with the spoils of the victims who had been sacrificed to the
murderous policy of Richelieu, and the religious intolerance of Louis
XIV., that the first families had been enriched? And who can tell
whether the lands which the emigrants reclaimed with so much pride and
bitterness, were not the same which their ancestors had received
without a blush from the bloody hands of Richelieu and Louis?
It must be confessed that the unalterable fidelity of a certain number
amongst the emigrants bound the royal government to reward their
fidelity and to alleviate their misfortunes. But all had not an equal
right to the affection and gratitude of the King. If some had
generously sacrificed their fortunes and their country in the cause of
royalty, yet others only fled from France because they wished to
escape their creditors[11], and thought that in strange countries they
might find dupes to feed upon, and thus exist upon swindling resources
to which they could no longer resort with impunity at home.
[Footnote 11: Before the revolution it was
customary for "_les grands seigneurs_" to obtain
what were called "_lettres de surseance_," by means
of which they avoided the payment of their debts,
and defeated their creditors.]
It was therefore necessary to separate the first class of emigrants
from the last; and after establishing this distinction, the government
should have made a fair appeal to the justice and generosity of the
nation. Frenchmen, who yield so readily to every dignified sentiment,
would not have allowed the faithful and virtuous servants of their
King to languish in poverty. We may appeal to the universal assent
which was given to the proposal[12] made by the marshal duke of
Tarentum, that ten millions of francs should be annually appropriated
for the indemnification of the emigrants who had been deprived of
their property, and of the soldiers who had lost their "_dotations_."
[Footnote 12: This proposal was not carried into
execution.]
But the government party should not have attempted to assist the
emigrants by resorting to means offensive to the nation, and
derogatory to the charter. And, above all, they should not have puffed
up the emigrants with proud and silly hopes. If they had been left to
themselves, they would have fallen in with the purchasers of their
property, they would have treated for an amicable settlement of their
claims, and they would have regained possession of their hereditary
estates without jarring and without scandal.
The partiality which was shown towards the emigrants on all occasions
produced another evil of still greater extent. It contributed, even
more than the efforts of disaffection, in persuading the peasantry
that the government wished to chain them again to the soil, and to
render them once more the tributaries both of the nobility and of the
priesthood.
The revolution has taught the countryman to know that he is somebody
in the state. After the revolution the peasants became rich, and they
were delivered from the double vassalage of former days, when they
crouched before the priest and the lord: therefore they could not
think of any alteration without horror. Day after day they heard or
they read (in France every body reads now,) that the government
intended to restore the "_ancien regime_." And the restoration of the
"_ancien regime_" was interpreted by them, as well as by many others,
to mean the restoration of tithes, vassalage, and feudal rights. They
were confirmed in their dangerous and disquieting opinion by the
outrageous claims of the emigrants, and the declamations of the
priests. It was to no purpose that the government tried to re-assure
them. They had been already deceived and it seldom happens that you
can catch a French peasant twice in the same snare. The abolition of
the conscription had been promised, and the old code was continued in
force with all its harshness, and still the refractory conscripts were
sent away in chains, whilst fines were imposed upon their families.
The abolition of the "_droits reunis_" had also been promised, and
they were not only levied with greater rigour and harshness than
before, but even some of these imposts had been greatly increased.
Such was the fatality which influenced all the actions of the
government, that all proceedings which in themselves were simple and
reasonable, became venomous and corrupted when conducted by the
ministry, and only added to the general disorder and discontent,
instead of producing the good effects which they might have been
justly expected to produce.
The discontent of the people, the inevitable result of the injuries
inflicted on the feelings and interests of individuals[13], was
increased by the open infringement of the rights of the people,
although these rights were secured to the country by a compact which
seemed to be inviolable.
[Footnote 13: There are times when a government may
attack general principles without danger. But men
and their personal interests can never be assailed
with impunity. Personal interest is the prime mover
of public opinion and feeling; and however
degrading the truth may appear, it is not to be
disputed. After a great national catastrophe this
baleful egotism is particularly evident. Dignified
passions become extinct for want of fuel; and the
human mind, destitute of external occupation, works
inward upon itself, and begets selfishness, the
true pestilence of the soul. When this disease
affects a nation, the government is lost if it
attacks the interests of individuals.]
Liberty of conscience had been promised by the charter, and this
liberty was immediately annihilated. An ordonnance was issued by the
police[14], which revived regulations enacted in _an age of
intolerance_, for enforcing the strict and universal observance of the
Lord's day, and the festivals of the church. Napoleon, anxious to
preserve a strict neutrality between the catholics and the
protestants, prohibited the religious processions of the former in all
towns containing places of worship belonging to the latter communion.
