Danton's passion for a young girl, whom he married, became his ruin. While he was honeymooning it by some river's margin, Robespierre got the upper hand in the Assembly, and caused him to be seized—mis en jugement—and soon afterwards guillotined. The woman did not know, it is affirmed, that it was Danton who set the massacres of 1792 agoing; she thought him a good-hearted man. He set all his personal enemies free out of their prisons prior to the commencement of the massacres; wishing to be able to boast of having spared his enemies, as a proof that he was actuated by no ignoble vengeance, but only by a patriotic impulse. He was a low, mean-souled fanatic, who had no clear conception of what he was aiming at, but who delighted in the horrid excitement prevailing around him. It was Tallien who had the chief share in the deposition of Robespierre and the transactions of the 9th thermidor. Madame Tallien was then in prison, and going to be executed in a few days (she was not yet married to Tallien then). She wrote, by stealth of course, a few emphatic words, with a toothpick and soot wetted, to Tallien which nerved him to the conflict, and she was saved. Talleyrand told De Tocqueville she was beyond everything captivating, beautiful, and interesting. She afterwards became the mistress of Barras, and finally married the Prince de Chimay.

De Tocqueville has been at Vore, Helvetius' chateau in La Perche—a fine place, and Helvetius lived en seigneur there. A grand-daughter of Helvetius married M. de Rochambeau, uncle, by mother's side, of Alexis: so that the great-grandchildren are De Tocqueville's first cousins.

In the 'Souvenirs' of M. Berryer (pere) he describes the scene of the 9th thermidor, in which he was actively concerned in the interest of the Convention, and saw Robespierre borne past him with his shattered jaw along the Quai Pelletier. Also went to the terrace of the Tuileries gardens to assure himself that Robespierre was really executed the next day; heard the execrations and shouts which attended his last moments, but did not stay to witness them. Release of the Duchess of St. Aignan, under sentence of death, by his father.

February 18.—A. de Tocqueville came to see me, and we walked out for half-an-hour. He said he had now spent over eight months in a seclusion such as he had never experienced in his whole life. That, partly his own debilitated health, partly the impaired state of his wife's general powers (nervous system inclusive), partly the extreme aversion he felt for public affairs and the topics of the day connected with politics; all these considerations had determined him upon withdrawing himself from society for a certain space, and that to a considerable distance from all his friends and relations. A physician, also of widely extended fame (Dr. Brittonneau), happening to reside close to where they have lodged themselves, formed an additional link in the chain of motives for settling themselves at Tours. M. de Tocqueville had some misgivings at first as to whether, after passing twenty years in active public life, and in the frequent society of men who occupied the most distinguished position in the political world, as well as of others not less eminent in that of letters; whether, he said, the monotony and stillness of his new mode of life would not be too much for his spirits and render his mind indolent and depressed. 'But,' said he, 'I have been agreeably reassured. I have come to regard society as a thing which I can perfectly well do without. I desire nothing better than to occupy myself, as I have been doing, with the composition of a work which I am in hopes will travel over somewhat other than beaten ground. I have found many materials for my purpose in this spot, and the pursuit has got hold of me to a degree which renders intellectual labour a source of pleasure; and I prosecute it steadily, unless when my health is out of order; which, happily, does not occur so frequently since the last three or four months. My wife's company serves to encourage me in my work, and to cheer me in every respect, since an entire sympathy subsists between us, as you know; we seem to require no addition, and our lives revolve in the most inflexible routine possible. I rise at half-past five, and work seriously till half-past nine; then dress for dejeuner at ten. I commonly walk half-an-hour afterwards, and then set to on some other study—usually of late in the German language—till two P.M., when I go out again and walk for two hours, if weather allows. In the evenings I read to amuse myself, often reading aloud to Madame de Tocqueville, and go to bed at ten P.M. regularly every night.'

'Sometimes,' said De Tocqueville, 'I reflect on the difference which may be discerned between the amount of what a man can effect by even the most strenuous and well-directed efforts, whether as a public servant or as a leading man in political life, and what a writer of impressive books has it in his power to effect. It is true that a man of talent and courage may acquire a creditable position, may exercise great influence over other individuals engaged in the same career, and may enjoy a certain measure of triumphant success in cases where he can put out his strength. At the same time it strikes me that the best of these exaggerates immensely the amount of good which he has been able to effect. I look back upon prodigiously vivid passages in various public men's lives, in this century, with a melancholy reflection of how little influence their magnificent efforts have really exercised over the march of human affairs. A man is apt to believe he has done great things when his hearers and contemporaries are strongly affected, either by a powerful speech, or an animated address, or an act of opportune courage, or the like. But, if we investigate the positive amount of what the individual has effected in the way of bettering or advancing the general interests of mankind, by personal exertion on the public stage, I regret to say I can find hardly an instance of more than a transient, though beneficial, flash of excitement produced on the public mind. I do not here speak of men invested with great power—princes, prime ministers, popes, generals and the like. Of course they produce lasting traces of their power, whether it be for good or evil; and, indeed, individuals have on their side considerable power to work mischief, though not often to work good. I begin to think that a man not invested with a considerable amount of political power can do but little good by slaving at the oar of independent political action. Now, on the contrary, what a vast effect a writer can produce, when he possesses the requisite knowledge and endowments! In his cabinet, his thoughts collected, his ideas well arranged, he may hope to imprint indelible traces on the line of human progress. What orator, what brilliant patriot at the tribune, could ever effect the extensive fermentation in a whole nation's sentiments achieved by Voltaire and Jean Jacques?

'I have certainly seen reason to change some of my views on social facts, as well as some reasonings founded on imperfect observation. But the fond of my opinions can never undergo a change—certain irrevocable maxims and propositions must constitute the basis of thinking minds. How such changes can come about as I have lived to see in some men's states of opinion is to me incomprehensible. Lafayette was foolish enough to give his support to certain conspiracies—certainly to that of Befort's, in Alsace. What folly! to seek to upset a despotism by the agency of the soldiery, in the nineteenth century!'

H. GROTE.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Senior's Journals.—ED.]

[Footnote 2: See Royal and Republican France, by H. Reeve Esq. vol. i.—ED.]



CONVERSATIONS WITH MR. SENIOR.

St. Cyr, Tuesday, February 21, 1854.[1]—On the 20th I left Paris for Le Tresorier, a country-house in the village of St. Cyr, near Tours, which the Tocquevilles have been inhabiting for some months. It stands in a large enclosure of about fifteen acres, of which about ten are orchard and vineyard, and the remainder are occupied by the house, stables, and a large garden. The house has a great deal of accommodation, and they pay for it, imperfectly furnished, 3,000 francs a year, and keep up the garden, which costs about 500 francs more, being one man at one and a-half francs a day.

This is considered dear; but the sheltered position of the house, looking south, and protected by a hill to the north-east, induced the Tocquevilles to pay for it about 1,000 francs more than its market value.

