opposing parties aggravated still more, from 1816 to 1820, this want of
forecast in men, and this extravagance of public passions. Under the
representative system, it is usually to one of the parties distinctly
defined and firmly resolved in their ideas and desires, that the
government belongs: sometimes the systematic defenders of power, at
others the friends of liberty, then the conservatives, and lastly the
innovators, direct the affairs of the country; and between these
organized and ambitious parties are placed the unclassed opinions and
undecided wishes, that political chorus which is ever present watching
the conduct of the actors, listening to their words, and ready to
applaud or condemn them according as they satisfy or offend their
unfettered judgment. This is, in fact, the natural bias and true order
of things under free institutions. It is well for Government to have a
public and recognized standard, regulated on fixed principles, and
sustained in action by steady adherents; it derives from that position,
not only the strength and consistent coherence that it requires, but the
moral dignity which renders power more easy and gentle by placing it
higher in the estimation of the people. It is not the chance of events
or the personal ambition of men alone, but the interests and inclination
of the public, which have produced, in free countries, the great,
acknowledged, permanent, and trusty political parties, and have usually
confided power to their hands. At the Restoration it was impossible,
from 1816 to 1820, to fulfil this condition of a Government at once
energetic and restrained. The two great political parties which it found
in action, that of the old system and of the revolution, were both at
the time incapable of governing by maintaining internal peace with
liberty; each had ideas and passions too much opposed to the established
and legal order they would have had to defend; they accepted with great
reluctance, and in a very undefined sense, the one the Charter, and the
other the old Monarchy. Through absolute necessity, power returned to
the hands of the political choir; the floating and impartial section of
the Chambers, the centre, was called to the helm. Under a free system,
the Centre is the habitual moderator and definitive judge of Government,
but not the party naturally pretending to govern. It gives or withholds
the majority, but its mission is not to conquer it. And it is much more
difficult for the centre than for strongly organized parties to win or
maintain a majority; for when it assumes government, it finds before it,
not undecided spectators who wait its acts to pass judgment on them, but
inflamed adversaries resolved to combat them beforehand;--a weak and
dangerous position, which greatly aggravates the difficulties of
Government, whether engaged in the display of power, or the protection
of liberty.
Not only was this the situation of the King's Government from 1816 to
1820, but even this was not regularly and powerfully established. Badly
distributed amongst the actors, the characters were doubtfully filled in
the interior of this new and uncertain party of the centre, on whom the
government, through necessity, devolved. The principal portion of the
heads of the majority in the Chambers held no office. From 1816 to 1819,
several of those who represented and directed the centre, who addressed
and supported it with prevailing influence, who defended it from the
attacks of the right and left-hand parties, who established its power in
debate and its credit with the public, MM. Royer-Collard, Camille
Jordan, Beugnot, and de Serre, were excluded from the Cabinet. Amongst
the eminent leaders of the majority, two only, M. Laine and M. Pasquier
were ministers. The Government, therefore, in the Chambers, relied on
independent supporters who approved of their policy in general, but
neither bore any part in the burden, nor acknowledged any share in the
responsibility.
The doctrinarians had acquired their parliamentary influence and moral
weight by principles and eloquence rather than by deeds; they maintained
their opinions without applying them to practice; the flag of thought
and the standard of action were in different hands. In the Chambers, the
Ministers often appeared as the clients of the orators; the orators
never looked upon their cause as identical with that of the Ministers;
they preserved this distinction while supporting them; they had their
own demands to make before they assented; they qualified their approval,
and even sometimes dissented altogether. As the questions increased in
importance and delicacy, so much the more independence and discord
manifested themselves in the bosom of the ministerial party, with
dangerous notoriety. During the session of 1817, M. Pasquier, then
Chancellor, presented a bill to the Chamber of Deputies, which, while
temporarily maintaining the censorship of the daily papers, comprised in
other respects some modifications favourable to the liberty of the
press. M. Camille Jordan and M. Royer-Collard demanded much greater
concessions, particularly the application of trial by jury to press
offences; and the bill, reluctantly passed by the Chamber of Deputies,
was thrown out by the Chamber of Peers, when the Duke de Broglie urged
the same amendments on similar principles. In 1817 also, a new Concordat
had been negotiated and concluded at Rome by M. de Blacas. It contained
the double and contradictory defect of invading by some of its
specifications the liberties of the old Gallican Church; while, by the
abolition of the Concordat of 1801, it inspired the new French society
with lively alarms for its civil liberties. Little versed in such
matters, and almost entirely absorbed in the negotiations for relieving
France from the presence of foreigners, the Duke de Richelieu had
confided this business to M. de Blacas, who was equally ignorant and
careless of the importance of the old or new liberties of France,
whether civil or religious. When this Concordat, respecting which the
Ministers themselves were discontented and doubtful when they had
carefully examined it, was presented to the Chamber of Deputies by
M. Laine, with the measures necessary for carrying it into effect, it
was received with general disfavour. In committee, in the board
appointed to report on it, in the discussions in the hall of conference,
all the objections, political and historical, of principle or
circumstance, that the bill could possibly excite, were argued and
explained beforehand, so as to give warning of the most obstinate and
dangerous debate. The doctrinarians openly declared for this premature
opposition; and their support produced a strong effect, as they were
known to be sincere friends to religion and its influences. It is true,
M. Royer-Collard was accused of being a Jansenist; and thus an attempt
was made to depreciate him in the eyes of the true believers of the
Catholic Church. The reproach was frivolous. M. Royer-Collard had
derived, from family traditions and early education, serious habits,
studious inclinations, and an affectionate respect for the exalted minds
of Port-Royal, for their virtue and genius; but he neither adopted their
religious doctrines nor their systematic conclusions on the relative
ties between Church and State. On all these questions he exercised a
free and rational judgment, as a stranger to all extreme passion or
sectarian prejudice, and not in the least disposed, either as Catholic
or philosopher, to engage in obscure and endless quarrels with the
Church. "I seek not to quibble with religion," he was wont to say; "it
has enough to do to defend itself and us from impiety." The opposition
of M. Royer-Collard to the Concordat of 1817 was the dissent of a
politician and enlightened moralist, who foresaw the mischief which the
public discussion, and adoption or rejection of this bill, would inflict
on the influence of the Church, the credit of the Restoration, and the
peace of the country. The Cabinet had prudence enough not to brave a
danger which it had created, or suffered to grow on its steps. The
report on the bill was indefinitely adjourned, and a fresh negotiation
was opened with Rome by sending Count Portalis on a special mission,
which ended in 1819 by the tacit withdrawal of the Concordat of 1817.
