Democracy and monarchy in France from the inception of the great revolution to the overthrow of the second empire

Front matter

Ml/JP-I

Democracy and Monarchy

FRANCE

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I.— INTKODUCTORY 1

II.— The Philosophers op the Revolution 33

Preface

IiT the winter of 1872-'3, I delivered a course of University Lectures on the Politics of France since the Great Kevolution, and the studies begun in the preparation of those lectures have resulted in the present volume.

At the time when the work was undertaken, there was everywhere prevalent a more or less general astonishment at the political weakness of France, as displayed after the outbreak of the Franco-German War. In the course of lectures referred to, it was my effort to show that the present political character of the French people is the legitimate result of certain doctrines and habits that have been taking root in the nation during the past hundred years. The same purpose has animated the preparation of the present volume.

It seems to me that every genuine student of history must feel that there is no more potent political truth than this, that the present has its roots running far back into the past, and that it draws its life from the ideas and institutions that have gone before, just as certainly as the vegetation of to-day receives its nourishment from the decaying remains of preceding organic life. I think that one of the most extraordinary examples in illustration of this truth, is to be found in the modern political life of France. Moreover, the lesson taught by this example is as valuable as it is extraordinary ; for it brings vividly before us the general truth, that while, on the one hand, the present is the child of the past, on the other, it is in its turn to be the parent of the future.

What the political role of France is hereafter to be, it were idle to predict. I think every one that follows these pages

Ylii PBEFAGE.

through, and assents to the positions taken, will agree with me in the belief that the great present need of Prance is the destruction of what I have called the revolutionary spirit ; and that if this destruction is impossible (as very likely it is), the need next in importance is the establishment of such a government as will make the revolutionary spirit powerless. So long as this revolutionary spirit is dominant, every effort for the establishment of liberty is likely to result in anarchy ; and anarchy, it must be confessed, is worse than tyranny. Something, whatever it is, that the nation can agree to for a permanent form of government^ is, of all things, what is needed ; and I can but think that the positions taken by President MacMahon, to maintain his power at all hazards to the end of his legal term, are, in spite of many objectionable features, in the general interest of this necessary permanence. It is quite possible that this course will result in the accession of the Prince Imperial ; but that the nation would be content to accept permanently of anything better than some form of Napoleonism, bad as every form of it is, seems to be growing more and more improbable.

Two of the chapters of this volume, the one on The Hise of N'apoleonism, and the one on Universal Suffrage under the Second Empire^ were published, in a somewhat abridged form, in the North Afmerican Heview in 1873. The courteous permission of Messrs. J. R. Osgood & Co. to republish them, is gratefully acknowledged.

I would also express my gratitude to my friend and colleague, Professor Henry B. Hutchins, to whom I am indebted for valuable suggestions and assistance in the final preparation of the work for the press.

C. K. A.

University op Michigan, ) September, 1874. {

INTRODUOTOEY.

" All questions of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought to have, different institutions : government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society ; and what this power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on it." — Mill^ Autobiography, p. 162.

T::m

Democeact and Monarchy in France.

Chapter I Ii^troductoey

AT the beginning of the late Franco-German war, the prediction was more or less common in France, in England, and in the United States, that the advance of Napoleon III. would be little less than a repetition of the Jena campaign, and that within sixty days the French eagles would be in possession of Berlin. It was within less than sixty days that the French armies were shattered in pieces, and the French emperor was a prisoner of war. How completely had men of ordinary political intelligence, almost everywhere, been deceived in their estimation of the comparative strength of these two hostile nations ! As the war progressed, it became more and more certain that the government which, fifty years before, had been one of the weakest, was now the strongest power in Europe, and that the one which, in the time of Napoleon I., had been the strongest,

4 DEMOCRACY AND MOJS'ARCHT IN FRANCE

was, under Napoleon III., apparently one of tlie ■weakest.

Now what is the history of this mutual exchange of strength and weakness ? How does a nation become strong ? How does a nation lose the strength which it has once acquired ?

These are questions which it would be presumptive to attempt to answer in full ; and yet each of the nations to which I have just referred has characteristics which have exerted a definite and powerful influence, and which, I believe, may be studied with profit. Let us glance at some of the most prominent of them.

The brilliant historian of the Eestoration begins his history wnth these words : — " I scarcely exceed the middle age of man, yet I have already lived under ten dominations, or ten different governments, in France. Between infancy and maturity I have witnessed ten revolutions — ten cataracts, by which the spirit of modern liberty and the stationary or obstructive spirit have endeavored by turns to descend or to remount the declivity of revolutions."

