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 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION.
 
 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE, 
 
 JANUARY, 1849. 
 
 BY MONSIEUE GUIZOT. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1849.
 
 V 
 
 LOKDOS: I'KINTBD Br W. CLOWES ASD SONS. STAMKOKP STRKKf.
 
 I VENTURE to believe that nothing will be found in 
 the following pages which bears the impress of my 
 personal situation. While events of such magnitude 
 are passing before his eyes, a man who did not 
 forget himself would deserve to be for ever for- 
 gotten. I have thought of nothing but the situation 
 of my country. The more I reflect upon that, the 
 more I am convinced that the evil which lies at the 
 root of all her evils, which undermines and destroys 
 her governments and her liberties, her dignity and 
 her happiness, is the evil which I attack ; the 
 idolatry of Democracy. 
 
 Whether the accession of M. Louis Napoleon 
 Bonaparte to the Presidency of the Republic will 
 be found an efficacious remedy for this disease, 
 the future will show. What I have said here 
 after the election of M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 
 I should have equally said, without the slightest 
 alteration, if General Cavaignac had been elected. 
 It is not to individuals, but to society itself, that 
 great social truths are addressed.
 
 ( vii ) 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL? . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT 
 TO DEMOCRACY? 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 15 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC 25 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT ARE THE REAL AND ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF 
 SOCIETY IN FRANCE? 36 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE . 5C 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE . 70 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 CONCLUSION 84
 
 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL ? 
 
 MIRABEAU, Barnave, Napoleon, and Lafayette, who 
 died at distant and very dissimilar periods, in bed 
 or on the scaffold, in their own country or in 
 exile, all died under the influence of one senti- 
 ment a sentiment of profound melancholy. They 
 thought their hopes deceived, their labours abortive. 
 They were assailed by doubts of the success of 
 their cause, and by misgivings as to the future. 
 
 King Louis - Philippe reigned above seventeen 
 years, for more than eleven of which I had the 
 honour to be his minister. If to-morrow it pleased 
 God to summon us into his presence, should we 
 quit this earth very confident in the future destiny 
 and the constitutional order of our country ? 
 
 B
 
 2 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. I. 
 
 Is then the French Revolution destined to give 
 birth only to doubt and deception ? to bury all its 
 triumphs under ruins ? 
 
 Yes : so long as France shall suffer the true and 
 the false, the upright and the perverse, the prac- 
 ticable and the chimerical, the salutary and the 
 pestilent to be constantly mingled and confounded 
 in her opinions, her institutions, and the govern- 
 ment of her affairs, such will be the unfailing and 
 inevitable result. 
 
 Until a people which has gone through a great 
 revolution has passed on the principles, the passions, 
 and the doctrines which have led to this revolution, 
 a sentence like that which shall be passed on all 
 human things at the Last Day, " severing the wheat 
 from the tares, and the corn from the straw that 
 shall be cast into the fire," it can never surmount 
 the perils, nor reap the advantages, of the struggle 
 in which it has been engaged. 
 
 So long as this judgment is deferred, chaos 
 reigns ; and chaos, if prolonged in the midst of a 
 people, would be death. 
 
 Chaos is now concealed under one word Demo- 
 cracy. 
 
 This is now the sovereign and universal word 
 which all parties invoke, all seek to appropriate as 
 a talisman. 
 
 The Monarchists say, " Our Monarchy is a De- 
 mocratic Monarchy : therefore it differs essentially
 
 CH. I.] WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL ? 3 
 
 from the ancient Monarchy, and is adapted to the 
 modern condition of society." 
 
 The Republicans say, " The Republic is Demo- 
 cracy governing itself. This is the only form of 
 government in harmony with a democratic society, 
 its principles, its sentiments, and its interests." 
 
 Socialists, Communists, and Montagnards require 
 that the republic should be a pure arid absolute 
 democracy. This, in their estimation, is the condi- 
 tion of its legitimacy. 
 
 Such is the power of the word Democracy, that 
 no government or party dares to raise its head, or 
 believes its own existence possible, if it does not 
 bear that word inscribed on its banner ; and those 
 who carry that banner aloft with the greatest osten- 
 tation and to the extremest limits, believe them- 
 selves to be stronger than all the rest of the world. 
 
 Fatal idea, which incessantly excites and foments 
 social war amongst us ! This idea must be extir- 
 pated ; for on its extirpation depends social peace, 
 and, in her train, liberty, security, prosperity, dig- 
 nity, all the benefits, material or moral, which social 
 peace alone can ensure. 
 
 The following are the causes to which the word 
 democracy owes its power. 
 
 It is the banner of all the social hopes and am- 
 bitions of man, pure or impure, noble or base, 
 rational or irrational, possible or chimerical. 
 
 B2
 
 4 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. I. 
 
 Now it is the glory of man to be ambitious. He 
 alone, of all created beings, does not passively re- 
 sign himself to evil ; he alone incessantly aspires 
 after good ; not only for himself, but for his fellow- 
 creatures. He respects and loves the race to which 
 he belongs; he wishes to find a remedy for their 
 miseries, and redress for their wrongs. 
 
 But man is no less imperfect than he is ambitious. 
 Amidst his ardent and unceasing struggles to era- 
 dicate evil and to achieve good, every one of his 
 virtuous inclinations is accompanied by an evil 
 inclination which treads closely on its heels, or 
 strives with it for precedence. The desire for jus- 
 tice and the desire for vengeance the spirit of 
 liberty and the spirit of tyranny the wish to rise 
 and the wish to abase what has risen the ardent 
 love of truth and the presumptuous temerity of 
 fancied knowledge ; we may fathom all the depths 
 of human nature ; we shall find throughout, the 
 same mingled yet conflicting qualities, the same 
 danger from their close and easy approximation. 
 
 To all these instincts, at once contrary and parallel, 
 to all indiscriminately, the bad as well as the good, 
 the word Democracy holds out an interminable 
 vista and infinite promises. It fosters every propen- 
 sity, it speaks to every passion, of the heart of man ; 
 to the most generous and the most shameful, the most 
 moral and the most immoral, the gentlest and
 
 CH. I.] WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL ? 5 
 
 the harshest, the most beneficent and the most de- 
 structive : to the former it loudly offers, to the latter 
 it secretly and dimly promises, satisfaction. 
 
 Such is the secret of its power. 
 
 I am wrong in saying, the secret. The word Demo- 
 cracy is not new, and in all ages it has signified what 
 it signifies now. But what is new and proper to our 
 times is this : the word Democracy is now pronounced 
 every day, every hour, and in every place ; and at 
 every time and place it is heard by all men. This 
 formidable appeal to all thatris most potent, for good 
 and for evil, in man and in society, was formerly 
 heard only transiently, locally, and among certain 
 classes, which, though bound to other classes by the 
 ties of a common country, were distinct and pro- 
 foundly different from them. They lived at a dis- 
 tance from each other; each obscurely known to 
 the other. Now there is but one society ; and 
 in this society there are no more lofty barriers, no 
 more great distances, no more mutual obscurities. 
 Whether it be false or true, noxious or salutary, 
 when once a social idea arises, it penetrates every- 
 where, and its action is universal and constant. It 
 is a torch that is never extinguished ; a voice that is 
 never wearied or hushed. Universality and pub- 
 licity are from henceforth the conditions of all the 
 great provocations addressed to men, of all the 
 great impulses given to society. 
 
 This is doubtless one of those absolute and sove-
 
 6 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. I. 
 
 reign facts which enter into the designs of God 
 with regard to mankind. 
 
 Such being the fact, the empire of the word De- 
 mocracy is not to be regarded as a transitory or 
 local accident. It is the development others would 
 say the explosion of all the elements of human 
 nature throughout all the ranks and all the depths 
 of society ; and consequently the open, general, con- 
 tinuous, inevitable struggle of its good and evil 
 instincts ; of its virtues and its vices ; of all its powers 
 and faculties, whether 4o improve or to corrupt, to 
 raise or to abase, to create or to destroy. Such is, 
 from henceforth, the social state, the permanent con- 
 dition of our nation.
 
 CH. II.] DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT 
 TO DEMOCRACY ? 
 
 THERE are men whom this fearful struggle does 
 not alarm : thev have full confidence in human na- 
 
 v 
 
 ture. According to them, if left to itself, its pro- 
 gress is towards good : all the evils of society arise 
 from governments which debase men by violence or 
 corrupt them by fraud : liberty liberty for every- 
 body and everything liberty will almost always 
 suffice to enlighten or to control the wills of men, 
 to prevent evil or to cure it : a little government 
 the least possible may be allowed for the re- 
 pression of extreme disorder and the control of brute 
 force. 
 
 Others have a more summary way of disposing 
 of all dread of the triumph of evil in man or in 
 society. There is, they say, no such thing as 
 natural and necessary evil, since no human inclina- 
 tion is bad in itself; it becomes so, only when it 
 does not attain the end after which it aspires it is a 
 torrent which overflows its banks when obstructed. 
 If society were organized in such a manner that each
 
 8 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. II. 
 
 of the instincts of man found its proper place and re- 
 ceived its due satisfaction, evil would disappear, strife 
 would cease, and all the various forces of humanity, 
 harmoniously combine to produce social order. 
 
 The former of these speculators misunderstand 
 man ; the t latter misunderstand man, and deny 
 God. 
 
 Let any man dive into his own heart and ob- 
 serve himself with attention. If he have the power 
 to look, and the will to see, he will behold, with 
 a sort of terror, the incessant war waged by the 
 good and evil dispositions within him reason and 
 caprice, duty and passion ; in short, to call them 
 all by their comprehensive names, good and evil. 
 We contemplate with anxiety the outward troubles 
 and vicissitudes of human life; but what should 
 we feel if we could behold the inward vicissitudes, 
 the troubles of the human soul ? if we could 
 see how many dangers, snares, enemies, combats, 
 victories, and defeats can be crowded into a day 
 an hour? I do not say this to discourage man, 
 nor to humble or under-value his free will. He 
 is called upon to conquer in the battle of life, and 
 the honour of the conquest belongs to his free will. 
 But victory is impossible, and defeat certain, if he 
 has not a just conception and a profound feeling of 
 his dangers, his weaknesses, and his need of assist- 
 ance. To believe that the free will of man tends 
 to good, and is of itself sufficient to accomplish
 
 CH. II.] DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 9 
 
 good, betrays an immeasurable ignorance of his 
 nature. It is the error of pride; an error which 
 tends to destroy both moral and political order ; 
 which enfeebles the government of communities 
 no less than the government of the inward man. 
 
 For the struggle is the same, the peril as immi- 
 nent, the aid as necessary, in society as in the 
 individual man. Many of those now living have 
 been doomed to see, several times in the course of 
 their lives, the social edifice tottering to its fall, and 
 all the props that should uphold, all the bonds that 
 should unite it, failing. Over what an immense 
 extent, and with what fearful rapidity, have all the 
 causes of social war and social destruction, which are 
 always fermenting in the midst of us, each time 
 burst forth ! Which of us has not shuddered at 
 the sudden discovery of the abyss over which we 
 live the frail barriers which separate us from it, 
 and the destructive legions ready to rush forth 
 upon society as soon as its jaws are unclosed ? For 
 my own part, I was a spectator, day by day, hour 
 by hour, of the purest, the wisest, the gentlest, and 
 the shortest of these formidable convulsions; in 
 July, 1830, I saw, in the streets and the palaces, 
 at the gate of the national councils and in the 
 midst of popular assemblies, society abandoned to 
 itself, an actor or spectator of the revolution. 
 And at the same time that I admired the gene- 
 rous sentiments, the proofs of strong intelli-
 
 10 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. II. 
 
 gence and disinterested virtue and heroic modera- 
 tion which I witnessed, I shuddered as I saw 
 a mighty torrent of insensate ideas, brutal 
 passions, perverse inclinations, and terrible chi- 
 meras, rise and swell, minute by minute, ready to 
 overflow, and submerge a land where all the dikes 
 that had contained it were broken down. Society 
 had gloriously repulsed the violation of its laws and 
 its honour, and now it was on the point of falling 
 into ruins in the midst of its glory. Here it was 
 that I learned the vital conditions of social order, 
 and the necessity of resistance to ensure the safety 
 of the social fabric. 
 