The Duke de Richelieu, pressed by his colleagues, and his own tardy
reflections, coincided in this retrograde movement; but he maintained a
feeling of displeasure at the opposition of the doctrinarians and others
on this occasion, which he sometimes gratified himself by indulging. In
the month of March, 1818, some one, whose name I have forgotten,
demanded of him a trifling favour. "It is impossible," replied he
sharply; "MM. Royer-Collard, de Serre, Camille Jordan, and Guizot will
not suffer it."
I had no reason to complain that my name was included in this
ebullition. Although not a member of the Chamber, I openly adopted the
opinions and conduct of my friends; I had both the opportunity and the
means, in the discussions of the Council of State, in the drawing-room,
and through the press,--channels which all parties employed with equal
ardour and effect. In spite of the shackles which restrained the papers
and periodical publications, they freely exercised the liberty which the
Government no longer attempted to dispute, and to which the most
influential politicians had recourse, to disseminate far and wide the
brilliant flames or smouldering fire of their opposition.
M. de Chateaubriand, M. de Bonald, M. de Villele, in the 'Conservative,'
and M. Benjamin Constant in the 'Minerva,' maintained an incessant
assault on the Cabinet. The Cabinet in its defence, multiplied similar
publications, such as the 'Moderator,' the 'Publicist,' and the
'Political and Literary Spectator.' But, for my friends and our cause,
the defences of the Cabinet were not always desirable or sufficient; we
therefore, from 1817 to 1820, had our own journals and periodical
miscellanies,--the 'Courier,' the 'Globe,' the 'Philosophical,
Political, and Literary Archives,' and the 'French Review;' and in these
we discussed, according to our principles and hopes, sometimes general
questions, and at others the incidental subjects of current policy, as
they alternately presented themselves. I contributed much to these
publications. Between our different adversaries and ourselves the
contest was extremely unequal: whether they came from the right or the
left, they represented old parties; they expressed ideas and sentiments
long in circulation; they found a public predisposed to receive them.
We were intruders in the political arena, officers seeking to recruit an
army, moderate innovators. We attacked, in the name of liberty, theories
and passions long popular under the same denomination. We defended the
new French society according to its true rights and interests, but not
in conformity with its tastes or habits. We had to conquer our public,
while we combated our enemies. In this difficult attempt our position
was somewhat doubtful: we were at the same time with and against the
Government, royalists and liberals, ministerialists and independents; we
acted sometimes in concert with the Administration, sometimes with the
Opposition, and we were unable to avail ourselves of all the weapons of
either power or liberty. But we were full of faith in our opinions, of
confidence in ourselves, of hope in the future; and we pressed forward
daily in our double contest, with as much devotion as pride, and with
more pride than ambition.
All this has been strenuously denied; my friends and I have often been
represented as deep plotters, greedy for office, eager and shrewd in
pushing our fortunes through every opening, and more intent on our own
ascendency than on the fate or wishes of the country,--a vulgar and
senseless estimate, both of human nature and of our contemporary
history. If ambition had been our ruling principle, we might have
escaped many efforts and defeats. In times when the most brilliant
fortunes, political or otherwise, were easily within reach of those who
thought of nothing else, we only desired to achieve ours on certain
moral conditions, and with the object of not caring for ourselves.
Ambition we had, but in the service of a public cause; and one which,
either in success or adversity, has severely tried the constancy of its
defenders.
The most clear-sighted of the cabinet ministers in 1817, M. Decazes and
M. Pasquier, whose minds were more free and less suspicious than those
of the Duke de Richelieu and M. Laine, were not deceived on this point:
they felt the necessity of our alliance, and cultivated it with anxiety.
But when it becomes a question of how to govern in difficult times,
allies are not enough; intimate associates are necessary, devoted
adherents in labour and peril. In this character, the doctrinarians, and
particularly M. Royer-Collard, their leader in the Chambers, were
mistrusted. They were looked upon as at once imperious and undecided,
and more exacting than effective. Nevertheless, in November, 1819, after
the election of M. Gregoire and in the midst of their projected reforms
in the electoral law, M. Decazes, at the strong instigation of
M. de Serre, proposed to M. Royer-Collard to join the Cabinet with one
or two of his friends. M. Royer-Collard hesitated at first, then acceded
for a moment, and finally declined. "You know not what you would do,"
said he to M. Decazes; "my method of dealing with affairs would differ
entirely from yours: you elude questions, you shift and change them, you
gain time, you settle things by halves; I, on the contrary, should
attack them in front, bring them into open view, and dissect them before
all the world. I should compromise instead of assisting you."
M. Royer-Collard was in the right, and defined himself admirably,
perhaps more correctly than he imagined. He was more calculated to
advise and contest than to exercise power. He was rather a great
spectator and critic than an eminent political actor. In the ordinary
course of affairs he would have been too absolute, too haughty, and too
slow. In a crisis, I question whether his mental reservations, his
scruples of conscience, his horror of all public excitement, and his
prevailing dread of responsibility, would have permitted him to preserve
the cool self-possession, with the firm and prompt determination, which
circumstances might have required. M. Decazes pressed him no further.
Even at this moment, after all I have seen and experienced, I am not
prone to be discouraged, or inclined to believe that difficult
achievements are impossible. However defective may be the internal
constitution and combinations of the different parties who co-operate in
carrying on public affairs, the upright conduct of individuals may
remedy them; history furnishes more than one example of vicious
institutions and situations, the evil results of which have been
counteracted by the ability of political leaders and the sound sense of
the public. But when to the evils of position, the errors of men are
added,--when, instead of recognizing dangers in their true tendency, and
opposing firm resistance, the chiefs and followers of parties either
yield to or accelerate them, then the mischievous effects of pernicious
courses inevitably and rapidly develop themselves. Errors were not
wanting from 1816 to 1820 in every party, whether of Government or
Opposition, of the centre, the right, or the left, of the ministers or
doctrinarians. I make no parade of impartiality; in spite of their
faults and misfortunes, I continue, with a daily increasing conviction,
to look upon the Government I served, and the party I supported, to have
been the best; but, for our own credit, let leisure and reflection teach
us to acknowledge the mistakes we committed, and to prepare for our
cause--which assuredly will not die with us--a more auspicious future.
