OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.
I shall not speak of the republican form of government otherwise than
with respect. Considered in itself, it is a noble form of government. It
has called forth great virtues; it has presided over the destiny and the
glory of great nations.
But a republican government has the same vocation, the same duties, as
any other government. Its name gives it no claim to dispensation or
privilege. It must satisfy both the general and permanent wants of human
society, and the particular wants of the particular community which it
is called to govern.
The permanent want of every community,--the first and most imperious
want of France at the present day,--is, peace in the bosom of society
itself.
A great deal has been said about unity and social fraternity. These are
sublime words, but they ought not to make us forget facts. Nothing has a
more certain tendency to ruin a people than a habit of accepting words
and appearances as realities. Whilst the shouts of unity and fraternity
resound among us, they are responded to by social war, flagrant or
imminent, terrible from the evils it causes, or from those it seems
likely to cause.
I will not dwell on this grievous wound. Yet in order to cure, we ought
to touch, and even to probe it. It is an old wound. The history of
France is filled with the struggle between the different classes of
society, of which the Revolution of 1789 was the most general and mighty
explosion. The contests between nobility and commonalty, aristocracy and
democracy, masters and workmen, those possessing property and those
dependent on wages, are all different forms and phases of the social
struggle which has so long agitated France. And it is at the very moment
when we are boasting of having reached the summit of civilization--it is
while the most humane words that can issue from the lips of man are
ringing in our ears, that this struggle is revived more violently, more
fiercely than ever!
This is a curse and a shame, of which we, and the age we live in, must
rid ourselves. Internal peace, peace among all classes of citizens, is
the paramount want, the only chance for the salvation of France.
Will the Democratic Republic give us this peace?
It did not begin well. When scarcely born, a civil war was its first
necessity--most unfortunately for the republic. Governments find great
difficulty in rising out of their cradles. Will the Democratic Republic
succeed in the attempt? If time is allowed to it, will it restore social
peace?
There is one circumstance which strikes me powerfully, and causes me
great anxiety: that is, the ardour manifested by the republic to be
expressly and officially called democratic.
The United States of America are universally admitted to be the model of
a Republic and a Democracy. Did it ever enter the head of the American
people to call the United States a Democratic Republic?
No; nor is this astonishing. In that country there was no struggle
between Aristocracy and Democracy; between an ancient aristocratical
society and a new democratic society: on the contrary, the leaders of
society in the United States, the descendants of the first colonists,
the majority of the principal planters in the country and the principal
merchants in the towns, who constituted the natural aristocracy of the
country, placed themselves at the head of the revolution and the
republic. The devotion, energy, and constancy which they showed in the
cause, were greater than those displayed by the people. The conquest of
their independence, and the foundation of the republic, was not, then,
the work and the victory of certain classes over certain other classes;
it was the joint work of all, led by the highest, the wealthiest, and
the most enlightened, who had often great difficulty in rallying the
spirit and sustaining the courage of the mass of the population.
Whenever officers were to be chosen for the bodies of troops formed in
the several States, Washington gave this advice:--“Take none but
gentlemen: they are the most trustworthy, as well as the ablest.”
A republican government has more need than any other of the co-operation
of every class of its citizens: if the mass of the population does not
zealously adopt it, it has no root; if the higher classes are hostile or
indifferent to it, it can enjoy no security. In either case, it is
reduced to the necessity of oppressing. It is precisely because in a
republic the authority of the government is weak and precarious, that it
stands in need of great moral support from the society over which it
presides. Which are the republics that have lived long and honourably,
overcoming the defects and the storms incident to their institutions?
Those only in which the republican spirit was sincere and general; which
obtained, on the one side, the attachment and the confidence of the
people, and on the other the decided support of the classes who, by
their position, fortune, education, and habits, bring into public life
the largest share of natural authority, tranquil independence,
knowledge, and leisure. On these conditions only can a republic be
established or maintained; for on these conditions only can it exist
without troubling the peace of society, and without condemning its
government to the deplorable alternative of the disorganization of
anarchy, or the rigid tension of tyranny.
The United States of America enjoyed this singular good fortune, but it
is denied to the French Republic. Indeed this is not only admitted, but
proclaimed and vaunted, by its authors. What is the meaning of the words
_Democratic Republic_ now current amongst us, and adopted as the
official name, the symbol of the government? It is the echo of an
ancient social war-cry--a cry which is still raised, still repeated in
every class of society; still angrily uttered against one class by
another, which, in its turn, hears it with terror directed against
itself. All are in turn democrats as against those above them,
aristocrats as against those below; threatening and threatened, envious
or envied, and exhibiting continual and revolting changes of position,
attitude, and language, and a deplorable confusion of conflicting ideas
and passions. It is war in the midst of chaos.
