Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 Part 24

To the west the ground rises to a wild common commanding the sea, the lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, La Hogue, and a green plain covered with woods and hedgerow trees, and studded with church towers and spires of the picturesque forms of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. It has no grand features, except the sea and the rocky coast of the Cherbourg peninsula, but it is full of variety and beauty. I can understand Tocqueville's delight in the house and in the country. The weather is perfect; the thermometer in my bedroom, the walls of which are about six feet thick, is 71, in the sun it is 80; but there is a strong breeze.

_August 12th._--Madame de Beaumont, my daughter, and Ampere drove, and Beaumont and I walked, to the coast about three miles and a half off. Our road ran through the gay wooded plain which I have described.

We talked of Italian affairs.

'Up to the annexation of Tuscany,' said Beaumont, 'I fully approve of all that has been done. Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were eager to join Piedmont. During the anxious interval of six months, while the decision of Louis Napoleon was doubtful, the conduct of the Tuscans was above all praise. Perhaps the general wish of the people of Romagna justified the Piedmontese in seizing it. Though there the difficult question as to the expediency of stripping the Pope of his temporal power rises.

'Perhaps, too, the facility with which Sicily submitted was a justification. But I cannot pardon the seizure of Naples. It is clear to me that if the Neapolitans had been left to themselves they would have driven out the Garibaldians. Garibaldi himself felt this: nothing but a conviction of its necessity would have induced him to call for the a.s.sistance of the Piedmontese. I do not believe that in defiance of all international law-indeed in defiance of all international morality--Cavour would have given that a.s.sistance if the public opinion of Piedmont had allowed him to refuse it. And what is the consequence? A civil war which is laying waste the country. The Piedmontese call their adversaries brigands. There are without doubt among them men whose motive is plunder, but the great majority are in arms in defence of the independence of their country. They are no more brigands now than they were when they resisted King Joseph. The Piedmontese are as much foreigners to them as the French were: as much hated and as lawfully resisted. They may be conquered, they probably will be conquered. An ignorant corrupt population, inhabiting a small country, unsupported by its higher cla.s.ses--its fleet, its fortresses, and all the machinery of its government, in the hands of its enemies--cannot permanently resist; but the war will be atrocious, and the more cruel on the part of Piedmont because it is unjust.'

'You admit,' I said, 'that the higher cla.s.ses side with Piedmont?'

'I admit that,' he answered; 'but you must recollect how few they are in number, and how small is the influence which they exercise. In general, I detest universal suffrage, I detest democracy and everything belonging to it, but if it were possible to obtain honestly and truly the opinion of the people, I would ask it and obey it. I believe that it would be better to allow the Neapolitans, ignorant and debased as they are, to choose their own sovereign and their own form of government, than to let them be forced by years of violence to become the unwilling subjects of Piedmont.'

'Do you believe,' I said, 'that it is possible to obtain through universal suffrage the honest and true opinion of a people?'

'Not,' he answered, 'if the Government interferes. I believe that in Savoy not one person in fifty was in favour of annexation to France. But this is an extreme case.

'The Bourbons are deservedly hated and despised by the Neapolitans, the Piedmontese are not despised, but are hated still more intensely. There is no native royal stock. The people are obviously unfit for a Republic.

It would be as well, I think, to let them select a King as to impose one on them. The King whom Piedmont, without a shadow of right, is imposing on them is the one whom they most detest.'

'If I go to Rome,' I asked, 'in the winter, whom shall I find there?'

'I think,' he answered, 'that it will be the Piedmontese. The present state of things is full of personal danger to Louis Napoleon. As his policy is purely selfish, he will, at any sacrifice, put an end to it.

That sacrifice may be the unity of Catholicism. The Pope, no longer a sovereign, will be under the influence of the Government in whose territory he resides, and the other Catholic Powers may follow the example of Greece and of Russia, and create each an independent Spiritual Government. It would be a new excitement for _Celui-ci_ to make himself Head of the Church.'

'a.s.sa.s.sinations,' I said, 'even when successful have seldom produced important and permanent effects, but Orsini's failure has influenced and is influencing the destinies of Europe.'

'If I were an Italian liberal,' said Beaumont, 'I would erect a statue to him. The policy and almost the disposition of Louis Napoleon have been changed by the _attentat_. He has become as timid as he once was intrepid. He began by courting the Pope and the clergy. He despised the French a.s.sa.s.sins, who were few in number and unconnected, and who had proved their unskilfulness on Louis Philippe; but Orsini showed him that he had to elect between the Pope and the Austrians on one side, and the Carbonari on the other. He has chosen the alliance of the Carbonari. He has made himself their tool, and will continue to do so.