The centre, in its governing mission, had considerable advantages; it
suffered neither from moral embarrassments nor external clogs, it was
perfectly free and unshackled,--essential qualifications in a great
public career, and which at that time belonged neither to the right nor
to the left-hand party.
The right had only accepted the Charter on the eve of its promulgation,
and after strenuous resistance; a conspicuous and energetic section of
the party still persisted in opposing it. That division which had seats
in the Chambers, sided from day to day with the constitutional
system,--the officers as intelligent and reflecting men, the soldiers as
staunch and contented royalists; but neither, in these recognized
capacities, inspired confidence in the country, which looked upon their
adhesion to the Charter as constrained or conditional, always insincere
and covering other views. The right, even while honestly accepting the
Charter, had also party interests to satisfy; when it aspired to power,
it was not solely to govern according to its principles, and to place
the restored monarchy on a solid basis: it had private misfortunes to
repair and positions to re-assume. It was not a pure and regular party
of Tory royalists. The emigrants, the remains of the old court and
clergy, were still influential amongst them, and eagerly bent on
carrying out their personal expectations. By its composition and
reminiscences, the party was condemned to much reserve and imprudence,
to secret aspirations and indiscreet ebullitions, which, even while it
professed to walk in constitutional paths, embarrassed and weakened its
action at every step.
The situation of the left was no less confused. It represented, at that
exact epoch, not the interests and sentiments of France in general, but
the interests and sentiments of that portion of France which had
ardently, indistinctly, and obstinately promoted and sustained the
Revolution, under its republican or imperial form. It cherished against
the House of Bourbon and the Restoration an old habit of hostility,
which the Hundred Days had revived, which the most rational of the party
could scarcely throw off, the most skilful with difficulty concealed,
and the gravest considered it a point of honour to display as a protest
and corner-stone. In November 1816, a man of probity, as sincere in the
renunciation of his opinions of 1789 as he had formerly been in their
profession, the Viscount Matthieu de Montmorency, complained, in a
drawing-room of the party, that the Liberals had no love for legitimacy.
A person present defended himself from this reproach. "Yes," said
M. de Montmorency, with thoughtless candour, "you love legitimacy as we
do the Charter." A keen satire on the false position of both parties
under the government of the Charter and of legitimacy!
But if the right-hand party or the left, if the members of either in the
Chambers, had followed only their sincere convictions and desires, the
greater portion, I am satisfied, would have frankly accepted and
supported the Restoration with the Charter, the Charter with the
Restoration. When men are seriously engaged in a work and feel the
weight of responsibility, they soon discover the true course, and would
willingly follow it. But, both in the right and left, the wisest and
best-disposed feared to proclaim the truth which they saw, or to adopt
it as their rule of conduct; both were under the yoke of their external
party, of its passions as of its interests, of its ignorance as of its
passions. It has been one of the sorest wounds of our age, that few men
have preserved sufficient firmness of mind and character to think
freely, and act as they think. The intellectual and moral independence
of individuals disappeared under the pressure of events and before the
heat of popular clamours and desires. Under such a general slavery of
thought and action, there are no longer just or mistaken minds, cautious
or rash spirits, officers or soldiers; all yield to the same controlling
passion, and bend before the same wind; common weakness reduces all to
one common level; hierarchy and discipline vanish; the last lead the
first; for the last press and drive onwards, being themselves impelled
by that tyranny from without, of which they have been the most blind and
ready instruments.
As a political party, the centre, in the Chambers from 1816 to 1820, was
not tainted by this evil. Sincere in its adoption of the Restoration and
the Charter, no external pressure could disturb or falsify its position.
It remained unfettered in thought and deed. It openly acknowledged its
object, and marched directly towards it; selecting, within, the leaders
most capable of conducting it there, and having no supporters without
who looked for any other issue. It was thus that, in spite of its other
deficiencies for powerful government, the centre was at that time the
fittest party to rule, the only one capable of maintaining order in the
State, while tolerating the liberty of its rivals.
But to reap the full fruits of this advantage, and to diminish at the
same time the natural defects of the centre in its mission, it was
necessary that it should adopt a fixed idea, a conviction that the
different elements of the party were indispensable to each other; and
that, to accomplish the object pursued by all with equal sincerity,
mutual concessions and sacrifices were called for, to maintain this
necessary union. When Divine wisdom intended to secure the power of a
human connection, it forbade divorce. Political ties cannot admit this
inviolability; but if they are not strongly knit, if the contracting
parties are not firmly resolved to break them only in the last extremity
and under the most imperious pressure, they soon end, not only in
impotence, but in disorder; and by their too easy rupture, policy
becomes exposed to new difficulties and disturbances. I have thus
pointed out the discrepancies and different opinions which, from the
beginning, existed between the two principal elements of the centre: the
Ministers, with their pure adherents, on the one side, and the
doctrinarians on the other. From the second session after the decree of
the 5th of September, 1816, these differences increased until they grew
into dissensions.
While acknowledging the influence of the doctrinarians in the Chambers,
and the importance of their co-operation, neither the Ministers nor
their advocates measured correctly the value of this alliance, or the
weight of the foundation from which that value was derived. Philosophers
estimate too highly the general ideas with which they are prepossessed;
