Ledru Rollin is now in his forty-fourth or forty-fifth year,
having been born in 1806 or 1807. He is the grandson of the famous
_Prestidigateur_, or Conjurer Comus, who, about four or five-and-forty
years ago, was in the acme of his fame. During the Consulate, and a
considerable portion of the Empire, Comus traveled from one department
of France to the other, and is even known to have extended his
journeys beyond the Rhine and the Moselle on one side, and beyond the
Rhône and Garonne on the other. Of all the conjurers of his day he was
the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting
that Corsican conjurer who ruled for so many years the destinies
of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we
have learned that the Charleses, the Alexanders, even the Robert
Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of
the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains
proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil it
was found he had left to his descendants a very ample--indeed, for
France, a very large fortune. Of the descendants in a right line, his
grandson, Ledru Rollin, was his favorite, and to him the old man left
the bulk of his fortune, which, during the minority of Ledru Rollin,
grew to a sum amounting to nearly, if not fully, £4,000 per annum.
The scholastic education of the young man who was to inherit this
considerable fortune, was nearly completed during the reign of
Louis XVIII., and shortly after Charles X. ascended the throne _il
commençait à faire sur droit_, as they phrase it in the _pays Latin_.
Neither during the reign of Louis XVIII., nor indeed now, unless in
the exact and physical sciences, does Paris afford a very solid and
substantial education. Though the Roman poets and historians are
tolerably well studied and taught, yet little attention is paid to
Greek literature. The physical and exact sciences are unquestionably
admirably taught at the Polytechnique and other schools; but neither
at the College of St. Barbe, nor of Henry IV., can a pupil be so well
grounded in the rudiments and humanities as in our grammar and public
schools. A studious, pains-taking, and docile youth, will, no doubt,
learn a great deal, no matter where he has been placed in pupilage;
but we have heard from a contemporary of M. Rollin, that he was not
particularly distinguished either for his industry or his docility in
early life. The earliest days of the reign of Charles X. saw M. Ledru
Rollin an _étudiant en droit_ in Paris. Though the schools of law
had been re-established during the Consulate pretty much after the
fashion in which they existed in the time of Louis the XIV., yet the
application of the _alumni_ was fitful and desultory, and perhaps
there were no two classes in France, at the commencement of 1825. who
were more imbued with the Voltarian philosophy and the doctrines and
principles of Rousseau, than the _élèves_ of the schools of law and
medicine.
Under a king so sceptical and voluptuous, so much of a _philosophie_
and _phyrronéste_, as Louis XVIII., such tendencies were likely to
spread themselves through all ranks of society--to permeate from
the very highest to the very lowest classes: and not all the lately
acquired asceticism of the monarch, his successor, nor all the
efforts of the Jesuits could restrain or control the tendencies of
the _étudiants en droit_. What the law-students were antecedently and
subsequent to 1825, we know from the _Physiologie de l'Homme de Loi_;
and it is not to be supposed that M. Ledru Rollin, with more ample
pecuniary means at command, very much differed from his fellows.
After undergoing a three years' course of study, M. Rollin obtained
a diploma as a _licencié en droit_, and commenced his career as
_stagiare_ somewhere about the end of 1826 or the beginning of 1827.
Toward the close of 1829, or in the first months of 1830, he was, we
believe, placed on the roll of advocates; so that he was called to
the bar, or, as they say in France, received an advocate, in his
twenty-second or twenty-third year.
The first years of an advocate, even in France, are generally passed
in as enforced an idleness as in England. Clients come not to consult
the greenhorn of the last term; nor does any _avoué_ among our
neighbors, any more than any attorney among ourselves, fancy that an
old head is to be found on young shoulders. The years 1830 and 1831
were not marked by any oratorical effort of the author of the _Decline
of England_; nor was it till 1832 that, being then one of the youngest
of the bar of Paris, he prepared and signed an opinion against the
placing of Paris in a state of siege consequent on the insurrections
of June. Two years after he prepared a memoir; or _factum_, on
the affair of the Rue Transonain, and defended Dupoty, accused
of _complicité morale_, a monstrous doctrine invented by the
Attorney-General Hebert. From 1834 to 1841 he appeared as counsel in
nearly all the cases of _émeute_ or conspiracy where the individuals
prosecuted were Republicans, or _quasi_-Republicans. Meanwhile, he
had become the proprietor and _rédacteur en chef_ of the _Reforme_
newspaper, a political journal of an ultra-Liberal--indeed of a
Republican--complexion, which was then called of extreme opinions, as
he had previously been editor of a legal newspaper called _Journal
du Palais_. _La Reforme_ had been originally conducted by Godefroy
Cavaignac, the brother of the general, who continued editor till the
period of the fatal illness which preceded his death. The defense
of Dupoty, tried and sentenced under the ministry of Thiers to five
years' imprisonment, as a regicide, because a letter was found open
in the letter-box of the paper of which he was editor, addressed to
him by a man said to be implicated in the conspiracy of Quenisset,
naturally brought M. Rollin into contact with many of the writers in
_La Reforme_; and these persons, among others Guinard Arago, Etienne
Arago, and Flocon, induced him to embark some portion of his fortune
in the paper. From one step he was led on to another, and ultimately
became one of the chief--indeed, if not the chief proprietor. The
speculation was far from successful in a pecuniary sense, but M.
