cannot change; but the deed is done,--France has chosen to set aside
the claim of the prince who by the law of hereditary succession has a
right to the crown, in favour of another prince of the same royal
line, whom in her policy she deems more capable of insuring the
prosperity of the country. The deed is done; and the welfare of tens
of millions who had, perhaps, no active share in bringing it about now
hangs upon the continuance of the tranquillity which has followed the
change.
However deep therefore may be the respect felt for those who, having
sworn fealty to Charles the Tenth, continue steadfastly undeviating in
their declaration of his right, and firm in their refusal to recognise
that of any other, still a stranger and sojourner in the land may
honestly acknowledge the belief that the prosperity of France at the
present hour depends upon her allegiance to the king she has chosen,
without being accused of advocating the cause of revolution.
To judge fairly of France as she actually exists, it is absolutely
necessary to throw aside all memory of the purer course she might have
pursued five years ago, by the temperate pleading of her chartered
rights, to obtain redress of such evils as really existed. The popular
clamour which rose and did the work of revolution, though it
originated with factious demagogues and idle boys, left the new power
it had set in action in the hands of men capable of redeeming the
noble country they were called to govern from the state of disjointed
weakness in which they found it. The task has been one of almost
unequalled difficulty and peril; but every day gives greater
confidence to the hope, that after forty years of blundering,
blustering policy, and changes so multiplied as to render the very
name of revolution ridiculous, this superb kingdom, so long our rival,
and now, as we firmly trust, our most assured ally, will establish her
government on a basis firm enough to strengthen the cause of social
order and happiness throughout all Europe.
The days, thank Heaven! are past when Englishmen believed it patriotic
to deny their Gallic neighbours every faculty except those of making a
bow and of eating a frog, while they were repaid by all the weighty
satire comprised in the two impressive words JOHN BULL. We now know
each other better--we have had a long fight, and we shake hands across
the water with all the mutual good-will and respect which is
generated by a hard struggle, bravely sustained on both sides, and
finally terminated by a hearty reconciliation.
The position, the prospects, the prosperity of France are become a
subject of the deepest interest to the English nation; and it is
therefore that the observations of any one who has been a recent
looker-on there may have some value, even though they are professedly
drawn from the surface only. But when did ever the surface of human
affairs present an aspect so full of interest? Now that so many of the
circumstances which have been alluded to above as puzzling and
incongruous have been interpreted by the unexpected events which have
lately crowded upon each other, I feel aware that I have indeed been
looking on upon the dénouement of one of the most interesting
political dramas that ever was enacted. The movements of King Philippe
remind one of those by which a bold rider settles himself in the
saddle, when he has made up his mind for a rough ride, and is quite
determined not to be thrown. When he first mounted, indeed, he took
his seat less firmly; one groom held the stirrup, another the reins:
he felt doubtful how far he should be likely to go--the weather looked
cloudy--he might dismount directly.... But soon the sun burst from
behind the cloud that threatened him: Now for it, then! neck or
nothing! He orders his girths to be tightened, his curb to be well
set, and the reins fairly and horsemanly put into his hands.... Now he
is off! and may his ride be prosperous!--for should he fall, it is
impossible to guess how the dust which such a catastrophe might raise
would settle itself.
The interest which his situation excites is sufficiently awakening,
and produces a species of romantic feeling, that may be compared to
what the spectators experienced in the tournaments of old, when they
sat quietly by to watch the result of a combat _à outrance_. But
greater, far greater is the interest produced by getting a near view
of the wishes and hopes of the great people who have placed their
destinies in his hands.
Nothing that is going on in Paris--in the Chamber of Deputies, in the
Chamber of Peers, or even in the Cabinet of the King--could touch me
so much, or give me half so much pleasure to listen to, as the tone in
which I have heard some of the most distinguished men in France speak
of the repeated changes and revolutions in her government.
It is not in one or two instances only that I have remarked this
tone,--in fact, I might say that I have met it whenever I was in the
society of those whose opinions especially deserved attention. I
hardly know, however, how to describe it, for it cannot be done by
repeating isolated phrases and observations. I should say, that it
marks distinctly a consciousness that such frequent changes are not
creditable to any nation--that they feel half ashamed to talk of them
gravely, yet more than half vexed to speak of the land they love with
anything approaching to lightness or contempt. That the men of whom I
speak do love their country with a true, devoted, Romanlike
attachment, I am quite sure; and I never remember to have felt the
conviction that I was listening to real patriots so strongly as when I
have heard them reason on the causes, deplore the effects, and
deprecate the recurrence of these direful and devastating convulsions.
It is, if I mistake not, this noble feeling of wishing to preserve
their country from the disgrace of any farther demonstrations of such
frail inconstancy, which will tend to keep Louis-Philippe on his
throne as much, or even more perhaps, than that newly-awakened energy
in favour of the _boutique_ and the _bourse_ of which we hear so much.
