn to make use of their rights, and to submit to the limits imposed by their laws; the other is, that each country and ruling power, at the same time that they are culling the fruits of civil liberty, should accept its inconveniences and its perils. {xlviii} A free government is not exempt from either vices or dangers; it does not dispense men from the necessity of contemplating with resignation the imperfection of every work of man as well as of every human situation.

Free institutions are not of themselves enough: they leave room to nations for--what do I say? they demand from them--great activity and much responsibility. If nations strive to elude their part of responsibility and omit to exercise their share of action, free institutions become idle words; they are no longer anything but a picture-frame without the picture--a drama written, not represented--in which the actors fail to assume their parts or to co-operate to produce the _dénouement_.