politician has always been faithful--the principle which maintains the
right of France to throw her sword into the scale where every or any
foreign question is to be weighed. When, after a long absence from the
parliamentary arena, he entered the Imperial Corps Legislatif as one of
the deputies for Paris, he soon proved himself to be "old Cassius
still." Age, study, experience, retirement, reflection, had in no wise
dimmed the fire of his ardent nationalism. Eagerly as ever he contended
for the sacred right of France to dragoon all Europe into obedience, to
chop up the Continent into such symmetrical sections as might seem
suitable to the taste and the convenience of French statesmen.
Undoubtedly he was a sharp, tormenting thorn in the side of the Imperial
Government when he returned to active political life. Louis Napoleon had
no minister who could pretend to compare with Thiers in debate. He was
an aggravating and exasperating enemy, against whom fluent and shallow
men like Billault and Baroche, or even speakers of heavier calibre like
Rouher, had no chance whatever. But there were times when to any
impartial mind the invectives of Thiers made the Imperial policy look
noble and enlightened in comparison with the canons of detestable
egotism which he propounded as the true principles of government. I
remember thinking more than once that if Louis Napoleon's Ministers
could only have risen to the real height of the situation and appealed
to whatever there was of lofty unselfish feeling in France, they might
have overwhelmed their remorseless and envenomed critic. In 1866 and
1867, for example, Thiers made it a cardinal point of complaint and
invective against the French Government that it had not prevented by
force of arms the progress of Germany's unity. Nothing could be more
pungent, brilliant, bitter, than the eloquence with which he proclaimed
and advocated his doctrines of ignoble and unscrupulous selfishness. Why
did not the Imperial spokesmen assume a virtue if they had it not, and
boldly declare that the Government of France scorned the shallow and
envious policy which sees calamity and danger in the union and growing
strength of a neighboring people? Such a chord bravely struck would have
awakened an echo in every true and generous heart. But the Imperial
Ministers feebly tried to fight M. Thiers upon his own ground, to accept
his principles as the conditions of contest. They endeavored in a
paltering and limping way to show that the French Government had been
selfish and only selfish, and had taken every care to keep Germany
properly weak and divided. It was during one of these debates, thus
provoked by M. Thiers, that occasion was given to Count von Bismarck for
one of his most striking _coups de theatre_. The French Minister (if I
remember rightly, it was M. Rouher), tortured and baited by M. Thiers,
stood at bay at last, and boldly declared that the Government of France
had taken measures to render impossible any political cohesion of North
and South Germany. A day or two after, Count von Bismarck effectively
and contemptuously replied to this declaration by unfolding in the
Prussian Chamber the treaties of alliance already concluded between his
Government and the South German States.
It has always been a matter of surprise to me that Thiers did not prove
a success at the bar, to which at first he applied his abilities. He
seems to have the very gifts which would naturally have made a great
pleader. All through his political career he displayed a wonderful
capacity for making the worse appear the better cause. The adroitness
which contends skilfully that black is white to-day, having argued with
equal force and fluency that white was green yesterday, would have been
highly appropriate and respectable in a legal advocate. But M. Thiers
did not somehow get on at the bar, and having no influential friends (he
was, I think, the son of a locksmith), but plenty of ambition, courage,
and confidence, he strove to enter political life by the avenue of
journalism. Much of Thiers's subsequent success as a debater was
probably due to that skill which a practised journalist naturally
acquires--the dexterity of arraying facts and arguments so as not to
bear too long on any one part of the subject, and not to offer to the
mind of the reader more than his patience and interest are willing to
accept. Most of the events of his political career, up to his
reappearance in public life in 1863, belong wholly to history and the
past. His long rivalry with Guizot, his intrigues out of office, and his
conduct as a Minister of Louis Philippe, have hardly a more direct and
vital connection with the affairs of to-day than the statecraft of
Mazarin or the political vicissitudes of Bolingbroke. One indeed of the
projects of M. Thiers has now come rather unexpectedly into active
operation. The fortifications of Paris were the offspring of the
apprehension M. Thiers entertained, thirty years ago, that the Eastern
question of that day might provoke another great European war. Since
that time many critics sneered and laughed a good deal at M. Thiers's
system of fortifications; but the whirligig of time has brought the
statesman his revenge. No one could mistake the meaning of the smile of
self-satisfaction which used last autumn to light up the unattractive
features of the veteran Orleanist, as he made tour after tour of
inspection around the defences of Paris. This chain of fortifications
alone, one might almost say, connects the Thiers of the present
generation with the Thiers of the past. There were malignant persons who
did not scruple to say that the author of the scheme of defences was not
altogether sorry for the national calamity which had brought them into
use, and apparently justified their construction. It is very hard to be
altogether sorry for even a domestic misfortune which gives one who is
especially proud of his foresight and sagacity an opportunity of
pointing out that the precautions which he recommended, and other
members of the family scorned, are now eagerly adopted by unanimous
concurrence. There certainly was something of the pardonable pride of
the author of a long misprized invention visible in the face of M.