Had Lamartine written his history in 1873, instead of 1849, he might have made his figure still more impressive. During the eighty years and more v/hicli have elapsed since the outbreak of the Great Revolution, France has had no less than fifteen distinct governments, every one of which has been the direct or indirect result of revolution. The old monarchy was first succeeded

INTBODUGTOBY. 5

by a democratic monarcliy, and then by a pure ochlocracy. Following this there was a republic, which, in turn, gave way to the military government. This assumed three distinct forms : that of a republican consulate, that of a life consulate or elective Dionarchy, and that of a hereditary empire. The government of the Restoration followed, and w^as in turn overthrown to make way for the Napoleonic rule of the Hundred Days. The Bourbons were reinstated only to be driven from the stage by the House of Orleans in 1830 ; the Orleans Dynasty was displaced by a second republic; and this latter, after three years, gave way to a second consulate and a second empire. Then came the military rule of Gambetta, only to be followed by the provisional administrations of Thiers and McMahon.

Each of these governments, moreover, presented to the nation a constitution formed in its own likeness. The law of nature was generally reversed ; for in almost every instance the government, instead of being the child of the constitution, was its parent. To the democratic monarchy corresponds the constitution of the 14th of September, 1791 ; to the republic, that of the 15th fructidor of the year III. ; to the limited consulate, that of the 22d frimaire of the year VIII. ; to the consulate for life, the Senatus Consultum of the 16th thermidor of the year X. ; to the empire, that of the 14th florcal of the year XII. ; to the Eestoration, the Charter of June 14th, 1814; to the Hundred Days,

Q DEMOCRACY AND MONARCHY IN FRANCE.

the Acte Additionel of April 22cl, 1815 ; to the accession of the House of Orleans, that of the 9th of August, 1830 ; to the Revolution of 1848, that of September 4th of the same year; and to the second empire, the Senatns Consultum of January 14th, 1852. To use a figure of the old Due de Broglie, some of these constitutions were stillborn, others immediately slew the authors of their existence, others committed suicide ; and yet they all have a place in French history, not for their intrinsic merit but rather for the purpose of illustrating that condition of a:ffairs which has made so much turbulence possible.

Take another view of the same period. During the whole of this time the Great Revolution has been before the eyes or in the minds of the French people. It has been a sort of dream, a confused souvenir in the national memory. In every one of those revolutionary movements just named the people hoped to realize the full fruition of the ideas and principles on which that great upheaval was founded. But they have constantly failed to see more than one of the two sides of the Revolution. That great event represents not only the destruction of the old monarchic despotism and the creation of armies whose victorious tread was heard in every quarter of Europe save in England ; it represented the creation of a general revolutionary spirit, which, if uncontrolled by predominating elements of stability, is as much worse for a nation than absolutism, as anarchy is worse

INTRODTJGTOBY. Y

than tyranny. And wliat is the prevalence of a revolutionary spirit in a nation ? In answer it must be said that it is nothing less than the claim of the ignorant and the passionate to sit in authoritative judgment on every act of the government. Now such a claim must evidently be injurious just in propoi'tion to its strength. As a general truth, it may be said that ignorance, especially when united with strong passion, chafes under restraint and tries to resist it. But no government can long exist without imposing such restraint, and therefore every good government is more or less unpopular, whenever it becomes necessary to control masses of people who are ignorant and whose ignorance is set on fire by passion. Nothing is more familiar to even the most cursory reader of history than the fact that some of the best of rulers have been least beloved, and that some of the worst have been most popular. The cause of this seeming paradox is in the fact that in turbulent times good government means restraint, while bad government means anarchy: in every nation, therefore, when the anarchic, or, what is the same thing, the revolutionary spirit is strong, any government whatever that is w^orthy the name of government will be more or less unpopular. Unite poverty with ignorance and passion, and then take away from them that respect for law and order which the revolutionary spirit always destroys, and you have the most difficult elements to control that can ever tax the energies of any government. Poverty, ignorance, and passion always abound ; when, therefore, the anarchic spirit is generally prevalent, good government is well-nigh, if not indeed quite, impossible.