I will throw together the conversations of February 22 and 23. They began by my giving to him a general account of the opinions of my friends in Paris.

'I believe,' said Tocqueville, 'that I should have found out many of your interlocutors without your naming them. I am sure that I should Thiers, Duvergier, Broglie, and Rivet; perhaps Faucher—certainly Cousin. I translate into French what you make them say, and hear them speak. I recognise Dumon and Lavergne, but I should not have discovered them. The conversation of neither of them has the marked, peculiar flavour that distinguishes that of the others. You must recollect, however, that some of your friends knew, and most of the others must have suspected, that you were taking notes. Thiers speaks evidently for the purpose of being reported. To be sure that shows what are the opinions that men wish to be supposed to entertain, and they often betray what they think that they conceal. Still it must be admitted that you had not always the natural man.' 'I am sorry,' he added, 'that you have not penetrated more into the salons of the Legitimists. You have never got further than a Fusionist. The Legitimists are not the Russians that Thiers describes them. Still less do they desire to see Henri V. restored by foreign intervention. They and their cause have suffered too bitterly for having committed that crime, or that fault, for them to be capable of repeating it. They are anti-national so far as not to rejoice in any victories obtained by France under this man's guidance. But I cannot believe that they would rejoice in her defeat. They have been so injured in their fortunes and their influence, 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 and frivolous, or bitter.

'They have ceased to be anxious about anything but to be let alone. But they are a large, a rich, and comparatively well-educated body. Your picture is incomplete without them, et il sera toujours tres-difficile de gouverner sans eux.[2]

I quite agree,' he continued, 'with Thiers as to the necessity of this war. Your interests may be more immediate and greater, but ours are very great. When I say ours, I mean those of France as a country that is resolved to enjoy constitutional government. I am not sure that if Russia were to become mistress of the Continent she would not allow France to continue a quasi-independent despotism under her protectorate. But she will never willingly allow us to lie powerful and free.

'I sympathise, too, with Thiers's fears as to the result. I do not believe that Napoleon himself, with all his energy, and all his diligence, and all his intelligence, would have thought it possible to conduct a great war to which his Minister of War was opposed. A man who has no heart in his business will neglect it, or do it imperfectly. His first step would have been to dismiss St.-Arnaud. Then, look at the other two on whose skill and energy we have to depend. One is Ducos, Minister of Marine, a man of mere commonplace talents and character. The other is Binneau, Minister of Finance, somewhat inferior to Ducos. Binneau ought to provide resources. He ought to check the preposterous waste of the Court. He has not intelligence enough to do the one, or courage enough to attempt the other. The real Prime Minister is without doubt Louis Napoleon himself. But he is not a man of business. He does not understand details. He may order certain things to be done, but he will not be able to ascertain whether the proper means have been taken. He does not know indeed what these means are. He does not trust those who do. A war which would have tasked all the powers of Napoleon, and of Napoleon's Ministers and generals, is to be carried on without any master-mind to direct it, or any good instruments to execute it. I fear some great disaster.

'Such a disaster might throw,' he continued, 'this man from the eminence on which he is balanced, not rooted. It might produce a popular outbreak, of which the anarchical party might take advantage. Or, what is perhaps more to be feared, it might frighten Louis Napoleon into a change of policy. He is quite capable of turning short round—giving up everything—key of the Grotto, protectorate of the orthodox, even the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus—to Nicholas, and asking to be repaid by the Rhine.

'I cannot escape from the cauchemar that a couple of years hence France and England may be at war. Nicholas's expectations have been deceived, but his plan was not unskilfully laid. He had a fair right to conjecture that you would think the dangers of this alliance such as to be even greater than those of allowing him to obtain his protectorate.

'In deciding otherwise, you have taken the brave and the magnanimous course. I hope that it may prove the successful one.

'I am sorry,' continued Tocqueville, 'to see the language of your newspapers as to the fusion. I did not choose to take part in it. I hate to have anything to do with pretenders. But as a mere measure of precaution it is a wise one. It decides what shall be the conduct of the Royalist party in the event—not an improbable one—of France being suddenly left without a ruler.

'Your unmeasured praise of Louis Napoleon and your unmeasured abuse of the Bourbons are, to a certain degree, the interference in our politics which you professedly disclaim. I admit the anti-English prejudices of the Bourbons, and I admit that they are not likely to be abated by your alliance with a Bonaparte. But the opinions of a constitutional sovereign do not, like those of a despot, decide the conduct of his country. The country is anxious for peace, and, above all, peace with you—for more than peace, for mutual good-feeling. The Bourbons cannot return except with a constitution. It has become the tradition of the family, it is their title to the throne. There is not a vieille marquise in the Faubourg St.-Germain who believes in divine right.

'The higher classes in France are Bourbonists because they are Constitutionalists, because they believe that constitutional monarchy is the government best suited to France, and that the Bourbons offer us the fairest chance of it.

'Among the middle classes there is without doubt much inclination for the social equality of a Republic. But they are alarmed at its instability; they have never known one live for more than a year or two, or die except in convulsions.

'As for the lower classes, the country people think little about politics, the sensible portion of the artizans care about nothing but cheap and regular work; the others are Socialists, and, next to the government of a Rouge Assembly, wish for that of a Rouge despot.'

'In London,' I said, 'a few weeks ago I came across a French Socialist, not indeed of the lower orders—for he was a Professor of Mathematics—but participating in their feelings. "I prefer," he said, "a Bonaparte to a Bourbon—a Bonaparte must rely on the people, one can always get something out of him." "What have you got," I asked, "from this man?" "A great deal," he answered. "We got the Orleans confiscation—that was a great step. Il portait attente a la propriete. Then he represents the power and majesty of the people. He is like the people, above all law. Les Bourbons nous chicanaient."'

'That was the true faith of a Rouge,' said Tocqueville 'If this man,' he added, 'had any self-control, if he would allow us a very moderate degree of liberty, he might enjoy a reign—probably found a dynasty. He had everything in his favour; the prestige of his name, the acquiescence of Europe, the dread of the Socialists, and the contempt felt for the Republicans. We were tired of Louis Philippe. We remembered the branche ainee only to dislike it, and the Assembly only to despise it. We never shall be loyal subjects, but we might have been discontented ones, with as much moderation as is in our nature.'

'What is the nuance,' I said, 'of G——?'

'G——,' answered Tocqueville, 'is an honest man, uncorrupt and public-spirited; he is a clear, logical, but bitter speaker; his words fall from the tribune like drops of gall. He has great perspicacity, but rather a narrow range. His vision is neither distant nor comprehensive. He wears a pair of blinkers, which allow him to see only what he looks straight at—and that is the English Constitution. For what is to the right and to the left he has no eyes, and unhappily what is to the right and to the left is France.

