The Recollections Of Alexis De Tocqueville Part 13

Since the President was to be elected directly by the citizens, the enthusiasm and infatuation of the people was very much to be feared; and moreover, the prestige and moral power which the newly elected would possess would be much greater. Since a relative majority was to be sufficient to make the election valid, it might be possible that the President should only represent the wishes of a minority of the nation.

I asked that the President might not be elected directly by the citizens, but that this should be entrusted to delegates whom the people would elect. In the second place, I proposed to subst.i.tute an actual for a relative majority; if an absolute majority was not obtained at the first vote, it would fall to the a.s.sembly to make a choice. These ideas were, I think, sound, but they were not new; I had borrowed them from the American Const.i.tution. I doubt whether anyone would have suspected this, had I not said so; so little was the Committee prepared to play its great part.

The first part of my amendment was rejected. I expected this: our great men were of opinion that this system was not sufficiently simple, and they considered it tainted with a touch of aristocracy. The second was accepted, and is part of the actual Const.i.tution.

Beaumont proposed that the President should not be re-eligible; I supported him vigorously, and the proposal was carried. On this occasion we both fell into a great mistake which will, I fear, lead to very sad results. We had always been greatly struck with the dangers threatening liberty and public morality at the hands of a re-eligible president, who in order to secure his re-election would infallibly employ beforehand the immense resources of constraint and corruption which our laws and customs allow to the head of the Executive Power. Our minds were not supple or prompt enough to turn in time or to see that, so soon as it was decided that the citizens themselves should directly choose the President, the evil was irreparable, and that it would be only increasing it rashly to undertake to hinder the people in their choice.

This vote, and the great influence I brought to bear upon it, is my most unpleasant memory of that period.

Each moment we came up against centralization, and instead of removing the obstacle, we stumbled over it. It was of the essence of the Republic that the head of the Executive Power should be responsible; but responsible for what, and to what extent? Could he be made responsible for the thousand details of administration with which our administrative legislation is overcharged, and over which it would be impossible, and moreover dangerous, for him to watch in person? That would have been unjust and ridiculous; and if he was not to be responsible for the administration proper, who would be? It was decided that the responsibility of the President should be shared by the ministers, and that their counter-signature should be necessary, as in the days of the Monarchy. Thus the President was responsible, and yet he was not entirely free in his own actions, and he was not able to protect his agents in agents.

We pa.s.sed to the const.i.tution of the Council of State. Cormenin and Vivien took charge of this; it may be said that they set to work like people who are building up a house for themselves. They did their utmost to make the Council of State a third power, but without success. It became something more than an administrative council, but infinitely less than a legislative a.s.sembly.

The only part of our work which was at all well thought out, and arranged, as I think, with wisdom, was that which related to justice.

Here the committee felt at home, most of its members being, or having been, barristers. Thanks to these, we were able to save the principle of the irremovability of the judges; as in 1830, it held good against the current which swept away all the rest. Those who had been Republicans from the commencement attacked it nevertheless, and very stupidly, in my opinion; for this principle is much more in favour of the independence of one's fellow-citizens than of the power of those who govern. The Court of Appeal and, especially, the tribunal charged with judging political crimes were const.i.tuted at once just as they are to-day (1851). Beaumont drew up most of the articles which refer to these two great courts. What we did in these matters is far in advance of all that had been attempted in the same direction during sixty years. It is probably the only part of the Const.i.tution of 1848 which will survive.

It was decided at the instance of Vivien that the Const.i.tution could only be revised by a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, which was right; but they added that this revision could only take place if the National a.s.sembly demanded it by an express vote, given three times consecutively by a majority of four-fifths, which rendered any regular revision almost impossible. I took no part in this vote. I had long been of opinion that, instead of aiming to make our governments eternal, we should tend to make it possible to change them in an easy and regular manner. Taken all round, I thought this less dangerous than the opposite course; and I thought it best to treat the French people like those madmen whom one should be careful not to bind lest they become infuriated by the restraint.

I noticed casually a number of curious opinions that were emitted.

Martin (of Strasburg), who, not content with being a Republican of yesterday, one day declared so absurdly in the tribune that he was a Republican by birth, nevertheless proposed to give the President the right to dissolve the a.s.sembly, and failed to see that a right of this kind would easily make him master of the Republic; Marrast wanted a section to be added to the Council of State charged to elaborate "new ideas," to be called a section of progress; Barrot proposed to leave to a jury the decision of all civil suits, as though a judiciary revolution of this sort could possibly be improvised. And Dufaure proposed to prohibit subst.i.tution in the conscription, and to compel everyone personally to perform his military service, a measure which would have destroyed all liberal education unless the time of service had been greatly reduced, or have disorganized the army if this reduction had been effected.