Thiers as he used to gaze upon his beloved system of fortifications any
time in last September. Little did even he himself think when, after
Sadowa, he accused the Emperor's Government of having left itself no
blunder more to commit, that it had yet to perpetrate one crowning and
gigantic mistake, and that one effect at least of this stupendous error
would be to compel Paris to treat _au serieux_, and as a supreme
necessity, that system of defences so long regarded as good for little
else than to remind the present generation that Louis Adolphe Thiers was
once Prime Minister of France.
Thiers was not far short of seventy years old when, in 1863, he entered
upon a new chapter of his public life as one of the deputies for Paris
in the Imperial Corps Legislatif. A new generation had meantime arisen.
Men were growing into fame as orators and politicians who were boys when
Thiers was last heard as a parliamentary debater. He returned to
political life at an eventful time and accompanied by some notable
compeers. The elections which sent Thiers to represent the department of
the Seine made the venerable and illustrious Berryer one of the
delegates from Marseilles. I doubt whether the political life of any
country has ever produced a purer, grander figure than that of Berryer;
I am sure that an obsolete and hopeless cause never had a nobler
advocate. The genius and the virtues of Berryer are indeed the loftiest
claims modern French legitimacy can offer to the respect of posterity. I
look back with a feeling of something like veneration to that grand and
kingly form, to the sweet, serene, unaffected dignity of that august
nature. Berryer belonged to a totally different political order from
that of Thiers. As John Bright is to Disraeli, as John Henry Newman is
to Monsignore Capel, as Montalembert was to Louis Veuillot, as Charles
Sumner is to Seward, so was Berryer to Thiers. Of the oratorical merits
of the two men I shall speak hereafter; now I refer to the relative
value of their political characters. With Thiers and Berryer there came
back to political life some men of mark and worth. Garnier-Pages was
one, the impulsive, true-hearted, not very strong-headed Republican; a
man who might be a great leader if fine phrases and good intentions
could rule the world. Carnot was another, not much perhaps in himself,
but great as the son of the illustrious organizer of victory (oh, if
France had lately had one hour of Carnot!), and personally very popular
just then because of his scornful rejection of Louis Napoleon's offer to
bring back the ashes of his father from Magdeburg in Prussia to France.
Eugene Pelletan, who had been suffering savage persecution because of
his fierce attack on the Empire in his book, "The New Babylon"; Jules
Simon, a superior sort of French Tom Hughes--Tom Hughes with republican
convictions and strong backbone--and several other men of name and
fibre, were now companions in the Corps Legislatif. All these, differing
widely in personal opinions, and indeed representing every kind of
political view, from the chivalrous and romantic legitimacy of Berryer
to the republican religion or fetichism of Garnier-Pages, combined to
make up an opposition to the Imperial Government. Up to that time the
opposition had consisted simply of five men. For years those five had
fought a persevering and apparently hopeless fight against the strength
of Imperial arms, Imperial gold, and the lungs of Imperial hirelings. Of
the five the leader was Jules Favre. The second in command was Emile
Ollivier, whose treason to liberty, truth, and peace has since been so
sternly avenged by destiny. The other three were Picard, a member of the
Republican Government of September, and MM. Darimon and Henon.