'Then he has a strong will, perfect self-reliance, and the most restless activity. All these qualities give him great influence. He led the centre gauche into most of its errors. H—— used to say, "If you want to know what I shall do, ask G——."

'Among the secondary causes of February 1848 he stands prominent. He planned the banquets. Such demonstrations are safe in England. He inferred, according to his usual mode of reasoning, that they would not be dangerous in France. He forgot that in England there is an aristocracy that leads, and even controls, the people.

'I am alarmed,' he continued, 'by your Reform Bill. Your new six-pound franchise must, I suppose, double the constituencies; it is a further step to universal suffrage, the most fatal and the least remediable of institutions.[3]

'While you preserve your aristocracy, you will preserve your freedom; if that goes, you will fall into the worst of tyrannies, that of a despot, appointed and controlled, so far as he is controlled at all, by a mob.'[4]

Madame de Tocqueville asked me if I had seen the Empress.

'No,' I said, 'but Mrs. Senior has, and thinks her beautiful.'

'She is much more so,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'than her portraits. Her face in perfect repose gets long, and there is a little drooping about the corners of the mouth. This has a bad effect when she is serious, as everyone is when sitting for a picture, but disappears as soon as she speaks. I remember dining in company with her at the President's—I sat next to him—she was nearly opposite, and close to her a lady who was much admired. I said to the President, looking towards Mademoiselle de Montigo, "Really I think that she is far the prettier of the two." He gazed at her for an instant, and said, "I quite agree with you; she is charming." It may be a bon menage'

'To come back,' I said, 'to our Eastern question. What is Baraguay d'Hilliers?'

'A brouillon,' said Tocqueville. 'He is the most impracticable man in France. His vanity, his ill-temper, and his jealousy make him quarrel with everybody with whom he comes in contact. In the interest of our alliance you should get him recalled.'

'What sort of man,' I asked, 'shall I find General Randon?'

'Very intelligent,' said Tocqueville. 'He was to have had the command of the Roman army when Oudinot gave it up; but, just as he was going, it was discovered that he was a Protestant. He was not so accommodating as one of our generals during the Restoration. He also was a Protestant. The Duc d'Angouleme one day said to him, "Vous etes protestant, general?" The poor man answered in some alarm, for he knew the Duke's ultra-Catholicism, "Tout ce que vous voulez, monseigneur."'



[Footnote 1: My conversations with M. de Tocqueville during this visit were written out after my return from Paris and sent to him. He returned them with the remarks which I have inserted.—N.W. SENIOR.]

[Footnote 2: Le portrait va plus loin que ma pensee.—A. de Tocqueville. The picture expresses more than my idea.]

[Footnote 3: Cela va plus loin que ma pensee. Je crois que le vote universel peut se concilier avec d'autres institutions, qui diminuerait le danger.—A. de Tocqueville.

This goes farther than my idea. I think that universal suffrage may be combined with other institutions, which would diminish the danger.]

[Footnote 4: Cela aussi va plus loin que ma pensee. Je crois tres-desirable le maintien des institutions aristocratiques en Angleterre. Mais je suis loin de dire que leur abolition menerait necessairement au despotisme, surtout si elles s'affaiblissaient peu a peu et n'etaient pas renversees par une revolution.—A. de Tocqueville.

This also goes farther than my idea. I think the maintenance in England of aristocratic institutions very desirable. But I am far from saying that their abolition would necessarily lead to despotism, especially if their power were diminished gradually and without the shock of a revolution.]



To N.W. Senior, Esq.

St. Cyr, March 18, 1854.

Your letter was a real joy to us, my dear Senior. As you consent to be ill lodged, we offer to you with all our hearts the bachelor's room which you saw. You will find there only a bed, without curtains, and some very shabby furniture. But you will find hosts who will be charmed to have you and your MSS. I beg you not to forget the latter.

My wife, as housekeeper, desires me to give you an important piece of advice. In the provinces, especially during Lent, it is difficult to get good meat on Fridays and Saturdays, and though you are a great sinner, she has no wish to force you to do penance, especially against your will, as that would take away all the merit. She advises you, therefore, to arrange to spend with us Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and to avoid Friday and Saturday, and especially the whole of the Holy Week.

Now you are provided with the necessary instructions. Choose your own day, and give us twenty-four hours' warning.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.



St. Cyr, March 31, 1854.

My dear Senior,—As you are willing to encounter hard meat and river fish, I have no objection to your new plan. I see in it even this advantage, that you will be able to tell us de visu what went on in the Corps Legislatif, which will greatly interest us.

The condemnation of Montalembert seems to me to be certain; but I am no less curious to know how that honourable assembly will contrive to condemn a private letter which appeared in a foreign country, and which was probably published without the authorisation and against the will of the writer.

It is a servile trick, which I should like to see played.

Do not hesitate to postpone your visit if the sitting of the Corps Legislatif should not take place on Monday.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.



CONVERSATIONS.

I passed the 3rd and 4th of April in the Corps Legislatif listening to the debate on the demand by the Government of permission to prosecute M. de Montalembert, a member of the Corps Legislatif, for the publication of a letter to M. Dupin, which it treated as libellous. As it was supposed that M. de Montalembert's speech would be suppressed, I wrote as much of it as I could carry in my recollection; the only other vehicle—notes—not being allowed to be taken.[1] On the evening of the 5th of April I left Paris for St. Cyr.

[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]

St. Cyr, Thursday, April 6, 1854.—I drove with Tocqueville to Chenonceaux, a chateau of the sixteenth century, about sixteen miles from Tours, on the Cher. I say on the Cher, for such is literally its position. It is a habitable bridge, stretching across the water.

The two first arches, which spring from the right bank of the river, and the piers which form their abutments, are about one hundred feet wide, and support a considerable house. The others support merely a gallery, called by our guide the ballroom of Catherine de Medicis, ending in a small theatre. The view from the windows of the river flowing through wooded meadows is beautiful and peculiar. Every window looks on the river; many rooms, as is the case with the gallery, look both up and down it. It must be a charming summer residence. The rooms still retain the furniture which was put into them by Diane de Poictiers and Catherine de Medicis; very curious and very uncomfortable; high narrow chairs, short sofas, many-footed tables, and diminutive mirrors. The sculptured pilasters, scrolls, bas-reliefs and tracery of the outside are not of fine workmanship, but are graceful and picturesque. The associations are interesting, beginning with Francis I. and ending with Rousseau, who spent there the autumn of 1746, as the guest of Madame Dupin, and wrote a comedy for its little theatre. The present proprietor, the Marquis de Villeneuve, is Madame Dupin's grandson.

In the evening we read my report of the debate on Montalembert.