politicians withhold from general ideas the attention and interest they
are entitled to demand. Intelligence is proud and sensitive; it looks
for consideration and respect, even though its suggestions may be
disallowed; and those who treat it lightly or coldly sometimes pay
heavily for their mistake. It is, moreover, an evidence of narrow
intellect not to appreciate the part which general principles assume in
the government of men, or to regard them as useless or hostile because
we are not disposed to adopt them as guides. In our days, especially,
and notwithstanding the well-merited disrepute into which so many
theories have fallen, philosophic deduction, on all the leading
questions and facts of policy, is a sustaining power, on which the
ablest and most secure ministers would do wisely to rely. The
doctrinarians at that period represented this power, and employed it
fearlessly against the spirit of revolution, as well as in favour of the
constitutional system. The Cabinet of 1816 undervalued the part they
played, and paid too little attention to their ideas and desires. The
application of trial by jury to offences of the press was not, I admit,
unattended by danger; but it was much better to try that experiment, and
by so doing to maintain union in the Government party, than to divide
it by absolutely disregarding, on this question, M. Camille Jordan,
M. Royer-Collard, and their friends.
All power, and, above all, recent power, demands an impression of
grandeur in its acts and on its insignia. Order, and the regular
protection of private interests, that daily bread of nations, will not
long satisfy their wants. To secure these is an inseparable care of
Government, but they do not comprise the only need of humanity. Human
nature finds the other enjoyments for which it thirsts in opposite
distinctions, moral or physical, just or unjust, solid or ephemeral. It
has neither enough of virtue nor wisdom to render absolute greatness
indispensable; but in every position it requires to see, conspicuously
displayed, something exalted, which may attract and occupy the
imagination. After the Empire, which had accustomed France to all the
delights of national pre-eminence and glory, the spectacle of free and
lofty thought displaying itself with moral dignity, and some show of
talent, was not deficient in novelty or attraction, while the chance of
its success outweighed the value of the cost.
The Ministers were not more skilful in dealing with the personal tempers
than with the ideas of the doctrinarians, who were as haughty and
independent in character as they were elevated in mind, and ready to
take offence when any disposition was evinced to apply their opinions
and conduct without their own consent. Nothing is more distasteful to
power than to admit, to any great extent, the independence of its
supporters; it considers them treated with sufficient respect if taken
into confidence, and is readily disposed to view them as servants.
M. Laine, then Minister of the Interior, wrote one morning to M. Cuvier
to say that the King had just named him Royal Commissioner, to second a
bill which would be presented on the following day to the Chamber of
Deputies. He had not only neglected to apprise him before of the duty he
was to undertake, but he did not even mention in the note the particular
bill he instructed him to support. M. Cuvier, more subservient than
susceptible, with power, made no complaint of this treatment, but
related it with a smile. A few days before, the Minister of Finance,
M. Corvetto, had also appointed M. de Serre Commissioner for the defence
of the budget, without asking whether this appointment was agreeable to
him, or holding any conference even on the fundamental points of the
budget he was expected to carry through. On receiving notice of this
nomination, M. de Serre felt deeply offended. "It is either an act of
folly or impertinence," said he loudly; "perhaps both." M. de Serre
deceived himself; it was neither the one nor the other. M. Corvetto was
an extremely polite, careful, and modest person; but he was of the
Imperial school, and more accustomed to give orders to agents than to
concert measures with members of the Chambers. By habits as well as
ideas, the doctrinarians belonged to a liberal system,--troublesome
allies of power, on the termination of a military and administrative
monarchy.
I know not which is the most difficult undertaking,--to transform the
functionaries of absolute power into the supporters of a free
Government, or to organize and discipline the friends of liberty into a
political party. If the Ministers sometimes disregarded the humour of
the doctrinarians, the doctrinarians in their turn too lightly
estimated the position and task of the Ministers. They had in reality,
whatever has been said of sectarian passions and ideas, neither the
ambition nor the vanity of a coterie; they possessed open, generous, and
expanded minds, extremely accessible to sympathy; but, too much
accustomed to live alone and depend on themselves, they scarcely thought
of the effect which their words and actions produced beyond their own
circle; and thus social faults were laid to their charge which they had
not the least desire to commit. Their political mistakes were more real.
In their relations with power, they were sometimes intemperate and
offensive in language, unnecessarily impatient, not knowing how to be
contented with what was possible, or how to wait for amelioration
without too visible an effort. These causes led them to miscalculate the
impediments, necessities, and practicable resources of the Government
they sincerely wished to establish. In the Chambers, they were too
exclusive and pugnacious, more intent on proving their opinions than on
gaining converts, despising rather than desiring recruits, and little
gifted with the talent of attraction and combination so essential to the
leaders of a party. They were not sufficiently acquainted with the
difficulties of carrying out a sound scheme of policy, nor with the
infinite variety of efforts, sacrifices, and cares which are comprised
in the art of governing.
From 1816 to 1818 the vices of their position and the mistakes
committed, infused into the Government and its party a continual
ferment, and the seeds of internal discord which prevented them from
acquiring the necessary strength and consistency. The mischief burst
forth towards the end of 1818, when the Duke de Richelieu returned from
the conferences of Aix-la-Chapelle, reporting the withdrawal of the
foreign armies, the complete evacuation of our territory, and the
definitive settlement of the financial burdens which the Hundred Days
had imposed on France. On his arrival he saw his Cabinet on the point of
dissolution, and vainly attempted to form a new one, but was finally
compelled to abandon the power he had never sought or enjoyed, but
which, assuredly, he was unwilling to lose by compulsion in the midst of
his diplomatic triumph, and to see it pass into hands determined to
employ it in a manner totally opposed to his own intentions.
A check like this, at such a moment, and to such a man, was singularly
unjust and unseasonable. Since 1815, the Duke de Richelieu had rendered
valuable services to France and to the King. He alone had obtained some
mitigation to the conditions of a very harsh treaty of peace, which
nothing but sincere and sad devotion had induced him to sign, while
feeling the full weight of what he sacrificed in attaching to it his
illustrious name, and seeking no self-glorification from an act of
honest patriotism. No man was ever more free from exaggeration or
quackery in the display of his sentiments. Fifteen months after the
ratification of peace, he induced the foreign powers to consent to a
considerable reduction in the army of occupation. A year later, he
limited to a fixed sum the unbounded demands of the foreign creditors of
France. Finally, he had just signed the entire emancipation of the
national soil four years before the term rigorously prescribed by
treaties. The King, on his return, thanked him in noble words:
"Duke de Richelieu," he said, "I have lived long enough, since, thanks
to you, I have seen the French flag flying over every town in France."
The sovereigns of Europe treated him with esteem and confidence. A rare
example of a statesman, who, without great actions or superior
abilities, had, by the uprightness of his character and the unselfish
tenor of his life, achieved such universal and undisputed respect!
