СНАР. rallied. Much has been said of the fatuity of the elder Bourbons, and of their having learned so little by misfortune, and yet it would be difficult to imagine a fairer trial of moderate policy and constitutional government than that which Louis the Eighteenth essayed from 1816 to 1820. Why did it not succeed? Some will say, that the attempt was hopeless from the beginning. To impose a dynasty upon a country, and then impose upon that dynasty the conditions of governing constitutionally, it was necessary to suppose that the majority was either in favour of the new royal family or capable of rallying to it. Far, however, from being in favour of or capable of rallying to it, the majority of the French were strongly attached to the principle of equality and the riddance of sacerdotal and aristocratic influence and action, which the revolution had accomplished and Napoleon confirmed. Louis the Eighteenth was prepared either to respect these principles or make a compromise with them; but his family, the younger members of which were destined in all appearance to succeed him, entertained ideas and avowed aims in direct contradiction of all that the country cherished. Hence arose hatred to the Bourbons, which the conduct of Government subsequently to 1820 gradually augmented, till it begot the explosion of 1830. The true way to have overcome this, and to have rallied to him the moderate politicians and the middleclass public, even Louis the Eighteenth either did not take or did not persevere in. A constitution is idle unless its principles be fully followed out, and be supported by the prevalence of the majority of the nation. If that majority of the French were decidedly hostile to royalty or the Bourbons, his constitutional government was impossible from the first. They were not so, however. Had the King nullified the political influence of his family, and accepted the decision of his people, as announced in the elections, he would have XLIV. given office and power to thorough and energetic liberals, СНАР. such as Foy and Périer. These men, instead of betraying him, would have rallied probably to his cause, and carried the Bourbons, or all such Bourbons as trusted them, through the popular storm, which would have broken upon them and not upon the dynasty. But the Bourbons never reconciled themselves to any constitution, or never read one otherwise than that their opinion and party should be dominant. Their lot was thus merely to make the most unhappy experience of a false or half constitution, and necessarily perish with it. M. Guizot has demonstrated with all the truth of experience the disadvantage of a middle party governing, such a party making an admirable audience or support to a government, but by no means ably administering itself. It committed at this time other faults, no doubt, which M. Guizot does not allude to. The chief one was not to have made the people generally feel the advantage of a constitutional over a despotic system. The mere power of voting for a deputy every five years cannot do this. But institutions of local and municipal liberty, a participation of the country in its own management, would have interested the whole country in the system of representative government. Centralisation killed all this, and left the country ignorant and indifferent towards political questions. M. Guizot indeed admits the difficulty of making centralisation work with representation. No doubt to maintain the one is to nullify the other. Chateaubriand declared, that seven high functionaries were quite sufficient to exercise all authority in each department. When he enumerated these authorities, some one cried out, "You forget the executioner." The spirit of a functionary government necessarily depends on the head. To amend it requires a revolution, a substitution of Bonaparte for Bourbon. That is what the want of local liberty leads to. Hence, if the great experiment of a moderate constitutional system foundered СНАР. in France, it was in the first place owing to the ultraRoyalist princes, but in the next to a partial and insufficient application of the constitutional principle itself. This system was allowed to work amongst the middle ranks of life. But it disgusted the higher, which it did not reach; and the lower, which remained insensible of its influence and ignorant of its very existence. One of the most fatal characteristics of political society and parties at and during the Restoration was their extreme nervousness. The Royalists imagined that they walked upon a path undermined by conspiracy, their fears and precautions rendering these suspicions true. The liberals, on the other hand, saw in the conduct of their opponents much more astute and determined plans of counter-revolution than actually existed. The mutual dread of their enemies having or obtaining a parliamentary majority deprived both of all patience and all calm. And as soon as such a result became evident or menacing, the thought was not to combat such ascendency by parliamentary means, but reverse it by a change of the electoral law. The history of the Decazes and Richelieu middle party is, they began by changing or fixing the electoral law, so as to abate the ascendency of the ultra-Royalists; and then finding that the result of these measures was to favour the gradual increase and possible predominance of the liberals, they had to amend the law to provide for this and prevent it. The first proposal brought by the Decazes and Richelieu ministry before the new Chamber was one to modify the elections. It had been drawn up by M. Lainé. The Chamber of 1815 had owed its royalist tinge in a great measure to each deputy being elected in a small locality, local influence and landed fortune of course predominating. The new law arranged that all elections should be direct, that of all the deputies of a department taking place in its chief town, where the bourgeois influence would counterbalance its landed rival. All who paid 300 francs direct taxes had a vote, all in fact who had sufficient property in land or houses. One fifth of the Chamber was to be re-elected each year to avoid the excitement of a general election. The law passed by 132 votes against 100. The King's personal influence and exertions were found requisite to engage the Chamber of Peers not to reject it. By this law, passed in February 1817, the electoral franchise was given to 100,000 proprietors, out of nigh 30,000,000 of population. The Royalists protested indignantly against so large an admission of what they called the middle classes. Yet never surely was term so misapplied. Large landed fortunes were especially rare in France, and the extensive emigration of the seigneurs, who arrogated to themselves the title of first class, left but country gentlemen. of a few hundreds a-year, not superior either in fortune or enlightenment to the upper ranks of what they styled the bourgeoisie. The greatest absurdity and folly, one might almost say the crime, of the Restoration was to have divided the rich and easy classes, which had quite enough to do to hold their own against the multitude of humbler labourers and earners without quarrelling amongst themselves for idle differences of origin or birth. The truth is, there is and was no such thing as an upper class in France. What we mean by the term is a body of men, who, as possessed of either land or capital, can feed and employ the multitude of labourers and earners beneath them, and who, being the best and richest customers of the trading class, have also a greater influence over it. There is no such state of things in France. The peasant farmer sows and reaps his own food. The few who labour for hire form the minority, and take their tone and their ideas from the small proprietors. An analogous feeling of independence pervades the farm and the workshop. There is no link, CHAP. XLIV. CHAP. no patronage, and no obligation between class and class. Other means of influence by the rich are likewise annulled. Authority is in the hands of the functionaries. Endow it as you will in a country revolutionized like France, you cannot make an aristocracy. To pretend that there was one, and to legislate for it, as was attempted by the ultra-Royalists, was at once insanity and anachronism. There is this, however, to be observed, that the arrogance of the squires or gentry so disgusted and alienated the notabilities of money and commerce, that these made common cause with even the lower of the middle class in opposing the pretensions and aims of the ultraRoyalists. Their denouncing of these pretensions gained the great commercial notabilities the support everywhere of both imperialists and admirers of the revolution. The consequence was that in the re-election of the second fifth of the Chamber, in 1817, according to the new law of election, Casimir Périer was returned to sit by the side of Lafitte; Delessert, Roy, and Ternaux, afterwards joining them as representatives of the haut commerce. With these leaders of the commercial world came the eminent men of the bar. The legal profession had recovered its scope and power with the Restoration, the use of the jury rendering it popular, and the many trials of journalists and compositors enabling their legal defenders to acquire position and fame. Hence the reputation of Dupont de l'Eure, Dupin, Mauguin, Ravez and Barrot. Imperialist functionaries joined them, such as Bignon, Chauvelin and Caumartin. The press and letters furnished their peculiar talents; Camille Jourdan was the great liberal orator. Chateaubriand was confined to the peers; Constant and Lafayette did not take their seats till 1818. Whilst the liberal party were thus augmenting in numbers and impatience, events occurred which demonstrate: plainly the ineptness of their ultra antagonists. |