Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time Part 4

But in those social shocks there are deeper questions involved than the actors are aware of. The Hundred Days inflicted on France a much heavier evil than the waste of blood and treasure it had cost her; they lit up again the old quarrel which the Empire had stifled and the Charter was intended to extinguish,--the quarrel between old and new France, between the emigrants and the revolutionists. It was not alone between two political parties, but between two rival cla.s.ses, that the struggle recommenced in 1815, as it originally exploded in 1789.

An unfavourable position for founding a Government, and, above all, a free Government. A certain degree of excitement and emulation invariably exists between the people and the political parties, which const.i.tutes the very life of the social body, and encourages its energetic and wholesome development. But if this agitation is not confined to questions of legislature and the conduct of public affairs,--if it attacks society in its very basis,--if, instead of emulation between parties, there arises hostility amongst cla.s.ses, the movement ceases to be healthy, and changes to a destroying malady, which leads on to the most lamentable disorders, and may end in the dissolution of the State.

The undue ascendency of one cla.s.s over another, whether of the aristocracy or the people, becomes tyranny. The bitter and continued struggle of either to obtain the upper hand, is in fact revolution, imminently impending or absolutely declared. The world has witnessed, in two great examples, the diametrically opposite results to which this formidable fact may lead. The contest between the Patricians and Plebeians held Rome for ages between the cruel alternations of despotism and anarchy, which had no variety but war. As long as either party retained public virtue, the republic found grandeur, if not social peace, in their quarrel; but when Patricians and Plebeians became corrupted by dissension, without agreeing on any fixed principle of liberty, Rome could only escape from ruin by falling under the despotism and lingering decline of the Empire. England presents to modern Europe a different spectacle. In England also, the opposing parties of n.o.bles and democrats long contended for the supremacy; but, by a happy combination of fortune and wisdom, they came to a mutual compromise, and united in the common exercise of power: and England has found, in this amicable understanding between the different cla.s.ses, in this communion of their rights and mutual influence, internal peace with greatness, and stability with freedom.

I looked forward to an a.n.a.logous result for my own country, from the form of government established by the Charter. I have been accused of desiring to model France upon the example of England. In 1815, my thoughts were not turned towards England; at that time I had not seriously studied her inst.i.tutions or her history. I was entirely occupied with France, her destinies, her civilization, her laws, her literature, and her great men. I lived in the heart of a society exclusively French, more deeply impregnated with French tastes and sentiments than any other. I was immediately a.s.sociated with that reconciliation, blending, and intercourse of different cla.s.ses, and even of parties, which seemed to me the natural condition of our new and liberal system. People of every origin, rank, and calling, I may almost say of every variety of opinion,--great n.o.blemen, magistrates, advocates, ecclesiastics, men of letters, fashion, or business, members of the old aristocracy, of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, of the Convention, of the Empire,--lived in easy and hospitable intercourse, adopting without hesitation their altered positions and views, and all apparently disposed to act together in goodwill for the advantage of their country.

A strange contradiction in our habits and manners! When social relations, applicable to mental or worldly pleasures, are alone involved, there are no longer distinctions of cla.s.ses, or contests; differences of situation and opinion cease to exist; we have no thought but to enjoy and contribute in common our mutual possessions, pretensions, and recommendations. But let political questions and the positive interests of life once more spring up,--let us be called upon, not merely to a.s.semble for enjoyment or recreation, but to a.s.sume each his part in the rights, the affairs, the honours, the advantages, and the burdens of the social system,--on the instant, all dissensions re-appear; all pretences, prejudices, susceptibilities, and oppositions revive; and that society which had seemed so single and united, resumes all its former divisions and differences.

This melancholy incoherence between the apparent and actual state of French society revealed itself suddenly in 1815. The reaction provoked by the Hundred Days destroyed in the twinkling of an eye the work of social reconciliation carried on in France for sixteen years, and caused the abrupt explosion of all the pa.s.sions, good or evil, of the social system, against all the works, beneficial or mischievous, of the Revolution.

Attacked also by another difficulty, the party which prevailed at the opening of the session, in the Chamber of 1815, fell into another mistake. The aristocratic cla.s.ses in France, although generously devoted, in public dangers, to the king and the country, knew not how to make common cause either with the crown or the people; they have alternately blamed and opposed, royal power and public liberty.

Isolating themselves in the privileges which satisfied their vanity without giving them real influence in the State, they had not a.s.sumed, for three centuries, either with the monarch, or at the head of the nation, the position which seemed naturally to belong to them. After all they had lost, and in spite of all they ought to have learned at the Revolution, they found themselves in 1815, when power reverted to their hands, in the same undefined and shifting position. In its relations with the great powers of the State, in public discussion, in the exercise of its peculiar rights, the Chamber of 1815 had the merit of carrying into vigorous practice the const.i.tutional system, which, in 1814, had scarcely emerged from its torpor under the Empire; but in its new work it lost sight of equity, moderation, and the favourable moment.

