Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

tunately, more truly his own, than the code which bears his name.

Washington was strictly institutional in his character, and never dreamed of concentration of power. If Satan ever appeared to him showing him the glory and power of a kingdom on earth, it was buried in his noble breast, and no act or word of his has ever shown even a struggle to beat down the tempter. Napoleon had no instinct for institutional government whatever,* and constantly struck out new paths of brilliancy to make hi'n and his people more glorious. Washington was a citizen, and statesman, a patriot and also a soldier; Napoleon was soldier above all. He acknowledges it, and is proud of it. To be the greatest captain was his greatest glory.

We Americans acknowledge that Washington plainly served his country, to which he bowed as the great thing above him and above all; the greatest admirers of Napoleon say that "soldiers, money, peoples, were in his hands but means to establish un système grandiose." Washington never was a dictator, and never aimed at a dictatorship; Napoleon claims the title to explain or excuse his despotism and centralism. Washington never compared himself to any one; Napoleon compares himself to him. Washington's policy was strictly domestic, and in leaving public life he urges the abstaining from foreign policy as a most essential point in the whole American State-system. Napoleon's poEey became from year to year more foreign, until it ended almost exclusively in conquest, and an absolute supremacy of France, to which all else was sacrifeed. Washington was a modest man; Napoleon looked upon himself as a sort of Fare. Washington was one of the beginners of the Revolution; Napoleon steps in when the revolution of his country had already developed immense pow

ers and forces. Washington aimed at no elevation of his family, and dies a justice of the peace; Napoleon writes to Joseph: I want a family of kings (il me faut une famille de rois.) Washington divests himself of the chief magistracy, voluntarily and gracefully, leaving to his people a document which after-ages honor like a political gospel; Napoleon, in his last days, is occupied with the idea of family aggrandizement, or with the means by which his house may be prevented from mingling again with common men. During his closing illness he directs General Bertrand to advise, in his name, the members of his family to settle chiefly in Rome, where their children ought to be married to the princely families of the Colonnas, &c. and where some Bonaparte would not fail to become pope. Jerome and Caroline ought to reside in Switzerland, where, in Berne, they must establish themselves in the Swiss "Oligarchy," and where a landamman-ship‡ would be certain to fall to the family; and the children of Joseph, should he remain in America, might marry into the great families of the Washingtons and Jeffersons, and a Bonaparte would become President of the United States.§ Washington was all that this country at the time required, and no more; he was thus, and remains, a political blessing to our country. Was Napoleon all that France required, and no more? Did the desires of his genius and his personal greatness not present themselves as France to his enormous mind? Even Louis Napoleon has said on his throne that his uncle, it must be owned, had loved war too much.

Both Washington and Napoleon have been men of high action, and some points of similarity undoubtedly exist, but to find them is a work of ingenuity, rather than one that naturally presents itself to an ingenuous mind.

We take the word institution and institutional government in the sense in which it has lately been defined in Lieber's Civil Liberty and Self-Government.

Words of the editors of the Memoirs quoted before, and cited here because they only express what thensnode say, and what pervades the whole ten volumes of imperial correspondence.

His

The Landamman of Switzerland is the chief magistrate. The word implies magistrate of the land. This extraordinary communication of the dying emperor to his family, will be found in the 10th volume the mentioned memoirs, page 264, and sequel. It proves, in addition, how deplorably mistaken Napoleon frequently was on subjects, on which, nevertheless, he formed absolute opinions on which he acted. poons on England, her institutions and the facility of her conquest, because the people would rush into Learms, against their own " oligarchy," were frequently no less absurd than his idea of "les Washington les Jeferson" as familles princières. That there are no families of the Washingtons and Jeffersons" may be passed over, but who would ever dream of marrying into the family of the Van Burens, Adamses, P. in order to increase the chance of come issue, to arrive at the White House? The whole is so Cal, and built on so utterly unfounded an analogy, with a hastiness and violence, as it were, that it creates a feeling of discomfort to find that so great a man has been capable of harboring so pitiful an idea; a stition accompanies this feeling, that if he has erred so egregio isly once, he may have been grievously taken at other times. Did he know more of the East than of us?

