_Paris, Saturday, April_ 17, 1858.--We had a discussion at the Institut
to-day as to a bust to fill a niche in the anteroom. Rossi was proposed.
His political merits were admitted, but he was placed low as to his
literary claims as an economist and a jurist. Dupin suggested Talleyrand,
which was received with a universal groan, and failed for want of a
seconder. Ultimately the choice fell on Dumont.
'Nothing that is published of Talleyrand's,' said Tocqueville to me as we
walked home, 'has very great merit, nor indeed is much of it his own. He
hated writing, let his reports and other state papers be drawn up by
others, and merely retouched them. But in the archives of the _Affaires
étrangères_ there is a large quarto volume containing his correspondence
with Louis XVIII during the Congress of Vienna. Nothing can be more
charming. The great European questions which were then in debate, the
diplomatic and social gossip of Vienna, the contemporary literature--in
short, all that one clever _homme du monde_ could find to interest and
amuse another, are treated with wit, brilliancy, and gaiety, supported by
profound good sense. When that volume is published his bust will be
placed here by acclamation.'
_Monday, April_ 19.--I dined with Lanjuinais, and met Tocqueville, Rivet,
Dufaure, Corcelle, Freslon, and one or two others.
They attacked me about the change of sentiment in England with respect to
Louis Napoleon.
'While he was useful to you,' they said, 'you steadily refused to admit
that he was a tyrant, or even an usurper. You chose to disbelieve in the
3,000 men, women, and children massacred on the Boulevards of Paris--in
the 20,000 poisoned by jungle fever in Cayenne--in the 25,000 who have
died of malaria, exposure, and bad food, working in gangs on the roads
and in the marshes of the Metidja and Lambressa.'
'We did not _choose_', I answered, 'to disbelieve any thing. We were
simply ignorant. _I_ knew all these facts, because I have passed a part
of every year since 1847 in Paris; because I walked along the Boulevards
on the 20th of December 1851, and saw the walls of every house, from the
Bastille to the Madeleine, covered with the marks of musket-balls;
because I heard in every society of the thousands who had been massacred,
and of the tens of thousands who had been _déportés_; but the untravelled
English, and even the travelled English, except the few who live in
France among the French, knew nothing of all this. Your press tells
nothing. The nine millions of votes given to Louis Napoleon seemed to
prove his popularity, and therefore the improbability of the tyranny of
which he was accused by his enemies. _I_ knew that those nine millions of
votes were extorted, or stolen by violence or fraud. But the English
people did not know it. They accepted his election as the will of the
nation, and though they might wonder at your choice, did not presume to
blame it.'
'The time,' they answered, 'at which light broke in upon you is
suspicious. Up to the 14th of January 1858 the oppression under which
thirty-four millions of people within twenty-four miles of your coast,
with whom you are in constant intercourse, was unknown to you. Their
ruler insults you, and you instantly discover that he is an usurper and a
tyrant. This looks as if the insult, and the insult alone, opened your
eyes.'
'What opened our eyes,' I answered, 'was not the insult but the _loi de
sûreté publique_. It was the first public act which showed to England the
nature of your Government.
'When we found, erected in every department, a revolutionary tribunal,
empowered to banish and transport without trial; when we found a rude
soldier made Home Minister, and the country divided into five districts
to be each governed by a marshal, we saw at once that France was under a
violent military despotism. Until that law was passed the surface was
smooth. There was nothing in the appearance of France to show to a
stranger that she was not governed by a Monarch, practically, indeed,
absolute, but governing as many absolute Monarchs have done, mildly and
usefully.
'Of course we might have found out the truth sooner if we had inquired.
And perhaps we ought to have inquired. We busy ourselves about our own
affairs, and neglect too much those of other countries. In that sense
you have a right to say that we chose to be ignorant, since our conduct
was such as necessarily to make us ignorant. But it was not because Louis
Napoleon was our ally that we chose to be ignorant, but because we
habitually turn our eyes from the domestic affairs of the Continent, as
things in which we have seldom a right to interfere, and in which, when
we do interfere, we do more harm than good.'
We talked of the manner in which the _loi de sûreté publique_ has been
carried out. And I mentioned 600 as the number of those who had suffered
under it, as acknowledged to me by Blanchard in the beginning of March.
'It is much greater now,' said Lanjuinais. 'Berryer on his return from
Italy, a week ago, slept in Marseilles. He was informed that more than
900 persons had passed through Marseilles, _déportés_ under the new law
to Algeria. They were of all classes: artisans and labourers mixed with
men of the higher and middle classes. To these must be added those
transported to Cayenne, who were sent by way of Havre. As for the number
_expulsés_ and _internés_ there are no data.'
