is perfectly consistent with the most perfect, the most ideal type
of Parliamentary government. Rather I should say, such and so strong
an executive is a certain consequence of the existence of that ideal
and rarely found type. If there is among the people, and among their
representatives, a strong, a decided, an unflinching preference for
particular Ministers, or a particular course of policy, that course of
policy can be carried out, and will be carried out, as certainly as
by the Czar Nicholas, whose Ministers can do exactly what they will.
There was something very like this in the old days of King George III.,
of Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Perceval. In those times, I have been told, the
great Treasury official of the day, Mr. George Rose (still known to the
readers of Sydney Smith) had a habit of observing, upon occasion of
anything utterly devoid of decent defence, ‘Well, well, this is a little
too bad; we must apply our _majority_ to this difficulty.’ The effect
is very plain; while Mr. George Rose and his betters respected certain
prejudices and opinions, then all but universal in Parliament, they in
all other matters might do precisely what they would; and in all out
of the way matters, in anything that Sir John could not understand, on
a point of cotton-spinning or dissent, be as absolute as the Emperor
Napoleon. But the case is (as we know by experience of what passes under
our daily observation) immensely altered, when there is no longer this
strong, compact, irrefragable, ‘following;’ no distinctly divided,
definite faction, no regular opposition to be daily beaten, no regular
official party to be always victorious—but, instead, a mere aggregate
of ‘independent members,’ each thinking for himself, propounding, as
the case may be, his own sense or his own nonsense—one, profound ideas
applicable to all time; another, something meritorious from the Eton
Latin grammar, and a mangled republication of the morning’s newspaper;
some exceedingly philosophical, others only crotchetty, but, what
is my point, each acting on his own head, assuming not Mr. Pitt’s
infallibility, but his own. Again, divide a political assembly into three
parties, any two of which are greater than the third, and it will be
always possible for an adroit and dexterous intriguer (M. Thiers has his
type in most assemblies) to combine, three or four times a fortnight, the
two opposition parties into a majority on some interesting question—on
some matter of importance. The best government possible under the
existing circumstances will be continually and, in a hazardous state of
society, even desperately and fatally weakened. We have had in our own
sensible House of Commons—aye, and among the most stupid and sensible
portion of it, the country gentlemen—within these few years, a striking
example of how far party zeal, the heat of disputation, and a strong
desire for a deep revenge will carry the best intentioned politicians in
destroying the executive efficiency of an obnoxious Government. I mean
the division of the House of Commons on the Irish Army Bill, which ended
in the resignation of Sir Robert Peel. You remember on that occasion
the country party, under the guidance of Lord G. Bentinck, in the teeth
of the Irish policy which they had been advocating and supporting all
their lives, and which they would advocate and support again now, in the
teeth of their previous votes, and (I am not exaggerating the history)
almost of their avowed present convictions, defeated a Government, not
on a question of speculative policy or recondite importance, but upon
the precautionary measures necessary (according to every idea that a
Tory esquire is capable of entertaining) for preventing a rebellion, the
occurrence of which they were told (and as the event proved, told truly)
might be speedy, hourly, and immediate. Of course I am not giving any
opinion of my own about the merits of the question. The Whigs may be
right; it may be good to have shown the world how little terrible is the
bluster of Irish agitation. But I cite the event as a striking example of
an essential evil in a three-sided Parliamentary system, as practically
showing that a generally well-meaning opposition will, in defiance of
their own habitual principles, cripple an odious executive, even in a
matter of street-rows and rebellions. I won’t weary you with tediously
pointing the moral. If such things are done in the green tree, what may
be done in the dry? If party zeal and disputation excitement so hurry
men away in our own grave, business-like experienced country—what may we
expect from a vain, a volatile, an ever-changing race?