It cannot be said that this extraordinary advice was owing to a failing mind. On the contrary, Bertrand, Mentheon, and all the companions of Napoleon at St. Helena state, that his mind remained remarkably clear to the last day, and Bertrand states, that he repeatedly spoke of these family settlements.

his

If Napoleon really was a dictator, forced by France, or by foreign combinations to assume that character-if the establishment of liberty was a merely suspended work with him, we would find the element of freedom in his character and psychological configuration, at some time or other in his life. But the more closely we examine the character of that gigantic man, the more we become convinced that, as we expressed it before, he was eminently destitute of a civic character. There was no ingredient of freedom in the brass of that colossus. He was bred a soldier; youth was imbued with Rousseauism, as it has been called; his early manhood, when his ideas became, to use one of his own favorite expressions, bien arrêté, and "his soul ripened," fell in a period at which popular absolutism was revelling in anarchy; all his instincts were towards the grand, the effective in history, without any reference to the solemn meaning of the individual, without which, real liberty cannot be imagined. We find, secondly, that in no case did he lay the foundation of institutions in which liberty may be said to have lain undeveloped, as the whole organism of the future independent individual is foreshadowed in the foetus, dependent though it be, for the time, upon the mother. We find that wherever he changed laws or institutions, established by the revolution, he curtailed, or extinguished liberty in them, substituting everywhere an uncompromising centralism. When Napoleon was liberal, we believe it will be generally found that it amounts rather to this-that he was not small, not mean. He was too great a man to be puny in any sphere; but we do not know that he ever acknowledged freedom of action as a substantive thing, and independent of himself. Lastly, if Napoleon really aimed at ultimate liberty, we must necessarily find some indication that his measures were purely provisional, in his abundant correspondence with his brother Joseph, as given in the work repeatedly cited.

We certainly do not agree with the dictum, that a man necessarily shows his character in the truest light in his letters. Many a genial man writes arid letters; many a morose husband writes affectionately to his wite; many a liberal man writes as if he were penurious; but the many letters of Napoleon to his brother are written for the very purpose of imparting his system to the brother he had

just made a king, of communicating his ideas of statesmanship to him, and of informing him of the great ends of what we will call Napoleonism. We think that these letters are invaluable as to a clearer understanding of Napoleon. The French editors justly consider them so; only, they and we differ regarding the opinions and ends of Napoleon, disclosed in this precious correspondence—a collection, the like of which is not to be found in all history. No emperor like him ever wrote letters under such circumstances to a cherished, thongh frequently abused brother of his. The historian cannot be sufficiently thankful that they have been preserved.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

What, then, was it that floated as the great ideal over the depth of his soul? What was the fundamental idea of which "the honor of my crown," "the glory of France," the grand nation," the grand empire," "the grande armée," and all similar terms and things were but emanations? What was the "grand système que la divine Providence nous a destiné à fonder," as he calls it in the decree of the thirtieth of March, 1806, by which he recognizes his brother Joseph as King of Naples?

Throughout his proclamations, laws, letters, and whole administration, we find a clear and determined hostility to the ancient system of feudal privileges, and of administrative corruption and mismanagement. We find a pretty clear idea of equality of all citizens before the law, and of their equal legal capacity to be called to the different public employments. Joseph generally adds the destruction of the influence of priests, but Napoleon took good care not to proclaim it, as indeed he often vaunts that he was the restorer of throne and altar.

These ideas Napoleon had received from the revolution, and gradually he came to believe that the destruction of feudalism and the establishment of legal equality had been the sole object of "“notre belle révolution," as he called it on one occasion. The identical error has been expressed by Louis Napoleon, who, shortly before he ascended the throne, declared that there was not a single day during which he did not study the works of his uncle, and endeavored to mould all his ideas and measures in conformity with that great model. On another occasion, when he ushered in his new constitution, the imitative emperor spoke of the great "génie," which, as by inspiration, had brought the true

and only national system for France, treating, at the same time, in terms of derogation and ridicule, all those who were of a different opinion, thus forestalling every idea of self-development from below upward. We do not believe in political Mahometani-m.

Napoleon's hostility to "Gothic institutions" extended to all institutions, if we understand by them, legal e-tabli-bments, with an independent organism of life and progress within themselves. He became the very apostle of absorbing centralism, the declared and uncompro mising enemy of self-government in eil its details, to self-development-in one word, to institutional, that is, to real liberty. We believe we are strictly correct in this opinion, and if we are, it is obvious that Napoleon was anything but a dictator. He was an absolute rulervery brilliant, very great, and, for that reason, only the more absolute and dangerous, and he established and wished to establish absolutism, with unprivileged equality, in some degree, beneath it. "Everything for the people, nothing by it." Napoleon unfortunately represented, intensely and absolutely, the vanity of the French, which maintained that an entire new era must needs be ushered in, and be ushered in through the French, forgetting to do the needful round-about, and that no introducer of a new era, has ever said so of himself. Self-praise is ruinous in the individual; in history it is a proof of inefficiency regarding the object of self-praise.