It wished at the same time to control France and the King. It was independent and haughty, often revolutionary in its conduct towards the monarch, and equally violent and contra-revolutionary as regarded the people. This was to attempt too much; it ought to have chosen between the two, and to have declared itself either monarchical or popular. The Chamber of 1815 was neither the one nor the other. It appeared to be deeply imbued with the spirit of the old system, envenomed by the ideas or examples of the spirit of the revolution; but the spirit of government, even more essential under const.i.tutional than under absolute power, was wanting altogether.

Thus, an opposition was seen to spring up quickly within its own bosom,--an opposition which became at once popular and monarchical, for it equally defended against the ruling party, the crown they had so rashly insulted, and the country they had profoundly disturbed. After some sharp contests, sustained with acrimonious determination on both sides, this opposition, strong in the royal support as in public sympathy, frequently obtained a majority, and became the party of the Government.

I had no seat at that time in the Chamber of Deputies. It has often been said that I took a more important share in the Government of the day than could be attributed to me with truth. I have never complained of this, nor shall I complain now. I accept the responsibility, not only of my own actions, but of those of the friends I selected and supported.

The monarchical and const.i.tutional party formed in 1815, became on the instant my own. I shall acknowledge frankly what experience has taught me of their mistakes, while I feel proud of having been enrolled in their ranks.

This party was formed abruptly and spontaneously, without premeditated object, without previous or personal concert, under the simple necessity of the moment, to meet a pressing evil, and not to establish any particular system, or any specific combination of ideas, resolutions, or designs. Its sole policy was at first confined to the support of the Restoration against the reaction: a thankless undertaking, even when most salutary; for it is useless to contend with a headlong counter-current. While you are supporting the power whose flag serves as a cloak to reaction, it is impossible to arrest the entire mischief you desire to check; and you seem to adopt that which you have been unable to subdue. This is one of the inevitable misconstructions which honest men, who act conscientiously, in stormy days, must be prepared to encounter.

Neither in its composition nor plans had the new Royalist party any special or decided character. Amongst its rising leaders, as in its more undistinguished ranks, there were men of every origin and position, collected from all points of the social and political horizon.

M. de Serre was an emigrant, and had been a lieutenant in the army of Conde; MM. Pasquier, Beugnot, Simeon, Barante and St. Aulaire, had possessed influence under Napoleon; MM. Royer-Collard and Camille Jordan were opposed to the Imperial system. The same judgment, the same opinion upon the events of the day and the chances of the morrow, upon the rights and legitimate interests of the throne and country, suddenly united these men, hitherto unknown to each other. They combined, as the inhabitants of the same quarter run from all sides and, without acquaintance and never having met before, work in concert to extinguish a great fire.

A fact, however, disclosed itself, which characterized already the new royalist party in the impending struggle. Equally disturbed by the pretensions of the old aristocrats, the monarchy and the citizens formed a close league for mutual support. Louis XVIII. and young France resumed together the policy of their fathers. It is fruitless for a people to deny or forget the past; they cannot either annihilate or abstract themselves from it; situations and emergencies will soon arise to force them back into the road on which they have travelled for ages.

Selected as President by the Chamber itself, and also by the King, M. Laine, while preserving, with a dignity at the same time natural and slightly studied, the impartiality which his situation required, inclined nevertheless towards the opinions of the moderate minority, and supported them by his moral influence, sometimes even by his words. The ascendency of his character, the gravity of his manners, and, at certain moments, the pa.s.sionate overflowing of his soul, invested him with an authority which his abilities and knowledge would scarcely have sufficed to command.

The Session had not been many days open, and already, from conversation, from the selection of the officials, from the projects of interior movement which were announced, the Deputies began to know and arrange themselves, but still with doubt and confusion; as, in a battalion unexpectedly called together, the soldiers a.s.semble in disorder, looking for their arms and colours. The Government propositions soon brought the different parties to broad daylight, and placed them in contest. The Session commenced, as might be expected, with measures arising from incidental circ.u.mstances. Of the four bills evidently bearing this character, two--the suspension of personal liberty, and the establishment of prevotal courts--were proposed as exceptional and purely temporary; the others--for the suppression of seditious acts, and for a general amnesty--were intended to be definitive and permanent.

Measures of expediency, and exceptional laws, have been so often and so peremptorily condemned in France, that their very name and aspect suffice to render them suspicious and hateful,--a natural impression, after so much and such bitter experience! They supply notwithstanding, and particularly under a const.i.tutional government, the least dangerous as well as the most efficacious method of meeting temporary and urgent necessities. It is better to suspend openly, and for a given time, a particular privilege, than to pervert, by encroachment and subtlety, the fixed laws, so as to adapt them to the emergency of the hour. The experience of history, in such cases, confirms the suggestions of reason. In countries where political liberty is finally established, as in England, it is precisely after it has obtained a signal triumph, that the temporary suspension of one or more of its special securities has, under pressing circ.u.mstances, been adopted as a Government measure. In ruder and less intelligent times, under the dominion of momentary danger, and as an immediate defence, those rigorous and artful statutes were enacted in perpetuity, in which all tyrannies have found arms ready made, without the odium of forging them, and from which a more advanced civilization, at a later period, has found it so difficult to escape.