Nor am I drawing a French Assembly from mere history, or from my own
imagination. In the late Chamber, the great subject of the very last
_Annual Register_, there were not only three parties but four. There
was a perpetually shifting element of 200 members, calling itself the
Mountain, which had in its hands the real casting vote between the
President’s Government and the Constitutional opposition. In the very
last days of the Constitution they voted against, and thereby negatived,
the proposition of the questors for arming the Assembly; partly because
they disliked General Changarnier, and detested General Cavaignac; partly
because, being extreme Socialists, they would not arm anybody who was
likely to use his arms against their friends on the barricades. The
same party was preparing to vote for the Bill on the Responsibility of
the President, actually, and according to the design of its promoters,
in the nature of a bill of indictment against him, because they feared
his rigour and efficiency in repressing the anticipated convulsion. The
question, the critical question, _Who_ shall prevent a new revolution?
was thus actually, and owing to the lamentable divisions of the friends
of order, in the hands of the Parliamentary representatives of the very
men who wished to effect that revolution, was determined, I may say,
ultimately, and in the last resort by the party of disorder.
Nor on lesser questions was there any steady majority, any distinctive
deciding faction, any administering phalanx, anybody regularly voting
with anybody else, often enough, or in number enough, to make the
legislative decision regular, consistent, or respectable. Their very
debates were unseemly. On anything not pleasing to them, the Mountain
(as I said) a yellow and fanatical generation—had (I am told) an
engaging knack of rising _en masse_ and screaming until they were tired.
It will be the same, I do not say in degree (for the Mountain would
certainly lose several votes now, and the numbers of the late Chamber
were unreasonably and injudiciously large), but, in a measure, you will
be always subject to the same disorder—a fluctuating majority, and a
minority, often a ruling minority, favourable to rebellion. The cause, as
I believe, is to be sought in the peculiarities of the French character,
on which I dwelt, prolixly, I fear, and _ad nauseam_, in my last two
letters. If you have to deal with a _mobile_, a clever, a versatile,
an intellectual, a dogmatic nation, inevitably, and by necessary
consequence, you will have conflicting systems—every man speaking his
own words, and always giving his own suffrage to what seems good in his
own eyes—many holding to-day what they will regret to-morrow—a crowd of
crotchetty theories and a heavy percentage of philosophical nonsense—a
great opportunity for subtle stratagem and intriguing selfishness—a
miserable division among the friends of tranquillity, and a great power
thrown into the hands of those who, though often with the very best
intentions, are practically, and in matter of fact, opposed both to
society and civilisation. And, moreover, beside minor inconveniences
and lesser hardships, you will indisputably have periodically—say three
or four times in fifty years—a great crisis; the public mind much
excited, the people in the streets swaying to and fro with the breath of
every breeze, the discontented _ouvriers_ meeting in a hundred knots,
discussing their real sufferings and their imagined grievances, with
lean features and angry gesticulations; the Parliament, all the while in
permanence, very ably and eloquently expounding the whole subject, one
man proposing this scheme, and another that; the Opposition expecting to
oust the Ministers, and ride in on the popular commotion; the Ministers
fearing to take the odium of severe or adequate repressive measures,
lest they should lose their salary, their places and their majority:
finally, a great crash, a disgusted people, overwhelmed by revolutionary
violence, or seeking a precarious, a pernicious, but after all a precious
protection from the bayonets of military despotism. Louis Philippe met
these dangers and difficulties in a thoroughly characteristic manner.
He bought his majority. Being a practical and not over sentimental
public functionary, he went into the market and purchased a sufficient
number of constituencies and members. Of course the _convenances_ were
carefully preserved; grossness of any kind is too jarring for French
susceptibility; the purchase money was not mere coin (which indeed the
buyers had not to offer), but a more gentlemanly commodity—the patronage
of the Government. The electoral colleges were extremely small, the
number of public functionaries is enormous; so that a very respectable
body of electors could always be expected to have, like a four-year
old barrister (since the County Courts), an immense prejudice for the
existing Government. One man hoped to be _Maire_, another wanted his
son got into St. Cyr or the Polytechnic School, and this could be got,
and was daily got (I am writing what is hardly denied) by voting for
the Government candidate. In a word, a sufficient proportion of the
returns of the electoral colleges resembled the returns from Harwich
or Devonport, only that the Government was the only bidder; for there
are not, I fancy, in any country but England, people able and willing
to spend, election after election, great sums of money for procuring
the honour of a seat in a representative assembly. In fact, to copy the
well-known phrase, just as in the time of Burke, certain gentlemen had
the expressive nickname of the King’s friends, so these constituencies
may aptly be called the King’s constituencies. Of course, on the face of
it, this system worked, as far as business went, excellently well. For
eighteen years the tranquillity was maintained. France, it may be, has
never enjoyed so much calm civilisation, so much private happiness; and
yet, after all such and so long blessings, it fell in a mere riot—it fell
unregretted. It is a system which no wise man can wish to see restored;
it was a system of regulated corruption.