It is unnecessary to show here, however instructive to the political philosopher it would be, how the very system pursued by Napoleon insensibly led him into many of the abuses of the decried feudalism, against which he set out. The military superiority, his re-establishment of fiefs, and of a nobility, chiefly founded on military merit, show this among many other things. Nor did his hostility to corruption remain more consistent. He hated the coleurs, the peculators; but he allowed his generals to extort money in foreign parts, and he repeats, time after time, to Joseph, that he should enrich the generals, and see before all to the greatest possible well

being of the army, for both which purposes he must frapper le pays with a heavy contribution, and raise the taxes of Naples from fifty millions to at least a hundred millions. This is repeated again and again, for Joseph was slow in oppressing.*

We do not believe that a candid and reflecting man can read the volumes of Napoleon's correspondence, without coming to the conclusion, that with whatever ideas and intentions that extraordinary man may have set out, he ended as a worshipper of power, rai-ing, as millions do in their different spheres, the means into the end-the great and ever-repeated fallacy of men and nations. The fundamental idea that the people are the substantive, and governments, systems, armies, nothing but means, wholly vanished from his mind. Force, power, glory, French glory, centered in him, came to be his idols; and soldiers, money, people, system, were mere means to serve them.

We do not recollect in all these volumes, one expression about the melioration of the people. If there be, it has escaped us. The constant advice, iterated to the satiety of the reader, is: acquire force, so that the méchants fear, and the loyal esteem you. "Strength is what makes the people esteem governments, and love with nations only means esteem." These are his words.

At this stage, it may well be asked, was Napoleon a great statesinan? Every one knows that he was a gifted politician; but was he a great statesman, taking this comprehensive term in the highest meaning which it has acquired?

Great statesmanship, in the advanced state of our race, consists, in our opinion, of three main elements of being what Schlegel said the true historian must be, namely, "the prophet of the past;" secondly, of using the given means for the highest purposes; of evoking new means, and of effecting great things with small means; lastly, of so shaping all measures and organizing all institutions, that by their inherent character they will lead to a higher future, which, in the political sphere of all nations belonging to the European family, is liberty, or

* The imperial notions of political economy, which, as it is well known, were very uncouth, present themselves in this correspondence, in a ludicrous light. Joseph constantly replied to Napoleon's demands of Ligher taxes and heavy contributions, that, so long as Sicily was not conquered, and peace established, all edmanserce was at an end, and the important products of the country, wine, oil, silk, and coarse cloth, would And no issue. Whereupon Napoleon answers that Joseph's reply amounted to nothing, for if the English blockade put a stop to all exports, it also prevented specie (renumeraire) from leaving the country; what reason, then, was there that the government could not get at this wealth? And he was in the habit of ridieuling political economists!

VOL. V.-2

a higher and higher degree of freedom. Every political measure, no matter how brilliant, that does not aim at this ultimate end, is but meteoric, passing, futile. The political destiny of all Europides is Freedom. It cannot be too often repeated; and, as we believe that it is the destiny of this peculiar race to cover the earth, so we believe that the gospel and liberty are destined to spread over the globe, or, which amounts to the same, as Christianity and liberty are destined to be preached and worshipped one of these days, over the whole face of the earth, we believe that the Europides will cover all lands.

Now, Napoleon was totally deficient in that element of high statesmanship of the white race, which has been mentioned as the third. He quieted France, he developed many resources, he established order in many cases, he concentrated, he stimulated, he ruled many minds, and attached them to himself, as Mahomet did, in a wonderful degree. Napoleon knew how to give the electric shock to large masses-a sure attribute of greatness. He was brilliant beyond any man of his and many other ages; but, with all this, he unfitted France for political self-evolvement, for a real internal productive life, for freedom, and, in exactly the same degree as he succeeded, so he made it necessary for her to retrace her steps, and to undo what he had done, would she attain to liberty. As a matter of course, the same is proportionally true of the present emperor, whose avowed object it is, as we have seen, to Napoleonize France once more. Napoleon's government was not, and never was intended to be a mere bridge to a better state of things. If it had been, we must consider him a man much inferior to what we have been accustomed to consider him; for in that case, he has chosen means contrary to his ends.

Was Napoleon a great statesman with reference to that characterestic which we have given as the first? Did he find the "blue thread" of French history? Our preceding remarks show that we do not believe he has.

And now as a last question connected with our theme, we may ask :-Was, then, Napoleon not the greatest man of all history? Was he not, at least, the greatest man of modern times, or of the last five centuries? Not only many French, but even many others, consider him the greatest man of all ages. We believe that they are blinded by the

magnifying power of historical nearness, or else they take the word greatness in a different sense from what we do. What constitutes a great man? Greatness implies elevation of soul and nobleness of mind, above common influences; but so soon as we apply the word great to individual characters-to the artist, the author, the captain, the statesman or the religionist, we always mean conception and production on a large scale and of a high order, combined with masterly execution-we mean action, not merely vast, but high, wide and of permanent effect. Erostratus was no great man, though his name is mentioned to this day.