It is necessary, I admit, to enable these exceptional laws to accomplish their end without too much danger, that, beyond the scope of their operation and during their continuance, the country should retain enough general liberty, and the authorities sufficient real responsibility, to confine these measures within their due limits, and to control their exercise. But, in spite of the blindness and rage of the beaten parties, we have only to read the debates in the Chambers of 1815, and the publications of the time, to be convinced that at that epoch liberty was far from having entirely perished; and the history of the ministers who were then in power unanswerably demonstrates that they sustained the weight of a most effective responsibility.

Of the two temporary bills introduced into the Chamber in 1815, that respecting the prevotal courts met with the least opposition. Two very superior men, MM. Royer-Collard and Cuvier, had consented to become its official advocates, in the character of Royal Commissioners; and during the discussion, M. Cuvier took the lead. The debate was a very short one; two hundred and ninety members voted for the bill, ten only rejected it. The division may create surprise. The bill, in principle, comprised the heaviest possible infringement on common right, and the most formidable in practical application, by the suppression, in these courts, of the greater part of the privileges accorded in the ordinary modes of jurisdiction. A clause in the bill went almost to deprive the King of his prerogative of pardon, by ordering the immediate execution of the condemned criminals, unless the prevotal court itself a.s.sumed the functions of grace by recommending them to royal clemency. One of the most enthusiastic Royalists of the right-hand party, M. Hyde de Neuville, objected energetically, but without effect, to a clause so harsh and anti-monarchical. The two most intractable of pa.s.sions, anger and fear, prevailed in the Chamber; it had its own cause, as well as that of the King, to defend and avenge, and persuaded itself that it could neither strike too soon nor too strongly when both were attacked.

On this occasion, as well as on others, the memory of M. Cuvier has been unjustly treated. He has been accused of pusillanimity and servile ambition. The charge indicates little knowledge of human nature, and insults a man of genius on very slight grounds. I lived much with M. Cuvier. Firmness in mind and action was not his most prominent quality; but he was neither servile, nor governed by fear in opposition to his conscience. He loved order, partly for his own personal security, but much more for the cause of justice, civilization, the advantage of society, and the progress of intellect. In his complaisance for power, he was more governed by sincere inclination than egotism. He was one of those who had not learned from experience to place much confidence in liberty, and whom the remembrance of revolutionary anarchy had rendered easily accessible to honest and disinterested apprehensions. In times of social disturbance, men of sense and probity often prefer drifting towards the sh.o.r.e, to running the risk of being crushed, with many dear objects, on the rocks upon which the current may carry them.

In the debate on the bill which suspended for a year the securities for personal liberty, M. Royer-Collard, while supporting the Government, marked the independence of his character, and the mistrustful foresight of the moralist with regard to the power which the politician most desired to establish. He demanded that the arbitrary right of imprisonment should be entrusted only to a small number of functionaries of high rank, and that the most exalted of all, the Ministers, should in every case be considered distinctly responsible. But these amendments, which would have prevented many abuses without interfering with the necessary power, were rejected. Inexperience and precipitation were almost universal at the moment. The Cabinet and its most influential partisans in the Chambers had scarcely any knowledge of each other; neither had yet learned to conceive plans in combination, to settle the limits or bearing of their measures, or to enter on a combat with preconcerted arrangements.

A combined action and continued understanding, however, between the Government and the moderate Royalists, became every day more indispensable; for the divergence of several new parties which began to be formed, and the extent of their disagreements, manifested themselves with increasing strength from hour to hour. In proposing the act intended to repress sedition, M. de Marbois, a gentle and liberal nature, inclined to mild government, and little acquainted with the violent pa.s.sions that fermented around him, had merely looked upon these acts as ordinary offences, and had sent the criminals before the tribunals of correctional police, to be punished by imprisonment only.

Better informed as to the intentions of a portion of the Chamber, the committee appointed to examine the bill, of which M. Pasquier was the chairman, endeavoured to restrain the dissentients, while satisfying them to a certain extent. Amongst seditious acts, the committee drew a line between crimes and offences, a.s.signing crimes to the Court of a.s.sizes, to be punished by transportation, and prescribing for simple offences fine and imprisonment. This was still too little for the ultra-members of the party. They demanded the penalty of death, hard labour, and confiscation of property. These additions were refused, and the Chamber, by a large majority, pa.s.sed the bill as amended by the committee. Undoubtedly there were members of the right-hand party who would not have dared to contest the propositions of MM. Piet and de Salaberry, but who rejoiced to see them thrown out, and voted for the bill. How many errors would men escape, and how many evils would they avoid, if they had the courage to act as they think right, and to do openly what they desire!

All these debates were but preludes to the great battle ready to commence, on the most important of the incidental questions before the Chamber. It is with regret that I use the word _question_. The amnesty was no longer one. On returning to France, the King, by his proclamation from Cambray, had promised it; and, with kings, to promise is to perform. What sovereign could refuse the pardon, of which he has given a glimpse to the condemned criminal? The royal word is not less pledged to a nation than to an individual. But in declaring, on the 28th of June, 1815, that he would only except from pardon "the authors and instigators of the plot which had overturned the throne," the King had also announced "that the two Chambers would point them out to the punishment of the laws;" and when, a month later, the Cabinet had, upon the report of the Duke of Otranto, arrested the individuals excepted in the two lists, the decree of the 24th of July again declared that "the Chambers should decide upon those amongst them who should be expatriated or brought to trial." The Chambers were therefore inevitably compromised.

