Paris and the Parisians in 1835 Volume II Part 24

As instances of this kind pressed upon me, I have sometimes felt as if I had got behind the scenes of a theatre, and that all sorts of materials, for all sorts of performances, were jumbled together around me, that they might be ready at a moment's notice if called for. Here a crown--there a cap of liberty. On this peg, a mantle embroidered with fleurs-de-lis; on that, a tri-coloured flag. In one corner, all the paraphernalia necessary to deck out the pomp and pageantry of the Catholic church; and in another, all the symbols that can be found which might enable them to show respect and honour to Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics. In this department might be seen very n.o.ble preparations to support a grand military spectacle; and in that, all the prettiest pageants in the world, to typify eternal peace.

I saw all these things, for it was impossible not to see them; but as to the scene-s.h.i.+fters who were to prepare the different tableaux, I in truth knew nothing about them. Their trap-doors, wires, and other machinery were very wisely kept out of sight of such eyes as mine; for had I known anything of the matter, I should most a.s.suredly have told it all, which would greatly tend to mar the effect of the next change of decorations.

It was with this feeling, and in this spirit of purely superficial observation, that the foregoing letters were written; but, ere I commit them to the press, I wish to add a few graver thoughts which rest upon my mind as the result of all that I saw and heard while at Paris, connected as they now are with the eventful changes which have occurred in the short interval that has elapsed since I left it.

"_The country is in a state of transition_," is a phrase which I have often listened to, and often been disposed to laugh at, as a sort of oracular interpretation of paradoxes which, in truth, no one could understand: but the phrase may now be used without any Delphic obscurity. France was indeed in a state of transition exactly at the period of which I have been writing; but this uncertain state is past, nearly all the puzzling anomalies which so completely defied interpretation have disappeared, and it may now be fairly permitted, to simple-minded travellers who pretend not to any conjuring skill, to guess a little what she is about.

I revisited France with that animating sensation of pleasure which arises from the hope of reviving old and agreeable impressions; but this pleasure was nevertheless dashed with such feeling of regret as an _English conservative_ may be supposed to feel for the popular violence which had banished from her throne its legitimate sovereign.

As an abstract question of right and wrong, my opinion of this act cannot change; but the deed is done,--France has chosen to set aside the claim of the prince who by the law of hereditary succession has a right to the crown, in favour of another prince of the same royal line, whom in her policy she deems more capable of insuring the prosperity of the country. The deed is done; and the welfare of tens of millions who had, perhaps, no active share in bringing it about now hangs upon the continuance of the tranquillity which has followed the change.

However deep therefore may be the respect felt for those who, having sworn fealty to Charles the Tenth, continue steadfastly undeviating in their declaration of his right, and firm in their refusal to recognise that of any other, still a stranger and sojourner in the land may honestly acknowledge the belief that the prosperity of France at the present hour depends upon her allegiance to the king she has chosen, without being accused of advocating the cause of revolution.

To judge fairly of France as she actually exists, it is absolutely necessary to throw aside all memory of the purer course she might have pursued five years ago, by the temperate pleading of her chartered rights, to obtain redress of such evils as really existed. The popular clamour which rose and did the work of revolution, though it originated with factious demagogues and idle boys, left the new power it had set in action in the hands of men capable of redeeming the n.o.ble country they were called to govern from the state of disjointed weakness in which they found it. The task has been one of almost unequalled difficulty and peril; but every day gives greater confidence to the hope, that after forty years of blundering, bl.u.s.tering policy, and changes so multiplied as to render the very name of revolution ridiculous, this superb kingdom, so long our rival, and now, as we firmly trust, our most a.s.sured ally, will establish her government on a basis firm enough to strengthen the cause of social order and happiness throughout all Europe.

The days, thank Heaven! are past when Englishmen believed it patriotic to deny their Gallic neighbours every faculty except those of making a bow and of eating a frog, while they were repaid by all the weighty satire comprised in the two impressive words JOHN BULL. We now know each other better--we have had a long fight, and we shake hands across the water with all the mutual good-will and respect which is generated by a hard struggle, bravely sustained on both sides, and finally terminated by a hearty reconciliation.