'It is difficult,' said Tocqueville, 'to wish that so great a speech had been suppressed. But I am inclined to think that Montalembert's wiser course was to remain silent. What good will his speech do? It will not be published. Yours is probably the only report of it. So far as the public hears anything of it, the versions coming through an unfavourable medium will be misrepresentations. In a letter which I received from Paris this morning it is called virulent. It was of great importance that the minority against granting the consent should be large, and I have no doubt that this speech diminished it by twenty or thirty. It must have wounded many, frightened many, and afforded a pretext to many. Perhaps, however, it was not in human nature for such a speaker as Montalembert to resist the last opportunity of uttering bold truths in a French Assembly.'

Friday, April 7.—We drove to-day along the Loire to Langrais, about twelve miles below Tours.

Here is a castle of the thirteenth century, consisting of two centre and two corner towers, and a curtain between them, terminating in a rocky promontory. Nothing can be more perfect than the masonry, or more elegant than the few ornaments. The outside is covered with marks of bullets, which appear to have rattled against it with little effect.

On our return we visited the castles of Cinq Mars and Luynes. Langrais, Cinq Mars, and Luynes were all the property of Effiat, Marquis of Cinq Mars, who with De Thou conspired against Richelieu in the latter part of Louis XIII.'s reign, and was beheaded. The towers of Cinq Mars were, in the words of his sentence, 'rasees a la hauteur de l'infamie,' and remain now cut down to half their original height. Luynes stands finely, crowning a knoll overlooking the Loire. It is square, with twelve towers, two on each side and four in the corners, and a vast ditch, and must have been strong. Nearly a mile from it are the remains of a Roman aqueduct, of which about thirty piers and six perfect arches remain. It is of stone, except the arches, which have a mixture of brick. The peasants, by digging under the foundations, are rapidly destroying it. An old man told us that he had seen six or seven piers tumble. A little nearer to Tours is the Pile de Cinq Mars, a solid, nearly square tower of Roman brickwork more than ninety feet high, and about twelve feet by fourteen feet thick. On one side there appear to have been inscriptions or bas-reliefs. Ampere believes it to have been a Roman tomb; but the antiquaries are divided and perplexed. Being absolutely solid, it could not have been built for any use.

I am struck during my walks and drives by the appearance of prosperity. The country about Tours is dotted with country-houses, quite as numerous as in any part of England. In St. Cyr alone there must be between twenty and thirty, and the houses of the peasants are far better than the best cottages of English labourers. Everyone seems to have attached to it a considerable piece of land, from ten acres to two, cultivated in vines, vegetables and fruit. These and green crops are nearly the only produce; there is very little grain. All the persons whom I met appeared to be healthy and well-clad. The soil and climate are good, and the proximity to Tours insures a market; but physical advantages are not enough to insure prosperity. The neighbourhood of Cork enjoys a good climate, soil, and market, but the inhabitants are not prosperous.

After some discussion Tocqueville agreed with me in attributing the comfort of the Tourainese to the slowness with which population increases. In the commune of Tocqueville the births are only three to a marriage, but both Monsieur and Madame de Tocqueville think that the number of children here is still less. I scarcely meet any.

Marriages are late, and very seldom take place until a house and a bit of ground and some capital have been inherited or accumulated. Touraine is the best specimen of the petite culture that I have seen. The want of wood makes it objectionable as a summer residence.

We are now suffering from heat. After eight in the morning it is too hot to walk along the naked glaring roads, yet this is only the first week in April.

Saturday, April 8.—The sun has been so scorching during our two last drives that we have given ourselves a holiday to-day, and only dawdled about Tours.

We went first to the cathedral, which I never see without increased pleasure. Though nearly four hundred years passed from its commencement in the twelfth century to its completion in the fifteenth, the whole interior is as harmonious as if it had been finished by the artist who began it. I know nothing in Gothic architecture superior to the grandeur, richness, and yet lightness of the choir and eastern apse. Thence we went to St. Julien's, a fine old church of the thirteenth century, desecrated in the Revolution, but now under restoration.

Thence to the Hotel Gouin, a specimen of the purely domestic architecture of the fifteenth century, covered with elegant tracery and scroll-work in white marble. We ended with Plessis-les-Tours, Louis XI.'s castle, which stands on a flat, somewhat marshy, tongue of land stretching between the Loire and the Cher. All that remains is a small portion of one of the inner courts, probably a guard-room, and a cellar pointed out to us as the prison in which Louis XI kept Cardinal de la Balue for several years. The cellar itself is not bad for a prison of those days, but he is said to have passed his first year or two in a grated vault under the staircase, in which he could neither stand up nor lie at full length.

'It is remarkable,' said Tocqueville, 'that the glorious reigns in French history, such as those of Louis Onze, Louis Quatorze, and Napoleon ended in the utmost misery and exhaustion, while the periods at which we are accustomed to look as those of disturbance and insecurity were those of comparative prosperity and progress. It seems as if tyranny were worse than civil war.'

'And yet,' I said, 'the amount of revenue which these despots managed to squeeze out of France was never large. The taxation under Napoleon was much less than under Louis Philippe.'

'Yes,' said Tocqueville, 'but it was the want of power to tax avowedly that led them into indirect modes of raising money, which were far more mischievous; just as our servants put us to more expense by their jobs than they would do if they simply robbed us to twice the amount of their indirect gains.

'Louis XIV. destroyed all the municipal franchises of France, and paved the way for this centralized tyranny, not from any dislike of municipal elections, but merely in order to be able himself to sell the places which the citizens had been accustomed to grant.'

Sunday, April 9.—Another sultry day. I waited till the sun was low, and then sauntered by the side of the river with Tocqueville.

'The worst faults of this Government,' said Tocqueville, 'are those which do not alarm the public.

'It is depriving us of the local franchises and local self-government which we have extorted from the central power in a struggle of forty years. The Restoration and the Government of July were as absolute centralizers 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 name of Conseils-generaux to the people, and thus dethroned the notaires who had governed those assemblies when they represented only the bourgeoisie. The Republic made the maires elective. The Republic placed education in the hands of local authorities. Under its influence, the communes, the cantons, and the departments were becoming real administrative bodies. They are now mere 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 our 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. He has the power to convert the commune 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 now are uneducated peasants. The prefet can dissolve the Conseil-general of his department and, although he cannot directly name its successors, he does so virtually.

'No candidate for an elective office can succeed unless he is supported by the Government. The prefet can destroy the prosperity of every commune that displeases him. He can dismiss its functionaries, close its schools, obstruct its improvements, and withhold the assistance in money which the Government habitually gives to forward the public purposes of a commune.

'The Courts of Law, both 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 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, whatever be the man, the candidate of the prefet comes in; but if he is a man who would have been universally rejected in a state of freedom, the bolder electors show their indignation by their absence. I do not believe that, even with peace, and with the prosperity which usually accompanies peace, such a Government could long keep down such a country as France. Whether its existence would be prolonged by a successful war I will not decide. Perhaps it might be.