Now, looking at the matter historically, what has been the spirit of the leading minds in France since the Great Eevolation ? ISTot to enter at this time into details, it may be said that the prevailing spirit of what may be called the predominant elements of society has been one of chronic discontent. I say clironic discontent, because the spirit to which I refer has not shown itself once or twice only, but has pervaded to a great extent the whole course of French history ever since the beginning of the present century. Speaking historically, it may be said that whenever the nation has a republican form of government there is a large faction which not only |)ref ers monarchy, but, for the purpose of setting it up, is ready to overthrow the government which exists. Whenever in turn royalty assumes the rule, there is an equally powerful faction seeking opportunities to rise up for its overthrow. The incoming governments have generally been popular for a time ; but, if they have chanced to have in them the elements of stability, their popularity has ceased, and passionate admiration has given way and been followed by equally passionate execration. The controlling elements in the nation, beset with the vision of 1789, have, in every new emergency, entrusted the power to that species of government which at

INTBODTJCTORY. 9

the moment gave most reason for tlie hope that it would apply and develop the principles of the Revolution. The result has been one of almost unvarying uniformity. The new government, either selfishly, or, as has sometimes occurred, in the real interests of the nation, has uniformly extended its powers, that is to say, has consolidated and perfected the restoration of a substantial authority. At the expiration of ,a dozen years, more or less, the people find, or think they find, that they have been deceived ; discontent becomes rife ; some faction or other gets the public ear ; the government is overturned, and instantly one of another kind is establislied, which only makes haste to imitate in its life and its death the example of its predecessor. In this vfay it has occurred that since 1789 France has had ten or twelve different governments which have resulted simply from couj^s de /b7^(?(?— governments not a single one of which has been the spontaneous expression of the ' sober national will — ten or twelve governments which have been usurpations, and usurpations, too, in the precise and scientific sense of the term. Upon an average, once in seven or eight years, violence has overthrown the established authority and created in its place a new government, which was in turn to be destroyed by the very hand which had created it. No history has been so variable ; and yet its very variety has been monotonous.

In order to appreciate the extent to which this substitution of force for law has been carried, one must consider not only the revolutions that have been successful, but also those that have failed. In addition to the events already enumerated, there have been no less than fifteen insurrections that have actually broken out, besides a still greater number that have been suppressed or prevented when on the point of committing the first overt act. Then, too, we are not to forget the violent measures committed either by the government or against it in disregard of the regular processes of law. Call to mind the massacres of September, the death of Louis XVI., the Reign of Terror, the death of the Due d'Enghien, the Massacres of 1816, the 2d of December, 1851, the Massacres of the Commune in 1871, the Infernal Machine under the Consulate, the attempt of Louvel just after the Restoration, those of Alibaud, Fieschi, and others under Louis Philippe, and of Orsini under IN^apoleon III. These facts, taken together, are quite enough to justify the declaration of Janet, that for the last eighty years France seems to have been abandoned to the domination of Siva, that fierce god of destruction whom the people of India adoi'e and whom the mystic prophecy of Joseph de Maistre has made so real to the nation. One would not be much amiss in saying of France as Petrarch said of Verona, that, Acteon-like, she has been torn by her own dogs.

It need, perhaps, hardly be said, and yet the fact is important, that such a tendency to turbulence is destructive of all healthy national

INTR on UGTOR Y. \\

growtli. A nation, like an individual, tliat is always changing its policy and its method of life, may properly be said to lose its personality. In France there has been so ready a disposition to brush aside old forms, often apparently for the simple reason that they are old, that one could almost believe that the highest ambition of the nation had been, at each new crisis, to forget the past and to begin the erection of the political structure completely anew. While the other great nations of Europe have been making slow but steady progress in paths that have been worn by years and centuries of historic sequence, the French have seemed to be chiefly desirous of breaking out of the path which at the moment they happened to be in, to be ever on the watch for some means of overthrowing the existing government. There has been a manifest want of that continuity of political method which is essential to a complete development of national personality, and which can only result from an organic and historic growth. Hence, it has happened, that whenever a new crisis has arisen, instead of attempting to harmonize the requirements of the time with the usages and traditions of tJie previous national life, the policy has been rather to ignore those traditions and to settle the difficulties at hand by tlie application of such abstract principles of politic{d philosophy as at the moment happened to be dominant.

INTow, this revolutionajy spirit, this spirit whose chief cliaracterlstic would seem to be that it is habitually and from principle fonder of that which it has not than of that which it has, is probably the most important fact of modern French history. As we proceed, I think it will become apparent that this revolutionary spirit is at once an impor- '"tant cause and an important result; a result of certain ideas which came to be more or less prevalent at the time of the Ee volution, and a cause of much of that weakness which France revealed to the astonished world in the course of the late war.