His prohibition was removed, and the catholic priesthood exulted in
their processions, in which they marched in triumph. They ought to
have tranquillized the apprehensions of their opponents, and to have
edified the faithful by humility, or at least by feigning humility;
but they disdained to conciliate the public, whom they scandalized by
their pride and irritated by their violence[15].
[Footnote 14: By means of ordonnances the ministers
legislated according to their pleasure in matters
which ought only to have been regulated by the law,
so that the greater part of the bills presented to
the chambers "had been already enacted and executed
in the shape of ordonnances; and the legislature
had no other function except that of giving a legal
sanction to the arbitrary decrees of the
ministers."--_Censeur._]
[Footnote 15: Even in Paris several persons were
ill treated and bayoneted, because they refused to
pull off their hats and kneel, whilst the
processions were passing by.]
The imagination of the priests became fired by the victory which they
supposed they had gained. They dreamt that they were in full
possession of their ancient power; and they wished immediately to
revive it according to their ancient fashion. An actress belonging to
the Theatre Francais died without being absolved, and without
suspecting that it was necessary to be absolved, from the
excommunication which had been formerly fulminated against stage
players; and which, as every body knows, deprived Moliere of Christian
burial.
Following the same precedents, the clergy would not allow the rites of
sepulture to the actress in question. The populace, who followed the
funeral out of curiosity, learnt the affront which was thus offered to
her remains. Transported by sudden indignation, they rushed to the
hearse, and dragged it onwards. The doors of the interdicted church
were burst open in a moment. They called for a priest; no priest
appeared. The tumult augmented. The church and the neighbouring
streets resounded with the groans and threats of ten thousand persons.
Their agitation became more violent, and there was no possibility of
foreseeing where the effervescence of popular feeling would stop, when
a messenger arrived from the court, who ordered, in the name of the
King, that the funeral should proceed.
The accounts of this event, and the comments to which it gave rise,
excited the most lively interest in Paris and throughout France: nor
did it fail to give the greatest pleasure to the enemies of religion.
The friends of public decency and good order accused the government of
encouraging the alarming progress of sacerdotal despotism. It was
particularly in the smaller towns, and in the country, that the
priests behaved with the most blamable audacity, abusing the privilege
of speech which had been restored to them[16]. The pulpit became a
tribunal from whence they pronounced sentence of present infamy, with
the reversion of eternal damnation, upon all who refused to
participate in their opinions and bigotry. Making common cause with
the emigrants, they employed hints, inuendoes, insinuations,
arguments, promises, and threats of every species, for the purpose of
compelling the owners of the national property to yield up their
lands, and of leading the wretched peasantry again beneath the tyrant
yokes of feudality and superstition.
[Footnote 16: Under the reign of Napoleon, if a
priest had ventured to utter any opinion contrary
to the system of government, he would have been
immediately removed.]
During the revolution, the priesthood had betrayed its real character.
Contempt had fallen on the clergy, and it was out of the power of the
government to invest them suddenly with the salutary influence which
they had lost. This influence ought to be gained by wise and prudent
conduct, by active and impartial benevolence, by the practice of
sacerdotal virtues. It cannot be gained by ordonnances of police, by
abuse, by violence, by mumming processions, which, in our times, are
out of character and ridiculous.
By the charter the liberty of the press had been guarantied as well as
the liberty of public worship; yet every day innumerable publications
were seized or suppressed contrary to the laws. M. Durbach, a deputy
who never equivocated with his conscience or yielded to danger,
complained on this subject in the chamber: the opinion of the house
went along with him; and the government, pretending to yield to the
feeling of the deputies, presented a bill to the chambers through the
medium of M. de Montesquiou, which, instead of delivering the press
from its slavery, gave full establishment to the censorship, and
legalized the tyranny which had been exercised over the press by mere
force under the former government.
Benjamin Constant attacked the bill with vigour: the same side was
taken by the public journals, and by all public writers; but there was
no possibility of putting M. de Montesquiou out of countenance. It was
demonstrated to him that his law would wholly destroy the liberty of
the press. By holding the charter before his eyes, the advocates of
public rights proved that the charter only declared that the licence
of the press was to be restrained, and that his bill was therefore
radically unconstitutional, because the preliminary censorship was not
intended to restrain abuses, but to prevent their taking place.
Montesquiou answered gravely, that the persons with whom such
objections originated did not understand French; that the words
"_prevenir_" and "_reprimer_" were perfectly synonymous: and that the
bill, instead of being offensive or unconstitutional, contained a most
complete and a most liberal development of the clause in the charter.
This unparalleled endeavour of Montesquiou, who persuaded himself that
he could convince an assembly of Frenchmen that they did not
understand their own language, was justly considered by the chamber as
a matchless specimen of impudence and folly. Lexicographical
subtleties were employed with bitter mockery for the purpose of
destroying a public right, consecrated by the constitutional compact.