'That it cannot carry on a war only moderately successful, or a war which from its difficulties and its distance may be generally believed to be ill managed, still less a war stained by some real disaster, seems to me certain—if anything in the future of France can be called certain.

'The vast democratic sea on which the Empire floats is governed by currents and agitated by ground-swells, which the Government discovers only by their effects. It knows nothing of the passions which influence these great, apparently slumbering, masses; indeed it takes care, by stifling their expression, to prevent their being known. Universal suffrage is a detestable element of government, but it is a powerful revolutionary instrument'

'But,' I said, 'the people will not have an opportunity of using that instrument. All the great elective bodies have some years before them.'

'That is true,' said Tocqueville, 'and therefore their rage will break out in a more direct, and perhaps more formidable, form. Depend on it, this Government can exist, even for a time, only on the condition of brilliant, successful war, or prosperous peace. It is bound to be rapidly and clearly victorious. If it fail in this, it will sink—or perhaps, in its terrors and its struggles, it will catch at the other alternative, peace.

'The French public is too ignorant to care much about Russian aggrandisement. So far as it fancies that the strength of Russia is the weakness of England, it is pleased with it. I am not sure that the most dishonourable peace with Nicholas would not give to Louis Napoleon an immediate popularity. I am sure that it would, if it were accompanied by any baits to the national vanity and cupidity; by the offer of Savoy for instance, or the Balearic Islands. And if you were to quarrel with us for accepting them, it would be easy to turn against you our old feelings of jealousy and hatred.'

We saw vast columns of smoke on the other side of the river. Those whom we questioned believed them to arise from an intentional fire. Such fires are symptoms of popular discontent. They preceded the revolution of 1830. They have become frequent of late in this country.

Monday, April 10.—Tocqueville and I drove this morning to Azy-le-Rideau, another Francis I. chateau, on an island formed by the Indre. It is less beautifully situated than Chenonceaux; the river Indre is smaller and more sluggish than the Cher; the site of the castle is in a hollow, and the trees round it approach too near, and are the tall and closely planted poles which the French seem to admire. But the architecture, both in its outlines and in its details, is charming. It is of white stone, in this form, with two curtains and four towers. The whole outside and the ceilings and cornices within are covered with delicate arabesques.

O 0 0 0

Like Chenonceaux, it escaped the revolution, and is now, with its furniture of the sixteenth century, the residence of the Marquis de Biancourt, descended from its ancient proprietors.

As we sauntered over the gardens, our conversation turned on the old aristocracy of France.

'The loss of our aristocracy,' said Tocqueville, 'is a misfortune from which we have not even begun to recover. The Legitimists are their territorial successors; they are the successors in their manners, in their loyalty, and in their prejudices of caste; but they are not their successors in cultivation, or intelligence, or energy, or, therefore, in influence. Between them and the bourgeoisie is a chasm, which shows no tendency to close. Nothing but a common interest and a common pursuit will bring them together.

'If the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had not made them recoil in terror and disgust from Napoleon, they might have perhaps been welded into one mass with his new aristocracy of services, talents, and wealth. They were ready to adhere to him during the Consulate. During the Restoration they were always at war with the bourgeoisie, and therefore with the constitution, on which the power of their enemies depended. When the result of that war was the defeat and expulsion of their leader, Charles X., their hostility extended from the bourgeoisie and the constitution up to the Crown. Louis Philippe tried to govern by means of the middle classes alone. Perhaps it was inevitable that he should make the attempt. It certainly was inevitable that he should fail. The higher classes, and the lower classes, all equally offended, combined to overthrow him. Under the Republic they again took, to a certain extent, their place in the State. They led the country people, who came to the assistance of the Assembly in June 1848. The Republic was wise enough to impose no oaths. It did not require those who were willing to serve it to begin by openly disavowing their traditionary opinions and principles. The Legitimists took their places in the Conseils-generaux. They joined with the bourgeoisie in local administration, the only means by which men of different classes can coalesce.

'The socialist tendencies which are imputed to this Second Empire, the oath which it most imprudently imposes, its pretensions to form a dynasty and its assertion of the principle most abhorrent to them, elective monarchy, have thrown them back into disaffection. And I believe their disaffection to be one of our great dangers—a danger certainly increased by the Fusion. The principal object of the Fusion is to influence the army. The great terror of the army is division in itself. It will accept anything, give up anything, dare anything, to avoid civil war. Rather than be divided between the two branches, it would have adhered to the Empire. Now it can throw off the Bonapartes without occasioning a disputed succession.'

'When you say,' I asked, 'that the Legitimists are not the successors of the old aristocracy in cultivation, intelligence, or energy, do you mean to ascribe to them positive or relative inferiority in these qualities?'

'In energy,' answered Tocqueville, 'their deficiency is positive. They are ready to suffer for their cause, they are not ready to exert themselves for it. In intelligence and cultivation they are superior to any other class in France; but they are inferior to the English aristocracy, and they are inferior, as I said before, to their ancestors of the eighteenth century. There existed in the highest Parisian society towards the end of that century a comprehensiveness of curiosity and inquiry, a freedom of opinion, an independence, and soundness of judgment, never seen before or since. Its pursuits, its pleasures, its admirations, its vanities, were all intellectual. Look at the success of Hume. His manners were awkward; he was a heavy, though an instructive, converser; he spoke bad French; he would pass now for an intelligent bore. But such was the worship then paid to talents and knowledge—especially to knowledge, and talents employed on the destruction of prejudices—that Hume was, for years, the lion of all the salons of Paris. The fashionable beauties quarrelled for the fat philosopher. Nor was their admiration or affection put on, or even transitory. He retained some of them as intimate friends for life. If the brilliant talkers and writers of that time were to return to life, I do not believe that gas, or steam, or chloroform, or the electric telegraph, would so much astonish them as the dulness of modern society, and the mediocrity of modern books.'

In the evening we discussed the new scheme of throwing open the service of India and of the Government offices to public competition.

'We have followed,' said Tocqueville, 'that system to a great extent for many years. Our object was twofold. One was to depress the aristocracy of wealth, birth, and connexions. In this we have succeeded.

The Ecole Polytechnique, and the other schools in which the vacancies are given to those who pass the best examinations, are filled by youths belonging to the middle classes, who, undistracted by society, or amusement, or by any literary or scientific pursuits, except those immediately bearing on their examinations, beat their better-born competitors, who will not degrade themselves into the mere slaves of success in the concours. Our other object was to obtain the best public servants. In that we have failed. We have brought knowledge and ability to an average; diminished the number of incompetent employes, and reduced, almost to nothing, the number of distinguished ones. Continued application to a small number of subjects, and those always the same, not selected by the student, but imposed on him by the inflexible rule of the establishment, without reference to his tastes or to his powers, is as bad for the mind as the constant exercise of one set of muscles would be for the body.

