Chapter 2

'I will not venture,' he answered, 'to affirm, with respect to any form whatever of government, that we shall never adopt it; but I own that I see no prospect of a French republic within any assignable period. We are, indeed, less opposed to a republic now than we were in 1848. We have found that it does not imply war, or bankruptcy, or tyranny; but we still feel that it is not the government that suits us. This was apparent from the beginning. Louis Napoleon had the merit, or the luck, to discover, what few suspected, the latent Bonapartism of the nation. The 10th of December showed that the memory of the Emperor, vague and indefinite, but therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic legend in the imaginations of the peasantry. When Louis Napoleon's violence and folly have destroyed the charm with which he has worked, all eyes will turn, not towards a republic, but to Henri V.'

'Was much money,' I asked, 'spent at his election?'

'Very little,' answered Tocqueville. 'The ex-Duke of Brunswick lent him 300,000 francs on a promise of assistance as soon as he should be able to afford it; and I suppose that we shall have to perform the promise, and to interfere to restore him to his duchy; but that was all that was spent. In fact he had no money of his own, and scarcely anyone, except the Duke, thought well enough of his prospects to lend him any. He used to sit in the Assembly silent and alone, pitied by some members and neglected by all. Silence, indeed, was necessary to his success.

_Paris, January 2nd_, 1852.--I dined with Mrs. Grote and drank tea with the Tocquevilles.

'What is your report,' they asked, 'of the President's reception in Notre Dame. We hear that it was cold.'

'So,' I answered, 'it seemed to me.'

'I am told,' said Tocqueville, 'that it was still colder on his road. He does not shine in public exhibitions. He does not belong to the highest class of hypocrites, who cheat by frankness and cordiality.'

'Such,' I said, 'as Iago. It is a class of villains of which the specimens are not common.'

'They are common enough with us,' said Tocqueville. 'We call them _faux bonshommes_. H. was an instance. He had passed a longish life with the character of a frank, open-hearted soldier. When he became Minister, the facts which he stated from the tribune appeared often strange, but coming from so honest a man we accepted them. One falsehood, however, after another was exposed, and at last we discovered that H. himself, with all his military bluntness and sincerity, was a most intrepid, unscrupulous liar.

'What is the explanation,' he continued, 'of Kossuth's reception in England? I can understand enthusiasm for a democrat in America, but what claim had he to the sympathy of aristocratic England?'

'Our aristocracy,' I answered, 'expressed no sympathy, and as to the mayors, and corporations, and public meetings, they looked upon him merely as an oppressed man, the champion of an oppressed country.'

'I think,' said Tocqueville, 'that he has been the most mischievous man in Europe.'

'More so,' I said, 'than Mazzini? More so than Lamartine?'

At this instant Corcelle came in.

'We are adjusting,' said Tocqueville, 'the palm of mischievousness.'

'I am all for Lamartine,' answered Corcelle; 'without him the others would have been powerless.'

'But,' I said, 'if Lamartine had never existed, would not the revolution of 1848 still have occurred?'

'It would have certainly occurred' said Tocqueville; 'that is to say, the oligarchy of Louis Philippe would have come to an end, probably to a violent one, but it would have been something to have delayed it; and it cannot be denied that Lamartine's eloquence and courage saved us from great dangers during the Provisional Government. Kossuth's influence was purely mischievous. But for him, Austria might now be a constitutional empire, with Hungary for its most powerful member, a barrier against Russia instead of her slave.'

'I must put in a word,' said Corcelle,[2] 'for Lord Palmerston. If Lamartine produced Kossuth, Lord Palmerston produced Lamartine and Mazzini and Charles Albert--in short, all the incendiaries whose folly and wickedness have ended in producing Louis Napoleon.'

'Notwithstanding,' I said, 'your disapprobation of Kossuth, you joined us in preventing his extradition.'