 Resistance not only to evil, but to the principle of 
 evil ; not only to disorder, but to the passions and the 
 ideas which engender disorder this is the paramount 
 and peremptory duty of every government. And the 
 greater the empire of Democracy, the more im- 
 portant is it that government should hold fast 
 to its true character, and act its true part in the 
 struggle which agitates society. Why is it that 
 so many democracies some of them very bril- 
 liant have so rapidly perished ? Because they 
 would not suffer their governments to do their 
 duty, and fulfil the objects for which governments 
 are instituted. They did more than reduce them to 
 weakness ; they condemned them to falsehood. It 
 is the melancholy condition of democratic govern- 
 ments, that while charged as they must be with
 
 CH. II.] DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 1 1 
 
 the repression of disorder, they are required to be 
 complaisant and indulgent to the causes of disorder ; 
 they are expected to arrest the evil when it breaks 
 out, and yet they are asked to foster it whilst it is 
 hatching. I know no more deplorable spectacle 
 than a power which, in the struggle between the 
 good and the evil principle, continually bends the 
 knee before the bad, and then attempts to resume an 
 attitude of vigour and independence when it be- 
 comes necessary to resist its excesses. If you will 
 not have excesses, you must repress them in their 
 origin. If you wish for liberty for the full and 
 glorious development of human nature learn first 
 on what conditions this is attainable ; look for- 
 ward to its consequences. Do not blind yourselves 
 to the perils and the combats it will occasion. 
 And when these combats and these perils arise, do 
 not require your leaders to be hypocritical or weak 
 in their dealings with the enemy. Do not force 
 upon them the worship of idols, even were you 
 yourselves those idols. Permit them, nay command 
 them, to worship and to serve the true God alone. 
 
 I might here allow myself the satisfaction of re- 
 calling the names of all the rulers who have fallen 
 shamefully because they submitted basely to be the 
 slaves or the tools of the errors and passions of the 
 democracies it was their duty and their vocation to 
 govern ; but I had rather dwell on the memory of 
 those who lived gloriously by resisting them. It is
 
 12 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. II. 
 
 more to my taste to prove the truth by examples 
 of the success which crowns wisdom, than by those 
 of the disasters which attend on folly. 
 
 Democratic France owes much to the Emperor 
 Napoleon. He gave her two things of immense 
 value : within, civil order strongly constituted ; with- 
 out, national independence firmly established. But 
 had she ever a government which treated her with 
 greater severity, or showed less complaisance for the 
 favourite passions of Democracy ? As to the po- 
 litical constitution of the state, Napoleon's only care 
 was to raise power from the abasement into which it 
 had fallen, to restore to it all the conditions of force 
 and greatness. In this he saw a national interest 
 paramount to all others, whether the nation were 
 governed democratically or otherwise. 
 
 But Napoleon was a despot. If he rightly under- 
 stood and ably served some of the great interests of 
 that new France he had to govern, he profoundly 
 misunderstood and injured others*, not less sacred. 
 How was it possible that one so hostile to liberty 
 should be favourable to the political propensities of 
 Democracy ? 
 
 I shall not contest this. I run no risk of forgetting 
 that Napoleon was a despot, for I have not to learn 
 it now I thought so when he was living. It may, 
 however, be asked whether he could have been 
 otherwise ? whether he could have tolerated political 
 liberty, and whether we were then in a state to receive
 
 CH. II.] DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 13 
 
 it ? I shall not attempt to decide these questions. 
 There are men, and very great men, who are suited 
 to certain diseased and transitory crises, and not 
 to the sane and permanent state, of society. Na- 
 poleon was, perhaps, one of those men. That he 
 mistook some of the essential wants of our time, 
 nobody is more convinced than I am. But he re- 
 established order and authority in the midst of 
 democratic France. He believed, and he proved, 
 that it was possible to serve and to govern a demo- 
 cratic society without humouring all its inclinations. 
 This is his real greatness. 
 
 Washington has no resemblance to Napoleon. 
 He was not a despot. He founded the political 
 liberty, at the same time as the national independ- 
 ence, of his country. He used war only as a means 
 to peace. Raised to the supreme power without 
 ambition, he descended from it without regret, as 
 soon as the safety of his country permitted. He is 
 the model for all democratic chiefs. Now you have 
 only to examine his life; his soul, his acts, his 
 thoughts, his words ; you will not find a single mark 
 of condescension, a single moment of indulgence, 
 for the favourite ideas of Democracy. He constantly 
 struggled struggled even to weariness and to sad- 
 ness against its exactions. No man was ever more 
 profoundly imbued with the spirit of government, 
 or with respect for authority. He never exceeded 
 the rights of power, according to the laws of his
 
 14 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. II. 
 
 country ; but he confirmed and maintained them, 
 in principle as well as in practice, as firmly, as 
 loftily, as he could have done in an old monarchical 
 or aristocratical state. He was one of those who 
 knew that it is no more possible to govern from 
 below in a republic than in a monarchy in a demo- 
 cratic than in an aristocratic society. 
 
 Democratic societies enjoy no privilege which 
 renders the spirit of government less necessary in 
 them than in others ; no privilege which renders their 
 vital conditions different or inferior to those required 
 elsewhere. By an infallible consequence of the strug- 
 gle which infallibly arises in such societies, the pos- 
 sessor of power is continually called on to decide be- 
 tween the contrary impulses by which he is solicited 
 to make himself the artisan of good or the accom- 
 plice of evil, the champion of order or the slave of 
 disorder. The mythic story of the choice of Her- 
 cules is the daily and hourly history of his life. 
 Every government, whatever be its form or its name, 
 which, by the vice of its organization or situation, or 
 by the corruption or feebleness of its will, cannot 
 fulfil this inevitable task, will speedily pass away like 
 an evil phantom, or will ruin the democracy it 
 affects to establish.
 
 CH. III.] OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 15 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 
 
 I SHALL not speak of the republican form of govern- 
 ment otherwise than with respect. Considered in 
 itself, it is a noble form of government. It has 
 called forth great virtues ; it has presided over the 
 destiny and the glory of great nations. 
 
 But a republican government has the same voca- 
 tion, the same duties, as any other government. 
 Its name gives it no claim to dispensation or 
 privilege. It must satisfy both the general and 
 permanent wants of human society, and the parti- 
 cular wants of the particular community which it is 
 called to govern. 
 
 The permanent want of every community, the 
 first and most imperious want of France at the 
 present day, is, peace in the bosom of society itself. 
 
 A great deal has been said about unity and social 
 fraternity. These are sublime words, but they 
 ought not to make us forget facts. Nothing has a 
 more certain tendency to ruin a people than a 
 habit of accepting words and appearances as 
 realities. Whilst the shouts of unity and fraternity
 
 16 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. III. 
 
 resound among us, they are responded to by 
 social war, flagrant or imminent, terrible from the 
 evils it causes, or from those it seems likely to 
 cause. 
 
 I will not dwell on this grievous wound. Yet 
 in order to cure, we ought to touch, and even to 
 probe it. It is an old wound. The history of 
 France is filled with the struggle between the 
 different classes of society, of which the Revolution 
 of 1789 was the most general and mighty explosion. 
 The contests between nobility and commonalty, 
 aristocracy and democracy, masters and workmen, 
 those possessing property and those dependent on 
 wages, are all different forms and phases of the 
 social struggle which has so long agitated France. 
 And it is at the very moment when we are boasting 
 of having reached the summit of civilization it is 
 while the most humane words that can issue from 
 the lips of man are ringing in our ears, that this 
 struggle is revived more violently, more fiercely 
 than ever ! 
 
 This is a curse and a shame, of which we, and 
 the age we live in, must rid ourselves. Internal 
 peace, peace among all classes of citizens, is the 
 paramount want, the only chance for the salvation 
 of France. 
 
 Will the Democratic Republic give us this 
 peace ? 
 
 It did not begin well. When scarcely born, a
 
 CH. III.] OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 17 
 
 civil war was its first necessity most unfortunately 
 for the republic. Governments find great difficulty 
 in rising- out of their cradles. Will the Democratic 
 Republic succeed in the attempt ? If time is allowed 
 to it, will it restore social peace? 
 
 There is one circumstance which strikes me pow- 
 erfully, and causes me great anxiety : that is, the 
 ardour manifested by the republic to be expressly 
 and officially called democratic. 
 
 The United States of America are universally 
 admitted to be the model of a Republic and a De- 
 mocracy. Did it ever enter the head of the Ameri- 
 can people to call the United States a Democratic 
 Republic? 
 
 No ; nor is this astonishing. In that country 
 there was no struggle between Aristocracy and De- 
 mocracy ; between an ancient aristocratical society 
 and a new democratic society : on the contrary, the 
 leaders of society in the United States, the descend- 
 ants of the first colonists, the majority of the prin- 
 cipal planters in the country and the principal mer- 
 chants in the towns, who constituted the natural aris- 
 tocracy of the country, placed themselves at the 
 head of the revolution and the republic. The de- 
 votion, energy, and constancy which they showed 
 in the cause, were greater than those displayed by 
 the people. The conquest of their independence, and 
 the foundation of the republic, was not, then, the 
 work and the victory of certain classes over certain
 
 18 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. III. 
 
 other classes; it was the joint work of all, led by 
 the highest, the wealthiest, and the most enlightened, 
 who had often great difficulty in rallying the spirit 
 and sustaining the courage of the mass of the popu- 
 lation. 
 
 Whenever officers were to be chosen for the 
 bodies of troops formed in the several States, Wash- 
 ington gave this advice : " Take none but gentle- 
 men : they are the most trustworthy, as well as the 
 ablest." 
 
 A republican government has more need than 
 any other of the co-operation of every class of its 
 citizens: if the mass of the population does not 
 zealously adopt it, it has no root ; if the higher 
 classes are hostile or indifferent to it, it can enjoy 
 no security. In either case, it is reduced to the 
 necessity of oppressing. It is precisely because in 
 a republic the authority of the government is weak 
 and precarious, that it stands in need of great moral 
 support from the society over which it presides. 
 Which are the republics that have lived long 
 and honourably, overcoming the defects and the 
 storms incident to their institutions ? Those only in 
 which the republican spirit was sincere and general ; 
 which obtained, on the one side, the attachment 
 and the confidence of the people, and on the other 
 the decided support of the classes who, by their 
 position, fortune, education, and habits, bring into 
 public life the largest share of natural authority,
 
 CH. III.] OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 19 
 
 tranquil independence, knowledge, and leisure. On 
 these conditions only can a republic be established 
 or maintained ; for on these conditions only can it 
 exist without troubling the peace of society, and 
 without condemning its government to the deplor- 
 able alternative of the disorganization of anarchy, 
 or the rigid tension of tyranny. 
 
 The United States of America enjoyed this 
 singular good fortune, but it is denied to the 
 French Republic. Indeed this is not only admitted, 
 but proclaimed and vaunted, by its authors. What 
 is the meaning of the words Democratic Repub- 
 lic now current amongst us, and adopted as the 
 official name, the symbol of the government ? It is 
 the echo of an ancient social war-cry a cry which 
 is still raised, still repeated in every class of so- 
 ciety; still angrily uttered against one class by 
 another, which, in its turn, hears it with terror di- 
 rected against itself. All are in turn democrats as 
 against those above them, aristocrats as against those 
 below ; threatening and threatened, envious or en- 
 vied, and exhibiting continual and revolting changes 
 of position, attitude, and language, and a deplora- 
 ble confusion of conflicting ideas and passions. It 
 is war in the midst of chaos. 
 
 But I hear it said, " This war is a fact it is the 
 dominant fact of our history, our society, and our 
 revolution. Such facts can neither be hidden nor 
 passed over in silence, and this is become final 
 
 c2
 
 20 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. III. 
 
 and decisive. It is not war that we proclaimed in 
 proclaiming a Democratic Republic, it is victory 
 the victory of Democracy. Democracy has con- 
 quered, and remains alone on the field of battle. 
 She raises her visor, announces her name, and takes 
 possession of her conquest." 
 
 Such an answer is dictated by illusion or by hypo- 
 crisy. How does a government, whether demo- 
 cratic or not, assert and prove its victory, when 
 that victory is real and decisive ? By restoring 
 peace. Thus, and thus alone, could the Demo- 
 cratic Republic have proved that it had conquered. 
 But does peace reign in France ? Is it even ap- 
 proaching? Do the various elements of society, 
 willingly or unwillingly, satisfied or resigned, really 
 believe in the existence and permanence of peace, 
 and come to seek tranquillity, order, and protection 
 under the shelter of the Democratic Republic ? Lis- 
 ten to the comments on the title assumed by the 
 republican government which are universally heard ; 
 see the striking and menacing facts which are con- 
 tinually occurring, and which are the consequence or 
 the proof of those comments. Is this state of things 
 peace ? Is there, I will not say the reality, but the 
 bare appearance, of one of those energetic, wise, and 
 conclusive victories which put an end, for a time at 
 least, to social conflicts, and secure a long truce 
 to harassed nations ? 
 
 There are facts of such magnitude, clearness, arid
 
 CH. III.] OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 2 1 
 
 prominence, that no human force or fraud can suc- 
 ceed in hiding them. It is in vain that you repeat 
 that the days of fraternity are come ; that Demo- 
 cracy, such as you establish it, puts an end to all 
 hostilities or conflicts of classes, and assimilates and 
 unites all orders of citizens. The truth, the terrible 
 truth, gleams through these vain words. Interests, 
 passions, pretensions, situations, and classes conflict 
 on every side, with all the fury of boundless hopes 
 and boundless fears. It is clear that the first 
 acts of the Democratic Republic threaten to plunge 
 herself and us into the chaos of social war. 
 