'We have a name for those who have been thus educated. They are called "polytechnises." If you follow our example, you will increase your second-rates, and extinguish your first-rates; and what is perhaps a more important result, whether you consider it a good or an evil, you will make a large stride in the direction in which you have lately made so many—the removing the government and the administration of England from the hands of the higher classes into those of the middle and lower ones.'



CORRESPONDENCE.

Paris, Sunday, May 14, 1854.

My dear Tocqueville,—I write to you in meditatione fugae. We start for England in an hour's time. The last news that I heard of you was the day before yesterday from Cousin. He read me your letter, which sounded to me like that of a man in not very bad health or hopes. I trust that the attack of which Madame de Tocqueville wrote to us has quite passed off.

Thiers, who asked very anxiously after you to-day, is earnest that you should be present at the election on the 18th. The Academy, he said, is very jealous. Vous serez tres-mal vu, if you do not come.

You are at last going seriously to work in the war. By the end of the year you will have, military and naval, 700,000 men in arms.

I wish that they were nearer to the enemy.

Pray remember us most kindly to Madame de Tocqueville, and let us know where you go as soon as you are decided.

Ever yours,

N.W. Senior.

St. Cyr, May 21, 1854.

I followed the advice which you were commissioned to give me, my dear Senior. I have just been to Paris, but as I stayed there only twenty-four hours I have not brought back any distinct impressions.

I saw only Academicians who talked about the Academy, and—who knew nothing of politics. It is true that such is now the case with everyone. Politics, which used to be transacted in open day, have now become a secret process into which none can penetrate except the two or three alchemists who are engaged in its preparation.

You heard of course that after your little visit, which we enjoyed so much, I became very unwell, and my mind was only less affected than my body. I spent a month very much out of spirits and very much tired of myself. During the last eight or ten days I have felt much better. My visit to our friends the Beaumonts did me a great deal of good, and I owe a grudge to the Academy for forcing me to shorten it.

I still intend to visit Germany, but the plan depends on the state of my health. When it is bad I am inclined to give up the journey, when I am better I take it up again and look forward to it with pleasure. On the whole I think that I shall go. But it is impossible for me to settle my route beforehand. Even if I were stronger it would be difficult, for such an expedition must always be uncertain.

I am not going to Germany to see any place in particular, but intend to go hither and thither wherever I can find certain documents and people.

I received yesterday a letter from our friend Ampere. He is still in Rome, still more and more enchanted with the place, and using every argument to induce us to spend there with him the winter of 1856. His descriptions are so attractive that we may very likely be persuaded, especially if we had any chance of meeting you there, for you are one of the people whose society always increases the happiness of life. However, we have plenty of time for talking over this plan.

Adieu, dear Senior.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Wildbad, September 19, 1854.

You gave me great pleasure, my dear Senior, by making me acquainted with Sir George and Lady Theresa Lewis.

I must really thank you sincerely for it, for the time passed with them has been the most agreeable part of our journey.

You have no doubt heard of the mischance which has put a stop to our peregrinations: my wife was seized two months ago at Bonn by a violent attack of rheumatism. The waters of Wildbad were recommended to her, and she has been taking them for more than twenty-five days without experiencing any relief. We are promised that the effects will be felt afterwards; but these fine promises only half reassure us, and we shall set out again on our travels in very bad spirits.

Our original intention was to spend the autumn in the North of Germany, but in Madame de Tocqueville's condition it is evident that there is nothing else to be done but to return home as fast as we can.

We are somewhat consoled by the arrival of our common friend Ampere. He was returning from Italy, through Germany, and, hearing of our misfortune, he has come to look after us in these wild mountains of the Black Forest amidst which Wildbad is situated. He has been with us a week, and I hope that he will accompany us home.

Our intention is to spend a month or six weeks with my father near Compiegne. Towards the first week in November we shall establish ourselves in Paris for the winter. We hope to see you there at the end of this year or the beginning of next.

Ampere, my wife, and I constantly talk of you. If you could overhear us I think you would not be very much dissatisfied. They insist upon being very particularly remembered to you, and as for me I beg you to believe in my most sincere attachment.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Compiegne, January 22, 1855.

It was a long time since I had seen your handwriting, my dear Senior, and I was beginning to complain of you; your letter therefore was a double pleasure.

I see that you have resumed your intention of visiting Algiers, and I am anxious that you should carry it into effect.

I hope that we shall be in Paris when you pass through. We put off our departure from day to day; not that we are kept by the charms of our present abode; the house is too small for us and scantily furnished, but I find it such a favourable retreat for study, that I have great difficulty in tearing myself away from it.

I hear, as you do, with great satisfaction of the mutual good feeling of our armies in the Crimea. It far exceeds my expectations.

But I am not equally pleased with your management of the war. The English ought to know that what has passed and is passing there has sensibly diminished their moral force in Europe. It is an unpleasant truth, but I ought not to conceal it from you. I see proofs of it every day, and I have been struck by it peculiarly in a late visit to Paris, where I saw persons of every rank and of every shade of political opinion. The heroic courage of your soldiers was everywhere and unreservedly praised, but I found also a general belief that the importance of England as a military Power had been greatly exaggerated; that she is utterly devoid of military talent, which is shown as much in administration as in fighting; and that even in the most pressing circumstances she cannot raise a large army.

Since I was a child I never heard such language. You are believed to be absolutely dependent on us; and in the midst of our intimacy I see rising a friendly contempt for you, which if our Governments quarrel, will make a war with you much easier than it has been since the fall of Napoleon.

I grieve at all this, not only as endangering the English alliance, which, as you well know, I cherish, but as injuring the cause of liberty.

I can pardon you for discrediting it by your adulation of our despotism, but I wish that you would not serve despotism more efficaciously by your own faults, and by the comparisons which they suggest.

It seems also difficult to say what may not be the results of your long intimacy with such a Government as ours, and of the contact of the two armies. I doubt whether they will be useful to your aristocracy.

Remember me to Lord Lansdowne and to the Lewises, who added such pleasure to our German tour.



Compiegne, February 15, 1855.

I conclude that this frightful weather is still keeping you in London, my dear Senior. I am comforted by the fact that I myself shall not reach Paris before the 28th.

I do not wish to act the part of the pedagogue in the fable who preaches to people when his sermon can no longer be of any possible use, but I cannot help telling you that it is a great imprudence on your part to allow yourself to be caught in this way by the winter in England. What you now suffer from is only a trifling malady, but it may become a real illness if you persist in preferring pleasure to health. Pray think of this in the future and do not tempt the devil.

I have not read the article to which you refer.[1]

I can perfectly understand the reserve which was imposed upon you, and which you were forced to impose on yourself.

I confess that I saw with great grief the sudden change in the expressions of the majority of the English, a year ago, respecting our Government. It was then ill consolidated, and in want of the splendid alliance which you offered to it. It was unnecessary that you should praise it, in order to keep it your friend. By doing so you sacrificed honourable opinions and tastes without a motive.