'We did,' answered Tocqueville. 'It was owing to the influence of Lord Normanby over the President. It was a fine _succès de tribune_. It gave your Government and ours an occasion to boast of their courage and of their generosity, but a more dangerous experiment was never made. You reckoned on the prudence and forbearance of Austria and Russia. Luckily, Nicholas and Nesselrode are prudent men, and luckily the Turks sent to St. Petersburg Fuad Effendi, an excellent diplomatist, a much better than Lamoricière or Lord Bloomfield. He refused to see either of them, disclaimed their advice or assistance, and addressed himself solely to the justice and generosity of the Emperor. He admitted that Russia was powerful enough to seize the refugees, but implored him not to set such an example, and--he committed nothing to paper. He left nothing, and took away nothing which could wound the pride of Nicholas; and thus he succeeded.

'Two days after, came a long remonstrance from Lord Palmerston, which Lord Bloomfield was desired to read to Nesselrode, and leave with him. A man of the world, seeing that the thing was done, would have withheld an irritating document. But Bloomfield went with it to Nesselrode. Nesselrode would have nothing to say to it. "Mon Dieu!" he said, "we have given up all our demands; why tease us by trying to prove that we ought not to have made them?" Bloomfield said that his orders were precise. "Lisez donc," cried Nesselrode, "mais il sera très-ennuyeux." Before he had got half through Nesselrode interrupted him. "I have heard all this," he said, "from Lamoricière, only in half the number of words. Cannot you consider it as read?" Bloomfield, however, was inexorable.'

I recurred to a subject on which I had talked to both of them before--the tumult of January 29, 1849.

'George Sumner,' I said, 'assures me that it was a plot, concocted by Faucher and the President, to force the Assembly to fix a day for its dissolution, instead of continuing to sit until it should have completed the Constitution by framing the organic laws which, even on December 2 last, were incomplete. He affirms that it was the model which was followed on December 2; that during the night the Palais Bourbon was surrounded by troops; that the members were allowed to enter, but were informed, not publicly, but one by one, that they were not to be allowed to separate until they had fixed, or agreed to fix, the day of their dissolution; and that under the pressure of military intimidation, the majority, which was opposed to such a dissolution, gave way and consented to the vote, which was actually carried two days after.'

'No such proposition was made to me,' said Tocqueville, 'nor, as far as I know, to anybody else; but I own that I never understood January 29. It is certain that the Palais Bourbon, or at least its avenues, were taken possession of during the night; that there was a vast display of military force, and also of democratic force; that the two bodies remained _en face_ for some time, and that the crowd dispersed under the influence of a cold rain.'

'I too,' said Corcelle, 'disbelieve Sumner's story. The question as to the time of dissolution depended on only a few votes, and though it is true that it was voted two days after, I never heard that the military demonstration of January 29 accelerated the vote. The explanation which has been made to me is one which I mentioned the other day, namely, that the President complained to Changarnier, who at that time commanded the army of Paris, that due weight seemed not to be given to his 6,000,000 votes, and that the Assembly appeared inclined to consider him a subordinate power, instead of the _Chef d'État_, to whom, not to the Assembly, the nation had confided its destinies. In short, that the President indicated an intention to make a _coup d'etat_, and that the troops were assembled by Changarnier for the purpose of resisting it, if attempted, and at all events of intimidating the President by showing him how quickly a force could be collected for the defence of the Assembly.'

_Sunday, January_ 4.--I dined with the Tocquevilles alone. The only guest, Mrs. Grote, who was to have accompanied me, being unwell.

'So enormous,' said Tocqueville, 'are the advantages of Louis Napoleon's situation, that he may defy any ordinary enemy. He has, however, a most formidable one in himself. He is essentially a copyist. He can originate nothing; his opinions, his theories, his maxims, even his plots, all are borrowed, and from the most dangerous of models--from a man who, though he possessed genius and industry such as are not seen coupled, or indeed single, once in a thousand years, yet ruined himself by the extravagance of his attempts. It would be well for him if he would utterly forget all his uncle's history. He might then trust to his own sense, and to that of his advisers. It is true that neither the one nor the other would be a good guide, but either would probably lead him into fewer dangers than a blind imitation of what was done fifty years ago by a man very unlike himself, and in a state of society both in France and in the rest of Europe, very unlike that which now exists.'