 And does she give us arms for our defence, or 
 open to us issues for our escape ? 
 
 I pass over the name she assumes ; I turn to the 
 political ideas she proclaims as laws for the govern- 
 ment of the state : so far from diminishing my 
 anxiety, these serve but to increase it. For if the 
 banner of the Democratic Republic appears to me 
 to bear the inscription of social war, its constitution 
 seems to me to lead directly to revolutionary des- 
 potism. I find in it no distinct powers, possessed 
 of sufficient inherent strength to exercise a reci- 
 procal control ; no solid ramparts, under the shelter 
 of which various rights and interests can take 
 root and flourish in safety ; no organization of gua- 
 rantees; no balance of powers in the centre of the 
 state and at the head of government nothing but 
 a single motive force and various wheels ; a master
 
 22 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. III. 
 
 and his agents ; nothing between the personal liberty 
 of the citizens and the bare will of the numerical 
 majority : the principle of despotism, checked by 
 the right of insurrection. 
 
 Such is the position of the Democratic Republic 
 with relation to social order ; such, with relation to 
 political order, is the government which it consti- 
 tutes. 
 
 What can be the result ? Assuredly neither peace 
 nor liberty. 
 
 When the republic was proclaimed, in the midst 
 of general and profound alarm, one sentiment pre- 
 vailed. A great number of men attached to the 
 interests of their country, said, or thought, " Let 
 us wait ; let us try perhaps the republic will 
 be different now from what it was heretofore; let 
 the experiment be tried let it not be disturbed by 
 violence : we shall see the result." 
 
 They kept their word ; they have excited no 
 troubles, they have raised no obstacles, to disturb or 
 to impede the progress of the republic. 
 
 The same sentiment prevailed throughout Europe 
 a sentiment inspired, no doubt, by prudence, and 
 not by any cordiality or hope : but the motives which 
 influenced Europe signify little ; the important fact 
 is, that no act, no danger from without troubles the 
 French Republic in the experiment of its founda- 
 tion. 
 
 On the other hand, justice compels us to acknow-
 
 CH. III.] OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 23 
 
 ledge that the leaders of the republic have endea- 
 voured to belie the predictions of its adversaries and 
 the fears of the public. They have respected the faith 
 of men. They have fought very late, it is true, but 
 at last they have fought for the existence of society. 
 They have not broken the peace of Europe, and they 
 have striven to maintain the public credit. These 
 meritorious efforts do honour to the men invested 
 with power, and show, moreover, what the general 
 instincts of the country are, But these men can 
 only retard, they cannot arrest, the downward course 
 of the state on a fatal declivity ; they can find no 
 firm footing, and lose ground at every step. They 
 have sunk into the revolutionary rut; and though 
 they struggle not to plunge deeper into it, they can- 
 not, or they dare not, quit it. The acts of the 
 republic are not, in all points, what they formerly 
 were ; but the republic is what it was. Whether 
 as to social organization or political institutions, 
 the conditions of order or the securities for liberty, 
 the republic has nothing better to offer than what 
 she offered fifty years ago. There are the same 
 ideas, the same crude and rash experiments, often 
 even the same forms and the same words. Strange 
 spectacle ! The authors of the republic are afraid 
 of their own work, and would fain change its cha- 
 racter and aspect ; but they can produce nothing 
 but a copy. 
 
 How long, whatever be its ultimate success or
 
 24 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. HI. 
 
 failure, the present attempt will last, nobody knows. 
 But hitherto France has evidently reason to fear 
 that its first and paramount interests social peace 
 and political liberty will be placed, or left, by the 
 Democratic Republic, in immense danger.
 
 CH. IV.] OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 25 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 
 
 THE Social Republic promises to solve the difficulty. 
 
 "All systems, all governments," it declares, " have 
 been tried and found wanting. My ideas alone are 
 new, and have not yet been put to the test. My 
 day is come." 
 
 This is a mistake. The ideas propounded by 
 the Social Republic are not new. They are as old 
 as the world. They have risen up in the midst of 
 all the great moral and social crises, whether in the 
 East or the West, in the ancient or the modern 
 world. The second and third centuries in Africa, 
 and especially in Egypt, during the agitations 
 caused by the propagation of Christianity the 
 middle ages during their confused, stormy fermen- 
 tation the sixteenth century in Germany, in the 
 course of the Reformation and the seventeenth 
 in England during the political revolution, had 
 their Socialists and their Communists, thinking, 
 speaking, and acting precisely like those of our own 
 day. It is a phase of human nature that reappears 
 at epochs when society is like a boiling caldron, in
 
 26 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cH. IV. 
 
 which every ingredient is thrown to the surface and 
 exposed to view. 
 
 Till now, it is true, these ideas had only been 
 enounced on a small scale, obscurely and timidly, 
 and were repelled and execrated almost as soon as 
 they saw the light. But now they boldly exhibit 
 themselves, and put forth all their pretensions before 
 the public. It signifies little whether this is by 
 their own strength, by the fault of the public itself, 
 or from causes inherent in the present state of 
 society. Since the Social Republic is proclaimed 
 aloud, we must look at it steadily and endeavour to 
 fathom its lowest depths. 
 
 I wish to avoid all circumlocution, to throw aside 
 all disguises, and to go straight to the heart of the 
 idol. Nor is this impossible. For as all the efforts 
 of the Social Republic tend to one end, so all its 
 ideas are the offspring of one fundamental idea. 
 
 This fundamental idea is to be found, explicitly 
 or implicitly, in the language of all the leaders of 
 the Social Republic, though all do not avow, and 
 some are perhaps not even conscious that they en- 
 tertain it. M. Proudhon appears to me the one 
 among them who knows best what he thinks and 
 what he wishes: he appears to show the firmest 
 and most consistent understanding in his detestable 
 dreams. 
 
 It is not, however, so firm nor so consistent as it 
 appears, or probably as he himself thinks it. He
 
 CH. IV.] OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 27 
 
 has not declared, and I doubt if he have perceived, 
 to what his system leads. 
 
 His system, nakedly and rigorously stated, is 
 this : 
 
 All men have a right and the same right to 
 happiness. 
 
 Happiness is the enjoyment (without any limit 
 but that prescribed by the want and the faculty of 
 enjoying) of all the good things existing or possible 
 in this world ; whether natural and primitive, or 
 progressively created by the intelligence and the 
 labour of man. 
 
 Certain men, certain families, or certain classes 
 have acquired the exclusive enjoyment of some (in- 
 deed the greater part) of the most essential and 
 productive of these good things ; or, in other words, 
 these things, or the means of procuring them, are 
 become the special and perpetual property of certain 
 men, families, and classes. 
 
 Such a confiscation of a part of the fund 
 common to mankind, for the advantage of a few, is 
 essentially contrary to justice ; contrary to the 
 rights of the men of the same generation, who 
 ought all to enjoy it equally ; and contrary to the 
 rights of successive generations, each of which, on 
 its entrance into life, ought to find the good things 
 of life equally accessible, and to enjoy them in its 
 turn like its predecessors. 
 
 Therefore all special and perpetual appropriation
 
 28 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. IV. 
 
 of the good things which confer happiness, and of 
 the means of procuring those good things, must 
 be abolished, in order to insure the universal 
 enjoyment and the equal distribution of them 
 amongst all men, and all successive generations of 
 men. 
 
 But how is it possible to abolish property ? or, 
 at least, so to transform it, that, as regards its social 
 and permanent effects, it may be as if it were 
 abolished ? 
 
 Here the leaders of the Social Republic differ 
 greatly among themselves. Some recommend slow 
 and gentle measures ; others urge prompt and de- 
 cisive ones. Some have recourse to political means 
 for example, a certain organization of existence 
 and labour in common ; others try to invent 
 economical and financial expedients for example, 
 a series of measures designed gradually to destroy 
 the net revenue of property, whether in land or 
 capital, and thus to render property itself useless 
 and illusory. But all these schemes originate in 
 the same design and tend to the same result ; the 
 abolition or the nullification of personal, domestic, 
 and hereditary property ; arid of all institutions, 
 social or political, which are based upon personal, 
 domestic, and hereditary property. 
 
 Such, through all the diversity, obscurity, am- 
 biguity, and contradiction of the ideas which cir- 
 culate among the adherents of the Social Republic,
 
 CII. IV.] OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 29 
 
 is the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, 
 of all these systems ; such is the end they pursue, 
 and hope to attain. 
 
 But the following truths are forgotten by M. 
 Proudhon and his friends. 
 
 Mankind is not merely a series of individuals 
 called men ; it is a race, which has a common 
 life, and a general and progressive destiny. This 
 is the distinctive character of man, which he alone 
 of created beings possesses. 
 
 And why is this ? It is because human indi- 
 viduals are not isolated, nor confined to themselves, 
 and to the point they occupy in space or time. 
 They are connected with each other; they act upon 
 each other, by ties and by means which do not 
 require their presence, and which outlive them. 
 Hence the successive generations of men are linked 
 together in unbroken succession. 
 
 The permanent union and progressive develop- 
 ment which are the consequences of this unbroken 
 succession of man to man, and generation to gene- 
 ration, characterize the human race. They consti- 
 tute its peculiarity and its greatness, and mark man 
 for sovereignty in this world, and for immortality 
 beyond it. 
 
 From this are derived, arid by this are founded, 
 the family and the state, property and inheritance, 
 country, history, glory, all the facts and all the 
 sentiments which constitute the extended and per-
 
 30 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cH. IV. 
 
 petual life of mankind, amidst the bounded appear- 
 ance and rapid disappearance of individual men. 
 
 In the Social Republic all this ceases to exist. 
 Men are mere isolated and ephemeral beings, who 
 appear in this life, and on this earth the scene of 
 life, only to take their subsistence and their pleasure, 
 each for himself alone, each by the same right, and 
 without any end or purpose beyond. 
 
 This is precisely the condition of the lower ani- 
 mals. Among them there exists no tie, no influence, 
 which survives the individual, and extends to the 
 race. There is no permanent appropriation, no 
 hereditary transmission, no unity nor progress in 
 the life of the species ; nothing but individuals 
 who appear and then vanish, seizing on their passage 
 their portion of the good things of the earth and 
 the pleasures of life, according to the combined 
 measure of their wants and their strength, which, 
 according to them, constitute their right. 
 
 Thus, in order to secure to every individual of 
 the human species the equal and incessantly fluctu- 
 ating share of the goods and pleasures of sense, the 
 doctrines of the Social Republic bring men down to 
 the level of the lower animals. They obliterate the 
 human race. 
 
 They do worse. 
 
 There is in the mind of man an imperishable in- 
 stinct that God presides over his destiny, and that 
 it is not wholly accomplished in this world. Natu-
 
 CH. IV.] OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 31 
 
 rally and universally, man believes in God and 
 invokes him as his support in the present, his hope 
 in the future. 
 
 According to the doctrines of the Social Re- 
 public, God is an unknown imaginary power, upon 
 whom the visible and real rulers of men upon earth 
 throw the weight of their own responsibility, and 
 by thus directing the eyes of the suffering towards 
 another master and another state of existence, dis- 
 pose them to acquiesce in their afflictions,, whilst 
 they secure themselves in the maintenance of their 
 usurpations. According then to this doctrine, God 
 is evil, for it is in his name that men are per- 
 suaded to acquiesce in evil. To banish evil from 
 the earth, it therefore is necessary to banish God 
 from the mind of man. Men left alone with their 
 earthly masters, and reduced to an earthly existence, 
 will demand the enjoyments of this life and the* 
 equal distribution of these enjoyments ; and as 
 soon as those who are without them insist on 
 having them, they will have them, for they are the 
 strongest. 
 
 Thus God and the human race will disappear 
 together. In their place will remain animals still 
 bearing the name of men, more intelligent and 
 more powerful than other animals, but having 
 the same condition and the same destiny; and 
 like them seizing, on their passage through life, 
 their portion of the goods of earth and the pleasures
 
 32 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. IV. 
 
 of sense, according to the combined measure of their 
 wants and their strength, which constitute their right. 
 
 Such is the philosophy of the Social Republic ; 
 such, therefore, is the basis of its policy. We have 
 traced its origin and its end. 
 