The position, the prospects, the prosperity of France are become a subject of the deepest interest to the English nation; and it is therefore that the observations of any one who has been a recent looker-on there may have some value, even though they are professedly drawn from the surface only. But when did ever the surface of human affairs present an aspect so full of interest? Now that so many of the circ.u.mstances which have been alluded to above as puzzling and incongruous have been interpreted by the unexpected events which have lately crowded upon each other, I feel aware that I have indeed been looking on upon the denouement of one of the most interesting political dramas that ever was enacted. The movements of King Philippe remind one of those by which a bold rider settles himself in the saddle, when he has made up his mind for a rough ride, and is quite determined not to be thrown. When he first mounted, indeed, he took his seat less firmly; one groom held the stirrup, another the reins: he felt doubtful how far he should be likely to go--the weather looked cloudy--he might dismount directly.... But soon the sun burst from behind the cloud that threatened him: Now for it, then! neck or nothing! He orders his girths to be tightened, his curb to be well set, and the reins fairly and horsemanly put into his hands.... Now he is off! and may his ride be prosperous!--for should he fall, it is impossible to guess how the dust which such a catastrophe might raise would settle itself.

The interest which his situation excites is sufficiently awakening, and produces a species of romantic feeling, that may be compared to what the spectators experienced in the tournaments of old, when they sat quietly by to watch the result of a combat _a outrance_. But greater, far greater is the interest produced by getting a near view of the wishes and hopes of the great people who have placed their destinies in his hands.

Nothing that is going on in Paris--in the Chamber of Deputies, in the Chamber of Peers, or even in the Cabinet of the King--could touch me so much, or give me half so much pleasure to listen to, as the tone in which I have heard some of the most distinguished men in France speak of the repeated changes and revolutions in her government.

It is not in one or two instances only that I have remarked this tone,--in fact, I might say that I have met it whenever I was in the society of those whose opinions especially deserved attention. I hardly know, however, how to describe it, for it cannot be done by repeating isolated phrases and observations. I should say, that it marks distinctly a consciousness that such frequent changes are not creditable to any nation--that they feel half ashamed to talk of them gravely, yet more than half vexed to speak of the land they love with anything approaching to lightness or contempt. That the men of whom I speak do love their country with a true, devoted, Romanlike attachment, I am quite sure; and I never remember to have felt the conviction that I was listening to real patriots so strongly as when I have heard them reason on the causes, deplore the effects, and deprecate the recurrence of these direful and devastating convulsions.

It is, if I mistake not, this n.o.ble feeling of wis.h.i.+ng to preserve their country from the disgrace of any farther demonstrations of such frail inconstancy, which will tend to keep Louis-Philippe on his throne as much, or even more perhaps, than that newly-awakened energy in favour of the _boutique_ and the _bourse_ of which we hear so much.

It is nowise surprising that this proud but virtuous sentiment should yet exist, notwithstanding all that has happened to check and to chill it. Frenchmen have still much of which they may justly boast. After a greater continuance of external war and internal commotion than perhaps any country was ever exposed to within the same s.p.a.ce of time, France is in no degree behind the most favoured nations of Europe in any one of the advantages which have ever been considered as among the especial blessings of peace. Tremendous as have been her efforts and her struggles, the march of science has never faltered: the fine arts have been cherished with unremitting zeal and a most constant care, even while every citizen was a soldier; and now, in this breathing-time that Heaven has granted her, she presents a spectacle of hopeful industry, active improvement, and prosperous energy, which is unequalled, I believe, in any European country except our own.

Can we wonder, then, that the nation is disposed to rally round a prince whom Fate seems to have given expressly as an anchor to keep her firm and steady through the heavy swell that the late storms have left? Can we wonder that feelings, and even principles, are found to bend before an influence so salutary and so strong?