'In the Department of Var, a man was found guilty in 1848 of joining in
one of the revolutionary movements of that time. His complete innocence
was soon proved; he was released, and has lived quietly on his little
estate ever since. He was arrested under the new law and ordered to be
_déporté_ to Algeria. His friends, in fact all his neighbours,
remonstrated, and sent to Paris the proof that the original conviction
was a mistake. "Qu'il aille tout de même," was Espinasse's answer.
'In Calvados the Préfet, finding no one whom he could conscientiously
arrest, took hold of one of the most respectable men in the department.
"If," he said, "I had arrested a man against whom there was plausible
ground for suspicion, he might have been transported. This man _must_ be
released."'
'Has he been released?' I asked.
'I have not heard,' was the answer. 'In all probability he has been.'
'In my department,' said Tocqueville, 'the _sous-préfet_, ordered by the
Préfet to arrest somebody in the arrondissement, was in the same
perplexity as the Préfet of Calvados. "I can find no fit person," he said
to me. I believe that he reported the difficulty to the Préfet, and that
the vacancy was supplied from some other arrondissement.
'What makes this frightful,' he added, 'is that we now know that
deportation is merely a slow death. Scarcely any of the victims of 1851
and 1852 are living.'
'I foretold that,' I said, 'at the time, as you will find if you look at
my article on Lamartine, published in the "Edinburgh Review."'[1]
[Footnote 1: See _Journals in France and Italy_.--ED.]
_April_ 20.--We talked of the political influence in France of the
_hommes de lettres_.
'It began,' said Tocqueville, 'with the Restoration. Until that time we
had sometimes, though very rarely, statesmen who became writers, but
never writers who became statesmen,'
'You had _hommes de lettres_,' I said, 'in the early Revolutionary
Assemblies--Mirabeau for instance.'
'Mirabeau,' he answered, 'is your best example, for Mirabeau, until he
became a statesman, lived by his pen. Still I should scarcely call a man
of his high birth and great expectations _un homme de lettres_. That
appellation seems to belong to a man who owes his position in early life
to literature. Such a man is Thiers, or Guizot, as opposed to such men as
Gladstone, Lord John Russell, or Montalembert.'
_Wednesday, April_ 21.--I dined with D. and met, among several others,
Admiral Matthieu the Imperial Hydrographer, and a general whose name I
did not catch. I talked to the general about the army.
'We are increasing it,' he said, 'but not very materially. We are rather
giving ourselves the means of a future rapid increase, than making an
immediate augmentation. We are raising the number of men from 354,000 to
392,400, in round numbers to 400,000; but the principal increase is in
the _cadres_, the officers attached to each battalion. We have increased
them by more than one third. So that if a war should break out we can
instantly--that is to say in three months, increase our army to 600,000
or even 700,000 men. Soldiers are never wanting in France, the difficulty
always is to find officers.'
'I hear,' I said, 'that you are making great improvements in your
artillery.'
'We are,' he answered. 'We are applying to it the principle of the Minié
musket, and we are improving the material. We hope to make our guns as
capable of resisting rapid and continued firing as well and as long as
the English and the Swedish guns, which are the best in Europe, can do.
And we find that we can throw a ball on the Minié principle with equal
precision twice as far. This will double the force of all our batteries.'
'Are _you_,' he asked me, 'among those who have taken shares in the
Russian railways?'
'No,' I said. 'They are the last that I wish to encourage.'
'Englishmen or Frenchmen,' he answered, 'who help Russia to make
railways, put me in mind of the Dutch who sold powder to their besiegers.
'The thinness of her population--that is, the vast space over which it is
scattered--alone prevents Russia from being the mistress of Europe. If
her 64,000,000 were as concentrated as our 34,000,000 are, she would be
irresistible. She loses always far more men in marching than in
fighting.'
'The events of the war,' I said, 'lead me to believe that the goodness of
the Russian soldier is exaggerated. They were always beaten, often by
inferior numbers.'
'In the first place,' he answered, 'those who were beaten at Sebastopol
were not the best Russian soldiers. They were short small men, generally
drawn from the neighbouring provinces. The Russian Imperial Guards and
the Russian Army in Poland are far superior to any that we encountered in
the Crimea. In the second place, they were ill commanded. The
improvements of weapons, of science and of discipline, have raised the
privates of all the great military nations to about the same level.
Success now depends on numbers and on generalship. With railways Russia
will be able to bring quickly a preponderating force to any point on her
frontier. Her officers are already good, and for money she can import the
best generals; indeed, I do not see why she should not breed them. Russia
is civilised enough to produce men of the highest military qualities.'