_littérateurs_ throughout whose ranks these measures are intended to
‘strike terror and inspire respect,’ you would hear that there never was
such tyranny since the beginning of mankind. But among the mass of the
industrious classes—between whom and the politicians there is internecine
war—I fancy that on turning the conversation to either of the most recent
events, you would hear something of this sort:—‘_Ça ne m’occupe pas_.’
‘What is that _to me_?’ ‘_Je suis pour la tranquillité, moi._’ ‘I sold
four brooches yesterday.’ The Socialists who have been removed from
prison to the colony, it is agreed were ‘pestilent fellows perverting
the nation,’ and forbidding to pay tribute to M. Bonaparte. Indeed, they
can hardly expect commercial sympathy. ‘Our national honour rose—our
stocks fell,’ is Louis Blanc’s perpetual comment on his favourite events,
and it is difficult to say which of its two clauses he dwells upon with
the intenser relish. It is generally thought by those who think about
the matter, that both the transportation, and in all cases, certainly,
the exile will only be a temporary measure, and that the great mass of
the people in both lists will be allowed to return to their homes when
the present season of extreme excitement has passed over. Still, I am
not prepared to defend the _number_ of the transportations. That strong
measures of the sort were necessary, I make no doubt. If Socialism
exist, and the fear of it exist, something must be done to re-assure
the people. You will understand that it is not a judicial proceeding
either in essence or in form; it is not to be considered as a punishment
for what men have done, but as a perfect precaution against what they
may do. Certainly, it is to be regretted that the cause of order is so
weak as to need such measures; but if it _is_ so weak, the Government
must no doubt take them. Of course, however, ‘our brethren,’ who are
retained in such numbers to write down Prince Louis, are quite right
to use without stint or stopping this most un-English proceeding; it
is their case, and you and I from old misdeeds know pretty well how it
is to be managed. There will be no imputation of reasonable or humane
motives to the Government, and no examination of the existing state of
France:—let both these come from the other side—but elegiac eloquence
is inexhaustibly exuded—the cruel corners of history are ransacked
for petrifying precedents—and I observe much excellent weeping on the
Cromwellian deportations and the ten years’ exile of Madame de Staël.
But after all they have missed the tempting parallel—I mean the ‘rather
long’ proscription list which Octavius—‘_l’ancien neveu de l’ancien
oncle_’—concocted with Mark Antony in the marshes of Bononia, and whereby
they thoroughly purged old Rome of its turbulent and revolutionary
elements. I suspect our estimable contemporaries regret to remember of
how much good order, long tranquillity, ‘_beata pleno copia cornu_’ and
other many ‘little comforts’ to the civilised world that very ‘strong’
proceeding, whether in ethics justifiable or not, certainly was in fact
the beginning and foundation.
The fate of the African generals is much to be regretted, and the
Government will incur much odium if the exile of General Changarnier
is prolonged any length of time. He is doubtless ‘dangerous’ for the
moment, for his popularity with the army is considerable, and he divides
the party of order; he is also a practical man and an unpleasant enemy,
but he is much respected and little likely (I fancy) to attempt anything
against any settled Government.
As for M. Thiers and M. Emile de Girardin—the ablest of the exiles—I
have heard no one pity them; they have played a selfish game—they have
encountered a better player—they have been beaten—and this is the whole
matter. You will remember that it was the adhesion of these two men that
procured for M. Bonaparte a large part of his _first_ six millions.
M. de Girardin, whom General Cavaignac had discreetly imprisoned and
indiscreetly set free, wrote up the ‘opposition candidate’ daily, in the
_Presse_ (he has since often and often tried to write him down,) and M.
Thiers was his Privy Councillor. ‘_Mon cher Prince_,’ they say, said the
latter, ‘your address to the people won’t do at all. I’ll get one of the
_rédacteurs of the Constitutionnel_ to draw you up something tolerable.’
You remember the easy patronage with which Cicero speaks in his letter
of the ‘boy’ that was outwitting him all the while. But, however, observe
I do not at all, notwithstanding my Latin, insinuate or assert that
Louis Napoleon, though a considerable man, is exactly equal to keep the
footsteps of Augustus. A feeble parody may suffice for an inferior stage
and not too gigantic generation. Now I really _have_ done.
LETTER III.