Numerically the opposition, now strengthened by the new accessions,
became quite respectable; morally and politically it wholly changed the
situation. It was no longer a Leonidas or Horatius Cocles desperately
holding a pass; it was an army encountering an army. The Imperialists of
course still far outnumbered their opponents; but there were no men
among the devotees of Imperialism who could even pretend to compare as
orators with Berryer, Thiers, or Favre. Of these three men, it seems to
me that Berryer was by far the greatest orator, but Thiers left him
nowhere as a partisan leader. Thiers undoubtedly pushed Jules Favre
aside and made him quite a secondary figure. Thiers delighted in
worrying a ministry. He never needed, as Berryer did, the impulse of a
great principle and a great purpose. He felt all the joy of the strife
which distinguishes the born gladiator. He soon proved that his years
had in no degree impaired his oratorical capacity. It became one of the
grand events of Paris when Thiers was to speak. Owing to the peculiar
regulations of the French Chamber, which required that those who meant
to take part in a debate should inscribe their names beforehand in the
book, and speak according to their turn--an odious usage, fatal to all
genuine debate--it was always known in advance through Paris that
to-morrow or the day after Thiers was to speak. Then came a struggle for
places in what an Englishman would call the strangers' gallery. The
Palais Bourbon, where the Corps Legislatif held its sittings, opposite
the Place de la Concorde, has the noble distinction of providing the
least and worst accommodation for the public of any House of Assembly in
the civilized world. The English House of Commons is miserably defective
and niggardly in this respect, but it is liberal and lavish when
compared with the French Corps Legislatif. Therefore, when M. Thiers was
about to speak, there was as much intriguing, clamoring, beseeching,
wrangling, storming for seats in the public _tribunes_ as would have
sufficed to carry an English county election. The trouble had its
reward. Nobody could be disappointed in M. Thiers who merely desired an
intellectual exercise and treat. Thiers never was heavy or dull. He is,
I think, the most interesting of all the great European debaters. I do
not know whether I convey exactly the meaning I wish to express when I
used the word "interesting." What I mean is that there is in M. Thiers
an inexhaustible vivacity, freshness, and variety which never allows the
attention to wander or flag. He never dwells too long on any one part of
his subject; or if he has to dwell long anywhere, he enlivens the theme
by a lavish copiousness of novel argument, application, and
illustration, which is irresistibly piquant and fascinating. Reentering
public life in his old age, M. Thiers had physically something like the
advantage which I have known to be possessed by certain mature
actresses, who, never having had any claim to personal beauty in their
youth, were visited with hardly any penalty of time when they began to
descend into age. Thiers always had an insignificant presence, a
dreadfully bad voice, and an unpleasant delivery. Time added nothing,
and probably could add nothing, to these disadvantages. Already John
Bright has lost, already Gladstone is losing, those magnificent
qualities of voice and intonation which till lately distinguished both
from all other living English orators. One of the only fine passages in
Disraeli's "Life of Lord George Bentinck" is that in which he describes
the melancholy sensation created in the House of Commons when Daniel
O'Connell, feeble and broken down, tried vainly to raise above a
mumbling murmur those accents which once could thrill and vibrate to the
furthest corner of the most capacious hall. But the voice and delivery
of Thiers at seventy were no whit worse than those of Thiers at forty;
and in energy, vivacity, and variety, I think the opposition leader of
1866 had rather gained upon the Minister of 1836. In everything that
makes a great orator he was far beneath Berryer. The latter had as
commanding a presence as he had a superb voice, and a manner at once
graceful and dignified. Berryer, too, had the sustaining strength of a
profound conviction, pure and lofty as a faith. If Berryer was a
political Don Quixote, Thiers was a political Gil Blas. Thiers was all
sparkle, antithesis, audacity, sophistry. His _tours de force_ were
perfect masterpieces of fearless adroitness. He darted from point to
point, from paradox to paradox, with the bewildering agility of a
squirrel. He flashed through the heavy atmosphere of a dull debate with
the scintillating radiancy of a firefly. He propounded sentiments of
freedom which would positively have captivated you if you had not known
a little of the antecedents of the orator. He threw off concise and
luminous maxims of government which would have been precious guides if
human politics could only be ruled by epigram. His long experience as a
partisan leader, in and out of office, had made him master of a vast
array of facts and dates, which he was expert to marshal in such a
manner as often to bewilder his opponents. His knowledge of the
mechanism and regulations of diplomatic and parliamentary practice was
consummate. He was singularly clear and attractive in statement; his
mode of putting a case had something in it that was positively
fascinating. He was sharp and severe in retort, and there was a cold,
self-complacent _hauteur_ in his way of putting down an adversary, which
occasionally reminded one of a peculiarity of Earl Russell's style when
the latter was still a good parliamentary debater. M. Thiers had the
great merit of never talking over the heads, above the understandings of
his audience. His style of language was of the same character perhaps as
that of Mr. Wendell Phillips. Of course no two men could possibly be
more unlike in the manner of speaking, but the rhetorical vernacular of
both has a considerable resemblance. The diction in each case is clear,
incisive, penetrating--never, or hardly ever, rising to anything of
exalted oratorical grandeur, never involved in mist or haze of any kind,
and with the same habitual acidity and sharpness in it. I presume M.