It is nowise surprising that this proud but virtuous sentiment should
yet exist, notwithstanding all that has happened to check and to chill
it. Frenchmen have still much of which they may justly boast. After a
greater continuance of external war and internal commotion than
perhaps any country was ever exposed to within the same space of time,
France is in no degree behind the most favoured nations of Europe in
any one of the advantages which have ever been considered as among the
especial blessings of peace. Tremendous as have been her efforts and
her struggles, the march of science has never faltered: the fine arts
have been cherished with unremitting zeal and a most constant care,
even while every citizen was a soldier; and now, in this
breathing-time that Heaven has granted her, she presents a spectacle
of hopeful industry, active improvement, and prosperous energy, which
is unequalled, I believe, in any European country except our own.
Can we wonder, then, that the nation is disposed to rally round a
prince whom Fate seems to have given expressly as an anchor to keep
her firm and steady through the heavy swell that the late storms have
left? Can we wonder that feelings, and even principles, are found to
bend before an influence so salutary and so strong?
However irregular the manner in which he ascended the throne,
Louis-Philippe had himself little more to do with it than yielding to
the voice of the triumphant party who called upon him to mount its
troublesome pre-eminence; and at the moment he did so, he might very
fairly have exclaimed--
"If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me
Without my stir."
* * * * *
Never certainly did any event brought on by tumult and confusion give
such fair promise of producing eventually the reverse, as the
accession of King Louis-Philippe to the throne of France.
The manner of this unexpected change itself, the scenes which led to
it, and even the state of parties and of feelings which came
afterwards, all bore a character of unsettled confusion which
threatened every species of misery to the country.
When we look back upon this period, all the events which occurred
during the course of it appear like the rough and ill-assorted
fragments of worsted on the reverse of a piece of tapestry. No one
could guess, not even the agents in them, what the final result would
be. But they were at work upon a design drawn by the all-powerful and
unerring hand of Providence; and strange as the medley has appeared to
us during the process, the whole when completed seems likely to
produce an excellent effect.
The incongruous elements, however, of which the chaos was composed
from whence this new order of things was to arise, though daily and
by slow degrees assuming shape and form, were still in a state of
"most admired disorder" during our abode in Paris. It was impossible
to guess where-unto all those things tended which were evidently in
movement around us; and the signs of the times were in many instances
so contrary to each other, that nothing was left for those who came to
view the land, but to gaze--to wonder, and pass on, without attempting
to reconcile contradictions so totally unintelligible.
But, during the few weeks that have elapsed since I left the capital
of France, this obscurity has been dispersed like a mist. It was the
explosion of an infernal machine that scattered it; but it is the
light of heaven that now shines upon the land, making visible to the
whole world on what foundation rest its hopes, and by what means they
shall be brought to fruition.
Never, perhaps, did even a successful attempt upon the life of an
individual produce results so important as those likely to ensue from
the failure of the atrocious plot against the King of the French and
his sons. It has roused the whole nation as a sleeping army is roused
by the sound of a trumpet. The indifferent, the doubting--nay, even
the adverse, are now bound together by one common feeling: an assassin
has raised his daring arm against France, and France in an instant
assumes an attitude so firm, so bold, so steady, and so powerful, that
all her enemies must quail before it.
As for the wretched faction who sent forth this bloody agent to do
their work, they stand now before the face of all men in the broad
light of truth. High and noble natures may sometimes reason amiss, and
may mistake the worse cause for the better; but however deeply this
may involve them in error, it will not lead them one inch towards
crime. Such men have nothing in common with the republicans of 1835.
From their earliest existence as a party, these republicans have
avowed themselves the unrelenting enemies of all the powers that be:
social order, and all that sustains it, is their abhorrence; and
neither honour, conscience, nor humanity has force sufficient to
restrain them from the most hideous crimes when its destruction is the
object proposed. Honest men of all shades of political opinion must
agree in considering this unbridled faction as the common enemies of
the human race. In every struggle to sustain the laws which bind
society together, their hand is against every man; and the inevitable
consequence must and will be, that every man's hand shall be against
them.
Deplorable therefore as were the consequences of the Fieschi plot in
its partial murderous success, it is likely to prove in its ultimate
result of the most important and lasting benefit to France. It has
given union and strength to her councils, energy and boldness to her
acts; and if it be the will of Heaven that anything shall stay the
plague of insurrection and revolt which, with infection more fearful
than that of the Asiatic pest, has tainted the air of Europe with its
poisonous breath, it is from France, where the evil first arose, that
the antidote to it is most likely to come.