_ON THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE, AND THE APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH
CHARACTER FOR NATIONAL FREEDOM._
Paris: January 20, 1852.
SIR,—We have now got our Constitution. The Napoleonic era has commenced;
the term of the dictatorship is fixed and the consolidation of France
is begun. You will perhaps anticipate from the conclusion of the last
letter, that _à propos_ of this great event, I should gratify you with
bright anticipations of an Augustan age, and a quick revival of Catonic
virtue, with an assurance that the night is surely passed and the day
altogether come, with a solemn invocation to the rising luminary, and an
original panegyric on the ‘golden throned morning.’
I must always regret to disappoint any one; but I feel obliged to
entertain you instead with torpid philosophy, constitutional details, and
a dull disquisition on national character.
The details of the new institutions you will have long ago learnt from
the daily papers. I believe they may be fairly and nearly accurately
described as the Constitution of the Consulate, _minus_ the ideas of the
man who made it. You will remember that, besides the First Magistrate,
the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Council of State (which
we may call, in legal language, the ‘common form’ of continental
constitution), the ingenious Abbé Sièyes had devised some four principal
peculiarities, which were to be remembered to all time as master-pieces
of political invention. These were the utter inaction of the First
Magistrate, copied, as I believe, from the English Constitution—the
subordination to him of two Consuls, one to administer peace and the
other war, who were intended to be the real hands and arms of the
Government—the silence of the Senate—the double and very peculiar
election of the House of Representatives. Napoleon the Great, as we
are now to speak, struck out the first of these, being at the moment
working some fifteen hours a day at the reorganisation of France. He said
plainly and rather sternly that he had no intention of doing nothing—the
_idéologue_ went to the wall—the ‘excellent idea’ put forth in happy
forgetfulness of real facts and real people was instantly abandoned—for
the Grand Elector was substituted a First Consul, who, so far from being
nothing, was very soon the whole Government. Napoleon the Little, as
I fear the Parisian multitude may learn to call him, has effaced the
other three ‘strokes of statesmanship.’ The new Constitution of France
is exactly the ‘common form’ of political conveyancing, _plus_ the _Idée
Napoléonienne_ of an all-suggesting and all-administering mind.
I have extremely little to tell you about its reception; it has made no
‘sensation,’ not so much as even the ‘fortified camps’ which his Grace
is said to be devising for the defence of our own London. Indeed, ‘_Il a
peur_’ is a very common remark (conceivable to everybody who knows ‘the
Duke,’) and it would seem even a refreshing alleviation of their domestic
sorrows. In fact, home politics are now _the_ topic; geography and the
state of foreign institutions are not, indeed, the true Parisian line—but
it has, in fine, been distinctly discovered that there are no _salons_
in Cayenne, which, once certain, the logical genius of the nation, with
incredible swiftness, deduced the clear conclusion that it was better
not to go there. Seriously, I fancy—for I have no data on which to found
real knowledge of so delicate a point—the new Constitution is regarded
merely as what Father Newman would call a ‘preservative addition’ or
a ‘necessary development,’ essential to the ‘chronic continuance’ of
the Napoleonic system; for the moment the mass of the people wish the
President to govern them, but they don’t seem to me to care how. The
political people, I suppose, hate it, because for some time it will
enable him, if not shot, to govern effectually. I say, if not shot—for
people are habitually recounting under their breath some new story of
an attempt at assassination, which the papers suppress. I am inclined
to think that these rumours are pure lies; but they show the feeling.
You know, according to the Constitution of 1848, the President would now
be a mere outlaw, and whoever finds him may slay him, if he can. It is
true that the elaborate masterpiece of M. Marrast is already fallen into
utter oblivion (it is no more remembered than yesterday’s _Times_, or the
political institutions of Saxon Mercia); but nevertheless such, according
to the antediluvian _régime_, would be the law, and it is possible that
a mindful Montagnard may upon occasion recall even so insignificant a
circumstance.