'They are the only enemies whom he fears, at least for the present.

'France is absolutely pa.s.sive. The uneducated ma.s.ses from whom he holds his power are utterly indifferent to liberty, and he has too much sense to irritate them by wanton oppression. They do not know that he is degrading the French character, they do not even feel that he is wasting the capital of France, they do not know that he is adding twenty millions every year to the national debt. They think of his loans merely as investments, and the more profligately extravagant are the terms and the amount, the better they like them.'

'Ten years ago,' I said, 'the cry that I heard was, "ca ne durera pas."'

'That was my opinion,' he answered; 'indeed, it was the opinion of everybody. I thought the Duc de Broglie desponding when he gave it three years. We none of us believed that the love of liberty was dead in France.'

'It is not,' I said, 'dead, for among the higher cla.s.ses it still lives, and among the lower it never existed.'

'Perhaps,' he answered, 'our great mistakes were that we miscalculated the courage of the educated cla.s.ses, and the degree in which universal suffrage would throw power into the hands of the uneducated. Not a human being in my commune reads a newspaper or indeed reads anything: yet it contains 300 electors. In the towns there is some knowledge and some political feeling, but for political purposes they are carefully swamped by being joined to uneducated agricultural districts.

'Still I think I might enter the _Corps legislatif_ for our capital Le Mans. Perhaps at a general election twenty liberals might come in. But what good could they do? The opposition in the last session strengthened Louis Napoleon. It gave him the prestige of liberality and success.'

'You think him, then,' I said, 'safe for the rest of his life?'

'Nothing,' he answered, 'is safe in France, and the thing most unsafe is a Government. Our caprices are as violent as they are sudden. They resemble those of a half-tamed beast of prey, which licks its keeper's hand to-day, and may tear him to-morrow. But if his life be not so long as to enable the fruits of his follies to show themselves in their natural consequences--unsuccessful war, or defeated diplomacy, or bankruptcy, or heavily increased taxation--he may die in the Tuileries.

'But I infer from his conduct that he thinks an insurrection against his tyranny possible, and that he is preparing to meet it by a popular war-- that is to say, by a war with England.

'I found my opinion not so much on the enormous maritime preparations, as on the long-continued systematic attempts to raise against England our old national enmity. All the provincial papers are in the hands of the Government. The constantly recurring topic of every one of them is, the perfidy and the malignity of England. She is described as opposing all our diplomacy, as resisting all our aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, as snarling and growling at our acquisition of Savoy, as threatening us if we accept Sardinia, as trying to drive the Pope from Rome because we protect him, as trying to separate the Danubian provinces because we wish to unite them, as preventing the Suez Ca.n.a.l because we proposed it--in short, on every occasion and in every part of the world as putting herself in our way. To these complaints, which are not without foundation, are added others of which our ignorant people do not see the absurdity. They are told that the enormous conscription, and the great naval expenditure, are rendered necessary by the aggressive armaments of England. That you are preparing to lay waste all our coasts, to burn our a.r.s.enals, to subsidise against us a new Coalition, and perhaps lead its armies again to Paris.

'The Emperor's moderation, his love of England, and his love of peace, are said to be the only obstacles to, a violent rupture. But they are prepared for these obstacles at length giving way. "The Emperor," they are told, "is getting tired of his insolent, and hostile, and quarrelsome allies. He is getting tired of a peace which is more expensive than a war. Some day the cup will flow over. 'Il en finira avec eux,' will dictate a peace in London, will free the oppressed Irish nationality, will make England pay the expense of the war, and then having conquered the only enemy that France can fear, will let her enjoy, for the first time, real peace, a reduced conscription, and low taxation."

'Such is the language of all the provincial papers and of all the provincial authorities, and it has its effect. There never was a time when a war with England would be so popular. He does not wish for one, he knows that it would be extremely dangerous, but he is accustomed to play for great stakes, and if submitting to any loss of his popularity, or to any limitation of his power is the alternative, he will run the risk. He keeps it, as his last card, in reserve, to be played only in extremity, but to be ready when that extremity has arrived.'