It will be in vain that any republican clamour shall attempt to
stigmatise the acts of the French legislature with the odium of an
undue and tyrannical use of the power which it has been compelled to
assume. The system upon which this legislature has bound itself to act
is in its very nature incompatible with individual power and
individual ambition: its acts may be absolute--and high time is it
that they should be so,--but the absolutism will not be that of an
autocrat.
The theory of the doctrinaire government is not so well, or at least
so generally, understood as it will be; but every day is making it
better known to Europe,--and whether the new principles on which it is
founded be approved or not, its power will be seen to rest upon them,
and not upon the tyrannical will of any man or body of men whatever.
It is not uncommon to hear persons declare that they understand no
difference between the juste-milieu party and that of the
doctrinaires; but they cannot have listened very attentively to the
reasonings of either party.
The juste-milieu party, if I understand them aright, consists of
politicians whose principles are in exact conformity to the expressive
title they have chosen. They approve neither of a pure despotism nor
of a pure democracy, but plead for a justly-balanced constitutional
government with a monarch at its head.
The doctrinaires are much less definite in their specification of the
form of government which they believe the circumstances of France to
require. It might be thought indeed, from some of their speculations,
that they were almost indifferent as to what form the government
should assume, or by what name it should be known to the world,
provided always that it have within itself power and efficacy
sufficient to adopt and carry into vigorous effect such measures as
its chiefs shall deem most beneficial to the country for the time
being. A government formed on these principles can pledge itself by no
guarantee to any particular line of politics, and the country must
rest contented in the belief that its interests shall be cared for by
those who are placed in a situation to control them.
Upon these principles, it is evident that the circumstances in which
the country is placed, internally and externally, must regulate the
policy of her cabinet, and not any abstract theory connected with the
name assumed by her government. Thus despotism may be the offspring of
a republic; and liberty, the gift of a dynasty which has reigned for
ages by right divine.
M. de Carné, a political writer of much ability, in his essay on
parties and "le mouvement actuel," ridicules in a spirit of keen
satire the idea that any order of men in France at the present day
should be supposed to interest themselves seriously for any abstract
political opinion.
"Croit-on bien sérieusement encore," he says, "au mécanisme
constitutionnel--à la multiplicité de ses poids et contre-poids--à
l'inviolabilité sacrée de la pensée dirigeante, combinée avec la
responsabilité d'argent?"...
And again he says,--"Est-il beaucoup d'esprits graves qui attachent
aujourd'hui une importance de premier ordre pour le bien-être moral et
matériel de la race humaine à la substitution d'une présidence
américaine, à la royauté de 1830?"
It is evident from the tone sustained through the whole of this
ingenious essay, that it is the object of M. Carné to convince his
readers of the equal and total futility of every political creed
founded on any fixed and abstract principle. Who is it, he asks, "qui
a établi en France un despotisme dont on ne trouve d'exemple qu'en
remontant aux monarchies de l'Asie?--Napoleon--lequel régnait comme
les Césars Romains, en vertu de la souveraineté du peuple. Qui a
fondé, après tant d'impuissantes tentatives, une liberté sérieuse, et
l'a fait entrer dans nos moeurs au point de ne pouvoir plus lui
résister?--La maison de Bourbon, qui régnait par le droit divin."
In advocating this system of intrusting the right as well as the power
of governing a country to the hands of its rulers, without exacting
from them a pledge that their measures shall be guided by theoretical
instead of practical wisdom, M. Carné naturally refers to his
own--that is to say, the doctrinaire party, and expresses himself
thus:--"Cette disposition à chercher dans les circonstances et dans la
morale privée la seule règle d'action politique, a donné naissance à
un parti qui s'est trop hâté de se produire, mais chez lequel il y a
assez d'avenir pour résister à ses propres fautes. Il serait difficile
d'en formuler le programme, si vaporeux encore, autrement qu'en disant
qu'il s'attache à substituer l'étude des lois de la richesse publique
aux spéculations constitutionnelles, dont le principal résultat est
d'équilibrer sur le papier des forces qui se déplacent inévitablement
dans leur action."
It is certainly possible that this distaste for pledging themselves to
any form or system of government, and the apparent readiness to
accommodate their principles to the exigences of the hour, may be as
much the result of weariness arising from all the restless experiments
they have made, as from conviction that this loose mode of wearing a
political colour, ready to drop it, or change it according to
circumstances, is in reality the best condition in which a great
nation can place itself.
It can hardly be doubted that the French people have become as weary
of changes and experiments as their neighbours are of watching them.