I have a word to say on the Prologue of the President. When I first began
to talk politics with French people, I was much impressed by the fact to
which he has there drawn attention. You know that all such conversation,
when one of the interlocutors is a foreigner, speaking slowly and but
imperfectly the language of the country in which he is residing, is
pretty much in the style of that excellent work which was the terror
of our childhood—Joyce’s ‘Scientific Dialogues’—wherein, as you may
remember, an accomplished tutor, with a singular gift of scholastic
improvisation, instructs a youthful pupil exceedingly given to feeble
questions and auscultatory repose. Now, when I began in Parisian society
thus to enact the _rôle_ of ‘George’ or ‘Caroline,’ I was, I repeat, much
struck with the fact that the Emperor had done everything: to whatever
subject my diminutive inquiry related, the answer was nearly universally
the same—an elegy on Napoleon. Nor is this exactly absurd; for whether
or not ‘the nephew’ is right in calling the uncle the greatest of modern
statesmen, he is indisputably the modern statesman who has founded the
greatest number of existing institutions. In the pride of philosophy and
in the madness of an hour, the Constituent Assembly and the Convention
swept away not only the monstrous abuses of the old _régime_, but that
_régime_ itself—its essence and its mechanism, utterly and entirely. They
destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on. The consequence was
certain—when they tried to construct they found they had no materials.
They left a vacuum. No greater benefit could have been conferred on
politicians gifted with the creative genius of Napoleon. It was like the
fire of London to Sir Christopher Wren. With a fertility of invention and
an obstinacy in execution, equalling, if not surpassing, those of Cæsar
and Charlemagne, he had before him an open stage, more clear and more
vast than in historical times fortune has ever offered to any statesman.
He was nearly in the position of the imagined legislator of the Greek
legends and the Greek philosophers—he could enact any law, and rescind
any law. Accordingly, the educational system, the banking system, the
financial system, the municipal system, the administrative system, the
civil legislation, the penal legislation, the commercial legislation
(besides all manner of secondary creations—public buildings and public
institutions without number), all date from the time, and are more or
less deeply inscribed with the genius, the firm will, and unresting
energies of Napoleon. And this, which is the great strength of the
present President, is the great difficulty—I fear the insurmountable
difficulty—in the way of Henry the Fifth. The first revolution is to
the French what the deluge is to the rest of mankind; the whole system
then underwent an entire change. A French politician will no more cite
as authority the domestic policy of Colbert or Louvois than we should
think of going for ethics and æsthetics to the bigamy of Lamech, or the
musical accomplishments of Tubal Cain. If the Comte de Chambord be (as it
is quite on the cards that he may be), within a few years restored, he
must govern by the instrumentality of laws and systems, devised by the
politicians whom he execrates and denounces, and devised, moreover, often
enough, especially to keep out him and his. It is difficult to imagine
that a strong Government can be composed of materials so inharmonious.
Meanwhile, to the popular imagination, ‘the Emperor’ is the past; the
House of Bourbon is as historical as the House of Valois; a peasant is
little oftener reminded of the ‘third dynasty’ than of the long-haired
kings.
In discussing any Constitution, there are two ideas to be first got rid
of. The first is the idea of our barbarous ancestors—now happily banished
from all civilised society, but still prevailing in old manor-houses, in
rural parsonages, and other curious repositories of mouldering ignorance,
and which in such arid solitudes is thus expressed: ‘Why can’t they have
Kings, Lords and Commons, _like we have_? What fools foreigners are.’
The second pernicious mistake is, like the former, seldom now held upon
system, but so many hold it in bits and fragments, and without system,
that it is still rather formidable. I allude to the old idea which
still here creeps out in conversation, and sometimes in writing,—that
politics are simply a subdivision of immutable ethics; that there are
certain rights of men in all places and all times, which are the sole and
sufficient foundation of all government, and that accordingly a single
stereotype Government is to make the tour of the world—that you have
no more right to deprive a Dyak of his vote in a ‘possible’ Polynesian
Parliament, than you have to steal his mat.
Burke first taught the world at large, in opposition to both, and
especially to the latter of these notions, that politics are made of
time and place—that institutions are shifting things, to be tried by
and adjusted to the shifting conditions of a mutable world—that, in
fact, politics are but a piece of business—to be determined in every
case by the exact exigencies of that case; in plain English—by sense and
circumstances.