 I will not insult the good sense or the dignity of 
 mankind by dwelling on it longer. It is the 
 degradation of man, and the destruction of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 Not only of society as at present constituted, but 
 of all human society whatsoever : for all society rests 
 on foundations which it is the object of the Social 
 Republic to overthrow. It is not a mere invasion of 
 the social edifice by intruders, whether barbarian or 
 not ; it is the utter ruin of the edifice itself that is 
 contemplated. If M. Proudhon had the absolute 
 disposal of society in its present state, with all that 
 * it possesses or enjoys, and were to change the dis- 
 tribution and the possessors of property at his own 
 good pleasure, he would be guilty of great iniquity, 
 and occasion great suffering. He would not, how- 
 ever, destroy society. But if he pretended to give 
 the ideas witli which he tries to batter down the 
 present structure of society, as laws to one newly 
 framed, it would infallibly perish. Instead of a 
 State and a People, there would be only a chaos of 
 human beings, without a tie and without repose. 
 Nor would it be possible to reduce that chaos to 
 order without abandoning or evading the ideas of
 
 CH. IV.] OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 33 
 
 the Social Republic, and returning to the natural 
 conditions of social order. 
 
 The Social Republic is then at once odious and 
 impossible. It is the most absurd, and at the same 
 time the most perverse, of all chimeras. 
 
 But we must not presume upon this. Nothing 
 is more dangerous than what is at once strong and 
 impossible. The Social Republic is strong; indeed 
 how can it be otherwise ? Availing themselves with 
 ardour of every kind of liberty granted for the pro- 
 mulgation of ideas, its advocates are incessantly 
 labouring to diffuse their principles and their pro- 
 mises through the densest ranks of society. There 
 they find masses of men easy to delude, easy to 
 inflame. They offer them rights in conformity 
 with their desires. They excite their passions in 
 the name of justice and truth. For it would be 
 puerile to deny (and for the honour of human na- 
 ture we must admit) that the ideas of the Social 
 Republic have, to many minds, the character and 
 the force of truth. In questions so complex and so 
 exciting, the smallest gleam of truth is suflicient to 
 dazzle the eyes and inflame the hearts of men, 
 and to dispose them to embrace with transport the 
 grossest and most fatal errors with which that truth 
 is blended. Fanaticism is kindled at the same time 
 that selfishness is awakened ; sincere devotedness 
 joins hands with brutal passions ; and, in the terrible 
 fermentation which ensues, evil predominates ; the 
 
 D
 
 34 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cH. IV. 
 
 portion of good mingled with it acts only as its 
 veil and its instrument. 
 
 We have no right to complain, for it is we our- 
 selves who incessantly add fuel to the fire and this 
 is the most deep-seated of our maladies. It is we who 
 give to the Social Republic its chief strength. It is 
 the chaos of our political ideas and our political 
 morality that chaos disguised sometimes under the 
 word democracy, sometimes under that of equality, 
 sometimes under that of people which opens all the 
 gates, and throws down all the ramparts of society 
 before it. We say that Democracy is everything. 
 The men of the Social Republic reply, " Democracy 
 is ourselves." We proclaim, in language of in- 
 finite confusion, the absolute equality of rights and 
 the sovereign right of numbers. The men of the 
 Social Republic come forward and say, " Count our 
 numbers." The perpetual confusion of the true and 
 the false, the good and the bad, the possible and the 
 chimerical, which prevails in our own policy, our own 
 language, our own acts this it is which has en- 
 feebled our arm for defence, and given to the Social 
 Republic a confidence, an arrogance, and an influence 
 for attack, which of itself it would never possess. 
 
 When this confusion shall be dissipated ; when 
 we shall arrive at that period of maturity in which 
 free nations, instead of blindly following their first 
 impressions, whithersoever they may lead, see 
 things as they really are, assign to the different
 
 CH. IV.J OF THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 35 
 
 elements of society their just measure, and to words 
 their true meaning, and regulate their ideas as they 
 do their affairs, with that firm moderation which 
 rejects all fantasies, admits all necessities, respects 
 all rights, has regard to all interests, and represses 
 all usurpations; those from below no less than 
 those from above those of fanaticism no less than 
 those of selfishness: when we shall have reached 
 this point, although the Social Republic may not 
 entirely disappear, and although we may not have 
 entirely crushed its efforts nor annihilated its dan- 
 gers (for it derives its ambition and its strength 
 from sources that none can dry up), still it will be 
 controlled by the union and the order of society ; 
 all that is most absurd and perverse in its doctrines 
 will be incessantly combated and defeated, and it 
 will in time take its due place in that vast and 
 imposing development of the human race which is 
 passing before our eyes.
 
 36 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT ARE THE REAL AND ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF 
 SOCIETY IN FRANCE ? 
 
 THE first step towards extricating ourselves out of 
 the chaos in which we are plunged, is, a full ucder- 
 standing and frank admission of all the real and 
 essential elements of which society in France is 
 now composed. 
 
 It is because we misunderstand these elements, 
 or refuse them the place and the consideration they 
 deserve, that we remain in, or relapse into, chaos. 
 
 A society may be tortured, perhaps destroyed ; 
 but you cannot force it to assume a form and 
 mode of existence foreign to its nature, either by 
 disregarding the essential elements of which it is 
 constituted, or by doing violence to them. 
 
 Let us first advert to that civil order which 
 forms the basis of French society, as of every other 
 society. 
 
 Family; property of all kinds, whether land, 
 capital, or wages ; labour, under all its forms, indi- 
 vidual or collective, intellectual or manual ; the 
 situations in which men are placed, or the relations
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 37 
 
 which are introduced among them by the incidents 
 of family, property, and labour; such are the con- 
 stituents of civil society. 
 
 The essential and characteristic fact in French 
 civil society is, unity of laws and equality of rights. 
 All families, property of every kind, labour of every 
 description, are governed by the same laws, and 
 possess or confer the same civil rights. There are 
 no privileges ; that is, no laws or rights peculiar to 
 particular families, or to property or labour of par- 
 ticular sorts. 
 
 This is a new and mighty fact in the history of 
 human societies. 
 
 But notwithstanding this fact, notwithstanding 
 this civil unity and equality, there are evidently 
 numerous and great diversities and inequalities, 
 which unity of laws and equality of rights can 
 neither prevent nor remove. 
 
 As to property, whether in immoveables or move- 
 ables, land or capital, there are rich and poor ; there 
 are large, middling, and small properties. 
 
 The great proprietors may be less numerous and 
 less wealthy, and the middling and small proprietors 
 may be more numerous and more powerful, than 
 they were formerly, or than they are in other coun- 
 tries ; but this does not prevent the inequality 
 amongst them from being real and great enough to 
 occasion a radical difference and inequality of social 
 position.
 
 38 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 From diversities of position founded on property, 
 I pass on to those founded upon labour, of every 
 kind and degree, from the highest intellectual, to 
 the lowest manual labour. Here too I meet with 
 the same fact. Here too diversity and inequality 
 arise and subsist, in spite of identical laws and equal 
 rights. 
 
 In the professions called liberal, or those which 
 depend on the cultivation and employment of the 
 intellect; among lawyers, physicians, men of science, 
 and literary men of every sort, some few rise to the 
 highest rank, attract business, and gain success, 
 reputation, wealth, and influence. Others earn 
 laboriously what is barely sufficient for the wants of 
 their families, and the decencies of their station. 
 Many more vegetate in obscure and unemployed 
 indigence. 
 
 And here one fact deserves notice. From the time 
 when all professions have been accessible to all, from 
 the time when labour has been free, subject only to 
 the same laws for all, the number of men who have 
 raised themselves to the first ranks in the liberal 
 professions has not sensibly increased. It does not 
 appear that there are now more great lawyers or 
 physicians, more men of science or letters of the first 
 order, than there were formerly. It is the men of 
 the second order, and the obscure and idle multi- 
 tude, that are multiplied. It is as if Providence 
 did not permit human laws to have any influence
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 39 
 
 over the intellectual rank of its creatures, or the 
 extent and magnificence of its gifts. 
 
 In the other trades or professions, in which labour 
 is chiefly material and manual, there are also dif- 
 ferent and unequal situations. Some, by intelligence 
 arid good conduct, accumulate a capital and enter 
 upon the path of competence and advancement ; 
 others, either incapable or improvident, lazy or 
 dissolute, remain in the narrow and precarious con- 
 dition of men dependent upon the daily casualties 
 of wages. 
 
 Thus throughout the whole extent of civil society, 
 whether among those who depend on labour, or 
 those possessed of property, diversity and inequal- 
 ity of situation arise and coexist with unity of laws 
 and equality of rights. 
 
 How, indeed, can it be otherwise? If we ex- 
 amine every form of human society throughout 
 all ages and countries whatever be the variety of 
 their organization, government, extent, or duration, 
 or of the kind and degree of civilization to which 
 they have attained we shall find three types of 
 social position always fundamentally the same, 
 though under very different forms and very dif- 
 ferently distributed. 
 
 1. Men living on the income of their property, 
 whether in land or capital, without seeking to 
 increase it by their own labour ;
 
 40 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 2. Men occupied in increasing by their own 
 labour the property, whether in land or capital, 
 which they possess ; 
 
 3. Men living by their labour without land or 
 capital. 
 
 These diversities and inequalities in the social 
 condition of men are not accidental, or peculiar to 
 any particular time or country. They are universal 
 facts, which naturally arise in every human society, 
 amidst circumstances, and under laws, the most 
 widely different. 
 
 And the more accurately we study them, the more 
 clearly we shall perceive that there exists an inti- 
 mate connexion and a profound harmony between 
 these facts and the nature of man, which we know, 
 on the one hand, and the mysteries of his des- 
 tiny, of which we can only obtain a dim and distant 
 glance, on the other. 
 
 Nor is this all. Independently of these diversi- 
 ties and inequalities among individuals, whether 
 proprietors or labourers, other diversities and other 
 inequalities exist among the kinds of property and 
 of labour. These differences are not less real than 
 the others, though they are less apparent ; nor are 
 they more incompatible with unity of laws or 
 equality of civil rights. 
 
 Moveable property, or capital, has acquired, and 
 continues to acquire, an ever increasing extension
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 41 
 
 and importance in the communities of modern 
 Europe. It is evident that the progress of civili- 
 zation in our times is entirely in favour of its 
 development ; a just requital for the immense services 
 which capital has rendered to civilization. 
 
 But this is not enough : efforts are continually 
 made to assimilate immoveable to moveable pro- 
 perty; to render land as transferable, as divisible, as 
 convenient to possess and to improve as capital. All 
 the proposed innovations, direct or indirect, in 
 the laws relating to landed property, have this 
 object in view, either openly or covertly. 
 
 But though a movement so favourable to capital 
 is going on, landed property is still the most 
 considerable in France, and still holds the first 
 place in the estimation and the desires of the 
 people. Those who possess it addict themselves 
 more and more to the enjoyment of it, and those 
 who do not possess it are more and more eager 
 after its acquisition. The great proprietor is return- 
 ing to the taste for living on his estate : the trades- 
 man, who has earned a competence, retires to the 
 country to enjoy repose : the peasant thinks of 
 nothing but how to add field to field. Whilst 
 everything is done to favour the development of 
 capital, landed property is more in request and 
 more prized than ever. 
 
 It may be confidently predicted that if, as I 
 hope, social order triumphs over its insane or de-
 
 42 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 praved enemies, the attacks of which landed pro- 
 perty is now the object, and the dangers with which 
 it is threatened, will, in the end, enhance its pre- 
 ponderance in socjety. 
 
 Whence arises this preponderance ? Is it merely 
 because, of all sorts of property, land is the most 
 secure, the least variable ; that which best resists 
 the perturbations, and survives the calamities of 
 society ? 
 
 This motive, though real, powerful, and obvious, 
 is far from being the only one. There are other 
 motives, or rather we may call them deep-seated 
 instincts, whose empire over man is great, even 
 when he is unconscious of it. These secure the 
 social preponderance of landed property, or re- 
 store it when transiently shaken or enfeebled. 
 Among these instincts two appear to me the most 
 powerful ; it will be sufficient to indicate them, 
 for an attempt to fathom their depths would carry 
 me too far. 
 
 Moveable property, or capital, may procure a 
 man all the advantages of wealth ; but property in 
 land gives him much more than this. It gives him 
 a place in the domain of the world it unites his 
 life to the life which animates all creation. Money 
 is an instrument by which man can procure the 
 satisfaction of his wants and his desires. Landed 
 property is the establishment of man as sovereign 
 in the midst of nature. It satisfies not only his wants
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 43 
 
 and his desires, but tastes deeply implanted in his 
 nature. For his family, it creates that domestic 
 country called home, with all the living sympathies 
 and all the future hopes and projects which people it. 
 And whilst property in land is more consonant than 
 any other to the nature of man, it also affords a 
 field of activity the most favourable to his moral 
 development, the most suited to inspire a just senti- 
 ment of his nature and his powers. In almost all 
 the other trades or professions, whether commercial 
 or scientific, success appears to depend solely on 
 himself on his talents, address, prudence, and 
 vigilance. In agricultural life, man is constantly 
 in the presence of God, and of his power. Activity, 
 talents, prudence and vigilance are as necessary 
 here as elsewhere to the success of his labours, but 
 they are evidently no less insufficient than they are 
 necessary. It is God who rules the seasons and 
 the temperature, the sun and the rain, and all those 
 phenomena of nature which determine the success 
 or the* failure of the labours of man on the soil 
 which he cultivates. There is no pride which can 
 resist this dependence, no address which can escape 
 it. Nor is it only a sentiment of humility as to his 
 power over his own destiny which is thus incul- 
 cated upon man ; he learns also tranquillity and 
 patience. He cannot flatter himself that the most in- 
 genious inventions or the most restless activity will 
 ensure his success ; when he has done all that de-
 
 44 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 pends upon him for the cultivation and the fertiliza- 
 tion of the soil, he must wait with resignation. The 
 more profoundly we examine the situation in which 
 man is placed by the possession and cultivation of 
 the soil, the more do we discover how rich it is 
 in salutary lessons to his reason, and benign in- 
 fluences on his character. Men do not analyze these 
 facts, but they have an instinctive sentiment of 
 them, which powerfully contributes to that pecu- 
 liar respect in which they hold property in land, 
 and to the preponderance which that kind of pro- 
 perty enjoys over every other. This preponder- 
 ance is a natural, legitimate and salutary fact, 
 which, especially in a great country, society at 
 large has a strong interest in recognising and 
 respecting. 
 