Rollin, in furtherance of his opinions, continued for some years to
disburse considerable sums in the support of the journal. By this he
no doubt increased his popularity and his credit with the Republican
party, but it cannot be denied that he very materially injured his
private fortune. In the earlier portion of his career, M. Rollin was,
it is known, not indisposed to seek a seat in the Chamber, under the
auspices of M. Barrot, but subsequently to his connection with the
_Reforme_, he had himself become thoroughly known to the extreme party
in the departments, and on the death of Gamier Pagès the elder, was
elected in 1841 for Le Mans, in La Sarthe.
In addressing the electors, after his return, M. Rollin delivered
a speech much more Republican than Monarchical. For this he was
sentenced to four months' imprisonment, but the sentence was appealed
against and annulled on a technical ground, and the honorable member
was ultimately acquitted by the Cour d'Assizes of Angers.
The parliamentary _début_ of M. Rollin took place in 1842. His first
speech was delivered on the subject of the secret-service money.
The elocution was easy and flowing, the manner oratorical, the style
somewhat turgid and bombastic. But in the course of the session M.
Rollin improved, and his discourse on the modification of the criminal
law, on other legal subjects, and on railways, were more sober
specimens of style. In 1843 and 1844 M. Rollin frequently spoke; but
though his speeches were a good deal talked of outside the walls of
the Chamber, they produced little effect within it. Nevertheless,
it was plain to every candid observer that he possessed many of the
requisites of the orator--a good voice, a copious flow of words,
considerable energy and enthusiasm, a sanguine temperament and jovial
and generous disposition. In the sessions of 1845-46, M. Rollin took
a still more prominent part. His purse, his house in the Rue Tournon,
his counsels and advice, were all placed at the service of the
men of the movement; and by the beginning of 1847 he seemed to be
acknowledged by the extreme party as its most conspicuous and popular
member. Such indeed was his position when the electoral reform
banquets, on a large scale, began to take place in the autumn of 1847.
These banquets, promoted and forwarded by the principal members of the
opposition to serve the cause of electoral reform, were looked on
by M. Rollin and his friends in another light. While Odillon Barrot,
Duvergier d'Haurunne, and others, sought by means of them to produce
an enlarged constituency, the member for Sarthe looked not merely to
functional, but to organic reform--not merely to an enlargement of
the constituency, but to a change in the form of the government. The
desire of Barrot was _à la vérité à la sincerité des institutions
conquises en Juillet_ 1830; whereas the desire of Rollin was, _à
l'amélioration des classes laborieuses_; the one was willing to go
on with the dynasty of Louis Philippe and the Constitution of July
improved by diffusion and extension of the franchise, the other
looked to a democratic and social republic. The result is now known.
It is not here our purpose to go over the events of the Revolution
of February 1848, but we may be permitted to observe, that the
combinations by which that event was effected were ramified and
extensive, and were long silently and secretly in motion.
The personal history of M. Rollin, since February 1848, is well-known
and patent to all the world. He was the _ame damnée_ of the
Provisional Government--the man whose extreme opinions, intemperate
circulars, and vehement patronage of persons professing the political
creed of Robespierre--indisposed all moderate men to rally around the
new system. It was in covering Ledru Rollin with the shield of his
popularity that Lamartine lost his own, and that he ceased to be the
political idol of a people of whom he must ever be regarded as one
of the literary glories and illustrations. On the dissolution of
the Provisional Government, Ledru Rollin constituted himself one of
the leaders of the movement party. In ready powers of speech and in
popularity no man stood higher; but he did not possess the power of
restraining his followers or of holding them in hand, and the result
was, that instead of being their leader he became their instrument.
Fond of applause, ambitious of distinction, timid by nature, destitute
of pluck, and of that rarer virtue moral courage, Ledru Rollin,
to avoid the imputation of faint-heartedness, put himself in the
foreground, but the measures of his followers being ill-taken, the
plot in which he was mixed up egregiously failed, and he is now in
consequence an exile in England.
* * * * *