Thiers wrote the greater part of his speeches beforehand, but he
evidently had the happy faculty, rare even among accomplished orators,
which enables a speaker to blend the elaborately prepared portions of
his discourse with the extemporaneous passages originated by the
impulses and the incidents of the debate. Some of the cleverest
arguments, and especially some of the cleverest sarcastic hits in M.
Thiers's recent speeches, were provoked by questions and interruptions
which must have been quite unexpected. But a strange peculiarity about
the whole body of the speeches, the written parts as well as the
extemporaneous, was that they bore no resemblance whatever to the
glittering and gorgeous style which is so common and so objectionable in
the pages of the author's history of the French Revolution, and of the
Consulate and the Empire. I must say that I think M. Thiers's historical
works are decidedly heavy reading. I think his speeches are more
interesting and attractive to read than those of any political speaker
of our day. As an orator I set him below Berryer, below Gladstone and
Bright, below Wendell Phillips, and not above Disraeli. But as an
interesting speaker--I can think of no better qualification for him--I
place M. Thiers above any of those masters of the art of eloquence.
I have not compared M. Thiers with Jules Favre. Any juxtaposition of the
two ought rather perhaps to be in the way of contrast than of
comparison. Jules Favre is probably the most exquisite and perfect
rhetorician practising in the public debates of our time. No one else
can lend so brilliant an effect, so delightful an emphasis to words and
phrases by the mere modulations of his tone. I once heard a French
workingman say that Jules Favre _parlait comme un ange_--talked like an
angel; and there was a simple appropriateness in the expression. An
angel, if he had to address so unsympathetic and uncongenial an audience
as the Imperial Corps Legislatif, could hardly lend more musical effect
to the meaning of his words than was given by Jules Favre's consummate
rhetorical skill. But I must acknowledge that to me at least there never
seemed to be much in what Jules Favre said. It seemed to me too often to
want marrow and backbone. It was an eloquence of fine phrases and
splendid vague generalities. "Flow on, thou shining river," one felt
sometimes inclined to say as the bright, broad, shallow stream glided
away. If Thiers spoke for half a day, and the discourse covered a dozen
columns of the closely-printed "Moniteur," yet the listener or reader
came away with the impression that the orator had crammed quite a
surprising quantity of matter into his speech, and could have found ever
so much more to say on the same subject. The impression produced on me
at least by the speeches of Jules Favre was always of the very opposite
character. They seemed to be all rhetoric and modulation; they were
without depth and without fibre. The essentially declamatory character
of Jules Favre's eloquence received its most complete illustration in
that remarkable document--so painful and pathetic because of its obvious
earnestness, so ludicrous and almost contemptible because of its turgid
and extravagant outbursts--the report of his recent interviews with
Count von Bismarck at the Prussian headquarters near Versailles. One
must keep constantly in mind the awful seriousness of the situation, and
the genuine suffering which it must have imposed upon Jules Favre, not
to laugh outright or feel disgusted at the inflated, hyperbolical, and
melodramatic style in which the Republican Minister describes his
interview with the Prussian Chancellor. Now, whatever faults of style M.