Lanjuinais and Madame B., a relation of the family, came in.

Lanjuinais had been dining with Kissileff the Russian Minister. Louis Napoleon builds on Russian support, in consequence of the marriage of his cousin, the Prince de Lichtenstein, to the Emperor's daughter. He calls it an _alliance de famille_, and his organs the 'Constitutionnel' and the 'Patrie' announced a fortnight ago that the Emperor had sent to him the Order of St. Andrew, which is given only to members of the Imperial family, and an autograph letter of congratulation on the _coup d'état_.

Kissileff says that all this is false, that neither Order nor letter has been sent, but he has been trying in vain to get a newspaper to insert a denial. It will be denied, he is told, when the proper moment comes.

'It is charming,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'to see the Emperor of Russia, like ourselves, forced to see his name usurped without redress.'

Madame B. had just seen a friend who left his country-house, and came to Paris without voting, and told those who consulted him that, in the difficulties of the case, he thought abstaining was the safest course. Immediately after the poll was over the Prefect sent to arrest him for _malveillance_, and he congratulated himself upon being out of the way.

One of Edward de Tocqueville's sons came in soon after; his brother, who is about seventeen, does duty as a private, has no servant, and cleans his own horse; and is delighted with his new life. That of our young cavalry officers is somewhat different. He did not hear of the _coup d'état_ till a week after it had happened.

'Our regiments,' said Lanjuinais, 'are a kind of convents. The young men who enter them are as dead to the world, as indifferent to the events which interest the society which they have left, as if they were monks. This is what makes them such fit tools for a despot.'

_Thursday, January 8, 1852_.--From Sir Henry Ellis's I went to Tocqueville's.

[3]'In this darkness,' he said, 'when no one dares to print, and few to speak, though we know generally that atrocious acts of tyranny are perpetrated everyday, it is difficult to ascertain precise facts, so I will give you one. A young man named Hypolite Magin, a gentleman by birth and education, the author of a tragedy eminently successful called "Spartacus," was arrested on the 2nd of December. His friends were told not to be alarmed, that no harm was intended to him, but rather a kindness; that as his liberal opinions were known, he was shut up to prevent his compromising himself by some rash expression. He was sent to Fort Bicêtre, where the casemates, miserable damp vaults, have been used as a prison, into which about 3,000 political prisoners have been crammed. His friends became uneasy, not only at the sufferings which he must undergo in five weeks of such an imprisonment in such weather as this, but lest his health should be permanently injured. At length they found that he was there no longer: and how do you suppose that his imprisonment has ended? He is at this instant at sea in a convict ship on his way to Cayenne--untried, indeed unaccused--to die of fever, if he escape the horrors of the passage. Who can say how many similar cases there may be in this wholesale transportation? How many of those who are missing and are supposed to have died at the barricades, or on the Boulevards, may be among the transports, reserved for a more lingering death!'

A proclamation to-day from the Prefect de Police orders all persons to erase from their houses the words 'Liberté,' 'Êgalité,' and 'Fraternité' on pain of being proceeded against _administrativement_.

'There are,' said Tocqueville, 'now three forms of procedure: _judiciairement, militairement_ and _administrativement._ Under the first a man is tried before a court of law, and, if his crime be grave, is sentenced to one or two years' imprisonment. Under the second he is tried before a drumhead court-martial, and shot. Under the third, without any trial at all, he is transported to Cayenne or Algiers.'

I left Paris next day.

[Footnote 1: I was not able to resist retaining this conversation in the _Journals in France_.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: It must be remembered that M. de Corcelle is an ardent Roman Catholic.--ED.]

[Footnote 3: This conversation was also retained in the _Journals in France_.--ED.]

CORRESPONDENCE.

Kensington, January 5, 1852.

My dear Tocqueville,--A private messenger has just offered himself to me, a Mr. Esmeade, who will return in about a fortnight.