This was a great step in political philosophy—though it _now_ seems the
events of 1848 have taught thinking persons (I fancy) further. They
have enabled us to say that of all these circumstances so affecting
political problems, by far and out of all question the most important is
_national character_. In that year the same experiment—the experiment,
as its friends say, of Liberal and Constitutional Government—as its
enemies say, of Anarchy and Revolution—was tried in every nation of
Europe—with what varying futures and differing results! The effect
has been to teach men—not only speculatively to know, but practically
to feel, that no absurdity is so great as to imagine the same species
of institutions suitable or possible for Scotchmen and Sicilians, for
Germans and Frenchmen, for the English and the Neapolitans. With a
well-balanced national character (we now know) liberty is a stable thing.
A really practical people will work in political business, as in private
business, almost the absurdest, the feeblest, the most inconsistent
set of imaginable regulations. Similarly, or rather reversely, the
best institutions will not keep right a nation that _will_ go wrong.
Paper is but paper, and no virtue is to be discovered in it to retain
within due boundaries the undisciplined passions of those who have
never set themselves seriously to restrain them. In a word—as people
of ‘large roundabout common-sense’ will (as a rule) somehow get on in
life—(no matter what their circumstances or their fortune)—so a nation
which applies good judgment, forbearance, a rational and compromising
habit to the management of free institutions, will certainly succeed;
while the more eminently gifted national character will but be a source
and germ of endless and disastrous failure, if, with whatever other
eminent qualities, it be deficient in these plain, solid, and essential
requisites.
The formation of _this_ character is one of the most secret of marvellous
mysteries. Why nations have the character we see them to have is,
speaking generally, as little explicable to our shallow perspicacity,
as why individuals, our friends or our enemies, for good or for evil,
have the character which they have; why one man is stupid and another
clever—why another volatile and a fourth consistent—this man by
instinct generous, that man by instinct niggardly. I am not speaking
of actions, you observe, but of tendencies and temptations. These and
other similar problems daily crowd on our observation in millions and
millions, and only do not puzzle us because we are too familiar with
their difficulty to dream of attempting their solution. Only this much
is most certain,—all men and all nations have a character, and that
character, when once taken, is, I do not say unchangeable—religion
modifies it, catastrophe annihilates it—but the least changeable thing
in this ever-varying and changeful world. Take the soft mind of the boy,
and (strong and exceptional aptitudes and tendencies excepted) you may
make him merchant, barrister, butcher, baker, surgeon, or apothecary.
But once make him an apothecary, and he will never afterwards bake
wholesome bread—make him a butcher, and he will kill too extensively,
even for a surgeon—make him a barrister, and he will be dim on double
entry, and crass on bills of lading. Once conclusively form him to one
thing, and no art and no science will ever twist him to another. Nature,
says the philosopher, has no Delphic daggers!—no men or maids of all
work—she keeps one being to one pursuit—to each is a single choice
afforded, but no more again thereafter for ever. And it is the same with
nations. The Jews of to-day are the Jews in face and form of the Egyptian
sculptures; in character they are the Jews of Moses—the negro is the
negro of a thousand years—the Chinese, by his own account, is the mummy
of a million. ‘Races and their varieties,’ says the historian, ‘seem to
have been created with an inward _nisus_ diminishing with the age of
the world.’ The people of the South are yet the people of the South,
fierce and angry as their summer sun—the people of the North are still
cold and stubborn like their own North wind—the people of the East ‘mark
not, but are still’—the people of the West ‘are going through the ends
of the earth, and walking up and down in it.’ The fact is certain, the
cause beyond us. The subtle system of obscure causes, whereby sons and
daughters resemble not only their fathers and mothers, but even their
great-great-grandfathers and their great-great-grandmothers, may very
likely be destined to be very inscrutable. But as the fact is so, so
moreover, in history, nations have one character, one set of talents, one
list of temptations, and one duty—to use the one and get the better of
the other. There are breeds in the animal man just as in the animal dog.
When you hunt with greyhounds and course with beagles, then, and not till
then, may you expect the inbred habits of a thousand years to pass away,
that Hindoos can be free, or that Englishmen will be slaves.
I need not prove to you that the French _have_ a national character.
Nor need I try your patience with a likeness of it. I have only to
examine whether it be a fit basis for national freedom. I fear you will
laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most essential
mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive,
permanent, and on a large scale; it is much _stupidity_. I see you are
surprised—you are going to say to me, as Socrates did to Polus, ‘My
young friend, _of course_, you are right; but will you explain what you
mean?—as yet you are not intelligible.’ I will do so as well as I can, or
endeavour to make good what I say—not by an _à priori_ demonstration of
my own, but from the details of the present, and the facts of history.
Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, let me take
the Roman character—for, with one great exception—I need not say to
whom I allude—they are the great political people of history. Now, is
not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic? What is the
history of their speculative mind?—a blank. What their literature?—a
copy. They have left not a single discovery in any abstract science;
not a single perfect or well-formed work of high imagination. The
Greeks, the perfection of narrow and accomplished genius, bequeathed to
mankind the ideal forms of self-idolising art—the Romans imitated and
admired; the Greeks explained the laws of nature—the Romans wondered and
despised; the Greeks invented a system of numerals second only to that
now in use—the Romans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy
apparatus which we still call by their name; the Greeks made a capital
and scientific calendar—the Romans began their month when the Pontifex
Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Throughout Latin literature,
this is the perpetual puzzle—Why are we free and they slaves? we prætors
and they barbers? Why do the stupid people always win, and the clever
people always lose? I need not say that, in real sound stupidity, the
English are unrivalled. You’ll hear more wit, and better wit, in an Irish
street row than would keep Westminster Hall in humour for five weeks. Or
take Sir Robert Peel—our last great statesman, the greatest Member of
Parliament that ever lived, an absolutely perfect transacter of public
business—the type of the nineteenth century Englishman, as Sir R. Walpole
was of the eighteenth. Was there ever such a dull man? Can any one,
without horror, foresee the reading of his memoirs? A _clairvoyante_,
with the book shut, may get on; but who now, in the flesh, will ever
endure the open _vision_ of endless recapitulation of interminable
Hansard. Or take Mr. Tennyson’s inimitable description:—
‘No little lily-handed Baronet he,
A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman,
A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep,
A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
A patron of some thirty charities,
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter sessions chairman, abler none.’
Whose company so soporific? His talk is of truisms and bullocks; his head
replete with rustic visions of mutton and turnips, and a cerebral edition
of Burn’s ‘Justice!’ Notwithstanding, he is the salt of the earth, the
best of the English breed. Who is like him for sound sense? But I must
restrain my enthusiasm. You don’t want me to tell you that a Frenchman—a
real Frenchman—can’t be stupid; _esprit_ is his essence, wit is to him
as water, _bons-mots_ as _bonbons_. He reads and he learns by reading;
levity and literature are essentially his line. Observe the consequence.
The outbreak of 1848 was accepted in every province in France; the
decrees of the Parisian mob were received and registered in all the
municipalities of a hundred cities; the Revolution ran like the fluid of
the telegraph down the _Chemin de fer du Nord_; it stopped at the Belgian
frontier. Once brought into contact with the dull phlegm of the stupid
Fleming, the poison was powerless. You remember what the Norman butler
said to Wilkin Flammock, of the fulling mills, at the castle of the Garde
Douloureuse: ‘that draught which will but warm your Flemish hearts,
will put wildfire into Norman brains; and what may only encourage your
countrymen to man the walls, will make ours fly over the battlements.’
_Les braves Belges_, I make no doubt, were quite pleased to observe what
folly was being exhibited by those very clever French, whose tongue they
want to speak, and whose literature they try to imitate. In fact, what
we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in
common society, is nature’s favourite resource for preserving steadiness
of conduct and consistency of opinion. It enforces concentration; people
who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The best security for
people’s doing their duty is, that they should not know anything else to
do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be
incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side. These
valuable truths are no discoveries of mine. They are familiar enough to
people whose business it is to know them. Hear what a dense and aged
attorney says of your peculiarly promising barrister:—‘Sharp! oh yes,
yes! he’s too sharp by half. He is not _safe_; not a minute, isn’t that
young man.’ ‘What style, sir,’ asked of an East India Director some
youthful aspirant for literary renown, ‘is most to be preferred in the
composition of official despatches?’ ‘My good fellow,’ responded the
ruler of Hindostan, ‘the style _as we_ like is the Humdrum.’ I extend
this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be
too clever to be practical, and not dull enough to be free.
How far this is true of the French, and how far the gross deficiency I
have indicated is modified by their many excellent qualities, I hope at a
future time to inquire.
I am, sir, yours truly,
AMICUS.
LETTER IV.
_ON THE APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER FOR NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT._
Paris: Jan. 29, 1852.