Although the Duke de Richelieu had only been engaged in foreign affairs,
he was better calculated than has been said, not so much to direct
effectively as to preside over the internal government of the
Restoration. A nobleman of exalted rank, and a tried Royalist, he was
neither in mind or feeling a courtier nor an Emigrant; he had no
preconceived dislike to the new state of society or the new men; without
thoroughly understanding free institutions, he had no prejudice against
them, and submitted to their exercise without an effort. Simple in his
manners, true and steady in his words, and a friend to the public good,
if he failed to exercise a commanding influence in the Chambers, he
maintained full authority near the King; and a constitutional
Government, resting on the parliamentary centre, could not, at that
period, have possessed a more worthy or more valuable president.
But at the close of 1818 the Duke de Richelieu felt himself compelled,
and evinced that he was resolved, to engage in a struggle in which the
considerations of gratitude and prosperity I have here reverted to
proved to be ineffective weapons on his side. In virtue of the Charter,
and in conformity with the electoral law of the 5th of February, 1817,
two-fifths of the Chamber of Deputies had been renewed since the
formation of his Cabinet. The first trial of votes, in 1817, had proved
satisfactory to the Restoration and its friends; not more than two or
three recognized names were added to the left-hand party, which, even
after this reinforcement, only amounted to twenty members. At the second
trial in 1818, the party acquired more numerous and much more
distinguished recruits; about twenty-five new members, and amongst them
MM. de La Fayette, Benjamin Constant, and Manuel, were enrolled in its
ranks. The number was still weak, but important as a rallying point, and
prognostic. An alarm, at once sincere and interested, exhibited itself
at court and in the right-hand party; they found themselves on the eve
of a new revolution, but their hopes were also excited: since the
enemies of the House of Bourbon were forcing themselves into the
Chamber, the King would at length feel the necessity of replacing power
in the hands of his friends. The party had not waited the issue of these
last elections to attempt a great enterprise. _Secret notes_, drawn up
under the eye of the Count d'Artois, and by his most intimate
confidants, had been addressed to the foreign sovereigns, to point out
to them this growing mischief, and to convince them that a change in the
advisers of the crown was the only safe measure to secure monarchy in
France, and to preserve peace in Europe. The Duke de Richelieu, in
common with his colleagues, and with a feeling of patriotism far
superior to personal interest, felt indignant at these appeals to
foreign intervention for the internal government of the country.
M. de Vitrolles was struck off from the Privy Council, as author of the
principal of the three _Secret notes_. The European potentates paid
little attention to such announcements, having no faith either in the
sound judgment or disinterested views of the men from whom they
emanated. Nevertheless, after the elections of 1818, they also began to
feel uneasy. It was from prudence, and not choice, that they had
sanctioned and maintained the constitutional system in France; they
looked upon it as necessary to close up the Revolution. If, on the
contrary, it once again opened its doors, the peace of Europe would be
more compromised than ever; for then the Revolution would assume the
semblance of legality. But neither in France nor in Europe did any one
at that time, even amongst the greatest alarmists and the most
intimidated, dream of interfering with the constitutional system; in
universal opinion it had acquired with us the privileges of citizenship.
The entire evil was imputed to the law of elections. It was at
Aix-la-Chapelle, while surrounded by the sovereigns and their ministers,
that the Duke de Richelieu was first apprised of the newly-elected
members whom this law had brought upon the scene. The Emperor Alexander
expressed to him his amazement; the Duke of Wellington advised Louis
XVIII. "to unite himself more closely with the Royalists." The
Duke de Richelieu returned to France with a determination to reform the
electoral law, or no longer to incur the responsibility of its results.
Institutions attacked have no voice in their own defence, and men
gladly charge on them their individual errors. I shall not commit this
injustice, or abandon a sound idea because it has been compromised or
perverted in application. The principle of the electoral law of the 5th
of February, 1817, was good in itself, and still remains good, although
it was insufficient to prevent the evil of our own want of foresight and
intemperate passions.
When a free government is seriously desired, we must choose between the
principle of the law of the 5th of February, 1817, and universal
suffrage,--between the right of voting confined to the higher classes of
society and that extended to the popular masses. I believe the direct
and defined right of suffrage to be alone effectual in securing the
action of the country upon the Government. On this common condition, the
two systems may constitute a real control over power, and substantial
guarantees for liberty. Which is to be preferred?--this is a question of
epoch, of situation, of degree of civilization, and of form of
government. Universal suffrage is well suited to republican
associations, small or federative, newly instituted or mature in wisdom
and political virtue. The right of voting confined to a more elevated
class, and exercised in a strong assumption of the spirit of order, of
independence, and intelligence, is more applicable to great single and
monarchical states. This was our reason for making it the basis of the
law of 1817. We dreaded republican tendencies, which with us, and in our
days, are nearly synonymous with anarchy; we regarded monarchy as
natural, and constitutional monarchy as necessary, to France; we wished
to organize it sincerely and durably, by securing under this system, to
the conservative elements of French society as at present constituted,
an influence which appeared to us as much in conformity with the
interests of liberty as with those of power.
It was the disunion of the monarchical party that vitiated the electoral
system of 1817, and took away its strength with its truth. By placing
political power in the hands of property, intelligence, independent
position, and great interests naturally conservative, the system rested
on the expectation that these interests would be habitually united, and
would defend, in common accord, order and right against the spirit of
license and revolution, the fatal bias of the age. But, from their very
first steps, the different elements of the great royalist party, old or
new, aristocratic or plebeian, plunged into discord, equally blind to
the weakness with which it infected them all, and thus opening the door
to the hopes and efforts of their common enemies, the revolutionists.
From thence, and not from the electoral law of 1817, or from its
principle, came the mischief which in 1818 it was considered desirable
to check by repealing that enactment.
I am ready to admit in express terms, for it may be alleged with
justice, that, when in 1816 and 1817 we prepared and defended the law of
elections, we might have foreseen the state of general feeling under
which it was to be applied. Discord between the components of the
monarchical party was neither a strange nor a sudden fact; it existed at
that time; the Royalists of old and new France were already widely
separated. I incline to think that, even had we attached more
importance to their future contests, we should still have pursued the
same course. We were in presence of an imperative necessity: new France
felt that she was attacked, and required defence; if she had not found
supporters amongst the Royalists, she would have sought for them, as she
has too often done, in the camp of the Revolution. But what may explain
or even excuse a fault cannot effect its suppression. Our policy in 1816
and 1817 regarded too lightly the disagreements of the monarchical
party, and the possible return of the Revolutionists; we miscalculated
the extent of both dangers. It is the besetting error of men
entrammelled in the fetters of party, to forget that there are many
opposite facts which skilful policy should turn to profitable account,
and to pass over all that are not inscribed with brilliancy on their
standard.
On leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, where he had been so fortunate, the
Duke de Richelieu, although far from presumptuous, expected, I have no
doubt, to be equally successful in his design of repealing the law of
elections. Success deceives the most unassuming, and prevents them from
foreseeing an approaching reverse. On his arrival, he found the
undertaking much more difficult than he had anticipated. In the Cabinet,
M. Mole alone fully seconded his intentions. M. Decazes and Marshal
Gouvion St. Cyr declared strongly for the law as it stood. M. Laine,
while fully admitting that it ought to be modified, refused to take any
part in the matter, having been, as he said, the first to propose and
maintain it. M. Roy, who had lately superseded M. Corvetto in the
department of finance, cared little for the electoral question, but
announced that he would not remain in the Cabinet without M. Decazes,
whom he considered indispensable, either in the Chambers or near the
King's person. Discord raged within and without the Ministry. In the
Chambers, the centre was divided; the left defended the law vehemently;
the right declared itself ready to support any minister who proposed its
reform, but at the same time repudiated M. Decazes, the author of the
decree of the 5th of September, 1816, and of all its consequences. The
public began to warm into the question. Excitement and confusion went on
increasing. It was evidently not the electoral law alone, but the
general policy of the Restoration and the Government of France, that
formed the subject of debate.
In a little work which the historians of this period, M. de Lamartine
amongst others, have published, the King, Louis XVIII. himself has
related the incidents and sudden turns of this ministerial crisis, which
ended, as is well known, in the retirement of the Duke de Richelieu,
with four of his colleagues, and in the promotion of M. Decazes, who
immediately constructed a new Cabinet, of which he was the head, without
appearing to preside, while M. de Serre, appointed to the seals, became
the powerful organ in the Chambers, and the maintenance of the law of
elections was adopted as the symbol. Two sentiments, under simple forms,
pervade this kingly recital: first, a certain anxiety, on the part of
the author, that no blame should be attached to him in his royal
character, or in his conduct towards the Duke de Richelieu, and a desire
to exculpate himself from these charges; secondly, a little of that
secret pleasure which kings indulge in, even under heavy embarrassments,
when they see a minister fall whose importance was not derived from
themselves, and who has served them without expecting or receiving
favours.
"If I had only consulted my own opinion," says the King, in concluding
his statement, "I should have wished M. Decazes, uniting his lot, as he
had always intended, with that of the Duke de Richelieu, to have left
the Ministry with him." It would have been happy for M. Decazes if this
desire of the King had prevailed. Not that he erred in any point of duty
or propriety by surviving the Duke de Richelieu in office, and in
forming a Cabinet without him; an important misunderstanding on a
pressing question had already separated them. M. Decazes, after
tendering his resignation, had raised no obstacle to the Duke's efforts
at finding new colleagues; it was only on the failure of those attempts,
frankly avowed by the Duke himself, and at the formal request of the
King, that he had undertaken to form a ministry. As a friend of
M. de Richelieu, and the day before his colleague, there were certainly
unpleasant circumstances and appearances attached to this position; but
M. Decazes was free to act, and could scarcely refuse to carry out the
policy he had recommended in council, when that which he had opposed
acknowledged itself incapable. Yet the new Cabinet was not strong enough
for the enterprise it undertook; with the centre completely shaken and
divided, it had to contend against the right-hand party more irritated
than ever, and the left evidently inimical, although through decency it
lent to Government a precarious support. The Cabinet of M. Decazes, as
a ministerial party, retained much inferior forces to those which had
surrounded the Duke de Richelieu, and had to contest with two bitter
enemies, the one inaccessible to peace or truce, the other sometimes
appearing friendly, but suddenly turning round and attacking the
Ministry with eager malevolence, when an opportunity offered, and with
hesitating hostility when compelled to dissemble.
The doctrinarians, who, in co-operation with M. Decazes, had defended
the law of elections, energetically supported the new Cabinet, in which
they were brilliantly represented by M. de Serre. Success was not
wanting at the commencement. By a mild and active administration, by
studied care of its partisans, by frequent and always favourably
received appeals to the royal clemency in behalf of the exiles still
excepted from amnesty, even including the old regicides, M. Decazes
sought and won extensive popularity; Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr satisfied
the remnants of the old army, by restoring to the new the ablest of its
former leaders; M. de Serre triumphantly defended the Ministry in the
Chambers; his bills, boldly liberal, and his frank opposition to
revolutionary principles, soon acquired for him, even with his
adversaries, a just reputation for eloquence and sincerity. In the
parliamentary arena it was an effective and upright Ministry; with the
country it was felt to be a Government loyally constitutional. But it
had more brilliancy than strength; and neither its care of individual
interests, nor its successes in the tribune, were sufficient to rally
round it the great Government party which its formation had divided.
Discord arose between the Chambers themselves. The Chamber of Peers, by
adopting the proposition of the Marquis Barthelemy, renewed the struggle
against the electoral law. In vain did the Chamber of Deputies repel
this attack; in vain did the Cabinet, by creating sixty new Peers, break
down the majority in the palace of the Luxembourg; these half triumphs
and legal extremes decided nothing. Liberal governments are condemned to
see the great questions perpetually revived which revolutions bequeath
to society, and which even glorious despotism suspends without solving.
The right-hand party was passionately bent on repossessing the power
which had recently escaped them. The left defended, at any cost, the
Revolution, more insulted than in danger. The centre, dislocated and
doubtful of the future, wavered between the hostile parties, not feeling
itself in a condition to impose peace on all, and on the point of being
confounded in the ranks of one side or the other. The Cabinet, ever
victorious in daily debate, and supported by the King's favour, felt
itself nevertheless feebly surrounded and precariously placed, with the
air of expecting a favourable or a hostile incident, to bring the
security it wanted, or to overthrow it altogether.
