Tocqueville, November 2, 1856.
I am grateful to you, my dear Senior, for your kindness in telling me
what I most wished to hear. The judgments of such men as those with whom
you have been living, while they delight me, impose on me the duty of
unrelaxed efforts.
Your fortnight at Lord Aberdeen's amused me exceedingly, and not the
least amusing part were the eccentricities of A.B.
There is one point in which the English seem to me to differ from
ourselves, and, indeed, from all other nations, so widely that they form
almost a distinct species of men. There is often scarcely any connection
between what they say and what they do.
No people carry so far, especially when speaking in public, violence of
language, outrageousness of theories, and extravagance in the inference
drawn from those theories. Thus your A.B. says that the Irish have not
shot half enough landlords. Yet no people act with more moderation. A
quarter of what is said in England at a public meeting, or even round a
dinner-table, without anything being done or intended to be done, would
in France announce violence, which would almost always be more furious
than the language had been.
We Frenchmen are not so different from our antipodes as we are from a
nation, partly our own progeny, which is separated from us by only a
large ditch.
I wonder whether you have heard how our illustrious master is relieving
the working-people from the constant rise of house-rent. When they are
turned out of their lodgings he re-establishes them by force; if they are
distrained on for non-payment of rent, he will not allow the tribunals to
treat the distress as legal. What think you, as a political economist, of
this form of outdoor relief?
What makes the thing amusing is, that the Government which uses this
violent mode of lodging the working classes, is the very same Government
which, by its mad public works, by drawing to Paris suddenly a hundred
thousand workmen, and by destroying suddenly ten thousand houses, has
created the deficiency of habitations. It seems, however, that the
systematic intimidation and oppression of the rich in favour of the poor,
is every day becoming more and more one of the principles of our
Government.
I read yesterday a circular from the prefect of La Sarthe, a public
document, stuck up on the church-doors and in the market-places, which,
after urging the landed proprietors of the department to assess
themselves for the relief of the poor, adds, that their insensibility
becomes more odious when it is remembered that for many years they have
been growing rich by the rise of prices, which is spreading misery among
the lower orders.
The real character of our Government, its frightful mixture of socialism
and despotism, was never better shown.
I have said enough to prevent your getting my letter. If it _should_
escape the rogue who manages our post-office, let me know as soon as you
can.
Kindest remembrances,