Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 Part 10

'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 cla.s.ses as they were three years ago; we still repeat "que ca ne peut pas durer," but we repeat it with less conviction.'

We pa.s.sed the spring in Algeria, and returned to Paris the latter part of May.

_Paris, May 26,_1855.--After breakfast I went to the Inst.i.tut.

M. Pa.s.sy 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 cote, particulierement curieux, de l'Algerie, qui vous a echappe parce que vous n'avez pu ou voulu vous imposer l'ennui de causer souvent avec les colons, et que ce cote-la ne se voit pas en parlant avec les gouvernants; c'est l'abus de la centralisation. L'Afrique peut etre consideree comme le tableau le plus complet et le plus extraordinaire des vices de ce systeme.

'Je suis convaincu que seul, sans les Arabes, le soleil, le desert, et la fievre, il suffirait pour nous empecher de coloniser. Tout ce que la centralisation laisse entrevoir de defauts, de ridicules et absurdites, d'oppression, de papera.s.series en France, est grossi en Afrique au centuple. C'est comme un pou vu dans un microscope.'

'J'ai cause,' I answered, 'avec Vialar et avec mon hote 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-etre, ils ne connaissaient pas. Mais si vous les aviez fait entrer dans les details de l'administration publique, ou meme de leurs affaires privees, vous auriez vu que le colon est plus gene dans tous ses mouvements, et plus _gouverne pour son plus grand bien_ que vous ne l'avez ete quand il s'est agi de votre pa.s.seport.

'Violar faisait allusion a cela quand il vous a dit que les chemins manquaient parce que le Gouvernement ne voulait pas laisser les gouvernes s'en meler.'[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 doc.u.ments, 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 more _governed, for his good_, than you were with regard to your pa.s.sport.

'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, May_ 28.--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 punis.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ated conscriptions, Louis Napoleon must have recourse to the real pa.s.sions of the French _bourgeoisie_ and 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 they _will_ be 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 mult.i.tude. 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 cla.s.ses, "que ces gens-la aient grande peur de nous."

'You accuse, in the second place, all the Royalist parties of dislike of England.

'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 inst.i.tutions. They are the body, small perhaps numerically, and now beaten down, of those who adore Const.i.tutional Liberty. They have maintained the mutual good feeling between France and England against the pa.s.sions 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 British Review.'--ED.]

'The princ.i.p.al 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, and Fusionists; and the Fusionists into Orleanist-Fusionists, and Legitimist-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 wors.h.i.+p of superst.i.tion; 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 t.i.tle from G.o.d, and that when the proper time comes G.o.d 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 a.s.sistance.

'There are also a very few Orleanists who, with a strange confusion of ideas, do not perceive that a t.i.tle 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 generally _roturiers_. They feel towards the _n.o.blesse_ the hatred which has acc.u.mulated during twelve centuries of past oppression and the resentment excited by present insolence. Of all the n.o.ble families of France the most n.o.ble is that of Bourbon. The head of that house has always called himself _le 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 the _bourgeoisie_. 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 cla.s.s, the _pays legal_, with which they shared the emoluments of Government, and it was not sufficient to raise a single hand in their defence when the ma.s.ses, 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 munic.i.p.al councils, from the central and from the local government of France, has deprived them of all apt.i.tude for business. The bulk of them are wors.h.i.+ppers 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 the _canaille_ of lawyers, and _litterateurs_, and adventurers, who have trampled on the _gentilshommes_ ever since 1830, will be turned down to their proper places, and that ancient descent will again be the pa.s.sport 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 cla.s.ses 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 Presidents.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s 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, inst.i.tutions really const.i.tutional; inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sembly. 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 princ.i.p.ally in the subdued tone of the debates, if debates they can be called, of the Corps Legislatif, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, we might say whose great business, is to converse, to criticise the acts of their rulers, and to p.r.o.nounce 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 narrow _pays legal_, the privileged ten-pounders, who were then attempting to govern France. The Republic gave the election of the _Conseils generaux_ to the people, and thus dethroned the notaries who governed those a.s.semblies when they represented only the _bourgeoisie_. 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 Prefet appoints the Maires; the Prefet appoints in every canton a Commissaire de Police, seldom a respectable man, as the office is not honourable; the Gardes champetres, 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 Prefet; the Prefet appoints, promotes, and dismisses all the masters of the _ecoles primaires_. The Prefet 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 Prefet can dissolve the _Conseil general_ of 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 Prefet provides the jury, and _la Haute Police_ acts 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 Prefet, 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 Prefet 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 pa.s.sions which influence these great apparently slumbering ma.s.ses. 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.sacre; 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 a.s.sembly, when the a.s.sembly was still the ruler of France; and Louis Napoleon's celebrated letter to Ney was an attempt, not, perhaps const.i.tutional or prudent, but well-intentioned, to obtain for the Roman people liberal and secular inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sailed 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, a.s.sured him that it was ready.

The time came, and not a s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sistance, 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 a.s.sistance nor advice. Advice, indeed, he refuses, and, what is still more useful than advice, censure, he punishes.