Part 14

'Every individual stands defenceless and insulated in the face of this unscrupulous Executive with its thousands of armed hands and its thousands of watching eyes. The only opposition that is ventured is the abstaining from voting. Whatever be the office, whatever be the man, the candidate of the préfet comes in; but if he is a man who would have been universally rejected in a state of freedom, the bolder electors show their indignation by their absence. I do not believe that, even with peace, and with the prosperity which usually accompanies peace, such a Government could long keep down such a country as France. Whether its existence would be prolonged by a successful war I will not decide. Perhaps it might be.

'That it cannot carry on a war only moderately successful, or a war which from its difficulties and its distance may be generally believed to be ill managed, still less a war stained by some real disaster, seems to me certain--if anything in the future of France can be called certain.

'The vast democratic sea on which the Empire floats is governed by currents and agitated by ground-swells, which the Government discovers only by their effects. It knows nothing of the passions which influence these great, apparently slumbering, masses; indeed it takes care, by stifling their expression, to prevent their being known. Universal suffrage is a detestable element of government, but it is a powerful revolutionary instrument'

'But,' I said, 'the people will not have an opportunity of using that instrument. All the great elective bodies have some years before them.'

'That is true,' said Tocqueville, 'and therefore their rage will break out in a more direct, and perhaps more formidable, form. Depend on it, this Government can exist, even for a time, only on the condition of brilliant, successful war, or prosperous peace. It is bound to be rapidly and clearly victorious. If it fail in this, it will sink--or perhaps, in its terrors and its struggles, it will catch at the other alternative, peace.

'The French public is too ignorant to care much about Russian aggrandisement. So far as it fancies that the strength of Russia is the weakness of England, it is pleased with it. I am not sure that the most dishonourable peace with Nicholas would not give to Louis Napoleon an immediate popularity. I am sure that it would, if it were accompanied by any baits to the national vanity and cupidity; by the offer of Savoy for instance, or the Balearic Islands. And if you were to quarrel with us for accepting them, it would be easy to turn against you our old feelings of jealousy and hatred.'

We saw vast columns of smoke on the other side of the river. Those whom we questioned believed them to arise from an intentional fire. Such fires are symptoms of popular discontent. They preceded the revolution of 1830. They have become frequent of late in this country.

Monday, April 10.--Tocqueville and I drove this morning to Azy-le-Rideau, another Francis I. château, on an island formed by the Indre. It is less beautifully situated than Chenonceaux; the river Indre is smaller and more sluggish than the Cher; the site of the castle is in a hollow, and the trees round it approach too near, and are the tall and closely planted poles which the French seem to admire. But the architecture, both in its outlines and in its details, is charming. It is of white stone, in this form, with two curtains and four towers. The whole outside and the ceilings and cornices within are covered with delicate arabesques.

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Like Chenonceaux, it escaped the revolution, and is now, with its furniture of the sixteenth century, the residence of the Marquis de Biancourt, descended from its ancient proprietors.

As we sauntered over the gardens, our conversation turned on the old aristocracy of France.

'The loss of our aristocracy,' said Tocqueville, 'is a misfortune from which we have not even begun to recover. The Legitimists are their territorial successors; they are the successors in their manners, in their loyalty, and in their prejudices of caste; but they are not their successors in cultivation, or intelligence, or energy, or, therefore, in influence. Between them and the bourgeoisie is a chasm, which shows no tendency to close. Nothing but a common interest and a common pursuit will bring them together.

'If the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had not made them recoil in terror and disgust from Napoleon, they might have perhaps been welded into one mass with his new aristocracy of services, talents, and wealth. They were ready to adhere to him during the Consulate. During the Restoration they were always at war with the bourgeoisie, and therefore with the constitution, on which the power of their enemies depended. When the result of that war was the defeat and expulsion of their leader, Charles X., their hostility extended from the bourgeoisie and the constitution up to the Crown. Louis Philippe tried to govern by means of the middle classes alone. Perhaps it was inevitable that he should make the attempt. It certainly was inevitable that he should fail. The higher classes, and the lower classes, all equally offended, combined to overthrow him. Under the Republic they again took, to a certain extent, their place in the State. They led the country people, who came to the assistance of the Assembly in June 1848. The Republic was wise enough to impose no oaths. It did not require those who were willing to serve it to begin by openly disavowing their traditionary opinions and principles. The Legitimists took their places in the Conseils-généraux. They joined with the bourgeoisie in local administration, the only means by which men of different classes can coalesce.