He is a great man that produces with means insignificant in the hands of others, comprehensive effects; that discovers a continent in a crazy craft. He is greater that becomes the representative of his age and utters forth clearly and boldly the unspoken and discomforting yearnings of his own times-who delivers his age of new ideas, and aids them to struggle into institutional existence and permanency; he is the greatest who adds to this the perfection of wholly new ideas and instils them into his age, and who organizes for the advent of a new future. The greater a man is the more he impresses, with his stamp, not only the people of his own period, but through it all future times. The deeper you study history the surer you find the truly great man and his era like threads interwoven in the tissue of the whole successive history of their race or nation. There is yet Miltiades in the atmosphere we breathe in this country, and there is Alfred in our daily doings.

His

With reference to this subject, and speaking exclusively as historians, we call Christ the greatest man. means were the smallest, his conceptions the greatest, his imprints the deepest, his effects the vastest, the changes he produced the most searching and essential. The merest deist, the total disbeliever in Christ's gospel, must acknowledge it as a historical fact, provided he be a candid and a studious historian.

If we apply these tests, it does not appear why Alexander was not at least as great as Napoleon, in conceptions as well as in doing comprehensive things with small means. As a captain, was Hannibal not as great? What, indeed, makes Mohammed less great than

him? As a ruler over a new empire Charlemagne was greater. He was greater, too, as a seminator and preparer for new times. Aristotle, Pope Gregory the Seventh-that ecclesiastic Cæsar; -Luther and Shakespeare were greater men in conceiving, imprinting and planting. In taking either of them out of the history of our race, it would be far more changed than by striking out the name of Napoleon. They have tinctured all history; they have added elements which work and expand. Napoleon has not. Even if the renewed empire were to last, which assuredly it will not, what advancing ideas does it add to the cultural treasures of our race? what institutions? Absolutisin is barren. It produces great battles and great palaces. The whole system of what Lieber calls Anglican liberty is actually expanding and spreading without any ingredient of Napoleonism. Where are the vaunted idées Napoléoniennes? The Frenchman may connect some idea of great enterprises with this term-an artificial harbor at Cherbourg, a road ever the Simplon-noble undertakings, but not as great as our ideas of a shipcanal across the Isthmus or a railway to California; still they are worthy enterprises, but where does the impartial Listorian find something he can call une idée Napoléonienne, and put the mark on it so that it can be recognized by all. We fear it will be found that everything truly deserving the name of an idee Napoléonienne, relates to stringent centralism, uniting, with the utmost precision, the administrative and executive power of a vast country in the hands of one brilliant man--one of the weakest governments, as history has shown; and well may Count Tribeaudeau say to Joseph, that certain it is, Napoleon fell with his centralism, but it is not proved that the same would have befallen him with a truly representative government.

The

From all we have said it will amply appear that we no way agree with those who deplore the fall of Napoleon, as an irreparable loss for the people. conduct of the monarchs who dethroned him led the people to sigh for the absent one, for his oppression was not felt when theirs pinched; but the acts of the succeeding governments alter nothing in the deeds and tendency of the emperor. His brilliant, crushing despotist was worse, and whether or not, his

downfall was necessary if Europe was to march towards liberty. If new difficulties have arisen, they must be overcome, but they change nothing in the necessity of his downfall. We consider it pitiful to side in the present conflict with the Russians, because, forsooth, we do not like the Turks. The Turks will one day be driven from Europe, and ought to meet that fate, but Russian despotism and arrogance must not on that account be allowed to swell without repulse. The fall of Napoleon was simply a historical consistency and necessity.

The following is the translation of the letter we have promised to the reader. Letter of Count Survillier (Joseph Bonaparte) to Francis Lieber.

"SIR,

Point Breeze, 1st July, 1829.

"I have only this day received your letter of the 22d of June, on my return from a journey of several days to New York. I have read the article which you have sent me; I return it immediately as you desire. The number of works on the emperor Napoleon is so large, that the catalogue of them alone would be a work; you know many of them. I have under my eyes a work, entitled Commentarii di Napoleone, printed at Brussels in 1827, which is not mentioned in the list I return to you; nor is the work of Botta mentioned; both are written in Italian. Among the works enumerated in the note in question, there are many which are evidently libels, payed for by the enemies of the revolution and the empire. There are others-works of passion, dictated by disappointment and spite. Those of the writers of St. Helena themselves, contain details evidently false; but they represent, in mass, sufficiently well the general views of the emperor Napoleon. When these authors speak of individuals, and when they write memoirs, they deceive themselves occasionally. I have the positive proof, regarding that which concerns myself, in several cases. I have sent such evidence at the time even to Mr. Las Casas. The work of general Petet, is that which seems to me to deserve the greatest confidence. The younger Ségur has evidently had in view to reconcile himself with the new court; grandson of the marshal Ségur, who was minister of war

Near Bordertown, New Jersey.

« AnteriorContinuar »