In this way, pressed by time and ill prepared to treat such important subjects, we approached the time appointed for the end of our labours.

What was said was: Let us adopt, in the meantime, the articles proposed to us; we can afterwards retrace our steps; we can judge from this sketch how to fix the definitive features and to adjust the portions among themselves. But we did not retrace our steps, and the sketch remained the picture.

We appointed Marrast our secretary. The way in which he acquitted himself of this important office soon exposed the mixture of idleness, giddiness and impudence which formed the basis of his character. He was first several days without doing anything, though the a.s.sembly was constantly asking to know the result of our deliberations, and all France was anxiously awaiting to learn it. Then he hurriedly wrote his report in one night immediately preceding the day on which he was to communicate it to the a.s.sembly. In the morning, he spoke of it to one or two of his colleagues whom he met by chance, and then boldly appeared in the tribune and read, in the name of the Committee, a report of which hardly one of its members had heard a single word. This reading took place on the 19th of June. The draft of the Const.i.tution contained one hundred and thirty-nine articles; it had been drawn up in less than a month. We could not have been quicker, but we might have done better. We had adopted many of the little articles which Cormenin had brought us in turns; but we had rejected a yet greater number, which caused their author an irritation, which was so much the greater in that he had never had an opportunity of giving vent to it. He turned to the public for consolation. He published, or caused to be published, I forget which it was, in all the newspapers an article in which he related what had pa.s.sed in the Committee, attributing all the good it had done to M. de Cormenin, and all the harm to his adversaries. A publication of this sort displeased us greatly, as may be imagined; and it was decided to acquaint Cormenin with the feeling inspired by his procedure. But no one cared to be the spokesman of the company.

We had among us a workman (for in those days they put workmen into everything) called Corbon, a tolerably right-minded man of firm character. He readily undertook the task. On the next morning, therefore, so soon as the sitting of the Committee had opened, Corbon stood up and, with cruel simplicity and conciseness, gave Cormenin to understand what we thought. Cormenin grew confused, and cast his eyes round the table to see if anybody would come to his aid. n.o.body moved.

He then said, in a hesitating voice, "Am I to conclude from what has just happened that the Committee wishes me to leave it?" We made no reply. He took his hat and went, without anyone interfering. Never was so great an outrage swallowed with less effort or grimace. I believe that, although enormously vain, he was not very sensitive to insults in secret; and as long as his self-love was well tickled in public, he would not have made many bones about receiving a few cuffs in private.

Many have believed that Cormenin, who from a viscount had suddenly become a Radical, while remaining a devout Catholic, never ceased to play a part and to betray his opinions. I would not venture to say that this was the case, although I have often observed strange inconsistencies between the things he said when talking and those he wrote; and to tell the truth, he always seemed to me to be more sincere in the dread he entertained of revolutions than in the opinions he had borrowed from them. What always especially struck me in him was the shortcomings of his mind. No writer ever to a greater extent preserved in public business the habits and peculiarities of that calling. When he had established a certain agreement between the different clauses of a law and drawn it up in a certain ingenious and striking manner, he thought he had done all that was necessary: he was absorbed in questions of form, of symmetry, and cohesion.

But what he especially sought for was novelty. Inst.i.tutions which had already been tried elsewhere or elsewhen seemed to him as hateful as commonplaces, and the first merit of a law in his eyes was to resemble in no way that which had preceded it. It is known that the law laying down the Const.i.tution was his work. At the time of the General Election I met him and he said, with a certain complacency, "Has anything in the world ever been seen like what is seen to-day? Where is the country that has gone so far as to give votes to servants, paupers and soldiers?

Confess that no one ever thought of it before." And rubbing his hands, he added, "It will be very curious to see the result." He spoke of it as though it were an experiment in chemistry.

PART THE THIRD

_MY TERM OF OFFICE_

_This part was commenced at Versailles on the 16th of September 1851, during the prorogation of the National a.s.sembly._

_To come at once to this part of my recollections, I pa.s.s over the previous period, which extends from the end of the days of June 1848 to the 3rd of June 1849. I return to it later if I have time.

I have thought it more important, while my recollections are still fresh in my mind, to recall the five months during which I was a member of the Government._

CHAPTER I

MY RETURN TO FRANCE--FORMATION OF THE CABINET.