_Tuesday, August_ 13.--We drove to La Prenelle, a church at the point of a high table-land running from Tocqueville towards the bay of La Hogue, and commanding nearly all the Cherbourg peninsula. On three sides of us was the sea, separated from us by a wooded, well-inhabited plain, whose churches rose among the trees, and containing the towns and lofty lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, Vast, and La Hogue. We sat on the point from whence James II. saw the battle of La Hogue, and admired the courage of his English rebels.

Ampere has spent much of his life in Rome, and is engaged on a work in which its history is to be ill.u.s.trated by its monuments.

We talked of the Roman people.

'Nothing,' said Ampere, 'can be more degraded than the higher cla.s.ses.

With the exception of Antonelli, who is charming, full of knowledge, intelligence, and grace, and of the Duke of Sermoneta, who is almost equally distinguished, there is scarcely a n.o.ble of my acquaintance who has any merits, moral or intellectual.

'They are surrounded by the finest ancient and modern art, and care nothing for it. The eminent men of every country visit Rome--the Romans avoid them for they have nothing to talk to them about.

'Politics are of course unsafe, literature they have none. They never read. A cardinal told me something which I doubted, and I asked him where he had found it. "In certi libri," he answered.

'Another, who has a fine old library, begged me to use it. "You will do the room good," he said. "No one has been there for years." Even scandal and gossip must be avoided under an Ecclesiastical Government.

'They never ride, they never shoot, they never visit their estates, they give no parties; if it were not for the theatre and for their lawsuits they would sink into vegetable life.'

'Sermoneta,' I said, 'told me that many of his lawsuits were hereditary, and would probably descend to his son.'

'If Sermoneta,' said Ampere, 'with his positive intelligence and his comparative vigour, cannot get through them, what is to be expected from others? They have, however, one merit, one point of contact with the rest of the world--their hatred of their Government. They seem to perceive, not clearly, for they perceive nothing clearly, but they dimly see, that the want of liberty is a still greater misfortune to the higher cla.s.ses than to the lower.

'But the people are a fine race. Well led they will make excellent soldiers. They have the cruelty of their ancestors, perhaps I ought to say of their predecessors, but they have also their courage.'

'They showed,' said Beaumont, 'courage in the defence of Rome, but courage behind walls is the commonest of all courages. No training could make the Spaniards stand against us in the open field, but they were heroes in Saragossa. The caprices of courage and cowardice are innumerable. The French have no moral courage, they cannot stand ridicule, they cannot encounter disapprobation, they bow before oppression; a French soldier condemned by a court-martial cries for mercy like a child. The same man in battle appears indifferent to death. The Spaniard runs away without shame, but submits to death when it is inevitable without terror. None of the prisoners taken on either side in the Spanish civil war asked for pardon.'

'Indifference to life,' I said, 'and indifference to danger have little in common. General Fenelon told me that in Algeria he had more than once to preside at an execution. No Arab showed any fear. Once there were two men, one of whom was to be flogged, the other to be shot. A mistake was made and they were going to shoot the wrong man. It was found out in time, but neither of the men seemed to care about it; yet they would probably have run away in battle. The Chinese are not brave, but you can hire a man to be beheaded in your place.'

'So,' said Ampere, 'you could always hire a subst.i.tute in our most murderous wars, when in the course of a year a regiment was killed twice over. It was hiring a man, not indeed to be beheaded, but to be shot for you.'

'The destructiveness,' said Beaumont, 'of a war is only gradually known.

It is found out soonest in the villages when the deaths of the conscripts are heard of, or are suspected from their never returning; but in the towns, from which the subst.i.tutes chiefly come, it may be long undiscovered. Nothing is known but what is officially published, and the Government lies with an audacity which seems always to succeed. If it stated the loss of men in a battle at one half of the real number, people would fancy that it ought to be doubled, and so come near to the truth; but it avows only one-tenth or only one-twentieth, and then the amount of falsehood is underestimated.'

'Marshal Randon,' I said, 'told me that the whole loss in the Italian campaign was under 7,000 men.'

'That is a good instance,' said Beaumont. 'It certainly was 50,000, perhaps 70,000. But I am guilty of a _delit_ in saying so, and you will be guilty of a _delit_ if you repeat what I have said. I remember the case of a man in a barber's shop in Tours, to whom the barber said that the harvest was bad. He repeated the information, and was punished by fine and imprisonment for having spread _des nouvelles alarmantes_. Truth is no excuse; in fact it is an aggravation, for the truer the news the more alarming.'

'In time of peace,' I asked, 'what proportion of the conscripts return after their six years of service?'

'About three-quarters,' answered Beaumont.