Thiers might commit, he never could thus make himself ridiculous. He
never allows himself to be out of tune with the occasion and the
audience. You may differ utterly from him, you may distrust and dislike
him; but Thiers, the parliamentary orator, will not permit you to laugh
at him.
Thiers was always very happy in his replies and retorts, and he never
allowed if he could an interruption to one of his speeches in the Corps
Legislatif to pass without seizing its meaning and at once dissecting
and demolishing it. He rejoiced in the light sword-play of such
exercises. He would never have been contented with the superb quietness
of contempt by which Berryer in one of his latest speeches crushed
Granier de Cassagnac, the abject serf and hireling of Imperialism. While
Berryer was speaking, Granier de Cassagnac suddenly expressed his coarse
dissent from one of the orator's statements by crying out, "That is not
true." Berryer was not certain as to the source of this insolent
interruption. He gazed all round the assembly, and demanded in accents
of subdued and noble indignation who had dared thus to challenge the
truth of his statement. There was a dead pause. Even enemies looked up
with reverence to the grand old orator, and were ashamed of the rude
insult flung at him. De Cassagnac quailed, but every eye was on him, and
he was compelled to declare himself. "It was I who spoke," said the
Imperial servant. Berryer looked at him for a moment, and then said,
"Oh, it was _you_!--then it is of no consequence," and calmly resumed
the thread of his discourse. Nothing could have been finer, nothing more
demolishing than the cold, grand contempt which branded De Cassagnac as
a creature incapable of meriting, even by insult, the notice of a man of
honor. But Thiers would never have been satisfied with such a mode of
crushing an adversary; and indeed it needed all the majesty of Berryer's
presence and the moral grandeur of his character to give it full force
and emphasis. Thiers would have showered upon the head of the Imperial
lacquey a whole fiery cornucopia of sarcasm and sharp invective, and De
Cassagnac would have gone home rather proud of having drawn down upon
his head the angry eloquence of the great Orleanist orator.
Thiers threw his whole soul into his speeches--not merely as to their
preparation, but as to their revision and publication. According to the
Imperial system, no independent reports of speeches in the Chambers were
allowed to appear in print. The official stenographers noted down in
full each day's debate, and the whole was published next day in the
"Moniteur Universel." These reports professed to give every word and
syllable of the speeches--every whisper of interruption. Sometimes,
therefore, the "Moniteur" came out with twenty of its columns filled up
with the dull maunderings of some provincial blockhead, for whom
servility and money had secured an official candidature. Besides these
stupendous reports, the Government furnished a somewhat condensed
version, in which the twenty-column speech was reduced say to a dozen
columns. Either of these reports the public journals might take, but
none other; and no journal must alter or condense by the omission of a
line or the substitution of a word the text thus officially furnished.
When Thiers had spent the whole day in delivering a speech, he was
accustomed to spend the whole night in reading over and correcting the
proof-sheets of the official report. The venerable orator would hurry
home when the sitting was over, change his clothes, get into his
arm-chair before his desk, and set to work at the proof-sheets according
as they came. Over these he would toil with the minute and patient
inspection of a watchmaker or a lapidary, reading this or that passage
many times, until he had satisfied himself that no error remained and
that no turn of expression could well be improved. Before this task was
done, the night had probably long faded and the early sun was already
lighting Paris; but when the Corps Legislatif came to assemble at noon,
the inexhaustible septuagenarian was at his post again. That evening he
would be found, the central figure of a group, in some salon, scattering
his brilliant sayings and acrid sarcasms around him, and in all
probability exercising his humor at the expense of the Imperial
Ministers, the Empire, and even the Emperor himself. After 1866 he was
exuberant in his _bons mots_ about the humiliation of the Imperial
Cabinet by Prussia. "Bismarck," he once declared, "is the best supporter
of the French Government. He keeps it always in its place by first
boxing it on one ear and then maintaining the equilibrium by boxing it
on the other."