But it does not at all follow, nor I am sure will you be apt so to
deduce, that because I imagine that France is unfit for a Government
in which a House of Commons is, as with us, the sovereign power in the
State, I therefore believe that it is fit for no freedom at all. Our own
constitutional history is the completest answer to any such idea. For
centuries, the House of Commons was habitually, we know, but a third-rate
power in the State. First the Crown, then the House of Lords, enjoyed the
ordinary and supreme dominion; and down almost to our own times the Crown
and House of Lords, taken together, were much more than a sufficient
match for the people’s House; but yet we do not cease to proclaim, daily
and hourly, in season and out of season, that the English people never
have been slaves. It may, therefore, well be that our own country having
been free under a Constitution in which the representative element
was but third-rate in power and dignity, France and other nations may
contrive to enjoy the advantage from institutions in which it is only
second-rate.
Now, of this sort is the Constitution of Louis Napoleon. I am not going
now, after prefacing so much, to discuss its details; indeed, I do not
feel competent to do so. What should we say to a Frenchman’s notion of
a 5_l._ householder, or the fourth and fifth clauses of the New Reform
Bill? and I quite admit that a paper building of this sort can hardly be
safely criticised till it is carried out on _terra firma_, till we see
not only the theoretic ground-plan, but the actual inhabited structure.
The life of a constitution is in the spirit and disposition of those
who work it; and we can’t yet say in the least what that, in this case,
will be; but so far as the constitution shows its meaning on the face
of it, it clearly belongs to the class which I have named. The _Corps
Législatif_ is not the administering body, it is not even what perhaps
it might with advantage have been, a petitioning and remonstrating body;
but it possesses the Legislative veto, and the power of stopping _en
masse_ the supplies. It is not a working, a ruling, or an initiative, or
supremely decisive, but an immense checking power. It will be unable to
change Ministers, or aggravate the course of revolutions; but it could
arrest an unpopular war—it could reject an unpopular law—it is, at least
in theory, a powerful and important drag-chain. Out of the mouths of its
adversaries this system possesses what I have proved, or conjectured, or
assumed to be the prime want of the French nation—a strong executive. The
objection to it is that the objectors find nothing else in it. We confess
there is no doubt now of a power adequate to repress street-rows and
revolutions.
At the same time, I guard myself against intimating any opinion on the
particular minutiæ of this last effort of institutional invention. I do
not know enough to form a judgment; I sedulously, at present, confine
myself to this one remark, that the new Government of France belongs,
in theory at least, to the right class of Constitutions—the class
that is most exactly suited to French habits, French nature, French
social advantages, French social dangers—the class I mean, in which the
representative body has a consultative, a deliberative, a checking and a
minatory—not as with us a supreme, nearly an omnipotent, and exclusively
initiatory function.
I am, yours, &c.
AMICUS.
P.S.—You may like five words on a French invasion. I can’t myself
imagine, and what is more to the point, I do not observe that anybody
here has any notion of, any such inroad into England as was contemplated
and proposed by General Changarnier. No one in the actual conduct of
affairs, with actual responsibility for affairs, not, as the event
proved, even Ledru Rollin, could, according to me, encounter the risk and
odium of such a hateful and horribly dangerous attempt. But, I regret
to add, there is a contingency which sensible people here (so far as I
have had the means of judging) do not seem to regard as at all beyond the
limits of rational probability, by which a war between England and France
would most likely be superinduced; that is, a French invasion of Belgium.
