Democracy in France. January 1849

CHAPTER I.. What Is the Source of the Prevalent Evil?

WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL?

Mirabeau, Barnave, Napoleon, and Lafayette, who died at distant and very dissimilar periods, in bed or on the scaffold, in their own country or in exile, all died under the influence of one sentiment--a sentiment of profound melancholy. They thought their hopes deceived, their labours abortive. They were assailed by doubts of the success of their cause, and by misgivings as to the future.

King Louis-Philippe reigned above seventeen years, for more than eleven of which I had the honour to be his minister. If to-morrow it pleased God to summon us into his presence, should we quit this earth very confident in the future destiny and the constitutional order of our country?

Is then the French Revolution destined to give birth only to doubt and deception?--to bury all its triumphs under ruins?

Yes: so long as France shall suffer the true and the false, the upright and the perverse, the practicable and the chimerical, the salutary and the pestilent to be constantly mingled and confounded in her opinions, her institutions, and the government of her affairs, such will be the unfailing and inevitable result.

Until a people which has gone through a great revolution has passed on the principles, the passions, and the doctrines which have led to this revolution, a sentence like that which shall be passed on all human things at the Last Day, “severing the wheat from the tares, and the corn from the straw that shall be cast into the fire,” it can never surmount the perils, nor reap the advantages, of the struggle in which it has been engaged.

So long as this judgment is deferred, chaos reigns; and chaos, if prolonged in the midst of a people, would be death.

Chaos is now concealed under one word--Democracy.

This is now the sovereign and universal word which all parties invoke, all seek to appropriate as a talisman.

The Monarchists say, “Our Monarchy is a Democratic Monarchy: therefore it differs essentially from the ancient Monarchy, and is adapted to the modern condition of society.”

The Republicans say, “The Republic is Democracy governing itself. This is the only form of government in harmony with a democratic society, its principles, its sentiments, and its interests.”

Socialists, Communists, and Montagnards require that the republic should be a pure and absolute democracy. This, in their estimation, is the condition of its legitimacy.

Such is the power of the word Democracy, that no government or party dares to raise its head, or believes its own existence possible, if it does not bear that word inscribed on its banner; and those who carry that banner aloft with the greatest ostentation and to the extremest limits, believe themselves to be stronger than all the rest of the world.

Fatal idea, which incessantly excites and foments social war amongst us! This idea must be extirpated; for on its extirpation depends social peace, and, in her train, liberty, security, prosperity, dignity, all the benefits, material or moral, which social peace alone can ensure.

The following are the causes to which the word democracy owes its power.

It is the banner of all the social hopes and ambitions of man,--pure or impure, noble or base, rational or irrational, possible or chimerical.

Now it is the glory of man to be ambitious. He alone, of all created beings, does not passively resign himself to evil; he alone incessantly aspires after good; not only for himself, but for his fellow-creatures. He respects and loves the race to which he belongs; he wishes to find a remedy for their miseries, and redress for their wrongs.

But man is no less imperfect than he is ambitious. Amidst his ardent and unceasing struggles to eradicate evil and to achieve good, every one of his virtuous inclinations is accompanied by an evil inclination which treads closely on its heels, or strives with it for precedence. The desire for justice and the desire for vengeance--the spirit of liberty and the spirit of tyranny--the wish to rise and the wish to abase what has risen--the ardent love of truth and the presumptuous temerity of fancied knowledge;--we may fathom all the depths of human nature; we shall find throughout, the same mingled yet conflicting qualities, the same danger from their close and easy approximation.

To all these instincts, at once contrary and parallel,--to all indiscriminately, the bad as well as the good,--the word Democracy holds out an interminable vista and infinite promises. It fosters every propensity, it speaks to every passion, of the heart of man; to the most generous and the most shameful, the most moral and the most immoral, the gentlest and the harshest, the most beneficent and the most destructive: to the former it loudly offers, to the latter it secretly and dimly promises, satisfaction.

Such is the secret of its power.

I am wrong in saying, the secret. The word Democracy is not new, and in all ages it has signified what it signifies now. But what is new and proper to our times is this: the word Democracy is now pronounced every day, every hour, and in every place; and at every time and place it is heard by all men. This formidable appeal to all that is most potent, for good and for evil, in man and in society, was formerly heard only transiently, locally, and among certain classes, which, though bound to other classes by the ties of a common country, were distinct and profoundly different from them. They lived at a distance from each other; each obscurely known to the other. Now there is but one society; and in this society there are no more lofty barriers, no more great distances, no more mutual obscurities. Whether it be false or true, noxious or salutary, when once a social idea arises, it penetrates everywhere, and its action is universal and constant. It is a torch that is never extinguished; a voice that is never wearied or hushed. Universality and publicity are from henceforth the conditions of all the great provocations addressed to men,--of all the great impulses given to society.

This is doubtless one of those absolute and sovereign facts which enter into the designs of God with regard to mankind.

Such being the fact, the empire of the word Democracy is not to be regarded as a transitory or local accident. It is the development--others would say the explosion--of all the elements of human nature throughout all the ranks and all the depths of society; and consequently the open, general, continuous, inevitable struggle of its good and evil instincts; of its virtues and its vices; of all its powers and faculties, whether to improve or to corrupt, to raise or to abase, to create or to destroy. Such is, from henceforth, the social state, the permanent condition of our nation.

CHAPTER II.. What Is the Duty of Government With Respect to Democracy?

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO DEMOCRACY?

There are men whom this fearful struggle does not alarm: they have full confidence in human nature. According to them, if left to itself, its progress is towards good: all the evils of society arise from governments which debase men by violence or corrupt them by fraud: liberty--liberty for everybody and everything--liberty will almost always suffice to enlighten or to control the wills of men, to prevent evil or to cure it: a little government--the least possible--may be allowed for the repression of extreme disorder and the control of brute force.

Others have a more summary way of disposing of all dread of the triumph of evil in man or in society. There is, they say, no such thing as natural and necessary evil, since no human inclination is bad in itself; it becomes so, only when it does not attain the end after which it aspires--it is a torrent which overflows its banks when obstructed. If society were organized in such a manner that each of the instincts of man found its proper place and received its due satisfaction, evil would disappear, strife would cease, and all the various forces of humanity, harmoniously combine to produce social order.

The former of these speculators misunderstand man; the latter misunderstand man, and deny God.

Let any man dive into his own heart and observe himself with attention. If he have the power to look, and the will to see, he will behold, with a sort of terror, the incessant war waged by the good and evil dispositions within him--reason and caprice, duty and passion; in short, to call them all by their comprehensive names, good and evil. We contemplate with anxiety the outward troubles and vicissitudes of human life; but what should we feel if we could behold the inward vicissitudes, the troubles of the human soul?--if we could see how many dangers, snares, enemies, combats, victories, and defeats can be crowded into a day--an hour? I do not say this to discourage man, nor to humble or under-value his free will. He is called upon to conquer in the battle of life, and the honour of the conquest belongs to his free will. But victory is impossible, and defeat certain, if he has not a just conception and a profound feeling of his dangers, his weaknesses, and his need of assistance. To believe that the free will of man tends to good, and is of itself sufficient to accomplish good, betrays an immeasurable ignorance of his nature. It is the error of pride; an error which tends to destroy both moral and political order; which enfeebles the government of communities no less than the government of the inward man.

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