However irregular the manner in which he ascended the throne, Louis-Philippe had himself little more to do with it than yielding to the voice of the triumphant party who called upon him to mount its troublesome pre-eminence; and at the moment he did so, he might very fairly have exclaimed--

"If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me Without my stir."

Never certainly did any event brought on by tumult and confusion give such fair promise of producing eventually the reverse, as the accession of King Louis-Philippe to the throne of France.

The manner of this unexpected change itself, the scenes which led to it, and even the state of parties and of feelings which came afterwards, all bore a character of unsettled confusion which threatened every species of misery to the country.

When we look back upon this period, all the events which occurred during the course of it appear like the rough and ill-a.s.sorted fragments of worsted on the reverse of a piece of tapestry. No one could guess, not even the agents in them, what the final result would be. But they were at work upon a design drawn by the all-powerful and unerring hand of Providence; and strange as the medley has appeared to us during the process, the whole when completed seems likely to produce an excellent effect.

The incongruous elements, however, of which the chaos was composed from whence this new order of things was to arise, though daily and by slow degrees a.s.suming shape and form, were still in a state of "most admired disorder" during our abode in Paris. It was impossible to guess where-unto all those things tended which were evidently in movement around us; and the signs of the times were in many instances so contrary to each other, that nothing was left for those who came to view the land, but to gaze--to wonder, and pa.s.s on, without attempting to reconcile contradictions so totally unintelligible.

But, during the few weeks that have elapsed since I left the capital of France, this obscurity has been dispersed like a mist. It was the explosion of an infernal machine that scattered it; but it is the light of heaven that now s.h.i.+nes upon the land, making visible to the whole world on what foundation rest its hopes, and by what means they shall be brought to fruition.

Never, perhaps, did even a successful attempt upon the life of an individual produce results so important as those likely to ensue from the failure of the atrocious plot against the King of the French and his sons. It has roused the whole nation as a sleeping army is roused by the sound of a trumpet. The indifferent, the doubting--nay, even the adverse, are now bound together by one common feeling: an a.s.sa.s.sin has raised his daring arm against France, and France in an instant a.s.sumes an att.i.tude so firm, so bold, so steady, and so powerful, that all her enemies must quail before it.

As for the wretched faction who sent forth this b.l.o.o.d.y agent to do their work, they stand now before the face of all men in the broad light of truth. High and n.o.ble natures may sometimes reason amiss, and may mistake the worse cause for the better; but however deeply this may involve them in error, it will not lead them one inch towards crime. Such men have nothing in common with the republicans of 1835.

From their earliest existence as a party, these republicans have avowed themselves the unrelenting enemies of all the powers that be: social order, and all that sustains it, is their abhorrence; and neither honour, conscience, nor humanity has force sufficient to restrain them from the most hideous crimes when its destruction is the object proposed. Honest men of all shades of political opinion must agree in considering this unbridled faction as the common enemies of the human race. In every struggle to sustain the laws which bind society together, their hand is against every man; and the inevitable consequence must and will be, that every man's hand shall be against them.

Deplorable therefore as were the consequences of the Fieschi plot in its partial murderous success, it is likely to prove in its ultimate result of the most important and lasting benefit to France. It has given union and strength to her councils, energy and boldness to her acts; and if it be the will of Heaven that anything shall stay the plague of insurrection and revolt which, with infection more fearful than that of the Asiatic pest, has tainted the air of Europe with its poisonous breath, it is from France, where the evil first arose, that the antidote to it is most likely to come.

It will be in vain that any republican clamour shall attempt to stigmatise the acts of the French legislature with the odium of an undue and tyrannical use of the power which it has been compelled to a.s.sume. The system upon which this legislature has bound itself to act is in its very nature incompatible with individual power and individual ambition: its acts may be absolute--and high time is it that they should be so,--but the absolutism will not be that of an autocrat.

The theory of the doctrinaire government is not so well, or at least so generally, understood as it will be; but every day is making it better known to Europe,--and whether the new principles on which it is founded be approved or not, its power will be seen to rest upon them, and not upon the tyrannical will of any man or body of men whatever.