The amnesty had been declared, and yet it still remained a question, a bill was still considered necessary.

Four members of the Chamber of Deputies hastened to take the initiative in this debate, three of them with extreme violence, M. de la Bourdonnaye being the most vehement of the three. He had energy, enthusiasm, independence, political tact as a partisan, and a frank and impa.s.sioned roughness, which occasionally soared to eloquence.

His project, it was said, would have brought eleven hundred persons under trial. Whatever might be the correctness of this calculation, the three propositions were tainted with two capital errors: they a.s.sumed, in fact, that the catastrophe of the 20th of March had been the result of a widely-spread conspiracy, the authors of which ought to be punished as they would have been in ordinary times, and by the regular course of law, if they had miscarried; they a.s.signed to the Chambers the right of indicating, by general categories, and without limit as to number, the conspirators to be thus dealt with, although the King, by his decree of the 24th of July preceding, had merely conferred on them the power of deciding, amongst the thirty-eight individuals specially excepted by name, which should be banished and which should be brought to trial.

There was thus, in these projects, at the same time, an act of accusation under the name of amnesty, and an invasion of the powers already exercised, as well as of the limits already imposed, by the royal authority.

The King's Government by no means mistook the bearing of such resolutions, and maintained its rights, its acts, and promises with suitable dignity. It hastened to check at once the attempt of the Chamber. The bill introduced by the Duke de Richelieu on the 8th of December, was a real act of amnesty, with no other exceptions than the fifty-six persons named in the two lists of the decree of the 24th of July, and belonging to the family of the Emperor Napoleon. A single additional clause, the fatal consequences of which were a.s.suredly not foreseen, had been introduced into the preamble: the fifth article excepted from the amnesty all persons against whom prosecutions had been ordered or sentences pa.s.sed before the promulgation of the law,--a lamentable reservation, equally contrary to the principle of the measure and the object of its framers. The character and essential value of an amnesty consist in a.s.signing a term to trials and punishments, in arresting judicial action in the name of political interest, and in re-establishing confidence in the public mind, with security in the existing state of things, at once producing a cessation of sanguinary scenes and dangers. The King's Government had already, by the first list of exceptions in the decree of the 24th of July, imposed on itself a heavy burden. Eighteen generals had been sent before councils of war.

Eighteen grand political prosecutions, after the publication of the amnesty, would have been much even for the strongest and best-established government to bear. The Duke de Richelieu's Cabinet, by the fifth article of the bill, imposed on itself, in addition, the prospective charge of an indefinite number of political prosecutions, which might rise up in an indefinite time; and no one could possibly foresee in what part of the kingdom, or under what circ.u.mstances. The evil of this short-sightedness continued, with repeated instances rapidly succeeding each other, for more than two years. It was the prolonged application of this article which destroyed the value and almost the credit of the amnesty, and compromised the royal Government in that reaction of 1815 which has left such lamentable reminiscences.

A member of the right-hand party, who was soon destined to become its leader, and who until then had taken no share in the debate, M. de Villele, alone foresaw the danger of the fifth article, and hesitated not to oppose it. "This article," said he, "seems to me too vague and expansive; exceptions to amnesty, after such a rebellion as that which has taken place in our country, deliver over inevitably to the rigour of the laws all the excepted individuals. Now rigorous justice demands that, in such cases, none should be excepted but the most guilty and the most dangerous. Having no pledge or certain proof that the individuals attainted by the fifth article have deserved this express exception, I vote that the article be struck out." Unfortunately for the Government, this vote of the leader of the opposition pa.s.sed without effect.

Independently of the question itself, this discussion produced an important result: it settled the division of the Chamber into two great parties, the right-hand side and the centre; the one the opponent, and the other the ally of the Cabinet. The differences of opinion which manifested themselves on this occasion were too keen, and were maintained on both sides with too much animosity, not to become the basis of a permanent cla.s.sification. The right-hand party persisted in requiring several categories of exceptions to the amnesty, confiscations under the name of indemnity for injuries done to the State, and the banishment of the regicides who had been implicated during the Hundred Days. The centre, and the Cabinet in union, firmly resisted these propositions. M. Royer-Collard and M. de Serre, amongst others, exhibited in the course of this debate as much political intelligence as moral rect.i.tude and impa.s.sioned eloquence. "It is not always the number of executions that saves empires," said M. Royer-Collard; "the art of governing men is more difficult, and glory is acquired at a loftier price. If we are prudent and skilful, we shall find that we have punished enough; never, if we are not so." M. de Serre applied himself chiefly to oppose the confiscations demanded under the t.i.tle of indemnities. "The revolutionists have acted thus," said he; "they would do the same again if they could recover power. It is precisely for this reason that you ought not to imitate their detestable example; and by a distorted interpretation of an expression which is not open and sincere, by an artifice scarcely worthy of the theatre.... Gentlemen, our treasury may be low, but let it be pure." The categories and the indemnities were definitively rejected. At the last moment, and in the midst of almost universal silence, the banishment of the regicides was alone inscribed upon the act. Under the advice of his ministers, the King felt that he could not, in obedience to the will of Louis XVI., refuse his sanction to the amnesty, and leave this formidable question in suspense. There are Divine judgments which human authority ought not to forestall; neither is it called upon to reject them when they are declared by the course of events.