While I was thus occupied in witnessing upon the private stage of Germany one act of the great drama of the European Revolution, my attention was suddenly drawn towards France and fixed upon our affairs by unexpected and alarming news. I heard of the almost incredible check received by our army beneath the walls of Rome, the violent debates which followed in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, the excitement produced throughout the country by these two causes, and lastly, the General Election, whose result deceived the expectations of both parties and brought over one hundred and fifty Montagnards into the new a.s.sembly.

However, the demagogic wind which had suddenly blown over a part of France had not prevailed in the Department of la Manche. All the former members for the department who had separated from the Conservative Party in the a.s.sembly had gone under in the _scrutin_. Of thirteen representatives only four had survived; as for me, I had received more votes than all the others, although I was absent and silent, and although I had openly voted for Cavaignac in the previous month of December. Nevertheless, I was almost unanimously elected, less because of my opinions than of the great personal consideration which I enjoyed outside politics, an honourable position no doubt, but difficult to retain in the midst of parties, and destined to become very precarious on the day when the latter should themselves become exclusive as they became violent.

I set out as soon as I received this news. At Bonn a sudden indisposition obliged Madame de Tocqueville to stop. She herself urged me to leave her and to continue my journey, and I did so, although with regret; for I was leaving her alone in a country still agitated by civil war; and moreover, it is in moments of difficulty or peril that her courage and her great sense are so helpful to me.

I arrived in Paris, if I am not mistaken, on the 25th of May 1849, four days before the meeting of the Legislative, and during the last convulsions of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. A few weeks had sufficed to make the aspect of the political world entirely unrecognizable, owing less to the changes which had taken place in outside facts, than to the prodigious revolution which had in a few days taken place in men's minds.

The party which was in power at my departure was so still, and the material result of the elections should, I thought, have strengthened its hands. This party, composed of so many different parties, and wis.h.i.+ng either to stop or drive back the Revolution, had obtained an enormous majority in the electoral colleges, and would command more than two-thirds of the new a.s.sembly. Nevertheless, I found it seized with so profound a terror that I can only compare it with that which followed February: so true is it that in politics one must argue as in war, and never forget that the effect of events should be measured less by what they are in themselves than by the impressions they give.

The Conservatives, who for six months had seen all the bye-elections invariably turning to their advantage, who filled and dominated almost all the local councils, had placed an almost unlimited confidence in the system of universal suffrage, after professing unbounded distrust of it.

In the General Election which was just decided, they had expected not only to conquer but to annihilate, so to speak, their adversaries, and they were as much cast down at not attaining the absolute triumph which they had dreamt of as though they had really been beaten. On the other hand, the Montagnards, who had thought themselves lost, were as intoxicated with joy and mad audacity as though the elections had a.s.sured them a majority in the new a.s.sembly. Why had the event thus at the same time deceived the hopes and fears of both parties? It is difficult to say for certain, for great ma.s.ses of men move by virtue of causes almost as unknown to humanity itself as those which rule the movements of the sea. In both cases the reasons of the phenomenon are concealed and, in a sense, lost in the midst of its immensity.

We are, at any rate, ent.i.tled to believe that the Conservatives owed their rebuff mainly to the faults which they themselves committed. Their intolerance, when they thought their triumph a.s.sured, of those who, without sharing their ideas, had a.s.sisted them in fighting the Montagnards; the violent administration of the new Minister of the Interior, M. Faucher; and more than all, the poor success of the Roman expedition prejudiced against them a portion of the people who were naturally disposed to follow them, and threw these into the arms of the agitators.

One hundred and fifty Montagnards, as I said, had been elected. A part of the peasantry and the majority of the army had voted for them: it was the two anchors of mercy which had snapped in the midst of the tempest.

Terror was universal: it taught anew to the various monarchical parties the tolerance and modesty which they had practised immediately after February, but which they had to a great extent forgotten during the past six months. It was recognized on every hand that there could no longer be any question, for the present, of emerging from the Republic, and that all that remained to be done was to oppose the moderate Republicans to the Montagnards.

The same ministers whom they had created and instigated they now accused, and a modification of the Cabinet was loudly demanded. The Cabinet itself saw that it was insufficient, and implored to be replaced. At the time of my departure I had seen the committee of the Rue de Poitiers refuse to admit the name of M. Dufaure to its lists; I now saw every glance directed towards M. Dufaure and his friends, who were called upon in the most pathetic manner to take office and save society.

On the night of my arrival, I heard that some of my friends were dining together at a little restaurant in the Champs-Elysees. I hastened to join them, and found Dufaure, Lanjuinais, Beaumont, Corcelles, Vivien, Lamoriciere, Bedeau, and one or two more whose names are not so well known. I was informed in a few words of the position of affairs. Barrot, who had been invited by the President to form a cabinet, had for some days been exhausting himself in vain efforts to do so. M. Thiers, M.