 What I have just shown with relation to pro- 
 perty, is equally true with relation to labour. It 
 is the glory of modern civilization to have un- 
 derstood and proclaimed the moral value and the 
 social importance of labour ; to have raised it to the 
 estimation and the rank which justly belong to it. 
 If I had to point out the most profound evil, the 
 most fatal vice, of the state of things which pre- 
 vailed in France up to the sixteenth century, I 
 should say, without hesitation, the contempt in 
 which labour was held. Contempt of labour and 
 pride in idleness are certain signs either that so- 
 ciety is under the dominion of brute force, or that
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 45 
 
 it is verging to its decline. Labour is the law which 
 God has enjoined on man. It is by labour that he 
 developes and improves everything around him by 
 labour that he developes and improves his own 
 nature. Labour is become the surest pledge of 
 peace between nations. The respect and the liberty 
 enjoyed by labour tend more than anything to calm 
 the anxieties which we might otherwise too justly 
 feel, and to raise our hopes for the prospects of the 
 human race. By what fatality then has it hap- 
 pened that the word labour, so honourable to modern 
 civilization, is become a war-cry and a source of 
 disasters in France ? It is because that word is made 
 a cloak for a great and pernicious lie. It is not 
 labour, its interests or its rights, which are the 
 object of the ferment excited in its name; the 
 war which has been declared on the plea of pro- 
 tecting labour, is not in fact waged in its be- 
 half, nor, if successful, would redound to its 
 advantage. It is, on the contrary, directed against 
 labour, whose ruin and degradation would be its 
 infallible result. 
 
 Labour, like family, property, and everything else 
 in this world, is subject to natural and general 
 laws ; among which are, diversity and inequality of 
 the kinds and the results of labour, and of the 
 stations of those by whom it is performed. Intel- 
 lectual labour is superior to manual. Descartes, 
 who enlightened France, and Colbert, who laid
 
 46 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 the foundations of her prosperity, performed a 
 labour superior to that of the workman who prints 
 the works of Descartes, or who helps to produce the 
 manufactures fostered by Colbert ; and among these 
 very workmen, those who are intelligent, moral, 
 and industrious, justly attain to a situation superior 
 to that which the same description of labour can 
 secure to the dull, the lazy, or the licentious. The 
 variety of tasks and vocations allotted to man is 
 infinite. Labour is everywhere in the house of a 
 father of a family, who educates his children and 
 superintends his affairs ; in the cabinet of a states- 
 man who takes part in the government of his 
 country ; in that of the magistrate who administers its 
 laws ; of the philosopher who instructs, and of the 
 poet who charms it ; in the fields, on the ocean, on 
 the highways, in the manufactories and the work- 
 shops ; and in every situation, in every variety of 
 labour, in every class of labourers, diversity and in- 
 equality arise and subsist ; inequality of intellectual 
 power, of moral merit, of social importance, of 
 material wealth. These are the natural, primitive, 
 universal laws of labour, originating in the nature 
 and condition of man, or, to speak more properly, 
 ordained by the wisdom of God. It is against these 
 laws that the war of which we are witnesses is 
 waged ; it is this hierarchy of labour, founded on 
 the decrees of God and the free actions of man, 
 which it is the object of this war to abolish ; and to
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 47 
 
 substitute what ? the degradation and the ruin of 
 labour, by the reduction of all labour and all 
 labourers to the same level ! Examine the meaning 
 which is usually affixed to the word labour in 
 the language of these enemies of social order. They 
 do not distinctly say that material and manual work 
 are the only real work ; indeed they occasionally 
 affect great respect for purely intellectual labour : 
 but they omit to mention the various sorts of higher 
 labour which are performed on every stage of the 
 social scale ; their whole attention is absorbed by 
 material labour, which they constantly represent as 
 the kind of labour whose importance throws every 
 other into the shade. In short, they talk in a 
 manner to excite and keep alive in the minds of the 
 men employed in physical labour, the opinion 
 that theirs only has a claim to the name and the 
 rights of labour. Even when speaking not of la- 
 bour, but of labourers, they hold the same levelling 
 and depreciating language ; ascribing the rights of 
 labour to workmen, as such, independently of all de- 
 grees of personal merit. Thus the coarsest and most 
 ordinary labour is assumed as the standard to which 
 all the higher degrees are adjusted ; and diversity 
 and inequality are abolished, for the supposed ad- 
 vantage of that which is the least and the lowest 
 in the scale ! 
 
 Do those who hold such language serve do 
 they even understand the cause which they affect
 
 48 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 to advocate? Is it by such means that we can 
 advance, or even barely keep our ground, on that 
 glorious path of civilization in which labour ac- 
 quired its proper rank and dignity ? Do we not, 
 on the contrary, mutilate, degrade, and disgrace 
 labour, when we strip it of a part of its noblest 
 claims, and substitute in their stead pretensions 
 which are not only absurd and preposterous, but 
 mean, in spite of their insolence? Lastly, does 
 not such language show a gross misconception and 
 violent perversion of the natural facts on which 
 civil society in France is founded ? This, though 
 admitting unity of laws and equality of rights, 
 assuredly never pretended to abolish that variety 
 of faculties, merits, and destinies, which is one of 
 the mysterious laws of God, and the inevitable result 
 of the free will of man. 
 
 Let us now turn from civil to political society ; 
 that is, the relation existing between men, in vir- 
 tue of their interests, opinions and sentiments, and 
 the ruling power under which they live. Let us 
 endeavour here to determine also the real and es- 
 sential elements of which society is now composed 
 in France. 
 
 In a free country, or in one struggling to become 
 free, the elements of political society are political 
 parties, in the widest and highest acceptation of the 
 term. 
 
 Legally, there are now no other parties in France
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 49 
 
 than those inherent in every constitutional state ; the 
 party of the Government and that of the Oppo- 
 sition. There are neither Legitimists nor Orleanists. 
 The Republic exists, and will not suffer the prin- 
 ciple of its existence to be attacked ; and as this 
 is the indisputable right of every established go- 
 vernment, it is by no means my intention to contest 
 or to infringe it. 
 
 But there are things so inherent in society, that 
 prohibitive laws, even when obeyed, fail to eradi- 
 cate them. There are political parties of which the 
 germ lies so deeply buried, and the roots so widely 
 spread, that they do not die, even when they are no 
 longer apparent. 
 
 The Legitimist party is not a mere dynastic, nor 
 is it a mere monarchical, party. It is indeed at- 
 tached to a principle and to a name ; but it also 
 occupies a great substantive place both in the history 
 and on the soil of France. It represents all that re- 
 mains of the elements so long predominant through- 
 out that French society which contained within itself 
 the fruitful and vigorous germs of progress ; and out 
 of which arose, after a growth of ages, the France 
 which suddenly burst forth in 1789, mighty, aspiring, 
 and glorious. Though the French Revolution over- 
 threw the ancient fabric of French society, it could 
 not annihilate its elements. In spite of the con- 
 vulsions by which they were dispersed, and in the 
 midst of the ruins by which they are surrounded, 
 
 E
 
 50 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 these still subsist, and are still considerable in modern 
 France. At every succeeding crisis they evidently 
 acquiesce more completely in the social order and 
 political constitution which the country has adopted ; 
 and by this acquiescence they take their station in 
 it, and change their position without disowning 
 their character. 
 
 Moreover, does anybody believe that the party 
 which endeavoured to found a constitutional monar- 
 chy in 1830, and which upheld that monarchy for 
 more than seventeen years, has vanished in the 
 tempest that overthrew the edifice it had raised? 
 It has been called the party of the bourgeoisie, the 
 middle classes ; and this in fact it was, and still is. 
 The ascendancy of the middle classes in France, in- 
 cessantly supplied by recruits from the bulk of the 
 population, is the characteristic feature in our history 
 since 1789. Not only have they conquered that 
 ascendancy, but they have justified their claims to 
 it. Amidst the grievous errors into which they 
 have fallen, and for which they have paid so dearly, 
 they have shown that they really possessed the qua- 
 lities that constitute the strength and greatness of 
 a nation. On all emergencies, for all the wants 
 of the country in war or peace, and to every kind 
 of social career, this class has abundantly furnished 
 men, nay, generations of men, able, active, and 
 sincerely devoted to the service of their country. 
 When called on in 1830 to found a new mo-
 
 CH. V.} ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 51 
 
 narchy, the middle classes brought to that difficult 
 task a spirit of justice and political sincerity of 
 which no succeeding event can cancel the merit. 
 In spite of all the passions and all the perils that 
 assailed them, in spite even of their own pas- 
 sions, they earnestly desired constitutional order, 
 and they faithfully observed it. At home, they 
 respected and maintained universal, legal and prac- 
 tical liberty ; abroad, universal, firm and prosperous 
 peace. 
 
 I am not one of those who disregard or despise 
 the power of the affections in political affairs. I do 
 not regard it as any proof of greatness or strength 
 of mind to say, " We don't care for such or such a 
 family ; we attach no value to proper names ; we 
 take men or leave them according to our wants or 
 our interests :" to me, this language, and the class 
 of opinions which it discloses, appear to betray far 
 more political ignorance and impotence than ele- 
 vation of mind or rectitude of judgment. It is, how- 
 ever, indisputable that political parties having no 
 other attachment than that excited by proper names, 
 and no other strength than that derived from per- 
 sonal affections, would be extremely feeble and inef- 
 ficient. But can anybody for a moment imagine 
 that the Legitimist party, or the party attached to 
 the monarchy of 1830, are of that nature ? Is it not 
 evident, on the contrary, that these parties are far 
 more the offspring of the general course of events 
 
 E 2
 
 52 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. V. 
 
 than of attachment to persons? that they are of a 
 social, as well as a political nature, and correspond 
 to the most deep-rooted and indestructible elements 
 of society in France ? 
 
 Around these great parties floats the mass of the 
 population ; holding to the one or the other by its 
 interests, its habits, or its virtuous and rational 
 instincts ; but without any strong or solid adhesion, 
 and incessantly assailed and worked upon by So- 
 cialists and Communists of every shade. These last 
 do not constitute political parties, for they do not 
 espouse any political principle, nor advocate any 
 peculiar political organization. Their only endea- 
 vour is to destroy all the influences, and to break 
 all the ties, material or moral, which bind the part 
 of the population living by the labour of its hands, 
 to the class occupied in the business of the state ; 
 to divide that part of the population from the land- 
 owner, the capitalist, the clergy, and all the other 
 established authorities; and finally to work upon 
 it through its miseries, and rule it by its appetites. 
 One name denotes them all ; all are members of the 
 one great Anarchical Party. It is not the superiority 
 of this or that form of government which they preach 
 to the people it is sheer and absolute anarchy; for 
 one kind of government is as incompatible with chaos 
 as another. There is, however, one striking fact : 
 whether sincere or depraved, blind Utopians or de- 
 signing Anarchists, all these disturbers of social
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 53 
 
 order are Republicans. Not that they are more 
 attached or more submissive to republican go- 
 vernment than to any other ; for every regular and 
 efficient government, whether republican or mo- 
 narchical, is equally odious to them ; but they hope 
 that under a republic they shall find stronger 
 weapons to aid their attacks, and feebler barriers 
 to resist them. This is the secret of their prefer- 
 ence. 
 
 I have thus surveyed French society on every side. 
 I have sought out and exhibited all its real and 
 essential elements, and all my inquiries lead to the 
 same result. On every side, whether in political or 
 civil life, I meet with profound diversities and in- 
 equalities : diversities and inequalities which can 
 neither be obliterated in civil life by unity of laws 
 and equality of rights, nor in political life by a re- 
 publican government ; and which endure or revive 
 under legislation of every kind and government of 
 every form. 
 
 This is not an opinion, an argument, or a con- 
 jecture, but a statement of facts. 
 