To the differences on the questions of expediency, every day were added the disagreements on the questions of principle. The Government itself excited but few. A bill on elections, introduced by the Minister of the Interior, M. de Vaublanc, was the only one which a.s.sumed this character. The debate was long and animated. The leading men on the opposite sides of the Chamber, MM. de Villele, de la Bourdonnaye, de Bonald, Royer-Collard, Pasquier, de Serre, Beugnot, and Laine, entered into it anxiously. But the ministerial plan was badly conceived, based upon incompatible foundations, and giving to the elections more of an administrative than of a political character. The princ.i.p.al orators of the Centre rejected it, as well as a counter-project proposed by the committee, in which the right-hand party prevailed, and which the Cabinet also disapproved. The last proposal was ultimately carried, but with important amendments, and vehemently opposed to the last. The Chamber of Deputies pa.s.sed it by a weak majority, and in the Chamber of Peers it was thrown out. Although the different parties had clearly indicated their impressions and desires on the electoral system, the details were as yet obscure and unsettled. The question remained in abeyance. From the Chamber itself emanated the other propositions which involved matters of principle; they sprang from the right-hand party, and all tended to the same point--the position of the Church in the State. M. de Castelbajac proposed that the bishops and ministers should be authorized to receive and hold in perpetuity, without requiring the sanction of Government, all donations of property, real or personal, for the maintenance of public worship or ecclesiastical establishments.

M. de Blangy demanded that the condition of the clergy should be materially improved, and that the married priests should no longer enjoy the pensions which had been given to them in their clerical character.

M. de Bonald called for the abolition of the law of divorce.

M. Lacheze-Murel insisted that the custody of the civil records should be given back to the ministers of religion. M. Murard de St. Romain attacked the University, and argued that public education should be confided to the clergy. The zeal of the new legislators was, above all other considerations, directed towards the re-establishment of religion and the Church, as the true basis of social power.

At the outset, the uneasiness and opposition excited by these proposals were less animated than we can at present imagine. More immediate dangers occupied the adversaries of Government and the public mind. A general sentiment in favour of religion as a necessary principle of order and morality, prevailed throughout the country; a sentiment revived even by the crisis of the Hundred Days, the moral wounds which that crisis had revealed, and the social dangers it had partially disclosed. The Catholic Church had not yet become the mark of the reaction which a little later was raised against it. The clergy took no direct part in these debates. The University had been, under the Empire, an object of suspicion and hostility on the part of the Liberals. The movement in favour of religious influences scarcely astonished those whom it displeased. But in the very bosom of the Chamber whence this movement emanated, there were enlightened understandings, who at once perceived its full range, and I foresaw the angry dissensions which sooner or later would be stirred up in the new social system by some of these propositions, so utterly opposed to its most fundamental and cherished principles. They applied themselves, with resolute good sense, to extract from the measures introduced, a selection conformable to the true interests of society and the Church. The law of divorce was abolished. The position of the parish priests, of the a.s.sistant ministers, and of several ecclesiastical establishments received important amelioration. The scandal of married clergymen still receiving official pensions ceased. But the proposal of a.s.signing to the clergy the care of the civil records, and the control of public instruction, fell to the ground. The University, well defended and directed by M. Royer-Collard, remained intact. And with regard to the privilege demanded for the clergy, of receiving every kind of donation without the interference of the civil authorities, the Chamber of Peers, on a report, as judicious as it was elegantly composed, by the Abbe de Montesquiou, reduced it to these conditions,--that none but religious establishments recognized by law should exercise this right, and that in every individual instance the authority of the King should be indispensable. The Chamber of Deputies adopted the measure thus amended, and from this movement, which threatened to disturb so completely the relations of the Church and State, nothing eventuated to infringe seriously either on the old maxims or the modern principles of French society.

The Cabinet co-operated loyally in these debates and wise resolutions, but with less decision and ascendency than that evinced by the moderate Royalists in the Chambers. It brought into the question neither the depth of thought, nor the power of eloquence, which give a Government the control over legislative a.s.semblies, and raise it, even in spite of its deficiencies, in public estimation. The Duke de Richelieu was universally respected. Amongst his colleagues, all men of high character and loyalty, there were several who were endowed with rare knowledge, ability, and courage. But the Cabinet wanted unity and brilliant reputation; important conditions under any system, but pre-eminently so under a free government.

Outside the Chambers, the Ministry had to sustain a still more weighty load than the pressure from within, and one which they were not better able to encounter. France had become a prey, not to the most tyrannical or the most sanguinary, but to the most vexatious and irritating of all the pa.s.sing influences which the vicissitudes of frequent revolutions impose upon a nation. A party long vanquished, trampled on, and finally included in a general amnesty, the party of the old Royalty, suddenly imagined that they had become masters, and gave themselves up pa.s.sionately to the enjoyment of a new power which they looked upon as an ancient right. G.o.d forbid that I should revive the sad remembrances of this reaction! I only desire to explain its true character. It was, in civil society, in internal administration, in local affairs, and nearly throughout the entire land of France, a species of foreign invasion, violent in certain places, offensive everywhere, and which occasioned more evil to be dreaded than it actually inflicted; for these unexpected victors threatened and insulted even where they refrained from striking. They seemed inclined to indemnify themselves by arrogant temerity, for their impotence to recover all that they had lost; and to satisfy their own consciences in the midst of their revenge, they tried to persuade themselves that they were far from inflicting on their enemies the full measure of what they had themselves suffered.