The events which men call accidents are never wanting in such
situations. During the space of a few months the Cabinet of 1819
experienced two,--the election of M. Gregoire, and the assassination of
the Duke de Berry; and these two decided its fate.
It is difficult to look upon the election of M. Gregoire as an accident;
it was proposed and settled beforehand in the central committee
established at Paris to superintend elections in general, and which was
called the managing committee. This particular election was decided on
at Grenoble in the college assembled on the 11th of September, 1819, by
a certain number of votes of the right-hand party, which at the second
round of balloting were carried to the credit of the left-hand
candidate, and gave him a majority which otherwise he could not have
obtained. To excuse this scandal, when it became known, some apologists
pretended that M. Gregoire was not in fact a regicide, because, even
though he had approved of the condemnation of Louis XVI. in his letters
to the Convention, his vote at least had not been included in the fatal
list. Again, when the admission of the deputy was disputed in the
Chamber, the left-hand party, to get rid of him, while eluding the true
cause of refusal, eagerly proposed to annul the election on the ground
of irregularity. When improvident violence fails, men gladly shelter
themselves under pusillanimous subtlety. It was unquestionably in the
character of a Conventional regicide, and with premeditated reflection,
not by any local or sudden accident, that M. Gregoire had been elected.
No act was ever more deliberately arranged and accomplished by party
feelings. Sincere in the perverse extravagancies of his mind, and
faithful to his avowed principles, although forgetful and weak in their
application, openly a Christian, and preaching tolerance under the
Convention, while he sanctioned the most unrelenting persecution of the
priests who refused to submit to the yoke of its new church; a
republican and oppositionist under the Empire, while consenting to be a
senator and a Count, this old man, as inconsistent as obstinate, was
the instrument of a signal act of hostility against the Restoration, to
become immediately the pretext for a corresponding act of weakness. A
melancholy end to a sad career!
The assassination of the Duke de Berry might with much more propriety be
called an accident. On the trial it was proved by evidence that Louvel
had no accomplices, and that he was alone in the conception as in the
execution of his crime. But it was also evident that hatred against the
Bourbons had possessed the soul and armed the hand of the murderer.
Revolutionary passions are a fire which is kindled and nourished afar
off; the orators of the right obtained credit with many timid and
horror-stricken minds, when they called this an accident;--as it is also
an accident if a diseased constitution catches the plague when it
infects the air, or if a powder-magazine explodes when you strike fire
in its immediate neighbourhood.
M. Decazes endeavoured to defend himself against these two heavy blows.
After the election of M. Gregoire, he undertook to accomplish alone what
at the close of the preceding year he had refused to attempt in concert
with the Duke de Richelieu. He determined to alter the law of elections.
It was intended that this change should take place in a great
constitutional reform meditated by M. de Serre, liberal on certain
points, monarchical on others, and which promised to give more firmness
to royalty by developing representative government. M. Decazes made a
sincere effort to induce the Duke de Richelieu, who was then travelling
in Holland, to return and reassume the presidency of the Council, and to
co-operate with him in the Chambers for the furtherance of this bold
undertaking. The King himself applied to the Duke de Richelieu, who
positively declined, more from disgust with public affairs and through
diffidence of his own power, than from any remains of ill-humour or
resentment. Three actual members of the Cabinet of 1819, General
Dessoles, Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, and Baron Louis, declared that they
would not co-operate in any attack on the existing law of elections.
M. Decazes determined to do without them, as he had dispensed with the
Duke de Richelieu, and to form a new Cabinet, of which he became the
president, and in which M. Pasquier, General Latour-Maubourg, and M. Roy
replaced the three retiring ministers. On the 29th of November the King
opened the session. Two months passed over, and the new electoral system
had not yet been presented to the Chamber. Three days after the
assassination of the Duke de Berry, M. Decazes introduced it suddenly,
with two bills to suspend personal liberty, and re-establish the
censorship of the daily press. Four days later he fell, and the
Duke de Richelieu, standing alone before the King and the danger,
consented to resume power. M. Decazes would have acted more wisely had
he submitted to his first defeat, and induced the King after the
election of M. Gregoire, to take back the Duke de Richelieu as minister.
He would not then have been compelled to lower with his own hand the
flag he had raised, and to endure the burden of a great miscarriage.
The fall of the Cabinet of 1819, brought on a new crisis, and a fresh
progress of the evil which disorganized the great Government party
formed during the session of 1815, and by the decree of the 5th of
September, 1816. To the successive divisions of the centre, were now
added the differences between the doctrinarians themselves. M. de Serre,
who had joined the Cabinet with M. Decazes to defend the law of
elections, now determined, although sick and absent, to remain there
with the Duke de Richelieu to overthrow it, without any of the
compensations, real or apparent, which his grand schemes of
constitutional reform were intended to supply. I tried in vain to
dissuade him from his resolution.[15] In the Chamber of Deputies,
M. Royer-Collard and M. Camille Jordan vehemently attacked the new
electoral plan; the Duke de Broglie and M. de Barante proposed serious
amendments to it in the Chamber of Peers. All the political ties which
had been cemented during five years appeared to be dissolved; every one
followed his own private opinion, or returned to his old bias. In the
parliamentary field, all was uncertainty and confused opposition; a
phantom appeared at each extremity, revolution and counter-revolution,
exchanging mutual menaces, and equally impatient to come to issue.