I do not mean to assure you that this week or next the Prince-President
will make a razzia in Brussels. But I do mean that it is thought not
improbable that somehow or other, on some wolf-and-the-lamb pretext,
he may pick a quarrel with King Leopold, and endeavour to restore to
the French the ‘natural limit’ of the Rhine. Now, I have never seen the
terms of the guarantee which the shrewd and cautious Leopold exacted
from England before he would take the throne of Belgium; but as the
only real risk was a French aggression upon this tempting territory, I
do not make any doubt but that the expressions of that instrument bind
us to go to war in defence of the country whose limits and independence
we have guaranteed. And in this case, an invasion of England would be
as admissible a military movement as an invasion of France. I hope,
therefore, you will use your best rhetoric to induce people to put our
pleasant country in a state of adequate and tolerable defence.
I see by the invaluable _Galignani_, that some excellent people at
Manchester are indulging in a little arithmetic. ‘Suppose,’ say they,
‘all the French got safe, and each took away 50_l._, now how much do you
fancy it would come to (40,000 men by 50_l._, nought’s nought is nought,
nought and carry two)—compared to the _existing_ burden of the National
Debt?’ Was there ever such amiable infatuation! It is not what the French
could carry off, but what they would leave behind them, which is in the
reasonable apprehension of reasonable persons. The funds at 50—broken
banks—the _Gazette_ telling you who had _not_ failed—Downing-street
_vide_ Wales—destitute families, dishonoured daughters, one-legged
fathers—the mourning shops utterly sacked—the customers in tears—a
pale widow in a green bonnet—the Exchange in ruins—five notches on St.
Paul’s—and a big hole in the Bank of England;—these, though but a few of
the certain consequences of a French visit to London, are quite enough to
terrify even an adamantine editor and a rather reckless correspondent.
LETTER VI.
_THE FRENCH NEWSPAPER PRESS._
PARIS: Feb. 10.
SIR,—We learn from an Oriental narrative in considerable circulation,
that the ancient Athenians were fond of news. Of course they were. It is
in the nature of a mass of clever and intellectual people living together
to want something to talk about. Old ideas—common ascertained truths—are
good things enough to live by, but are very rare, and soon sufficiently
discussed. Something else—true or false, rational or nonsensical—is quite
essential; and, therefore, in the old literary world men gathered round
the travelling sophist, to learn from him some thought, crotchet, or
speculation. And what the vagabond speculators were once, that, pretty
exactly, is the newspaper now. To it the people of this intellectual
capital look for that daily mental bread, which is as essential to them
as the less ethereal sustenance of ordinary mortals. With the spread
of education this habit travels downward. Not the literary man only,
but the _ouvrier_ and the _bourgeois_, live on the same food. This
day’s _Siècle_ is discussed not only in gorgeous drawing-rooms, but in
humble reading-rooms, and still humbler workshops. According to the
printed notions of us journalists, this is a matter of pure rejoicing.
The influence of the Press, if you believe writers and printers, is
the one sufficient condition of social well-being. Yet there are many
considerations which make very much against this idea: I can’t go into
several of them now, but those that I shall mention are suggested at
once by matters before me. First, newspaper people are the only traders
that thrive upon convulsion. In quiet times, who cares for the paper?
In times of tumult, who does not? Commonly, the _Patrie_ (the _Globe_
of this country) sells, I think, for three sous: on the evening of the
_coup d’état_, itinerant ladies were crying under my window, ‘_Demandez
la_ Patrie—_Journal du soir—trente sous—Journal du soir_;’ and I remember
witnessing, even in our sober London, in February 1848, how bald fathers
of families paid large sums, and encountered bare-headed the unknown
inclemencies of the night air, that they might learn the last news of
Louis Philippe, and, if possible, be in at the death of the revolutionary
Parisians. ‘Happy,’ says the sage, ‘are the people whose annals are
vacant;’ but ‘woe! woe! woe!’ he might add, ‘to the wretched journalists
that have to compose and sell leading articles therein.’