It is not uncommon to hear persons declare that they understand no difference between the juste-milieu party and that of the doctrinaires; but they cannot have listened very attentively to the reasonings of either party.

The juste-milieu party, if I understand them aright, consists of politicians whose principles are in exact conformity to the expressive t.i.tle they have chosen. They approve neither of a pure despotism nor of a pure democracy, but plead for a justly-balanced const.i.tutional government with a monarch at its head.

The doctrinaires are much less definite in their specification of the form of government which they believe the circ.u.mstances of France to require. It might be thought indeed, from some of their speculations, that they were almost indifferent as to what form the government should a.s.sume, or by what name it should be known to the world, provided always that it have within itself power and efficacy sufficient to adopt and carry into vigorous effect such measures as its chiefs shall deem most beneficial to the country for the time being. A government formed on these principles can pledge itself by no guarantee to any particular line of politics, and the country must rest contented in the belief that its interests shall be cared for by those who are placed in a situation to control them.

Upon these principles, it is evident that the circ.u.mstances in which the country is placed, internally and externally, must regulate the policy of her cabinet, and not any abstract theory connected with the name a.s.sumed by her government. Thus despotism may be the offspring of a republic; and liberty, the gift of a dynasty which has reigned for ages by right divine.

M. de Carne, a political writer of much ability, in his essay on parties and "le mouvement actuel," ridicules in a spirit of keen satire the idea that any order of men in France at the present day should be supposed to interest themselves seriously for any abstract political opinion.

"Croit-on bien serieus.e.m.e.nt encore," he says, "au mecanisme const.i.tutionnel--a la multiplicite de ses poids et contre-poids--a l'inviolabilite sacree de la pensee dirigeante, combinee avec la responsabilite d'argent?"...

And again he says,--"Est-il beaucoup d'esprits graves qui attachent aujourd'hui une importance de premier ordre pour le bien-etre moral et materiel de la race humaine a la subst.i.tution d'une presidence americaine, a la royaute de 1830?"

It is evident from the tone sustained through the whole of this ingenious essay, that it is the object of M. Carne to convince his readers of the equal and total futility of every political creed founded on any fixed and abstract principle. Who is it, he asks, "qui a etabli en France un despotisme dont on ne trouve d'exemple qu'en remontant aux monarchies de l'Asie?--Napoleon--lequel regnait comme les Cesars Romains, en vertu de la souverainete du peuple. Qui a fonde, apres tant d'impuissantes tentatives, une liberte serieuse, et l'a fait entrer dans nos moeurs au point de ne pouvoir plus lui resister?--La maison de Bourbon, qui regnait par le droit divin."

In advocating this system of intrusting the right as well as the power of governing a country to the hands of its rulers, without exacting from them a pledge that their measures shall be guided by theoretical instead of practical wisdom, M. Carne naturally refers to his own--that is to say, the doctrinaire party, and expresses himself thus:--"Cette disposition a chercher dans les circonstances et dans la morale privee la seule regle d'action politique, a donne naissance a un parti qui s'est trop hate de se produire, mais chez lequel il y a a.s.sez d'avenir pour resister a ses propres fautes. Il serait difficile d'en formuler le programme, si vaporeux encore, autrement qu'en disant qu'il s'attache a subst.i.tuer l'etude des lois de la richesse publique aux speculations const.i.tutionnelles, dont le princ.i.p.al resultat est d'equilibrer sur le papier des forces qui se deplacent inevitablement dans leur action."

It is certainly possible that this distaste for pledging themselves to any form or system of government, and the apparent readiness to accommodate their principles to the exigences of the hour, may be as much the result of weariness arising from all the restless experiments they have made, as from conviction that this loose mode of wearing a political colour, ready to drop it, or change it according to circ.u.mstances, is in reality the best condition in which a great nation can place itself.

It can hardly be doubted that the French people have become as weary of changes and experiments as their neighbours are of watching them.