But I hear it said, “This war is a fact--it is the dominant fact of our
history, our society, and our revolution. Such facts can neither be
hidden nor passed over in silence, and this is become final and
decisive. It is not war that we proclaimed in proclaiming a Democratic
Republic, it is victory--the victory of Democracy. Democracy has
conquered, and remains alone on the field of battle. She raises her
visor, announces her name, and takes possession of her conquest.”
Such an answer is dictated by illusion or by hypocrisy. How does a
government, whether democratic or not, assert and prove its victory,
when that victory is real and decisive? By restoring peace. Thus, and
thus alone, could the Democratic Republic have proved that it had
conquered. But does peace reign in France? Is it even approaching? Do
the various elements of society, willingly or unwillingly, satisfied or
resigned, really believe in the existence and permanence of peace, and
come to seek tranquillity, order, and protection under the shelter of
the Democratic Republic? Listen to the comments on the title assumed by
the republican government which are universally heard; see the striking
and menacing facts which are continually occurring, and which are the
consequence or the proof of those comments. Is this state of things
peace? Is there, I will not say the reality, but the bare appearance, of
one of those energetic, wise, and conclusive victories which put an end,
for a time at least, to social conflicts, and secure a long truce to
harassed nations?
There are facts of such magnitude, clearness, and prominence, that no
human force or fraud can succeed in hiding them. It is in vain that you
repeat that the days of fraternity are come; that Democracy, such as you
establish it, puts an end to all hostilities or conflicts of classes,
and assimilates and unites all orders of citizens. The truth, the
terrible truth, gleams through these vain words. Interests, passions,
pretensions, situations, and classes conflict on every side, with all
the fury of boundless hopes and boundless fears. It is clear that the
first acts of the Democratic Republic threaten to plunge herself and us
into the chaos of social war.
And does she give us arms for our defence, or open to us issues for our
escape?
I pass over the name she assumes; I turn to the political ideas she
proclaims as laws for the government of the state: so far from
diminishing my anxiety, these serve but to increase it. For if the
banner of the Democratic Republic appears to me to bear the inscription
of social war, its constitution seems to me to lead directly to
revolutionary despotism. I find in it no distinct powers, possessed of
sufficient inherent strength to exercise a reciprocal control; no solid
ramparts, under the shelter of which various rights and interests can
take root and flourish in safety; no organization of guarantees; no
balance of powers in the centre of the state and at the head of
government--nothing but a single motive force and various wheels; a
master and his agents; nothing between the personal liberty of the
citizens and the bare will of the numerical majority: the principle of
despotism, checked by the right of insurrection.
Such is the position of the Democratic Republic with relation to social
order; such, with relation to political order, is the government which
it constitutes.
What can be the result? Assuredly neither peace nor liberty.
When the republic was proclaimed, in the midst of general and profound
alarm, one sentiment prevailed. A great number of men attached to the
interests of their country, said, or thought, “Let us wait; let us
try--perhaps the republic will be different now from what it was
heretofore; let the experiment be tried--let it not be disturbed by
violence: we shall see the result.”
They kept their word; they have excited no troubles, they have raised no
obstacles, to disturb or to impede the progress of the republic.
The same sentiment prevailed throughout Europe--a sentiment inspired, no
doubt, by prudence, and not by any cordiality or hope: but the motives
which influenced Europe signify little; the important fact is, that no
act, no danger from without troubles the French Republic in the
experiment of its foundation.
On the other hand, justice compels us to acknowledge that the leaders
of the republic have endeavoured to belie the predictions of its
adversaries and the fears of the public. They have respected the faith
of men. They have fought--very late, it is true, but at last they have
fought--for the existence of society. They have not broken the peace of
Europe, and they have striven to maintain the public credit. These
meritorious efforts do honour to the men invested with power, and show,
moreover, what the general instincts of the country are. But these men
can only retard, they cannot arrest, the downward course of the state on
a fatal declivity; they can find no firm footing, and lose ground at
every step. They have sunk into the revolutionary rut; and though they
struggle not to plunge deeper into it, they cannot, or they dare not,
quit it. The acts of the republic are not, in all points, what they
formerly were; but the republic is what it was. Whether as to social
organization or political institutions, the conditions of order or the
securities for liberty, the republic has nothing better to offer than
what she offered fifty years ago. There are the same ideas, the same
crude and rash experiments, often even the same forms and the same
words. Strange spectacle! The authors of the republic are afraid of
their own work, and would fain change its character and aspect; but they
can produce nothing but a copy.
How long, whatever be its ultimate success or failure, the present
attempt will last, nobody knows. But hitherto France has evidently
reason to fear that its first and paramount interests--social peace and
political liberty--will be placed, or left, by the Democratic Republic,
in immense danger.