I am constrained to say that, even in England, this is not without its
unfavourable influence on literary morals. Take in the _Times_, and you
will see it assumed that every year ought to be an era. ‘The Government
does nothing,’ is the indignant cry, and simple people in the country
don’t know that this is merely a civilised _façon de parler_ for ‘I have
nothing to say.’ Lord John Russell must alter the suffrage, that we may
have something pleasant in our columns.
I am afraid matters are worse here. The leading French journalist is,
as you know, the celebrated Emile de Girardin, and, so far as I can
learn anything about him, he is one of the most fickle politicians in
existence. Since I have read the _Presse_ regularly, it has veered from
every point of the compass well-nigh to every other—now for, now against,
the revision of the constitution,—now lauding Louis Napoleon to the
skies—now calling him plain M. Bonaparte, and insinuating that he had
not two ideas, and was incapable of moral self-government—now connected
with the Red party, now praising the majority; but all and each of
these veerings and shiftings determined by one most simple and certain
principle—to keep up the popular excitement, to maintain the gifted M. de
Girardin at the head of it. Now a man who spends his life in stimulating
excitement and convulsion is really a political incendiary; and however
innocent and laudable his brother exiles may be, the old editor and
founder of the _Presse_ is, as I believe, now only paying the legitimate
penalty of systematic political _arson_.
When a foreigner—at least an Englishman—begins to read the French papers,
his first idea is ‘How well these fellows write! Why, every one of them
has a style, and a good style too. Really, how clear, how acute, how
clever, how perspicuous; I wish our journalists would learn to write
like this;’ but a little experience will modify this idea—at least I
have found it so. I read for a considerable time these witty periodicals
with pleasure and admiration; after a little while I felt somehow that
I took them up with an effort, but I fancied, knowing my disposition,
that this was laziness; when on a sudden, in the waste of _Galignani_,
I came across an article of the _Morning Herald_. Now you’ll laugh at
me, if I tell you it was a real enjoyment. There was no toil, no sharp
theory, no pointed expression, no fatiguing brilliancy, in fact, what
the man in Lord Byron desired, ‘no nothing,’ but a dull, creeping,
satisfactory sensation that now, at least, there was nothing to admire.
As long walking in picture galleries makes you appreciate a mere wall, so
I felt that I understood for the first time that really dulness had its
interest. I found a pure refreshment in coming across what possibly might
be latent sense, but was certainly superficial stupidity.
I think there is nothing we English hate like a clever but prolonged
controversy. Now this is the life and soul of the Parisian press.
Everybody writes against everybody. It is not mere sly hate or solemn
invective, nothing like what we occasionally indulge in, about the
misdemeanours of a morning contemporary. But they take the other side’s
article piece by piece, and comment on him, and, as they say in libel
cases, _innuendo_ him, and satisfactorily show that, according to his
arithmetic, two and two make five; useful knowledge that. It is really
good for us to know that some fellow (you never heard of him) it rather
seems can’t add up. But it interests people here—_c’est logique_ they
tell you, and if you are trustful enough to answer ‘_Mon Dieu, c’est
ennuyeux, je n’en sais rien_,’ they look as if you sneered at the
Parthenon.
It is out of these controversies that M. de Girardin has attained his
power and his fame. His articles (according to me, at least) have no
facts and no sense. He gives one all pure reasoning—little scrappy
syllogisms; as some one said most unjustly of old Hazlitt, he ‘writes
pimples.’ But let an unfortunate writer in the _Assemblée Nationale_, or
anywhere else, make a little refreshing blunder in his logic, and next
morning small punning sentences (one to each paragraph like an equation)
come rattling down on him: it is clear as noonday that somebody said
‘something followed,’ and it does not follow, and it is so agreed in all
the million _cabinets de lecture_ after due gesticulation; and, moreover,
that M. de Girardin is the man to expose it, and what clever fellows they
are to appreciate him; but what the truth is, who cares? The subject is
forgotten.