They have tried revolutions of every size and form till they are
satiated, and their spirits are worn out and exhausted by the labour
of making new projects of laws, new charters, and new kings. It is, in
truth, contrary to their nature to be kept so long at work. No people
in the world, perhaps, have equal energy in springing forward to
answer some sudden call, whether it be to pull down a Bastile with
Lafayette, to overturn a throne with Robespierre, to overrun Europe
with Napoleon, or to reorganise a monarchy with Louis-Philippe. All
these deeds could be done with enthusiasm, and therefore they were
natural to Frenchmen. But that the mass of the people should for long
years together check their gay spirits, and submit themselves, without
the recompense of any striking stage effect, to prose over the thorny
theories of untried governments, is quite impossible,--for such a
state would be utterly hostile to the strongest propensities of the
people. "Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop." It is for this
reason that "_la loi bourgeoise_" has been proclaimed; which being
interpreted, certainly means the law of being contented to remain as
they are, making themselves as rich and as comfortable as they
possibly can, under the shelter of a king who has the will and the
power to protect them.
M. Carné truly says,--"Le plus puissant argument que puisse employer
la royauté pour tenir en respect la bourgeoisie, est celui dont usait
l'astrologue de Louis Onze pour avoir raison des capricieuses
velléités de son maître,--'Je mourrai juste trois jours avant votre
majesté.'"
This quotation, though it sound not very courtier-like, may be uttered
before Louis-Philippe without offence; for it is impossible, let one's
previous political bias have been what it will, not to perceive in
every act of his government a firm determination to support and
sustain in honour and in safety the order of things which it has
established, or to perish; and the consequence of this straightforward
policy is, that thousands and tens of thousands who at first
acknowledged his rule only to escape from anarchy, now cling to it,
not only as a present shelter, but as a powerful and sure defence
against the return of the miserable vicissitudes to which they have
been so long exposed.
Among many obvious advantages which the comprehensive principles of
the "doctrine" offered to France under the peculiar circumstances in
which she was placed at the time it was first propagated, was, that it
offered a common resting-place to all who were weary of revolutions,
let them be of what party they would. This is well expressed by M.
Carné when he says,--"Ce parti semble appelé, par ce qu'il a de vague
en lui, à devenir le sympathique lien de ces nombreuses intelligences
dévoyées qui ont pénétré le vide de l'idée politique."
There cannot, I think, be a happier phrase to describe the host who
have bewildered themselves in the interminable mazes of a science so
little understood by the multitude, than this of "_intelligences
dévoyées qui ont pénétré le vide de l'idée politique_." For these, it
is indeed a blessing to have found one common name (vague though it
be) under which they may all shelter themselves, and, without the
slightest reproach to the consistency of their patriotism, join heart
and hand in support of a government which has so ably contrived to
"draw golden opinions from all sorts of men."
In turning over the pages of Hume's History in pursuit of a particular
passage, I accidentally came upon his short and pithy sketch of the
character and position of our Henry the Seventh. In many points it
approaches very nearly to what might be said of Louis-Philippe.
"The personal character of the man was full of vigour, industry, and
severity; deliberate in all his projects, steady in every purpose, and
attended with caution, as well as good fortune, in each enterprise. He
came to the throne after long and bloody civil wars. The nation was
tired with discord and intestine convulsions, and willing to submit to
usurpations and even injuries rather than plunge themselves anew into
like miseries. The fruitless efforts made against him served always,
as is usual, to confirm his authority."
Such a passage as this, and some others with which I occasionally
indulge myself from the records of the days that are gone, have in
them a most consoling tendency. We are apt to believe that the scenes
we are painfully witnessing contain, amidst the materials of which
they are formed, elements of mischief more terrible than ever before
threatened the tranquillity of mankind; yet a little recollection, and
a little confidence in the Providence so visible in every page of the
world's history, may suffice to inspire us with better hopes for the
future than some of our doubting spirits have courage to anticipate.
"The fruitless efforts made against" King Philippe "have served to
confirm his authority," and have done the same good office to him
that similar outrages did to our "princely Tudor" in the fourteenth
century. The people were sick of "discord and intestine convulsions"
in his days: so are they at the present time in France; so will they
be again, at no very distant period, in England.
While congratulating the country I have so recently left, as I do most
heartily, on the very essential improvements which have taken place
since my departure, I feel as if I ought to apologise for some
statements to be found in the preceding pages of these volumes which
if made now might fairly be challenged as untrue. But during the last
few months, letters from France should have been both written and read
post-haste, or the news they contained would not be of much worth. We
left Paris towards the end of June, and before the end of July the
whole moral condition of France had received a shock, and undergone a
change which, though it does not falsify any of my statements, renders
it necessary at least that the tense of many of them should be
altered.
Thus, when I say that an unbounded license in caricaturing prevails,
and that the walls of the capital are scrawled over with grotesque
representations of the sovereign, the errata should have--"for
_prevails_, read _did prevail_; for _are_, read _were_;" and the like
in many other instances.