Now things are changed. After you have lost your only army, and our master has made an alliance with Austria, which suits his feelings much better than yours did, he does not depend on you; you, to a certain extent, depend on him. Such being now the case, I can understand the English thinking it their duty to their country to say nothing that can offend the master of France. I can understand even their praising him; I reproach them only for having done so too soon, before it was necessary.

I agree with you that England ought to be satisfied with being the greatest maritime Power, and ought not to aim at being also one of the greatest military Powers.

But the feelings which I described to you as prevalent in France and in Germany, arose not from your want of an army of 500,000 men. They were excited by these two facts.

First, by what was supposed (perhaps falsely) to be the bad military administration of your only army. Secondly, and much more, by your apparent inability to raise another army.

According to continental notions, a nation which cannot raise as many troops as its wants require, loses our respect. It ceases, according to our notions, to be great or even to be patriotic. And I must confess that, considering how difficult it is to procure soldiers by voluntary enlistment, and how easily every nation can obtain them by other means, I do not see how you will be able to hold your high rank, unless your people will consent to something resembling a conscription.

Dangerous as it is to speak of a foreign country, I venture to say that England is mistaken if she thinks that she can continue separated from the rest of the world, and preserve all her peculiar institutions uninfluenced by those which prevail over the whole of the Continent.

In the period in which we live, and, still more, in the period which is approaching, no European nation can long remain absolutely dissimilar to all the others. I believe that a law existing over the whole Continent must in time influence the laws of Great Britain, notwithstanding the sea, and notwithstanding the habits and institutions, which, still more than the sea, have separated you from us, up to the present time.

My prophecies may not be accomplished in our time; but I should not be sorry to deposit this letter with a notary, to be opened, and their truth or falsehood proved, fifty years hence.



Compiegne, February 23, 1855.

... My object in my last letter was not by any means, as you seem to think, to accuse your aristocracy of having mismanaged the Crimean war. It has certainly been mismanaged, but who has been in fault?

Indeed I know not, and if I did I should think at the same time that it would not be becoming in a foreigner to set himself up as a judge of the blunders of any other Government than his own.

I thought that I had expressed myself clearly. At any rate what I wanted to say, if I did not say it, is, that the present events created in my opinion a new and great danger for your aristocracy, and that it will suffer severely from the rebound, if it does not make enormous efforts to show itself capable of repairing the past; and that it would be wrong to suppose that by fighting bravely on the field of battle it could retain the direction of the Government.

I did not intend to say more than this.

I will now add that if it persuades itself that it will easily get out of the difficulty by making peace, I think that it will find itself mistaken.

Peace, after what has happened, may be a good thing for England in general, and useful to us, but I doubt whether it will be a gain for your aristocracy. I think that if Chatham could return to life he would agree with me, and would say that under the circumstances the remedy would not be peace but a more successful war.

Kind regards, &c.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[Footnote 1: An article in the North British Review, see p. 107.—ED.]



CONVERSATIONS.

Paris, Hotel Bedford.—Friday, March 2, 1855.—We slept on the 27th at Calais, on the 28th at Amiens, and reached this place last night.

Tocqueville called on us this morning. We talked of the probability of Louis Napoleon's going to the Crimea.

I said, 'that the report made by Lord John Russell, who talked the matter over with him, was, that he certainly had once intended to go, and had not given it up.'

'I do not value,' said Tocqueville, 'Lord John's inferences from anything that he heard or saw in his audiences. All Louis Napoleon's words and looks, are, whether intentionally or not, misleading. Now that his having direct issue seems out of the question, and that the deeper and deeper discredit into which the heir presumptive is falling, seems to put him out of the question too, we are looking to this journey with great alarm. We feel that, for the present, his life is necessary to us, and we feel that it would be exposed to many hazards. He ought to incur some military risks, if he is present at a battle or an assault, and his courage and his fatalism, will lead him to many which he ought to avoid. But it is disease rather than bullets that we fear. He will have to travel hard, and to be exposed, under exciting circumstances, to a climate which is not a safe one even to the strong.'

'But,' I said, 'he will not be exposed to it long. I have heard thirty, or at most forty, days proposed as the length of his absence.'

'Who can say that?' answered Tocqueville. 'If he goes there, he must stay there until Sebastopol falls. It will not do for him to leave Paris in order merely to look at the works, pat the generals on the back, compliment the army, and leave it in the trenches. Unless his journey produces some great success—in short, unless it gives us Sebastopol—it will be considered a failure; and a failure he cannot afford. I repeat that he must stay there till Sebastopol falls. But that may be months. And what may months bring forth in such a country as France? In such a city as Paris? In such times as these? Then he cannot safely leave his cousin—Jerome Plon swears that he will not go, and I do not see how he can be taken by force.'

'I do not understand,' I said, 'Jerome's conduct. It seemed as if he had the ball at his feet. The role of an heir is the easiest in the world. He has only to behave decently in order to be popular.'

'Jerome's chances,' answered Tocqueville, 'of the popularity which is to be obtained by decent behaviour were over long before he became an heir. His talents are considerable, but he has no principles, and no good sense. He is Corsican to the bone. I watched him among his Montagnards in the Constituent.

'Nothing could be more perverse than his votes, nor more offensive than his speeches. He is unfit to conciliate the sensible portion of society, and naturally throws himself into the arms of those who are waiting to receive him—the violent, the rapacious, and the anarchical: this gives him at least some adherents.'

'What do you hear,' I asked, 'of his conduct in the East?'

'I hear,' said Tocqueville, 'that he showed want, not so much of courage, as of temper and of subordination. He would not obey orders; he would not even transmit them, so that Canrobert was forced to communicate directly with the officers of Napoleon's division, and at last required him to take sick leave, or to submit to a court-martial.'

'I thought,' I said, 'that he was really ill.'

'That is not the general opinion,' said Tocqueville. 'He showed himself at a ball directly after his return, with no outward symptoms of ill health.'

The conversation turned on English politics.

'So many of my friendships,' said Tocqueville, 'and so many of my sympathies, are English, that what is passing in your country, and respecting your country, gives me great pain, and greater anxiety. To us, whom unhappily experience has rendered sensitive of approaching storms, your last six months have a frightfully revolutionary appearance.