Never had insolence and bad faith been displayed so prominently:
Raynouard, the reporter of the committee, exclaimed in the language of
grief and indignation, "Minister of our King, confess, at least, that
your law is contrary to the constitution, since you cannot refute the
evidence adduced against it: your obstinacy in contesting such an
indisputable truth would not then inspire us with such just alarms."
The law was ultimately adopted by both chambers; ministerial influence
triumphed over reason, and rased the most important bulwark of the
rights guarantied to the nation. The result of the conflict produced
the most lively sensation. No man who was capable of forethought and
reasoning could remain undisturbed. Notwithstanding the patriotism of
Dupont (of the department of the Eure), of Raynouard, of Durbach, of
Bedoch, of Flaugergues, it was seen too clearly that the chamber of
deputies could not oppose any effectual obstacle to the despotic and
anti-constitutional plans of the government; and that the ministers
would have full power, whenever they thought proper, to interpret the
clauses of the charter according to their own way, and to rob the
French nation of the few rights which it yet might promise to them.
"By means of such interpretations," the people said, "the senate
sacrificed the independence of the nation to Napoleon. But at least
the imperial despotism assumed a character by which it was justified
and ennobled. It tended to render our nation the greatest nation in
the world; but the despotism which awaits us has no other
accompaniment but bad faith, and no other end except the degradation
and slavery of France."
By such reflections, the suspicion and disgust and aversion inspired
by the government, were excited to the utmost pitch. The public
feeling did not stop there: the French people are naturally inconstant
in their opinions and sentiments; and their former prejudices against
Napoleon were changed into transports of admiration. France, under the
royal government, was humiliated, disorganized, and degenerate; and
they contrasted the present state of the country with the influence,
the strength, the compactness, which it enjoyed under the reign of
Napoleon; and He, who had lately been cursed as the root of all evil,
now appeared to be the greatest of men, and the greatest of heroes,
though in misfortune.
The government knew that Napoleon was again admired by the people, and
that they regretted his loss. To counteract these sentiments, coarse
and vulgar caricatures were exposed to the eyes of the populace; and
his person and his character became the theme of false and scandalous
libels published under the direction of the ministry. No effect was
produced. The mob looked at the caricatures with a smile of contempt;
and the actions of Napoleon, which, under his reign, excited the
greatest censure and disapprobation, now found the most zealous
apologists and defenders.
If Napoleon was accused of having overthrown the republican
government, and enslaved the country by the revolution of the 18th
Brumaire, they answered[17]:--"At that era, anarchy, emboldened by the
misfortunes of the country, could only be repressed by victory. Civil
war had been organized in twenty departments; insurrections had taken
place in many, rapine infected them all; robbery and murder took place
with impunity on many of the principal high roads. Two dreadful laws,
the law of the hostages, and that of the forced loans, occasioned
greater evils than they could cure. No nation had ever existed in
which the finances of the state were in equal confusion; and a
succession of partial bankruptcies prolonged the opprobrium of the
general bankruptcy of the country. The money of the public was robbed
whilst in transit on the high roads. Robbers even carried it off from
the houses of the receivers, and the deficiency could not be made good
by the most violent exactions. The jacobins were on the point of
recommencing their reign of terror. The royalists had recourse without
scruple to all the measures which might enable them to satiate their
revenge; and the peaceable friends of the law were placed between the
conflicting parties in a state of disgraceful weakness and neutrality.
Such was the desperate situation of France when Napoleon seized the
helm of the state. Instead of imputing the slavery of the country to
him, he ought to have been blessed; for he delivered us from the
spoliations, the murders, and the tyranny which were consequent upon
the reign of anarchy and terror."
[Footnote 17: I cannot express their thoughts more
forcibly than by copying the passage, which I have
quoted in my text, from the View of the Revolution
by Lacretelle.]
Was it maintained that Napoleon had reigned despotically? They held
that this accusation was unjust; and they had recourse to the
following reasoning. "Anarchy was silenced by Napoleon." It became
necessary, that order should take the place of disorder; that the
authority of one should be substituted for the authority of all.
Parties were to be restrained within the bound of moderation; traitors
were to be annihilated. It was necessary to curb the prejudices of the
nobility, and the revolutionary habits and manners of the jacobins.