 Now what is the import and tendency of these 
 facts? Shall we find in them the ancient classi- 
 fications of society ? Will the ancient political 
 denominations apply to them ? Do they exhibit 
 an aristocracy opposed to a democracy; or a nobility, 
 a bourgeoisie, and a so-called people ? Would these 
 diversities and inequalities of social and political
 
 54 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cH. V. 
 
 position form, or tend to form, a hierarchy of classes 
 analogous to those which formerly existed in French 
 society ? 
 
 No, certainly ! the words aristocracy, democracy, 
 nobility, bourgeoisie, or hierarchy, do not correspond to 
 the constituent elements of modern French society, 
 or express them with any truth or accuracy. 
 
 Does then this society consist solely of citizens 
 equal among each other ? Are there no different 
 classes, and only individual diversities and inequali- 
 ties, devoid of all political importance'? Is there 
 nothing but a great and uniform democracy, which 
 seeks satisfaction in a republic at the risk of find- 
 ing repose in a despotism ? 
 
 Neither is this the fact; either of these de- 
 scriptions would equally misrepresent the true 
 state of our society. We must emancipate our- 
 selves from the tyranny of words, and see things 
 as they really are. France is extremely new, 
 and yet full of the past; whilst the principles 
 of unity and equality have determined her orga- 
 nization, she still contains social conditions and 
 political situations profoundly different and un- 
 equal. There is no hierarchical classification, but 
 there are different classes ; there is no aristocracy, 
 properly so called, but there is something which is 
 not democracy. The real, essential, and distinct 
 elements of French society, which I have just de- 
 scribed, may enfeeble each other by perpetual con-
 
 CH. V.] ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE. 55 
 
 flicts, but neither can destroy or obliterate the 
 other. They survive all the struggles in which 
 they engage, and all the calamities which they 
 inflict on each other. Their co-existence is a fact 
 which it is not in their power to abolish. Let them 
 then fully acquiesce in it ; let them live together, 
 and in peace. Neither the liberty nor the repose, 
 the dignity nor the prosperity, the greatness nor 
 the security of France, are to be had on any other 
 terms. 
 
 On what conditions can this peace be established ?
 
 56 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VI. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 
 
 WHENEVER it shall have been distinctly perceived 
 and fully admitted that the different classes which 
 exist among us, and the political parties which 
 correspond to those classes, are natural and deeply- 
 rooted elements of French society, a great step will 
 have been made towards social peace. 
 
 This peace is impossible so long as each of the 
 different classes and the great political parties into 
 which our society is divided cherishes the hope of 
 annihilating the others, and of reigning alone. That 
 is the evil which, ever since 1789, has periodically 
 agitated and convulsed France. Sometimes the de- 
 mocratic element has aimed at the extinction of the 
 aristocratic ; at other times the aristocratic element 
 has tried to crush the democratic, and to regain its 
 former predominance. Constitutions, laws, and the 
 administration of the government have been by turns 
 directed, like engines of war, to one or the other of 
 these ends a war to the death, in which neither 
 combatant believed his life compatible witli that of 
 his rival.
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 57 
 
 This war was suspended by the Emperor Napo- 
 leon. He rallied around him the classes which 
 had formerly possessed, and those which actually 
 enjoyed, power and influence ; and by the security 
 which he offered them, by the continual turmoil in 
 which he kept them, or by the yoke which he imposed 
 upon them, he established and maintained peace. 
 
 After him, from 1814 to 1830, and from 1830 to' 
 1848, this war was renewed. A great progress had 
 been made. Liberty had become real. Both the 
 ancient aristocratic, and the modern democratic ele- 
 ments acquired strength ; but though neither could 
 succeed in suppressing the other, each was impa- 
 tient of its adversary's existence, and eagerly strove 
 for the mastery. 
 
 And now a third combatant has entered the 
 arena. The democratic party having divided itself 
 into two conflicting sections, the workmen are now 
 arrayed against their masters, or the people against 
 the middle classes. This new war, like the former, 
 is a war to the death ; for the new aspirant is as 
 arrogant and exclusive as the others can have ever 
 been. The sovereignty, it is said, belongs of right 
 to the people only ; and no rival, ancient or modern, 
 noble or bourgeois, can be admitted to share it. 
 
 Every pretension of this kind must be withdrawn, 
 not by one only, but by all of the contending parties. 
 The great elements of society among us the old 
 aristocracy, the middle classes, and the people
 
 58 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VI. 
 
 must completely renounce the hope of excluding 
 and annihilating each other. Let them vie with each 
 other in influence ; let each maintain its position and 
 its rights, or even endeavour to extend and improve 
 them, for in such efforts consists the political life of 
 a country. But there must be an end of all radical 
 hostility : they must resign themselves to live toge- 
 ther, side by side, in the ranks of the government 
 as well as in civil society. This is the first condition 
 of social peace. How, it may be asked, can this 
 condition be satisfied? How can the different 
 elements of our society be brought to tolerate each 
 other's existence, and to fulfil their several functions 
 in the government of the country ? 
 
 I reply, by such an organization of that govern- 
 ment as may assign to each its place and functions ; 
 may concede something to the wishes, while it im- 
 poses limits to the ambition, of all. 
 
 I am here met by an idea, perhaps the most false 
 and fatal of all those current in our days on the 
 subject of constitutional organization. It is this : 
 " National unity involves political unity. There is 
 but one people : there can exist at the head and in 
 the name of this people, but one power." 
 
 This is the idea which most completely charac- 
 terizes both revolution and despotism. The Con- 
 vention and Louis XIV. exclaimed alike, " L'Etat, 
 c'est moi." 
 
 It is as false as it is tyrannical. A nation is not
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 59 
 
 a vast aggregate of men, consisting of so many 
 thousands or millions, occupying a certain extent of 
 ground, and concentrated in, and represented by, a 
 unit, called king or assembly. A nation is a great 
 organic body, formed by the union within one 
 country of certain social elements which assume 
 the shape and constitution naturally impressed 
 upon them by the primitive laws of God and 
 the free acts of man. The diversity of these ele- 
 ments is, as we have just seen, one of the essential 
 facts resulting from those laws ; and is absolutely 
 inconsistent with the false and tyrannous unity 
 which it is proposed to establish at the centre of 
 government, as representative of that society in 
 which it never exists. 
 
 What then, it is said, must all the elements of 
 society, all the groups of which it is naturally 
 composed, all the various classes, professions, and 
 opinions it contains, be represented in the govern- 
 ment by powers corresponding to each ? 
 
 No, certainly : society is not a federation of pro- 
 fessions, classes, and opinions, which treat, by their 
 several delegates, of the affairs which are common 
 to them all ; any more than it is a uniform mass of 
 exactly similar elements, which send their repre- 
 sentatives to the centre of government only because 
 they cannot all repair thither themselves, and 
 are compelled to reduce themselves to a number 
 which can meet in one place and deliberate in
 
 60 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cH. VI. 
 
 common. Social unity requires that there should 
 be but one government ; but the diversity of the 
 social elements equally requires that this govern- 
 ment should not be one sole power. 
 
 There is a natural process of attraction and con- 
 centration at work in the heart of society, and 
 among the numberless particular associations which 
 it contains (such as families, professions, classes, and 
 parties), by which all the smaller associations are 
 successively absorbed into the larger. The mul- 
 titude of particular and different elements are thus 
 reduced to a small number of principal and essen- 
 tial elements, which include and represent all the 
 rest. 
 
 I do not think that these principal elements 
 of society ought to be all specially represented in 
 the government of the state by several authorities ; 
 I only maintain that their diversity is inconsistent 
 with the unity of the central power. 
 
 To this reasoning it has often been confidently 
 replied that the various elements of society are 
 congregated, by the process of free election, in a 
 single assembly which represents the whole nation ; 
 and which affords them an arena for free discussion, 
 where they can maintain their opinions, their inter- 
 ests and their rights, and exert their proper influ- 
 ence over the resolutions of the assembly, and con- 
 sequently over the government of the state. 
 
 We are then to infer from this that we have dis-
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 6 1 
 
 charged the claims of the most varied, weighty, and 
 essential social elements when we have said, " Get 
 yourselves elected, then give your opinion, and try 
 to make it the prevalent one !" Election and dis- 
 cussion constitute the entire basis which is to sus- 
 tain the social edifice; election and discussion 
 afford a sufficient guarantee for all interests, rights, 
 and liberties ! 
 
 Such a theory betrays a strange ignorance of 
 human nature, human society, and the French 
 people. 
 
 I will put a single question. The interests of 
 society are twofold ; those of stability and conserva- 
 tion on the one hand, and those of activity and pro- 
 gress on the other. If you wanted to secure the 
 interests of activity and progress, would you seek this 
 security among the social elements in which the 
 interests of stability and conservation are peculiarly 
 strong ? Undoubtedly not : you would commit the 
 interests of activity and progress to the care of their 
 natural and willing protectors, and you would do well. 
 But all these various interests have equal wants and 
 equal claims. There is no safety for any of them 
 but in its appropriate power; that is to say, in a 
 power analogous to it in its nature and in its rela- 
 tions to other powers. If the interests of stability 
 and conservation are committed wholly to the 
 chances of the composition of a single elective assem-
 
 62 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VI. 
 
 bly, invested with the sole and final decision of all 
 questions, and to the chances of the discussions in 
 that assembly, be assured that sooner or later, after 
 numerous oscillations between tyrannies of different 
 kinds, those interests will be sacrificed or lost. 
 
 It is absurd to seek the principle of the political 
 stability of government in the mobile elements of 
 society. The permanent elements of society must 
 find in the government itself, powers corresponding 
 to them, and offering a pledge for their security. 
 A diversity of powers is equally indispensable to 
 conservation and to liberty. 
 
 It is matter of amazement that this truth should 
 be disputed, for the very men who dispute it have 
 made a great step towards its admission and appli- 
 cation. After establishing unity of power at the 
 head of the state, they have admitted a division of 
 powers lower down, on account of the diversity of 
 functions. They have carefully separated the le- 
 gislative, executive, administrative, and judicial 
 powers; thus practically acknowledging the ne- 
 cessity of giving guarantees to different interests, 
 by the separation and the different constitution 
 of these powers. How is it that they do not 
 see that this necessity has a higher application, 
 and that the diversity of the general interests 
 of society and of the duties of the supreme power, 
 imperatively requires a diversity of powers in the
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 63 
 
 highest as well as in the subordinate spheres of go- 
 vernment? 
 
 But to constitute a real and efficient diversity of 
 powers, it is not enough that each should have a 
 distinct place and name in the government; it is 
 also necessary that all should be strongly organized, 
 all fully competent to fill and to maintain the place 
 they occupy. 
 
 It is the fashion of the day to think that har- 
 mony among the powers of the state, and security 
 against their excess, is to be found in their weak- 
 ness. People are afraid of every kind of authority ; 
 and in order to prevent their destroying each other, 
 or encroaching upon liberty, they ingeniouslye n- 
 deavour to undermine them all in turn. 
 
 This is a monstrous error. Every weak power is 
 a power doomed to perish by extinction or by usur- 
 pation. If several weak powers conflict, either one 
 will become strong at the expense of the others, 
 and will end in a tyranny, or they will trammel 
 and neutralize each other, and the result will be 
 anarchy. 
 
 What is it that has constituted the strength and 
 success of constitutional monarchy in England? 
 It is that, while the royalty and aristocracy were 
 originally strong, the commonalty has become 
 strong by successive conquests of its rights from 
 the aristocracy and the king. Of the three con- 
 stitutional powers, two retain much of their primitive
 
 64 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VI. 
 
 greatness, and rest firmly on their deep and primeval 
 roots; the third has risen to greatness, arid has gra- 
 dually struck its roots deeply into the same soil. 
 Each is fully able to defend itself against the other, 
 and to fulfil its peculiar mission. 
 
 When an earnest and sincere attempt was made 
 to establish constitutional monarchy in France, its 
 firmest adherents desired an ancient and histo- 
 rical basis for royalty ; for the Chamber of Peers, an 
 hereditary seat in the legislature, and for the Cham- 
 ber of Deputies, direct election : not by any means 
 in obedience to theories or precedents, but in order 
 that the great powers of the state might be true 
 powers, efficient and living entities, not words or 
 phantoms. 
 
 In the United States, notwithstanding the differ- 
 ence of names, situations, manners, and institutions, 
 Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, 
 when founding the Republic, recognised and acted 
 upon the same principles. They too thought it 
 necessary to have different powers at the head of 
 the government; and in order that the difference 
 might be real, they gave to each of these powers 
 i. e. the two chambers and the President a distinct 
 origin ; as distinct as the general institutions of the 
 country would permit, and as different as their 
 several functions. 
 
 Diversity of origin and of nature is one of the 
 conditions essential to the intrinsic and real strength
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 65 
 
 of powers, and this again is the condition indispen- 
 sable to political harmony and social peace. 
 