They have tried revolutions of every size and form till they are satiated, and their spirits are worn out and exhausted by the labour of making new projects of laws, new charters, and new kings. It is, in truth, contrary to their nature to be kept so long at work. No people in the world, perhaps, have equal energy in springing forward to answer some sudden call, whether it be to pull down a Bastile with Lafayette, to overturn a throne with Robespierre, to overrun Europe with Napoleon, or to reorganise a monarchy with Louis-Philippe. All these deeds could be done with enthusiasm, and therefore they were natural to Frenchmen. But that the ma.s.s of the people should for long years together check their gay spirits, and submit themselves, without the recompense of any striking stage effect, to prose over the th.o.r.n.y theories of untried governments, is quite impossible,--for such a state would be utterly hostile to the strongest propensities of the people. "Cha.s.sez le naturel, il revient au galop." It is for this reason that "_la loi bourgeoise_" has been proclaimed; which being interpreted, certainly means the law of being contented to remain as they are, making themselves as rich and as comfortable as they possibly can, under the shelter of a king who has the will and the power to protect them.

M. Carne truly says,--"Le plus puissant argument que puisse employer la royaute pour tenir en respect la bourgeoisie, est celui dont usait l'astrologue de Louis Onze pour avoir raison des capricieuses velleites de son maitre,--'Je mourrai juste trois jours avant votre majeste.'"

This quotation, though it sound not very courtier-like, may be uttered before Louis-Philippe without offence; for it is impossible, let one's previous political bias have been what it will, not to perceive in every act of his government a firm determination to support and sustain in honour and in safety the order of things which it has established, or to perish; and the consequence of this straightforward policy is, that thousands and tens of thousands who at first acknowledged his rule only to escape from anarchy, now cling to it, not only as a present shelter, but as a powerful and sure defence against the return of the miserable vicissitudes to which they have been so long exposed.

Among many obvious advantages which the comprehensive principles of the "doctrine" offered to France under the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which she was placed at the time it was first propagated, was, that it offered a common resting-place to all who were weary of revolutions, let them be of what party they would. This is well expressed by M.

Carne when he says,--"Ce parti semble appele, par ce qu'il a de vague en lui, a devenir le sympathique lien de ces nombreuses intelligences devoyees qui ont penetre le vide de l'idee politique."

There cannot, I think, be a happier phrase to describe the host who have bewildered themselves in the interminable mazes of a science so little understood by the mult.i.tude, than this of "_intelligences devoyees qui ont penetre le vide de l'idee politique_." For these, it is indeed a blessing to have found one common name (vague though it be) under which they may all shelter themselves, and, without the slightest reproach to the consistency of their patriotism, join heart and hand in support of a government which has so ably contrived to "draw golden opinions from all sorts of men."

In turning over the pages of Hume's History in pursuit of a particular pa.s.sage, I accidentally came upon his short and pithy sketch of the character and position of our Henry the Seventh. In many points it approaches very nearly to what might be said of Louis-Philippe.

"The personal character of the man was full of vigour, industry, and severity; deliberate in all his projects, steady in every purpose, and attended with caution, as well as good fortune, in each enterprise. He came to the throne after long and b.l.o.o.d.y civil wars. The nation was tired with discord and intestine convulsions, and willing to submit to usurpations and even injuries rather than plunge themselves anew into like miseries. The fruitless efforts made against him served always, as is usual, to confirm his authority."

Such a pa.s.sage as this, and some others with which I occasionally indulge myself from the records of the days that are gone, have in them a most consoling tendency. We are apt to believe that the scenes we are painfully witnessing contain, amidst the materials of which they are formed, elements of mischief more terrible than ever before threatened the tranquillity of mankind; yet a little recollection, and a little confidence in the Providence so visible in every page of the world's history, may suffice to inspire us with better hopes for the future than some of our doubting spirits have courage to antic.i.p.ate.

"The fruitless efforts made against" King Philippe "have served to confirm his authority," and have done the same good office to him that similar outrages did to our "princely Tudor" in the fourteenth century. The people were sick of "discord and intestine convulsions"

in his days: so are they at the present time in France; so will they be again, at no very distant period, in England.