The debate on Tuesday night on the Palmerston question was very satisfactory to the Government. Lord John's speech was very well received--Lord Palmerston's very ill; and though the constitution of the present Ministry is so decidedly unhealthy that it is dangerous to predict any length of life to it, yet it looks healthier than people expected. It may last out the Session.

The feeling with respect to Louis Napoleon is stronger, and it tends more to unanimity every day. The Orleans confiscation has, I think, almost too much weight given to it. After his other crimes the mere robbery of a single family, ruffian-like as it is, is a slight addition.

I breakfasted with V. yesterday. He assures me that it is false that a demand of twenty millions, or any other pecuniary demand whatever, has been made in Belgium. Nor has anything been said as to the demolition of any fortresses, except those which were agreed to be dismantled in 1832, and which are unimportant.

The feeling of the people in Belgium is excellent.

Mr. Banfield, who has just returned from the Prussian provinces, says the same with respect to them--and Bunsen assures me that his Government will perish rather than give up a foot of ground. I feel better hopes of the preservation of peace.

Thiers and Duvergier de Hauranne are much _fêtés_, as will be the case with all the exiles.

I have been reading Fiquelmont. He is deeply steeped in all the _bêtises_ of the commercial, or rather the anti-commercial school; and holds that the benefit of commerce consists not, as might have been supposed, in the things which are imported, but in those which are exported.

These follies, however, are not worth reading; but his constitutional theories--his belief, for instance, that Parliamentary Government is the curse of Europe--are curious.

The last number of the 'Edinburgh Review' contains an article on Reform well worth reading. It is by Greg. He wrote an admirable article in, I think, the April number, on Alton Locke and the English Socialists, and has also written a book, which I began to-day, on the Creed of Christendom. I have long been anxious to get somebody to do what I have not time to do, to look impartially into the evidences of Christianity, and report the result. This book does it.

Lord Normanby does not return to Paris, as you probably know. No explanation is given, but it is supposed to be in compliance with the President's wishes.

I have just sent to the press for the 'Edinburgh Review,' an article on Tronson du Coudray[1] and the 18th fructidor, which you will see in the April number. The greater part of it was written this time last year at Sorrento.

Gladstone has published a new Neapolitan pamphlet, which I will try to send you. It is said to demolish King Ferdinand.

Kindest regards to Madame de Tocqueville. We hope that you will come to us as soon as it is safe.

Ever yours,

N.W. SENIOR.

P.S. and very private.--I have seen a communication from Schwartzenberg to Russia and Prussia, of the 19th December, the doctrine of which is that Louis Napoleon has done a great service by putting down parliamentaryism. That in many respects he is less dangerous than the Orleans, or elder branch, because they have parliamentary leanings. That no alteration of the existing parties must be permitted--and that an attempt to assume an hereditary crown should be discouraged--but that while it shows no aggressive propensities the policy of the Continent ought to be to countenance him, and _isoler_ l'Angleterre, as a _foyer_ of constitutional, that is to say, anarchical, principles.

Bunsen tells me that in October his King was privately asked whether he was ready to destroy the Prussian Constitution--and that he peremptorily refused.

Look at an article on the personal character of Louis Napoleon in the 'Times' of Monday. It is by R----, much built out of my conversation and Z.'s letters.

I have begged Mr. Esmeade to call on you--you will like him. He is a nephew of Sir John Moore.

[2]Kensington, March 19, 1852.

My dear Tocqueville,--I was very glad to see your hand again--though there is little in French affairs on which liberals can write with pleasure.

Ours are become very interesting. Lord John's declaration, at the meeting the other day in Chesham Place, that he shall introduce a larger reform, and surround himself with more advanced adherents, and Lord Derby's, on Monday, that he is opposed to all democratic innovation, appear to me to have changed the position of parties. The question at issue is no longer Free-trade or Protection. Protection is abandoned. It is dead, never to revive. Instead of it we are to fight for Democracy, or Aristocracy. I own that my sympathies are with Aristocracy: I prefer it to either Monarchy or Democracy. I know that it is incident to an aristocratic government that the highest places shall be filled by persons chosen not for their fitness but for their birth and connections, but I am ready to submit to this inconvenience for the sake of its freedom and stability. I had rather have Malmesbury at the Foreign Office, and Lord Derby first Lord of the Treasury, than Nesselrode or Metternich, appointed by a monarch, or Cobden or Bright, whom I suppose we should have under a republic. But above all, I am for the winning horse. If Democracy is to prevail I shall join its ranks, in the hope of making its victory less mischievous.