Strangers to the pa.s.sions of this party, impressed with the mischief they inflicted on the Royal cause, and personally wounded by the embarra.s.sments they occasioned to the Government, the Duke de Richelieu and the majority of his colleagues contended with honest sincerity against them. Even by the side of the most justly condemned proceedings during the reaction of 1815, and which remained entirely unpunished, we find traces of the efforts of the existing authorities either to check them, prevent their return, or at least to repel the sad responsibility of permitting them. When the outrages against the Protestants broke out in the departments of the south, and more than six weeks before M. d'Argenson spoke of them in the Chamber of Deputies, a royal proclamation, countersigned by M. Pasquier, vehemently denounced them, and called upon the magistrates for their suppression. After the scandalous acquittal, by the Court of a.s.size at Nismes, of the a.s.sa.s.sin of General Lagarde, who had protected the free worship of the Protestants, M. Pasquier demanded and obtained, from the Court of Appeal, the annulment of this sentence, in the name of the law, and as a last protestation of discarded justice. In spite of every possible intervention of delay and impediment, the proceedings commenced at Toulouse, and ended in a decree of the prevotal court at Pau, which inflicted five years' imprisonment on two of the murderers of General Ramel. Those of Marshal Brune had never been seriously pursued; but M. de Serre, being appointed Chancellor, compelled justice to resume its course; and the Court of a.s.size at Riom condemned to death, in default of appearance, the a.s.sa.s.sins they were unable to apprehend. Tardy and insufficient amends, which reveal the weakness of authority, as well as the resistance with which it was opposed! Even the ministers most subservient to the extreme royalist party endeavoured to check while supporting them, and took care to contribute less a.s.sistance than they had promised. At the very time when the Government divided the old army into cla.s.ses, to get rid of all the suspected officers, the Minister of War, the Duke of Feltri, summoned to the direction of the staff of his department General de Meulan, my brother-in-law, a brave soldier, who had entered the service as a private in 1797, and had won his promotion on the field of battle by dint of wounds. M. de Meulan was a royalist, but extremely attached to the army and his comrades, and deeply grieved by the severities with which they were oppressed. I witnessed his constant efforts to obtain justice for them, and to secure the continuance in the ranks, or re-admission, of all those whom he believed to be disposed to serve the King with honest loyalty. The undertaking was difficult. In 1816, one of our most able and distinguished officers of engineers, General Bernard, had been placed on half-pay, and lived in exile at Dole. The United States of America offered him the command of that branch of service in the Republic, with considerable advantages. He accepted the proposal, and asked the permission of his minister. The Duke of Feltri summoned him to his presence, and tried to induce him to abandon this design, by offering to appoint him to any situation in France which he considered suitable. "You promise me," said Bernard, "what you are unable to perform; place me as you intend, and in a fortnight I shall be so denounced that you will have no power to support me, and so hara.s.sed that I should voluntarily resign. While the Government has no more strength than at present, it can neither employ nor protect me. In my corner, I am at the mercy of a sub-prefect and police magistrate, who can arrest and imprison me; who sends for me every day, and compels me to wait in his ante-chamber to be ill received at last. Suffer me to go to America. The United States are the natural allies of France. I have decided, and, unless imprisoned, I shall certainly take my departure." His pa.s.sport was then given to him. The Duke de Berry complained to General Haxo of the course adopted by General Bernard. "After the manner in which he has been treated,"

replied Haxo, "I am only surprised that he has not gone before; it is by no means certain that I shall not some day follow his example."

Nothing can explain, better than this simple fact, the situation of the King's ministers at that time, and the sincerity as well as the timidity of their wishes to be prudent and just.

A great act, resolutely conceived and accomplished, on a great occasion, was necessary to raise the executive authority from the reputation as well as the actual mischief of this weakness, and to emanc.i.p.ate it from the party under which it succ.u.mbed while resisting. Today, so long removed as we are from that time, the more I reflect on it in the calm freedom of my judgment, the more I am convinced that the trial of Marshal Ney afforded a most propitious opportunity for such an act as that to which I now allude. There were undoubtedly weighty reasons for leaving justice to its unfettered course. Society and the royal power both required that respect for, and a salutary dread of, the law should repossess men's minds. It was important that generations formed during the vicissitudes of the Revolution and the triumphs of the Empire, should learn, by startling examples, that all does not depend on the strength and success of the moment; that there are certain inviolable duties; that we cannot safely sport with the fate of governments and the peace of nations; and that, in this momentous game, the most powerful and the most eminent risk their honour and their lives. In a political and moral sense these considerations were of the greatest importance.