Those who wish to give themselves a correct idea of parliamentary and
popular excitement, pushed to their extreme limit, and yet retained
within that boundary by legal authority and the good sense of the
public,--sufficient to arrest the country on the brink of an abyss,
although too weak to block up the road that leads to it,--should read
the debate on the new electoral bill introduced into the Chamber of
Deputies on the 17th of April, 1820, by the second Cabinet of the Duke
de Richelieu, and discussed for twenty-six days in that Chamber,
accompanied with riotous gatherings without, thoughtlessly aggressive
and sternly repressed. If we are to believe the orators of the left,
France and her liberties, the Revolution and its conquests, the honour
of the present, and the security of the future, were all lost if the
ministerial bill should pass. The right, on the other hand, looked upon
the bill as scarcely strong enough to save the monarchy for the moment,
and declared its resolution to reject every amendment which might
diminish its powers. On both sides, pretensions and claims were equally
ungovernable. Attracted and excited by this legal quarrel, the students,
the enthusiastic young Liberals, the old professional disturbers, the
idlers and oppositionists of every class, were engaged daily with the
soldiers and the agents of police, in conflicts sometimes sanguinary,
and the accounts of which redoubled the acrimony of the debate
withindoors. In the midst of this general commotion, the Cabinet of 1820
had the merit of maintaining, while repressing all popular movement, the
freedom of legislative deliberation, and of acting its part in these
stormy discussions with perseverance and moderation. M. Pasquier, their
Minister for Foreign Affairs, endowed with rare self-command and
presence of mind, was on this occasion the principal parliamentary
champion of the Cabinet; and M. Mounier, Director-General of the
Police, controlled the street riots with as much prudence as active
firmness. The charge so often brought against so many ministers, against
M. Casimir Perrier in 1831, as against the Duke de Richelieu in 1820, of
exciting popular commotions only to repress them, does not deserve the
notice of sensible men. At the end of a month, all these debates and
scenes, within and without, ended in the adoption, not of the
ministerial bill, but of an amendment which, without destroying in
principle the bill of the 5th of February, 1817, so materially vitiated
it, to the advantage of the right, that the party felt themselves bound
to be satisfied. The greater portion of the centre, and the more
moderate members of the left, submitted for the sake of public
peace. The extreme left and the extreme right, M. Manuel and
M. de la Bourdonnaye entered a protest. The new electoral system was
clearly destined to shift the majority, and, with the majority, power,
from the left to the right; but the liberties of France, and the
advantages gained by the Revolution, were not endangered by the change.
This question once settled, the Cabinet had to pay its debts to the
right-hand party,--rewards to those who had supported it, and
punishments to its opposers. In spite of old friendships, the
doctrinarians figured of necessity in the last category. If I had
desired it, I might have escaped. Not being a member of either Chamber,
and beyond the circle of constrained action, I could in my capacity of
State Councillor have maintained reserve and silence after giving my
advice to the Government; but on entering public life, I had resolved on
one uniform course,--to express my true thoughts on every occasion, and
never to separate myself from my friends. M. de Serre included me, with
good reason, in the measure which removed them from the Council; on the
17th of June, 1820, he wrote to MM. Royer-Collard, Camille Jordan,
Barante, and myself, to inform us that we were no longer on the list.
The best men readily assume the habits and style of absolute power.
M. de Serre was certainly not deficient in self-respect or confidence in
his own opinions; he felt surprised that in this instance I should have
obeyed mine, without any other more coercive necessity, and evinced this
feeling by communicating my removal with unqualified harshness. "The
evident hostility," he said to me, "which, without the shadow of a
pretext, you have lately exhibited towards the King's Government, has
rendered this step inevitable." My answer was simply this:--"I expected
your letter. I might have foreseen, and I did anticipate it, when I
openly evinced my disapprobation of the acts and speeches of the
Ministry. I congratulate myself that I have nothing to alter in my
conduct. Tomorrow, as yesterday, I shall belong only and entirely to
myself."[16]
The decisive step was taken; power had changed its course with its
friends. After having turned it to this new direction, the
Duke de Richelieu and his colleagues made sincere efforts during two
years to arrest its further progress. They tried all methods of
conciliation or resistance; sometimes they courted the right, at others
the remains of the centre, and occasionally even the left, by
concessions of principle, and more frequently of a personal nature.
M. de Chateaubriand was sent as Ambassador to Berlin, and General
Clauzel was declared entitled to the amnesty. M. de Villele and
M. Corbiere obtained seats in the Cabinet, the first as minister without
a portfolio, and the other as president of the Royal Council of Public
Instruction; they left it, however, at the expiration of six months,
under frivolous pretexts, but foreseeing the approaching fall of the
Ministry, and not wishing to be there at the last moment. They were not
deceived. The elections of 1821 completed the decimation of the weak
battalion which still endeavoured to stand firm round tottering power.
The Duke de Richelieu, who had only resumed office on a personal promise
from the Count d'Artois of permanent support, complained loudly, with
the independent spirit of a nobleman of high rank and of a man of
honour, that the word of a gentleman, pledged to him, had not been kept.
Vain complaints, and futile efforts! The Cabinet obtained time with
difficulty; but the right-hand party alone gained ground. At length, on
the 19th of December, 1821, the last shadow of the Government of the
Centre vanished with the ministry of the Duke de Richelieu. The right
and M. de Villele seized the reins of power. "The counter-revolution is
approaching!" exclaimed the left, in a mingled burst of satisfaction and
alarm. M. de Villele thought differently; a little before the decisive
crisis, and after having, in his quality of vice-president, directed for
some days the deliberations of the Chamber of Deputies, he wrote as
follows to one of his friends:--"You will scarcely believe how my four
days of presidency have succeeded. I received compliments on every side,
but particularly, I own it to my shame, from the left, whom I have never
conciliated. They expected, without doubt, to be eaten up alive by an
_ultra_. They are inexhaustible in eulogium. Finally, those to whom I
never speak, now address me with a thousand compliments. I think in this
there is a little spite against M. Ravez. But, be that as it may, if a
president were just now to be elected, I should have almost every vote
in the Chamber.... For myself, impartiality costs me nothing. I look
only to the success of the affairs I have undertaken, and have not the
slightest prejudice against individuals. I am born for the end of
revolutions."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: I have recapitulated amongst the "Historic Documents" the
chief measures of general administration, which were adopted by
M. Laine, M. Decazes and Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, in their respective
departments, during this period. These short tables clearly exhibit the
spirit of improvement and the rational care of public interests which
animated the Cabinet. (Historic Documents, No. IX.)]
[Footnote 15: I insert in the "Historic Documents" the letter I
addressed to him, with this object, on the 12th of April, 1820, to Nice,
whither he had repaired towards the middle of the month of January, to
seek relief from a crisis of the chest complaint which finally caused
his death. I am struck today, as undoubtedly all will be who read this
letter with attention, by the mixture of truth and error, of foresight
and improvidence therein contained. Subsequent events alternately
verified and disproved what I then wrote. (Historic Documents, No. X.)]
[Footnote 16: I insert at length amongst the "Historic Documents" the
correspondence interchanged on this occasion between M. de Serre,
M. Pasquier, and myself. (Historic Documents, No. XI)]