Now, in the way of contrast with these characteristics, let us look for a moment at those of Prussia. The Prussian government has always been of a severe type, and sometimes it has been grossly tyrannical ; and yet as a historical fact, the loyalty of the people to the reigning house and the prevailing methods of government, has been earnest and uninterrupted. During all the vicissitudes of its history, the government has retained its hold upon the people, and the people, by the exercise of a steady policy, have wrested from their rulers one right after another, until at last a parliamentary government, which is substantially free, has been established. Liberty in Prussia has been a growth rather than a creation, and a very slow growth at that. It began in an absolutism, in many respects like that of the Normans in England ; and the history of England from the time of the Conquest to the present, has in Germany been more closely imitated

INTRODUCTORY. ][3

than that of any other nation. While France has been spending its energies in attempting to leap at a single bound into a political condition similar to that of England, Germany has been content to follow— if need be, afar off — evidently in a kind of all-sufficing conviction that a steady pace, even though a slow one, if in the right direction, would finally bring the nation to the desired goal.

The spirit to which I refer finds good illustration in the Prussian Eeform Bill of 1872. This important constitutional measure was designed to extend the sphere of local self-government in the rural districts. Having passed the Lower House, it was defeated by the peers ; whereupon the King, after the English method, appealed to the country by dissolving Parliament and ordering a new election. The bill was passed a second time by the representatives, but the House of Lords still held out. The King then resorted to his prerogative, and created a sufficient number of new peers to carry the measure in a constitutional manner. Thus the Prussian Eeform Bill of 1872 followed in the footsteps of the English Eeform of forty years before.

But there are other characteristics of France and Germany which, by way of contrast, are scarcely less worthy of our attention. Foremost among them is the general question of education, — not merely the amount and quality of education afforded by the schools, but the whole of that system of preliminary training which these nations demand of a man before he is regarded as fitted for tlie bnsiness of life.

We in America all admit, tliongli I think in a somewhat apathetic manner, that the safety of the nation depends in great measure upon education, as well as upon morality. We have devoted large energies to the education and elevation of the masses, but I fear that we have sometimes forgotten that the masses are always directed by the few, and that consequently it is no less essential that the few be in every way qualified for giving the best direction, than that the masses be qualified to recognize and accept such direction. We have heard much of generous legislative provisions for education in the United States, and j)erhaps on the whole the credit which our country has received, has been fairly earned ; and yet it has to be admitted, that, while millions have been bestowed on our common schools, our higher institutions of learning have received next to nothing. While our common schools have been amply provided for, the most of our colleges and universities have been left as beggars, solely dependent upon the precarious benefactions of private generosity. If, here and there, an institution has gained a respectable standing v^ithout the aid of such private munificence, it has been the result of exceptional good management on the part of its board of control, rather than of any legislative liberality. '^' The conse-

* Many of those wlio talk mucli of the liberality with which our higher institutions are endowed by private individuals, seem to be quite

INTROBUGTORT. 15

quence of this general policy has been what one would have been led to anticipate. While we have in our various professions large numbers of men of respectable culture, I fear it must be said we have, as compared with the larger European nations, very few men of what may be called great culture. When difficult problems of state are to be solved, therefore, they are always more or less liable to fall into the hands of men whose qualifications, to speak within bounds, entitle them to no very high respect.

There is in our country another tendency on which the recent history of France and Germany throws a flood of light. I refer to a general inclination to rush prematurely into the active and responsible work of life. This comes in great part

ignorant of the amounts expended on similar institutions in otlier countries. Too mucli in praise of such generosity cannot be said ; and yet the fact remains that the whole amount of money furnished to our colleges and universities is lamentably meagre. This becomes strikingly apparent when the incomes of our institutions are compared with those of other countries. The Physiological Laboratory alone at Leipsic has an income of $40,000, and admits to its privileges but twelve students. The Natural History Department of the British Museum has an annual income of $100,000. The Zoological Society of London (which attends to the keeping of live animals solely for the purpose of studying their peculiarities) has an income varying from $100,000 to $125,000. The Kew Garden in London (which does a similar work for botany) has also $100,000 annually. The Zodlogical Society at Amsterdam expends $50,000; the Zoological Gardens at Hamburg, $30,000; the Berlin Aquarium (devoted to aquatic animals only), $50,000; the Jardin des Plantes, $200,000 ; the Museum at Edinburgh, $50,000 ; the College of Surgery at London (exclusively devoted to human and comparative anatomy), $00,000; the Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna, $40,000. These examples, purposely taken for better illustration, from a single department of liberal culture, might be indefinitely extended.