But another prominent truth, equally moral and political, ought to have weighed heavily in the balance against an extreme decision. The Emperor Napoleon had reigned long and brilliantly, acknowledged and admired by France and Europe, and supported by the devotion of millions of men,--by the people as well as by the army. Ideas of right and duty, sentiments of respect and fidelity, were confused and antagonistic in many minds.

There were two actual and natural governments in presence of each other; and many, without perversity, might have hesitated which to choose. The King, Louis XVIII. and his advisers might in their turn, without weakness, have taken into consideration this moral confusion, of which Marshal Ney presented the most ill.u.s.trious example. The greater his offence against the King, with the more safety could they place clemency by the side of justice, and display, over his condemned head, that greatness of mind and heart which has also its full influence in establishing power and commanding fidelity. The very violence of the reaction in favour of royalty, the bitterness of party pa.s.sions, their thirst for punishment and vengeance, would have imparted to this act a still greater brilliancy of credit and effect; for boldness and liberty would have sprung from it as natural consequences. I heard at that time a lady of fashion, usually rational and amiable, call Mademoiselle de Lavalette "a little wretch," for aiding her mother in the escape of her father. When such extravagancies of feeling and language are indulged in the hearing of kings and their advisers, they should be received as warnings to resist, and not to submit.

Marshal Ney, pardoned and banished after condemnation, by royal letters deliberately promulgated, would have given to kingly power the aspect of a rampart raising itself above all, whether friends or enemies, to stay the tide of blood; it would have been, in fact, the reaction of 1815 subdued and extinguished, as well as that of the Hundred Days.

I do not pretend to have thought and said then, all that I say and think at present. I was sorrowful and perplexed. The King's ministers were in a similar predicament. They believed that they neither could nor ought to recommend clemency. In this momentous contingency, power knew not how to be great, sometimes the only method of becoming strong. Controlled but not overthrown, and irritated while defeated, by these alternations of concession and resistance, the Right-hand party, now become decidedly the Opposition, sought, while complaining and hesitating, some channel of escape from their position at once powerful and impotent,--some breach through which they might give the a.s.sault to the Government, enter the citadel, and establish themselves firmly there. A man of mind and courage, ambitious, restless, clever, and discontented, as well on his own account as for the sake of his party, ventured an attack extremely daring in reality, but circ.u.mspect in form, and purely theoretical in appearance. M. de Vitrolles, in a short pamphlet ent.i.tled 'Of the Ministry under a Representative Government,' said:--"France in every quarter expresses the necessity, profoundly acknowledged, of sterner action in the Government. I have examined the causes of this universal feeling, and the reasons which could explain why the different Administrations that have succeeded each other within the last eighteen months have not given the King's Cabinet the character of strength and unity which the Ministers themselves feel to be so essential. I believe that I have found them in the incoherence which existed between the nature of the adopted government and the ministerial organization, which it had not been considered necessary to modify, while at the same time we received a new division of power, and that power a.s.sumed an entirely new character of action." Appealing at every sentence to the practice and example of England, M. de Vitrolles argued that the Ministry, which he called _an inst.i.tution_, should have perfect unity in itself, a predominant majority in the Chambers, and an actual responsibility in the conduct of affairs, which would ensure for it, with the Crown, the requisite influence and dignity. On these three conditions alone could the Government be effective. A strange reminiscence to refer to at the present day! By the most confidential intimate of the Count d'Artois, and to establish the old royalist party in power, parliamentary legislation was for the first time recommended and demanded for France, as a necessary consequence of representative government.

I undertook to repulse this attack by unmasking it.[11] I explained, in reply, the essential principles of representative government, their true meaning, their real application, and the conditions under which they could be usefully developed, in the state in which France had been plunged by our revolutions and dissensions. Above all, I endeavoured to expose the bitterness of party spirit which lay behind this polished and erudite tilting-match between political rhetoricians, and the underhand blows which, in the insufficiency of their public weapons, they secretly aimed at each other. I believe my ideas were sound enough to satisfy intelligent minds who looked below the surface and onwards to the future; but they had no immediate and practical efficacy. When the great interests of nations and the contending pa.s.sions of men are at stake, the most ingenious speculative arguments are a mere war of display, which has no influence on the course of events. As soon as the budget was voted, and on the very day of its announcement, the session was closed, and the Chambers of 1815 retired, having strenuously exercised, both in defence and attack, the free privileges conferred on France by the Charter; but divided into two Royalist parties: the one wavering and uneasy, although in the possession of power; the other full of expectation, and looking forward, with the opening of the next session, to a more decisive success, and both in a state of mutual irritation.

Notwithstanding their doubts and weaknesses, the advantage remained with the Cabinet and its adherents. For the first time since France had been a prey to the Revolution, the struggles of liberty a.s.sisted the advocates of a moderate policy, and essentially checked, if not completely subdued, their opponents. The waves of reaction murmured, but rose no more. The Cabinet, strongly supported in the Chambers, possessed the confidence of the King, who entertained a high esteem for the Duke de Richelieu, and a friendly disposition, becoming daily more warm, towards his young Minister of Police, M. Decazes. Eight days after the closing of the session, the Cabinet gained an important accession to its internal strength, and an eloquent interpreter of its public policy.