I wish, however, that the contest had not been forced on. We were very well, before Lord John brought in his Reform Bill, which nobody called for, and I am not at all sure that we shall be as well after it has passed.

As to the immediate prospects of the Ministry, the next three weeks may change much, but it seems probable that they will be forced to dissolve in April, or the beginning of May, that the new Parliament will meet in July, and that they will be turned out about the end of August. And that this time next year we shall be discussing Lord John's new Reform Bill.

I doubt whether our fears of invasion are exaggerated. At this instant, without doubt, Louis Napoleon is thinking of nothing but the Empire; and is kind to Belgium, and pacific to Switzerland in the hope of our recognition.

But I heard yesterday from Lord Hardinge that 25,000 men are at Cherbourg, and that 25,000 more are going there--and that a large sum is devoted to the navy. We know that he governs _en conspirateur_, and this is likely to extend to his foreign as well as his civil relations.

I see a great deal of Thiers, who is very agreeable and very _triste_. 'L'exil,' he says, 'est très-dur.' Rémusat seems to bear it more patiently. We hear that we are to have Cousin.

What are your studies in the Bibliothèque Royale? I have begun to read Bastide, and intend to make the publication of my lectures on Political Economy my principal literary pursuit. I delivered the last on Monday.

I shall pass the first fifteen days of April in Brussels, with my old friend Count Arrivabene, 7 Boulevard du Régent.

* * * * *

Ever yours,

N.W. SENIOR.

March 25, 1852.

I send you, my dear Senior, an introduction to Lamoricière. This letter will be short: you know that I do not write at any length by the post.

It will contain nothing but thanks for your long and interesting letter brought by Rivet, who returned delighted with the English in general, and with you in particular.

I see that the disturbed state of politics occasioned by Sir Robert Peel's policy, is passing away, and that your political world is again dividing itself into the two great sects, one of which tries to narrow, the other to extend, the area of political power--one of which tries to lift you into aristocracy, the other to depress you into democracy.

The political game will be simpler. I can understand better the conservative policy of Lord Derby than the democratic one of Lord John Russell. As the friends of free-trade are more numerous than those of democracy, I think that it would have been easier to attack the Government on its commercial than on its political illiberality.

Then in this great nation, called Europe, similar currents of opinions and feelings prevail, different as may be the institutions and characters of its different populations. We see over the whole continent so general and so irresistible a reaction against democracy, and even against liberty, that I cannot believe that it will stop short on our side of the Channel; and if the Whigs become Radical, I shall not be surprised at the permanence in England of a Tory Government allied to foreign despots.

But I ought not to talk on such matters, for I live at the bottom of a well, seeing nothing, and regretting that it is not sufficiently closed above to prevent my hearing anything. Your visions of 25,000 troops at Cherbourg, to be followed by 25,000 more, are mere phantoms. There is nothing of the kind, and there will be nothing. I speak with knowledge, for I come from Cherbourg. I have been attending an extraordinary meeting of our _Conseil général_ on the subject of a projected railway. My reception touched and delighted me. I was unanimously, and certainly freely, elected president.

* * * * *

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Friday evening, April 17, 1852.

My dear Tocqueville,--My letter is not likely to be a very amusing one, for I begin it on the dullest occasion and in the dullest of towns, namely at Ostend, while waiting for the packet-boat which is to take me to London.

A thousand thanks for your letter to Lamoricière. He was very kind to me, and I hope hereafter, in Paris or in London, to improve the acquaintance.

I saw no other French in Brussels. The most interesting conversation that I had was with the King.