IQ DEMOCRACY AND MONARCHY IN FRANCE.

from those popular opinions concerning higher education to which I have alluded. There is a law that is more unchangeable than the laws of the Medes and the Persians ; it is the law which establishes the correspondence of demand and supply. So long as men of small culture and men of no culture find easy access to the high, if not the highest, political stations in the gift of society, we ma^r be sure that the men knocking most vigorously at our political doors will be our political charlatans. It is greatly to be feared that until a more healthy and enlightened public opinion on this subject shall come to prevail, a change for the better will be looked for in vain. When such men come to feel that for them there is no high place of political honor, the preparation of those who aspire to public life will be more complete and more satisfactory.

I wish not to be misunderstood. It is one of the glories of our country, that it affords rare opportunities for the encouragement of those who would rise from obscurity to honor. This we have heard at least as often as every Fourth of July. I am by no means disposed to question the truth of the assertion. The question of importance, however, is not whether men can rise, or whether they will attempt to rise ; it is rather at what level will they be content to stop. I think no one can compare the average statesman of to-day with the man of similar rank seventy-five years ago, without an oppressive sense of the political degeneracy that has

INTRODUGTOBT. 17

taken place. The generation wliicli framed the Constitution and wrote the Federalist, has h.ad no political successor. Surely, the reason is not that men have had fewer opportunities as time has progressed ! Jeiferson was a frontiersman, whose wife, at the time of their marriage, as Mr. Parton assures us, could only reach his log-house on horseback ; and, yet, when he took his seat in the Continental Congress, though far from being the most learned man there, he was a proficient naturalist, a mathematician able to calculate an eclipse, and a master of four languages.'^

If public opinion would to-day be content with nothing short of the highest moral and intellectual attainments, it is certain that within a few years the preparation of those who aspire to public life Yv^ould be of a far higher order.

I^ow, in reo^ard to the o^eneral worth of this care-

* It is a great mistake to suppose ttiat self-made men are in any sense peculiar to our own country. There is not a nation in Western Europe that has not been largely ruled by such men during the past three hundred years. It was but the other day that the English papers told us how Eichard Bethell went to college a poor boy ; how from the age of seventeen he supported himself ; hovt^ he rose to the highest ]30sition in the legal profession, and finally how, as Lord Chancellor, presiding over the entire nobility of G-rcat Britain, he died a peer of the realm. The case of Lord Tcnterden is another example to illustrate the same fact. Beginning life as the son of a country barber, without friends or influence to aid him, he ended it as Lord Chief Justice. For any who may think that with the aid of party machinery all these things were and arc possible, it needs perhaps to be said, that, when Tenterden was offered the position of King's Counsel, he declined it from distrust of his own ability, and that finally, he was taken from his life of patient and unassuming labor and raised to the bench by his political opponents.

Ig DEMOCRACY AND MONARCHY IN FRANCE.

ful preliminary training, tliere comes an occasional lesson Avliicli we do well to heed. The war of the Rebellion was a case in point. It is generally remembered that early in the struggle a hue and cry was raised against our Military Academy at West Point. Those who predicted that the war would ' be terminated in a few months found, at the close of the first year, that the end was apparently as far off as ever. It is singular that so many failed to appreciate the magnitude of the struggle. It should have been generally foreseen that the South, with the advantage, not only of ample preparation, but also of a defensive policy, would be able to offer a resolute and a protracted resistance. Those political sages and editorial generals who found their predictions disappointed, fell to throwing the blame upon our military officers ; and when one new man after another was raised to the head of the army, only to disappoint the nation, and be returned into obscurity, the outcry, which at first had been turned against individuals only, was directed against the whole chiss. Some of the most influential journals in the country appear to have seriously attempted in 1862 and '63 to make the nation believe that the man without the training afforded by West Point was likely to be a better soldier and a better general than the man with that .training. In consequence of this absurdity, we had our era of civilian generals. Lucidly, however, it took but a short time to satisfy even the most unreasonable, and our civilians gave way to men who

INTB OB UGTOB Y. X 9

seemed divinely called to the double work of putting an end to the war, and of showing to the American people that, if they have a special and difficult work to do, that work is likely to be best done by men who have received the most thorough training for it. When it turned out that Grant and Sherman and Sheridan and Thomas and Meade and the other great soldiers, South as well as North, were men who had all submitted to the ligors of a military training, there was no one found bold enough to renew the proposition to abolish our national Military Academy. It was apparent to everybody, that we must either aban- . don all thought of war in future, or we must sustain and enlarge our school for the education of officers.