 Nor is it only at the summit and centre of go- 
 vernment that these principles ought to guide the 
 organization of power ; they are equally applicable 
 through the whole extent of the country, in the 
 management of its local, no less than of its general 
 affairs. A great deal has been said in favour of 
 centralization and administrative unity, and there 
 is no doubt that they have rendered great service to 
 France. We shall preserve many of their forms, 
 regulations, maxims, and works; but the time of 
 their sovereignty is past. Centralization is no 
 longer sufficient for the chief wants and pressing dan- 
 gers of society. The struggle is no longer confined 
 to the centre; it agitates the whole nation. Since pro- 
 perty, family, and all the bases of society, are attacked 
 everywhere, they must everywhere be vigorously 
 defended ; and functionaries or orders which have 
 to travel from the centre of government will be 
 found a very inadequate defence, even though sup- 
 ported by bayonets. Landed^ proprietors, and heads 
 of families, who are the natural guardians of society, 
 must all be enjoined and empowered to maintain 
 its security by conducting its affairs : they must 
 have an active share in the management of its local 
 as well as its general interests ; in the administra- 
 tion, as well as the government of the country : the 
 central government ought to uphold the banner of
 
 66 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VI. 
 
 social order, but it cannot bear the whole burthen 
 of it unaided. 
 
 I speak always on the presumption that I am 
 speaking to a free country, and of a free govern- 
 ment; for it is under free governments that the 
 safety of society demands all these conditions : they 
 have evidently no application to absolute govern- 
 ments. 
 
 Absolute power -is, however, subject to certain 
 conditions, as well as liberty. It is far from being 
 always possible where it would be submitted to, 
 nor can it be obtained wherever it is desired. 
 
 Let the friends of freedom never forget that 
 nations prefer absolute power to anarchy. The 
 first want the first instinct of communities, as 
 well as of governments or of individuals, is self- 
 preservation. Now a community may exist under 
 absolute power ; under anarchy, if it lasts, it must 
 perish. 
 
 The readiness, I might almost say the eagerness, 
 with which nations throw .their liberties into the 
 gulf of anarchy, in the desperate attempt to close it, 
 is a shameful spectacle. I know nothing more 
 lamentable to witness than this sudden renunciation 
 of all the rights so noisily and vehemently de- 
 manded. The friend of freedom and of progress 
 who would fall into despair of man and of the 
 future at this humiliating sight must withdraw into 
 himself, and refresh and invigorate his soul at those
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 67 
 
 high and pure fountains which nourish deep con- 
 victions and far-reaching hopes. 
 
 Let not France, whatever be her peril, reckon on 
 absolute power to save her. It would not justify 
 her confidence. In her ancient society, absolute 
 power reposed on a principle of moderation and of 
 permanence ; while, under the Emperor Napoleon, it 
 contained a principle of strength, either of which it 
 would vainly seek for now. Popular tyranny or 
 military dictatorship may be the expedient of a day, 
 but can never be a form of government. Free insti- 
 tutions are now as necessary to social peace as they 
 are to individual dignity ; and power, whatever be 
 its nature or origin, whether republican or monar- 
 chical, has no wiser course to pursue than to learn 
 to use them, for they are now its only instruments 
 and its only stay. 
 
 If some are tempted to seek repose in other 
 sources, let them abandon all such hopes. What- 
 ever be the future destiny of France, we shall 
 not escape from the necessity of a constitutional 
 government ; we are condemned, for our own salva- 
 tion, to surmount all the difficulties, and to fulfil all 
 the conditions, with which it may be encumbered. 
 
 There is but one means of rendering ourselves 
 equal to this mighty task, and of complying with 
 this imperious necessity. All the elements of sta- 
 bility, all the conservative forces in the country 
 must unite closely and act constantly together. It 
 
 F<2
 
 68 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cH. VI. 
 
 is no more possible to extinguish democracy in the 
 nation than liberty in the government. That im- 
 mense movement which has been communicated to 
 every country and agitates all their deepest re- 
 cesses ; which is incessantly inciting every class and 
 every individual to think, to desire, to claim, to act, 
 to employ his activity in every direction, this 
 movement will not be stopped. It is a fact in which 
 we must acquiesce, whether it pleases or displeases 
 us, whether it awakens our fears or excites our 
 hopes. But though we cannot extinguish this 
 movement, we can guide and govern it ; and if it is 
 not guided and governed, it will throw back the 
 whole current of civilization, and will be the oppro- 
 brium as well as the curse of humanity. De- 
 mocracy, to be guided and governed, must form a 
 considerable ingredient in the state, but it must not 
 be the sole one : it must be strong enough to climb 
 itself, but never to pull down others : it must find 
 issues, and encounter barriers on every side. De- 
 mocracy is a fertilizing, but muddy stream, whose 
 waters are never beneficent till the turbid and im- 
 petuous current has spread itself abroad and sub- 
 sided into calmness and purity. 
 
 The Dutch, a great people, though in a small 
 country, whose republican glory shone brightly 
 even amidst the full blaze of the monarchical 
 glory of Louis XIV., conquered their country from 
 the ocean, and maintained their conquest, by cut-
 
 CH. VI.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN PRANCE. 69 
 
 ting canals and raising dikes on every side. It is 
 the ceaseless care of the whole community that the 
 canals be never obstructed and the dikes never 
 broken ; for on this depend the prosperity and the 
 existence of Holland. 
 
 Let all the conservative elements of France learn 
 from this example ; let them unite all their efforts, 
 let them keep a common and incessant watch, that 
 the rising tide of democracy may always find safe 
 channels and indestructible barriers. On the joint 
 and efficient action of these depend the safety of 
 the community, and the safety of each individual 
 composing it. If the conservative elements of 
 French society know how to combine and to form a 
 united body, if the party spirit which prevails 
 among them shall give way to a large and en- 
 lightened political spirit, then France, and the de- 
 mocracy of France, are saved. If the conservative 
 elements remain disunited and disorganized, Demo- 
 cracy will destroy France, and will perish under the 
 ruins she has made.
 
 70 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VII. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 
 
 THE political conditions which I have just specified. 
 are indispensable to the re-establishment of social 
 peace in France ; but they alone will not suffice. 
 Such a work requires something more than a good 
 organization of powers ; it requires a certain mea- 
 sure of prudence and virtue oh the part of the 
 people themselves. It is a gross delusion to believe 
 in the sovereign power of political machinery. The 
 free will of man plays a great part in social affairs, 
 and the success of institutions must in the end 
 depend on the men who live under them. 
 
 Much has lately been said about Christianity, 
 and the name of Jesus Christ has been frequently 
 introduced into the harangues of demagogues. 
 God forbid that I should suffer my mind to dwell 
 long on these profanations, this hideous mixture 
 of cynicism and hypocrisy. I shall only suggest one 
 question If the French nation were sincerely and 
 practically Christian, what would be its conduct in 
 the midst of the terrible difficulties by which it is 
 agitated and perplexed ?
 
 CH. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 7l 
 
 The rich and great of the earth would earnestly 
 and perseveringly labour to alleviate the distresses 
 of those beneath them. Their intercourse with the 
 poorer classes would be active, affectionate, morally 
 and physically beneficent. The various sufferings 
 and perils of humanity would call forth correspond- 
 ing associations, endowments, and works of charity. 
 
 The poor and humble would be submissive to the 
 will of God and the laws of society. They would 
 seek the satisfaction of their wants in regular and 
 assiduous labour, the improvement of their con- 
 dition in good conduct and provident habits, and 
 consolation and hope in the futurity promised to 
 man. 
 
 These are the Christian virtues they are called 
 Faith, Hope, and Charity. Is this the conduct men 
 are exhorted by the preachers of Democracy to 
 pursue ? Are these the sentiments which these 
 men, who affect a veneration for the Founder of 
 Christianity, try to rekindle in the hearts of the 
 people ? 
 
 I doubt whether they can carry the impudence 
 of mendacity so far as to answer in the affirmative ; 
 and if they dared to do so, I am sure that, spite of 
 the credulity of the public, they would receive a 
 universal contradiction. 
 
 But these monstrous attempts, whether the result 
 of fraud or of folly, will not succeed. Christianity will 
 not be disfigured or degraded so. Nothing can be
 
 72 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [cil. VII. 
 
 more anti-Christian than the ideas, the language, 
 or the influence of the present race of reformers of 
 social order. If Communism and Socialism pre- 
 vailed, Christianity must become extinct : if 
 Christianity were more potent, Communism and 
 Socialism would soon sink into the chaotic mass of 
 obscure and .forgotten extravagances. 
 
 I wish to be perfectly just ; and while attacking 
 notions which are the disgrace arid the curse of our 
 times, I would acknowledge whatever germ of mo- 
 rality they contain, and show what virtuous pretexts 
 or benevolent instincts may delude their advocates 
 or seduce their converts. 
 
 There is a sentiment, noble and beautiful in 
 itself, which has been much and often appealed to 
 throughout all the perturbations and convulsions 
 of society in France ; this sentiment is, enthusiasm 
 for mankind the enthusiasm of confidence, sym- 
 pathy, and hope. This feeling reigned supreme 
 among us in 1789, and gave its resistless impulse 
 to that epoch. There was no virtue that was not 
 ascribed to man no success that was not hoped 
 and predicted for him. Faith and hope in man 
 took the place of faith and hope in God. The 
 trial was not long deferred. The idol did not 
 long retain its power. Confidence was soon con- 
 victed of presumption, and sympathy ended in 
 social war and the scaffold. The hopes that were 
 fulfilled appeared insignificant, compared to those
 
 CH. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 73 
 
 that had vanished like dreams. Never did expe- 
 rience advance with such rapid strides to confront 
 and overthrow pride. 
 
 Yet it is to this same sentiment that our modern 
 reformers of social order appeal. It is this same 
 idolatrous enthusiasm for human nature that they 
 invoke. At the same time that they rob man of 
 his sublimest emotions and loftiest prospects, they 
 exalt without measure his nature and his power : 
 rather, I ought to say, they miserably degrade 
 them, for they promise him nothing beyond this 
 earth ; but while there, their belief in him is blind 
 and implicit their hope from him, and for him, 
 boundless. 
 
 The most melancholy reflection is, that this 
 insane idolatry is their only excuse; the only one 
 of their ideas which springs from a source of the 
 smallest elevation, or possesses the smallest moral 
 value. If they had not a blind faith in man, and 
 a servile adoration of humanity, they would be 
 nothing more than the propagators of a rapacious, 
 brutish, and lawless materialism. 
 
 " If man exalteth himself," says Pascal, " I abase 
 him ; if he abaseth himself, I exalt him." We ought 
 continually to bear in mind and to apply these 
 admirable words. Certainly man is a being worthy 
 to inspire us with respect and love, and with high 
 hopes of his future condition. To those who were 
 insensible to the nobleness of his nature and his
 
 74 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VII. 
 
 destiny to himself, if he forgot it I should say with 
 Pascal, " If man abaseth himself, I exalt him." 
 But to those who promise themselves everything 
 from him, by promising him everything; whose 
 expectations from him are as boundless as those 
 they labour to excite in him ; to those who, goaded 
 by their own pride, are constantly striving to inflate 
 his pride ; who forget, and try to make him forget, 
 the frailty and wretchedness of his nature, the 
 supreme laws by which he is bound, and the sup- 
 port of which he stands in need, to those men 1 
 would say with Pascal, " If man exalteth himself, I 
 abase him." And facts, recent, glaring, incon- 
 trovertible facts, say it far more impressively 
 than I. 
 
 It is impossible to restore France to the state of 
 things which prevailed in 1789 to rekindle that 
 enthusiasm of presumptuous confidence and hope 
 with which the nation was then drunk an en- 
 thusiasm which then was genuine as well as general, 
 had the ardour and spontaneity of youth, and was 
 rendered excusable by inexperience, but which now 
 would be only a false and factitious excitement ; a 
 thin, an ineffectual veil thrown over bad passions and 
 insane dreams. By what incurable arrogance could 
 we reject the lessons which God has lavished upon 
 us for the last sixty years ? He does not require 
 of us to despair of ourselves and of our species, to 
 abandon all efforts for its progress, or to shut our
 
 CII. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 75 
 
 hearts against a tender sympathy in its weal or woe ; 
 but He does forbid us to exalt our own nature 
 into an idol. He commands us to see it as it is ; 
 without illusion and without coldness ; and to love 
 and serve it according to the laws He has established. 
 I have certainly no desire to extinguish any of the 
 small portion of moral ardour still remaining in 
 the world, nor to infuse additional doubt and 
 indifference into hearts already so lukewarm and 
 uncertain. But neither can I add to their de- 
 lusions. It is not by retracing its course toward the 
 sources of the revolution, that France will walk with 
 a firm and animated step : those fountains are all 
 dry, and our generation will not go to slake its 
 thirst or refresh its spirit at them. You complain 
 of its languor ; you want to see the faith and the 
 moral energy, which are the soul and strength of 
 nations, revive among us : but it is vain to seek 
 them in the revolutionary spirit, which is wholly 
 incapable of inspiring them. It is a fire which 
 has still power to consume, but can neither warm 
 nor enlighten. Instead of reviving and invigorat- 
 ing our belief in the great truths which are the 
 wholesome stimulants as well as the true guardians 
 of society, they can only diffuse doubt and perplexity. 
 Certainly France wants to be morally elevated and 
 strengthened ; she wants to regain her faith in, 
 and attachment to, fixed and undisputed principles.
 