'There is with you, as there was with us in 1847, a general malaise in the midst of general prosperity. Your people seem, as was the case with ours, to have become tired of their public men, and to be losing faith in their institutions. What else do these complaints of what is called "the system" mean? When you complain that the Government patronage is bartered for political support, that the dunces of a family are selected for the public service, and selected expressly because they could not get on in an open profession; that as their places are a sort of property, they are promoted only by seniority, and never dismissed for any, except for some moral, delinquency; that therefore the seniors in all your departments are old men, whose original dulness has been cherished by a life without the stimulus of hope or fear, you describe a vessel which seems to have become too crazy to endure anything but the calmest sea and the most favourable winds. You have tried its sea-worthiness in one department, your military organisation, and you find that it literally falls to pieces. You are incapable of managing a line of operations extending only seven miles from its base. The next storm may attack your Colonial Administration. Will that stand any better? Altogether your machinery seems throughout out of gear. If you set to work actively and fearlessly, without reference to private interests, or to private expectations, or to private feelings, to repair, remove and replace, you may escape our misfortunes; but I see no proofs that you are sufficiently bold, or indeed that you are sufficiently alarmed. Then as to what is passing here. A year ago we probably overrated your military power. I believe that now we most mischievously underrate it. A year ago nothing alarmed us more than a whisper of the chance of a war with England. We talk of one now with great composure. We believe that it would not be difficult to throw 100,000 men upon your shores, and we believe that half that number would walk over England or Ireland. You are mistaken if you think that these opinions will die away of themselves, or will be eradicated by anything but some decisive military success. I do not agree with those who think that it is your interest that Russia should submit while Sebastopol stands. You might save money and men by a speedy peace, but you would not regain your reputation. If you are caught by a peace before you have an opportunity of doing so, I advise you to let it be on your part an armed peace. Prepare yourselves for a new struggle with a new enemy, and let your preparations be, not only as effective as you can make them, but also as notorious.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Note inserted by M de Tocqueville in my Journal, after reading the preceding conversation.

'J'ai entendu universellement louer sans restriction le courage heroique de vos soldats, mais en meme temps j'ai trouve repandu cette croyance, qu'on s'etait trompe de l'importance de l'Angleterre dans le monde, comme puissance militaire proprement dite, qui consiste autant a administrer la guerre qu'a combattre, et surtout qu'il lui etait impossible, ce qu'on ne croyait pas jusque la, d'elever de grandes armees, meme dans les cas les plus pressants. Je n'avais rien entendu de pareil depuis mon enfance. On vous croit absolument dans notre dependance, et du sein de la grande inimite qui regne entre les deux peuples, je vois naitre des idees qui, le jour ou nos deux gouvernements cesseront d'etre d'accord, nous precipiteront dans la guerre contre vous, beaucoup plus facilement que cela n'eut pu avoir lieu depuis la chute du premier Empire. Cela m'afflige, et pour l'avenir de Alliance anglaise (dont vous savez que j'ai toujours ete un grand partisan), et non moins aussi, je l'avoue, pour la cause de vos institutions libres. Ce qui se passe n'est pas de nature a la relever dans notre esprit. Je vous pardonnerais de deconsiderer vos principes par les louanges dont vous accablez le gouvernement absolu qui regne en France, mais je voudrais du moins que vous ne le fissiez pas d'une maniere encore plus efficace par vos propres fautes, et par la comparaison qu'elles suggerent. Il me semble, du reste, bien difficile de dire ce qui resultera pour vous meme du contact intime et prolonge avec notre gouvernement, et surtout de l'action commune et du melange des deux armees. J'en doute, je vous l'avouerai, que l'aristocratie anglaise s'en trouve bien, et quoique A B ait entonne l'autre jour une veritable hymne en l'honneur de celle ci, je ne crois pas que ce qui passe soit de nature a rendre ces chances plus grandes dans l'avenir'—A de Tocqueville.

'I heard universal and unqualified praise of the heroic courage of your soldiers, but at the same time I found spread abroad the persuasion that the importance of England had been overrated as a military Power properly so called—a Power which consists in administering as much as in fighting; and above all, that it was impossible (and this had never before been believed), for her to raise large armies, even under the most pressing circumstances. I never heard anything like it since my childhood. You are supposed to be entirely dependent upon us, and from the midst of the great intimacy which subsists between the two countries, I see springing up ideas which, on the day when our two Governments cease to be of one mind, will precipitate our country into a war against you, much more easily than has been possible since the fall of the first Empire. This grieves me, both on account of the duration of the English Alliance (of which you know that I have always been a great partisan), and no less, I own, for the sake of your free institutions. Passing events are not calculated to raise them in our estimation. I forgive you for discrediting your principles by the praise which you lavish on the absolute government which reigns in France, but I would have you at least not to do so in a still more efficacious manner by your own blunders and by the comparisons which they suggest. It seems to me, however, very difficult to predict the result to yourselves of the long and intimate contact with, our Government, and, above all, of the united action and amalgamation of the two armies. I own that I doubt its having a good effect on the future of the English aristocracy, and although A.B. struck up the other day a real hymn in its praise, I do not think that present events are of a nature to increase its chance in the future.']



Paris, Saturday, March 3.—Tocqueville called on us soon after breakfast.

We talked of the loss and gain of Europe by the war. We agreed that Russia and England have both lost by it. Russia probably the most in power, England in reputation. That Prussia, though commercially a gainer, is humiliated and irritated by the superiority claimed by Austria and conceded to her.

'You cannot,' said Tocqueville, 'estimate the opinions of Germany without going there. There is a general feeling among the smaller Powers of internal insecurity and external weakness, and Austria is looked up to as the supporter of order against the revolutionists, and of Germany against Russia. Austria alone has profited by the general calamities. Without actually drawing the sword she has possession of the Principalities, she has thrust down Prussia into the second rank, she has emancipated herself from Russia, she has become the ally of France and of England, and even of her old enemy Piedmont, she is safe in Italy. Poland and Hungary are still her difficulties, and very great ones, but as her general strength increases, she can better deal with them.'

'Has not France, I said, 'been also a gainer, by becoming head of the coalition against Russia?'

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

We passed the spring in Algeria, and returned to Paris the latter part of May.

Paris, May 26,1855.—After breakfast I went to the Institut.

M. Passy 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 paperasseries 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 passeport.

'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 documents, 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 passport.

'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 punishing 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 mass 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 anticipated conscriptions, Louis Napoleon must have recourse to the real passions 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 multitude. 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 classes, "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 institutions. They are the body, small perhaps numerically, and now beaten down, of those who adore Constitutional Liberty. They have maintained the mutual good feeling between France and England against the passions 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 principal 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 worship of superstition; 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 title from God, and that when the proper time comes God 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 assistance.

'There are also a very few Orleanists who, with a strange confusion of ideas, do not perceive that a title 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 noblesse the hatred which has accumulated during twelve centuries of past oppression and the resentment excited by present insolence. Of all the noble families of France the most noble 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 class, 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 masses, 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 municipal councils, from the central and from the local government of France, has deprived them of all aptitude for business. The bulk of them are worshippers 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 passport 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 classes 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 Presidentship, 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 classes, 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 class 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, institutions really constitutional; institutions, 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 Assembly. 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 principally 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 amusement, we might say whose great business, is to converse, to criticise the acts of their rulers, and to pronounce 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 assemblies 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.