Mole and the more important of their friends had refused to undertake the government. They had made up their minds, nevertheless, as will be seen, to remain its masters, but without becoming ministers. The uncertainty of the future, the general instability, the difficulties and perhaps the dangers of the moment kept them aloof. They were eager enough for power, but not for responsibility. Barrot, repulsed on that side, had come to us. He asked us, or rather he besought us, to become his colleagues. But which among us to choose? What ministries to allot to us? What colleagues to give us? What general policy to adopt? From all these questions had arisen difficulties in execution which, till then, seemed insurmountable. Already, more than once, Barrot had returned towards the natural chiefs of the majority; and repelled by them, had fallen back upon us.

Time pa.s.sed amid these sterile labours; the dangers and difficulties increased; the news became each day more alarming, and the Ministry were liable at any moment to be impeached by the dying but furious a.s.sembly.

I returned home greatly preoccupied, as will be believed, by what I had heard. I was convinced that it only depended upon the wishes of myself and my friends to become ministers. We were the necessary and obvious men. I knew the leaders of the majority well enough to be sure that they would never commit themselves to taking charge of affairs under a government which seemed to them so ephemeral, and that, even if they had the disinterestedness, they would not have the courage to do so. Their pride and their timidity a.s.sured me of their abstention. It was enough for us, therefore, to stand firm on our ground to compel them to come and fetch us. But ought we to wish to become ministers? I asked myself this very seriously. I think I may do myself the justice to say that I did not indulge in the smallest illusion respecting the true difficulties of the enterprise, and that I looked upon the future with a clearness of view which we rarely possess except when we consider the past.

Everybody expected to see fighting in the streets. I myself regarded it as imminent; the furious audacity which the result of the elections had imparted to the Mountain and the opportunity afforded to it by the Rome affair seemed to make an event of this kind inevitable. I was not, however, very anxious about the issue. I was convinced that, although the majority of the soldiers had voted for the Mountain, the army would fight against it without hesitation. The soldier who individually votes for a candidate at an election and the soldier acting under pressure of _esprit de corps_ and military discipline are two different men. The thoughts of the one do not regulate the actions of the other. The Paris garrison was very numerous, well commanded, experienced in street warfare, and still filled with the memory of the pa.s.sions and examples which had been left to it by the days of June. I therefore felt certain of victory. But I was very anxious as to the eventual results of this victory: what seemed to others the end of the difficulties I regarded as their commencement. I considered them almost insurmountable, as I believe they really were.

In whichever direction I looked, I saw no solid or lasting stand-point for us.

Public opinion looked to us, but it would have been unsafe to rely upon it for support; fear drove the country in our direction, but its memories, its secret instincts, its pa.s.sions could scarcely fail soon to withdraw it from us, so soon as the fear should have vanished. Our object was, if possible, to found the Republic, or at least to maintain it for some time, by governing it in a regular, moderate, conservative, and absolutely const.i.tutional way; and this could not allow us to remain popular for long, since everybody wanted to evade the Const.i.tution. The Mountain wanted more, the Monarchists much less.

In the a.s.sembly it was much worse still. The same general causes were aggravated by a thousand accidents arising from the interests and vanities of the party leaders. The latter were quite content to allow us to a.s.sume the government, but we must not expect them to allow us to govern. So soon as the crisis was pa.s.sed, we might expect every sort of ambush on their part.

As to the President, I did not know him yet, but it was evident that we could not rely upon him to support us in his Council, except where the jealousy and hatred were concerned with which our common adversaries inspired him. His sympathies must always lie in an opposite direction; for our views were not only different, but naturally opposed to one another. We wanted to make the Republic live: he longed for its inheritance. We only supplied him with ministers where he wanted accomplices.

To these difficulties, which were in a sense inherent to the situation and consequently permanent, were added pa.s.sing ones which it was not at all easy to surmount: the revolutionary agitation revived in part of the country; the spirit and habits of exclusion spread and already rooted in the public administration; the Roman expedition, so badly conceived and so badly conducted that it was now as difficult to bring it to an end as to get out of it; in fact, the whole legacy of mistakes committed by our predecessors.

There were reasons enough for hesitation; and yet I did not hesitate.

The idea of taking a post from which fear kept so many people off, and of relieving society from the bad pa.s.s in which it had been involved, flattered at the same time my sense of honour and my pride. I was quite aware that I should only be pa.s.sing through power, and that I should not stay there; but I hoped to stay long enough to be able to render some signal service to my country and to raise myself. This was enough to attract me.

I at once took three resolutions:

First, not to refuse office if an opportunity offered;