This great work could not be accomplished, without engaging in a
conflict against individual interests and opinions. Napoleon was
considered as a despot; this was inevitable. Whenever the existing
polity of a state has been totally subverted, he who first raises the
edifice of society from its ruins, is necessarily accused of
despotism, because apparently he has no other rule except his own
will. Nor must we forget that Napoleon had been accustomed to command
implicit obedience in the camp. He retained his military attitude on
the throne. He usually addressed his courtiers, his connexions, and
his ministers, in the tone which he had formerly adopted when speaking
to his soldiers or their generals[18]. An appearance of despotism was
certainly given to his way of reigning and commanding, by such
language which is seldom heard in civil society. And in almost all
cases, appearance is taken for reality.
[Footnote 18: From his early youth, it may be even
said from his days of boyhood, Napoleon felt an
inward presentiment that he was not destined to
live in mediocrity. This persuasion soon taught him
to treat others with disdain, and to entertain the
highest opinion of himself. Scarcely had he
obtained a subaltern command in the artillery, when
he considered himself as the superior of his
equals, and the equal of his superiors. In his 20th
year he was placed at the head of the army of
Italy. Without appearing to be in the slightest
degree surprised by his elevation, he passed from a
secondary station to the chief command. He
immediately treated the old generals of the
army--they who were so proud of the laurels--with
an air of dignity and authority, which placed them
in a situation which was probably new to them. But
they did not feel humiliated, and their inferiority
seemed to result as a matter of course, for the
ascendancy exercised by Napoleon was irresistible;
and he was thoroughly endued; with that instinct of
authority, that talent of ensuring obedience, with
those faculties which are usually confined to those
who are kings by birth. Napoleon could probably
have attained to supreme authority in any country
in the world. Nature had formed him for command,
and she never creates such men for the purpose of
leaving them in obscurity. It seems, according to
the remark of a writer whose name I have forgotten,
that she is proud of her own work, and that she
wishes to offer it to admiration, by placing it at
the head of human society.]
At first the imperious tone adopted by Napoleon was blamed, next it
was admired. He soon employed it in his intercourse with foreign
ambassadors, with foreign sovereigns. The wily forms of ancient
diplomacy were discarded. Napoleon did not negociate; he issued his
orders. With one hand he brandished his victorious sword; in the other
he held crowns and sceptres. He bade the sovereigns of Europe make
their choice; he offered his friendship or his hatred, kingdoms or
blows. The monarchs who stood before his throne were taught wisdom by
experience. They knew that Napoleon could reward and punish; they
crowded into the ranks of his allies; and they consoled themselves for
their weakness, by crying out upon his tyranny[19].
[Footnote 19: The continental system induced
Napoleon to exercise a real tyranny over Europe. We
do not pretend to deny the fact; but we only wish
to add, that this exterior despotism always induced
a belief amongst foreigners, that Napoleon, who
tyrannized so violently over nations which did not
belong to him, must necessarily be the tyrant of
his own subjects.]
When these causes were united, they aided in persuading the world
that Napoleon was really a despot. For, as Montesquieu observes, there
are some things which we believe at last, merely because we hear them
continually repeated. But if the government of Napoleon is considered
impartially, we shall feel convinced, that the despotism attributed to
him existed rather in words and forms, than in deeds. Let the acts of
his reign be scrutinized, and none will be found impressed with the
character of real despotism; that is to say, of despotism founded on
the mere arbitrary will and pleasure of the prince. On the contrary,
they all prove that the interest and aggrandizement of France entered
alone into the views of Napoleon, and that instead of being under a
tyrannical government, the people never enjoyed the benefits of
distributive justice with greater equality, and were never protected
more completely against the oppressions of public functionaries, and
of the higher ranks. He may, perhaps, be censured for having violated
certain laws, for violations in which the senate and the
representatives of the people were his accomplices. But laws are only
binding upon sovereigns in the ordinary course of things, and the most
rigid writers on the law of nations acknowledge this principle. When
extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances take place, it is the duty
of the sovereign to be above the law. In order to judge fairly of the
actions of a monarch, we must not consider them separately. Many an
action which, if taken singly, appears unjustifiable or hateful, loses
that character when viewed as one of the series of events from which
it arose, as a connecting link in the political chain of which it
forms a part. Neither should the conduct of a sovereign be judged
according to the principles of natural equity. In the estimation of
those, upon whom the task of ruling nations has devolved, necessity
and the public safety ought to know no law. Every apprehension of
injuring private interest vanishes, and must ever vanish, before state
considerations.
"After all," continued they, "the real point at issue is, not whether
the government of Napoleon was more or less despotic; but whether it
was such as was required by the character of his people and of his
times,--such as it needed to be, in order that France might become
tranquil, happy, and powerful." Now it is impossible to deny but that,
during the reign of Napoleon, the interior of France enjoyed an
unruffled calm, and that the ascendancy of his genius bestowed upon
the country a degree of power and prosperity, which it never attained
before, and which probably it will never possess again.