'The socialist tendencies which are imputed to this Second Empire, the oath which it most imprudently imposes, its pretensions to form a dynasty and its assertion of the principle most abhorrent to them, elective monarchy, have thrown them back into disaffection. And I believe their disaffection to be one of our great dangers--a danger certainly increased by the Fusion. The principal object of the Fusion is to influence the army. The great terror of the army is division in itself. It will accept anything, give up anything, dare anything, to avoid civil war. Rather than be divided between the two branches, it would have adhered to the Empire. Now it can throw off the Bonapartes without occasioning a disputed succession.'

'When you say,' I asked, 'that the Legitimists are not the successors of the old aristocracy in cultivation, intelligence, or energy, do you mean to ascribe to them positive or relative inferiority in these qualities?'

'In energy,' answered Tocqueville, 'their deficiency is positive. They are ready to suffer for their cause, they are not ready to exert themselves for it. In intelligence and cultivation they are superior to any other class in France; but they are inferior to the English aristocracy, and they are inferior, as I said before, to their ancestors of the eighteenth century. There existed in the highest Parisian society towards the end of that century a comprehensiveness of curiosity and inquiry, a freedom of opinion, an independence, and soundness of judgment, never seen before or since. Its pursuits, its pleasures, its admirations, its vanities, were all intellectual. Look at the success of Hume. His manners were awkward; he was a heavy, though an instructive, converser; he spoke bad French; he would pass now for an intelligent bore. But such was the worship then paid to talents and knowledge--especially to knowledge, and talents employed on the destruction of prejudices--that Hume was, for years, the lion of all the salons of Paris. The fashionable beauties quarrelled for the fat philosopher. Nor was their admiration or affection put on, or even transitory. He retained some of them as intimate friends for life. If the brilliant talkers and writers of that time were to return to life, I do not believe that gas, or steam, or chloroform, or the electric telegraph, would so much astonish them as the dulness of modern society, and the mediocrity of modern books.'

In the evening we discussed the new scheme of throwing open the service of India and of the Government offices to public competition.

'We have followed,' said Tocqueville, 'that system to a great extent for many years. Our object was twofold. One was to depress the aristocracy of wealth, birth, and connexions. In this we have succeeded.

The École Polytechnique, and the other schools in which the vacancies are given to those who pass the best examinations, are filled by youths belonging to the middle classes, who, undistracted by society, or amusement, or by any literary or scientific pursuits, except those immediately bearing on their examinations, beat their better-born competitors, who will not degrade themselves into the mere slaves of success in the concours. Our other object was to obtain the best public servants. In that we have failed. We have brought knowledge and ability to an average; diminished the number of incompetent employés, and reduced, almost to nothing, the number of distinguished ones. Continued application to a small number of subjects, and those always the same, not selected by the student, but imposed on him by the inflexible rule of the establishment, without reference to his tastes or to his powers, is as bad for the mind as the constant exercise of one set of muscles would be for the body.

'We have a name for those who have been thus educated. They are called "polytechnisés." If you follow our example, you will increase your second-rates, and extinguish your first-rates; and what is perhaps a more important result, whether you consider it a good or an evil, you will make a large stride in the direction in which you have lately made so many--the removing the government and the administration of England from the hands of the higher classes into those of the middle and lower ones.'

CORRESPONDENCE.

Paris, Sunday, May 14, 1854.

My dear Tocqueville,--I write to you in meditatione fugæ. We start for England in an hour's time. The last news that I heard of you was the day before yesterday from Cousin. He read me your letter, which sounded to me like that of a man in not very bad health or hopes. I trust that the attack of which Madame de Tocqueville wrote to us has quite passed off.

Thiers, who asked very anxiously after you to-day, is earnest that you should be present at the election on the 18th. The Academy, he said, is very jealous. Vous serez très-mal vu, if you do not come.

You are at last going seriously to work in the war. By the end of the year you will have, military and naval, 700,000 men in arms.

I wish that they were nearer to the enemy.

Pray remember us most kindly to Madame de Tocqueville, and let us know where you go as soon as you are decided.

Ever yours,