M. Laine replaced M. de Vaublanc as Minister of the Interior. As a slight compensation to the right-hand party, M. de Marbois, who had rendered himself very objectionable to them, was dismissed from the Ministry of Justice, and the Chancellor, M. Dambray, resumed the seals.

M. de Marbois was one of those upright and well-informed men, but at the same time neither quick-sighted nor commanding, who a.s.sist power by opinion rather than force. He had opposed the reaction with more integrity than energy, and served the King with dignity, without acquiring personal influence. In October 1815, at a moment of the most violent agitation, the King expressed much anxiety for the introduction of the bill respecting the prevotal courts. It was settled in council that the Chancellor and the Minister of War should prepare it together.

A few days after, the King asked for it rather impatiently. "Sire,"

answered M. de Marbois, "I am ashamed to tell your Majesty that it is ready." He resigned office honourably, although with some regret. At the same time I left the post of Secretary-General to the Ministry of Justice. While there, M. de Marbois had treated me with confidence inspired by sympathy. Finding it disagreeable to remain under M. Dambray, to whom my Protestant extraction and opinions were equally unsuited, I re-a.s.sumed the place of Master of Requests in the State Council.

The Chambers had scarcely adjourned, when the conspiracy of Gren.o.ble, planned by Didier, and that called the plot of the patriots, at Paris, in 1816, came, one upon the other, to put the moderation of the Cabinet to the proof. The details forwarded by the magistrates of the department of the Isere were full of exaggeration and declamatory excitement. The mode of repression ordered by the Government was precipitately rigorous.

Gren.o.ble had been the cradle of the Hundred Days. It was thought expedient to strike Bonapartism heavily, in the very place where it had first exploded. A natural opportunity presented itself here of dealing firmly with the abettors of treason, while in another quarter strong resistance was opposed to the advocates of reaction. Moderation sometimes becomes impatient of its name, and yields to the temptation of forgetting it for the moment.

The Government nevertheless continued to be moderate, and the public were not deceived as to the course adopted. Although M. Decazes, from the nature of his department, was the minister on whom measures of inquiry and suppression devolved, he was at the same time looked upon, and truly, as the protector of the oppressed, and of all who were suspected without cause. By natural disposition and magisterial habit, he loved justice in his heart. A stranger to all party antipathies, penetrating, fearless, indefatigably active, and as prompt in benevolence as in duty, he exercised the power which the special laws conferred on him with measure and discretion; enforcing them as much against the spirit of reaction and persecution as against detected conspiracy, and continually occupied himself in preventing or repairing the abuses in which the inferior authorities indulged. Thus he advanced equally in the good opinion of the country and the favour of the King.

People and parties have an infallible instinct by which they recognize, under the most complicated circ.u.mstances, those who attack and those who defend them, their friends and their enemies. The ultra-royalists soon began to look upon M. Decazes as their chief adversary, and the moderates to regard him as their most valuable ally.

At the same time, and during the silence of the tribune, the chief representatives of moderate policy in the Chambers eagerly sought opportunities of bringing their views before the public, of proclaiming their principles, and of rallying, round the King and the const.i.tutional government, the still hesitating support of the nation at large. It affords me much gratification to recall here the words, perhaps forgotten, of three justly celebrated men, all personal friends of my own; they demonstrate (as I think, with some brilliancy) the spirit of the monarchical party attached to the state of society which the times had engendered in France, and the opinions and sentiments they were anxious to disseminate.

On the 6th of July, 1816, M. de Serre, in establishing, as first President, the Royal Court at Colmar, spoke as follows:--"Liberty, that pretext of all seditious ambition,--liberty, which is nothing more than the reign of law, has ever been the first privilege buried with the laws under the ruins of the throne. Religion itself is in danger when the throne and laws are attacked; for everything on earth is derived from heaven, and there is perfect harmony between all divine and human inst.i.tutions. If the latter are overturned, the former cannot be respected. Let all our efforts, then, be exerted to combine, purify, and strengthen that monarchical and Christian spirit which inspires the sentiment of every sacrifice to duty! Let our first care be to obtain universal respect for the Charter which the King has granted to us.

Undoubtedly our laws, our Charter, may be improved; and we neither require to interdict regret for the past nor hope for the future. But let us commence by submitting heartily and without reserve to the laws as they exist; let us place this first check on the impatient restlessness to which we have been surrendered for twenty-five years; let us teach ourselves this primary conviction, that we know how to adopt and to be satisfied with a defined system. The rest may be left to time."

Six weeks later, on the 19th of August, M. Royer-Collard, when presiding over the distribution of prizes at the general meeting of the University, addressed these words to the young students:--"Today, when the reign of falsehood has ceased, and the legitimacy of power, which is truth in government, permits a more unshackled play to all salutary and generous doctrines, public instruction beholds its destinies elevated and expanded. Religion demands from it pure hearts and disciplined minds; the State looks for habits profoundly monarchical; science, philosophy, and literature expect new brilliancy and distinction. These will be the benefits bestowed by a prince to whom his people already owe so much grat.i.tude and love. He, who has made public liberty flourish under the shadow of his hereditary throne, will know well how to base, on the tutelary principles of empires, a system of teaching worthy of the enlightened knowledge of the age, and such as France demands from him, that she may not descend from the glorious rank she occupies amongst nations."