 76 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VII. 
 
 But the revolutionary spirit can do nothing to 
 appease these wants ; the scenes and the harangues, 
 the predictions and the recollections which it sug- 
 gests, can only retard the work. The honour of its 
 accomplishment is reserved for other moral powers 
 and other intellectual tendencies. 
 
 Among the foremost, are the domestic sentiments 
 and morals. The Family is now, more than ever, 
 the first element and the last rampart of society. 
 Whilst, in general society, everything becomes 
 more and more mobile, personal, and transient, it is 
 in domestic life that the demand for permanency, and 
 the feeling of the necessity of sacrificing the present 
 to the future, are indestructible. It is in domestic 
 life that the ideas and the virtues which form a coun- 
 terpoise to the excessive and ungoverned movement 
 excited in the great centres of civilization, are formed. 
 The tumult of business and pleasure, temptation and 
 strife which reigns in our great cities, would soon 
 throw the whole of society into a deplorable 
 state of ferment and dissolution, if domestic life, 
 with its calm activity, its permanent interests, and 
 its fixed property, did not oppose solid barriers 
 throughout the country to the restless waves of 
 this stormy sea. It is in the bosom of domestic 
 life, and under its influences, that private, the 
 basis of public, morality is most securely main- 
 tained. There too, and in our days there almost
 
 CH. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 77 
 
 exclusively, the affections of our nature, friend- 
 ship, gratitude, and self-devotion, all the ties 
 which unite hearts in the sense of a common 
 destiny, grow and flourish. The time has been 
 when, under other forms of society, these private 
 affections found a place in public life ; when de- 
 voted attachments strengthened political connexions. 
 These times are past, never to return. In the vast 
 and complicated and ever-moving society of our 
 days, general interests and principles, the senti- 
 ments of the masses, and the combinations of parties, 
 have the entire possession and direction of public 
 life. The private affections are ties too delicate to 
 exercise any powerful influence over the conflicts of 
 that pitiless field. But it is never without serious 
 injury that one of the vital elements of human 
 nature is uprooted out of any of the fields of 
 human action; and the complete absence of tender 
 and faithful attachments in that almost exclusive 
 domain of abstract ideas and general or selfish 
 interests, has robbed political life of a noble orna- 
 ment and a great source of strength. It is of in- 
 calculable importance to society that there should 
 be some safe retreat in which the affectionate dis- 
 positions I would almost say passions of the heart 
 of man may expand in freedom ; and that, occa- 
 sionally emerging from that retreat, they may ex- 
 hibit their presence and their power by some beau- 
 tiful examples in that tumultuous region of politics
 
 78 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VII. 
 
 in which they are so rarely found. But these so- 
 cial virtues must be nursed in the bosom of domes- 
 tic life ; these social affections must spring from 
 family affections. Home, the abode of stability 
 and morality, also contains the hearth at which 
 all our affections and all our self-devotion are 
 kindled ; it is in the circle of the Family that the 
 noblest parts of our nature find satisfactions they 
 would seek for else in vain ; it is from that circle 
 that, when circumstances demand, they can go 
 forth to adorn and bless society. 
 
 Next to the spirit of family, the political spirit 
 is that from which France has now the greatest ser- 
 vices to expect, and which she ought to foster with 
 the greatest care. The political spirit shows itself in 
 the will and the power to take a regular and active 
 part in public affairs, without employment of violence 
 or risk of disturbance. The greater the spread and 
 cultivation of the political spirit, the more does it 
 teach men the necessity and the habit of seeing 
 things as they are in their exact and naked truth. 
 To see, not what exists, but what they wish ; to in- 
 dulge complacently in illusions about facts, as if 
 facts would, with equal complacency, take the form 
 that they desire, is the radical and characteristic 
 weakness of men still new to political life, and the 
 source of their most fatal errors. To see things as 
 they are, is the first and very excellent fruit of the 
 political spirit, and gives birth to another not less
 
 CH. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 79 
 
 excellent, viz. that, by learning to see only what 
 is, we learn to desire only what is possible ; the 
 exact appreciation of facts begets moderation in de- 
 signs and pretensions. The political spirit, true and 
 sincere to itself, becomes prudent and reasonable 
 towards others. Nothing inclines men more to mo- 
 deration than a full knowledge of the truth ; for it 
 is rarely that she throws all her weight into one 
 scale. The political spirit is thus naturally led by 
 prudence, if by no higher morality, to that respect 
 for rights which is not only its fundamental law and 
 essential merit, but the sole basis of social stability ; 
 since, where law ceases, nothing remains but force, 
 which is essentially variable and precarious. The 
 respect for rights supposes, or produces, the respect 
 for law, the habitual source of rights. The real and 
 the possible, rights and law, such are the subjects 
 upon which the political spirit is constantly exercised, 
 and which become the habitual objects of its inquiry 
 and its veneration. It thus maintains, or re-esta- 
 blishes, a moral principle of fixity in the relations of 
 individuals, and a moral principle of authority in 
 those of the state. 
 
 The more the value for family ties shall increase 
 at the expense of the selfishness of an isolated exist- 
 ence, and the more the political shall gain upon the 
 revolutionary spirit, the more tranquil will the so- 
 ciety of France become, and the more firmly will it 
 rest upon its foundations.
 
 80 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VII. 
 
 Nevertheless, neither the domestic nor the po- 
 litical spirit would suffice for the task. They need 
 the assistance of another and a higher spirit, whose 
 influence penetrates more deeply than they can do 
 into the human soul. It is peculiar to religion 
 that she has a language for every individual ; a 
 language which all can understand, the high as 
 well as the humble, the happy as well as the un- 
 happy; and that she ascends or descends, without 
 an effort, into every rank and region of society. 
 And it is one of the admirable features of the con- 
 stitution of the Christian church, that her ministers 
 are not only scattered over, but form an integral part 
 of, the whole of society ; living as near to the cottage 
 as the palace ; in habitual and intimate intercourse 
 with the highest and the lowest; equally the mo- 
 nitors of greatness and the consolers of misery. 
 This tutelary power, spite of the abuses and the 
 fault* into which it has been led by its very force 
 and extent, has for ages exercised a more vigilant 
 and energetic control over the moral dignity and 
 the dearest interests of man, than any other. No- 
 body would be so averse as I should, for the sake 
 of religion herself, to see a revival of the abuses 
 by which she has been disfigured or corrupted; but 
 I confess that I do not fear this at the present 
 day. The principles of lay supremacy and freedom 
 of thought have definitively triumphed in modern 
 society : they may still have some enemies to repel,
 
 CII. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 81 
 
 and some conflicts to sustain, but their victory is 
 certain ; they have in their favour the prevailing 
 institutions, manners, opinions, and passions; and 
 that general and overwhelming current of ideas 
 and events which flows on through all diversities, 
 obstacles, and perils, in the same direction, at 
 Rome, Madrid, Turin, Berlin, and Vienna, no 
 less than at London or Paris. For modern 
 society to fear religion, or to dispute her influ- 
 ence with acrimony, would therefore be a puerile 
 alarm and a fatal error. You are surrounded 
 by an immense and excited multitude ; you 
 complain that you want means to act upon it, 
 to enlighten, direct, control, and tranquillize it; 
 that you have little intercourse with these men, save 
 through the tax-gatherer and the policeman ; that 
 they are given over, without defence, to the 
 inflammatory declamations of charlatans and dema- 
 gogues, and to the blind violence of their own 
 passions. Dispersed among them, you have men 
 whose express mission and constant occupation it 
 is to guide their faith, to console their distresses, 
 to show them their duties, to awaken and elevate 
 their hopes, to exercise over them that moral influ- 
 ence which you vainly seek elsewhere. And would 
 you not second these men in their work, when 
 they can second you so powerfully in yours, pre- 
 cisely in those obscure enclosures where you so 
 rarely penetrate, and where the enemies of social 
 
 G
 
 82 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VII. 
 
 order enter continually, and sap all their founda- 
 tions ? 
 
 There is, it is true, a condition attached to the 
 favour and the political efficacy of the religious 
 spirit; it demands sincere respect, and liberty. I 
 will even confess that the fears and desires of the 
 religious party often render them unjust, captious, 
 suspicious, rancorous, and exacting; that they 
 sometimes fall into the vortex of those false, anar- 
 chical and chimerical ideas which it is their pecu- 
 liar vocation to combat. I will make as large con- 
 cessions as can be required, as to the injustice you 
 must expect to submit to, and the precautions 
 you will have to take; yet I shall say at the 
 conclusion, as I said at the beginning, Do not 
 hold up acrimonious disputes with religion ; do 
 not fear her influences ; allow them space and 
 liberty to expand and to act in the largest and most 
 powerful manner. On the whole, they will certainly 
 be more in favour of tranquillity than of strife, and 
 will assist more than they will embarrass you. 
 
 If we were under that proximate necessity of act- 
 ing, which affords a light indispensable to those who 
 want to do more than lay down general princi- 
 ples of action, it would be our business to inquire 
 by what practical means, by what positive institu- 
 tions or laws, the domestic, the political, and the 
 religious spirit might be duly strengthened and de- 
 veloped in our country. At present I shall only add
 
 CH. VII.] CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. 83 
 
 one word. We cannot treat with great moral forces 
 as if they were mercenary and suspected auxiliaries. 1 
 They exist by themselves, with their natural merits 
 and defects, their unavoidable benefits and dangers. 
 We must accept them, such as they are ; without 
 pretending to be either their slaves or their tyrants, 
 without giving up everything to them, but also 
 without trying to withhold their just portion. The 
 religious, the domestic, and the political spirit are 
 more than ever beneficent, more than ever neces- 
 sary, in our society. Neither social tranquillity, nor 
 stability, nor order can dispense with their co-opera- 
 tion. Seek then that co-operation with sincerity ; 
 receive it with a good grace, and resign yourselves 
 to pay the price of it. 
 
 Societies, no more than individuals, are exempted 
 from the necessity of purchasing advantages by 
 efforts and sacrifices. 
 
 IB
 
 84 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VIII. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 LET not France deceive herself. Not all the experi- 
 ments she may try, not all the revolutions she may 
 make, or suffer to be made, will ever emancipate 
 her from the necessary and inevitable conditions 
 of social tranquillity and good government. She 
 may refuse to admit them, and may suffer without 
 measure or limit from her refusal, but she cannot 
 escape from them. 
 
 We have tried everything : Republic Empire 
 Constitutional Monarchy. We are beginning our 
 experiments anew. To what must we ascribe their 
 ill success? In our own times, before our own 
 eyes, in three of the greatest nations in the world, 
 these three same forms of government Constitu- 
 tional Monarchy in England, the Empire in Russia, 
 and the Republic in North America endure and 
 prosper. Have we the monopoly of all impossi- 
 bilities ? 
 
 Yes; so long as we remain in the chaos in which 
 we are plunged, in the name, and by the slavish 
 idolatry, of Democracy; so long as we can see 
 nothing in society but Democracy, as if that were
 
 CH. VIII.] CONCLUSION. 85 
 
 its sole ingredient ; so long as we seek in govern- 
 ment nothing but the domination of Democracy, 
 as if that alone had the right and the power to 
 govern. 
 
 On these terms the Republic is equally impos- 
 sible as the Constitutional Monarchy, and the Em- 
 pire, as the Republic ; for all regular and stable 
 government is impossible. 
 
 And liberty legal and energetic liberty is no 
 less impossible than stable and regular government. 
 
 The world has seen great and illustrious com- 
 munities reduced to this deplorable condition ; in- 
 Capable of supporting any legal and energetic 
 liberty, or any regular and stable government ; con- 
 demned to interminable and sterile political oscilla- 
 tions, from the various shades and forms of anarchy 
 to the equally various forms of despotism. For a 
 heart capable of any feeling of pride or dignity, I 
 cannot conceive a more cruel suffering than to be 
 born in such an age. Nothing remains but to 
 retire to the sanctuary of domestic life, and the 
 prospects of religion. The joys and the sacrifices, 
 the labours and the glories of public life exist no 
 more. 
 
 Such is not, God be praised, the state of France; 
 such will not be the closing scene of her long and 
 glorious career of civilization, of all her exer- 
 tions, conquests, hopes, and sufferings. France is 
 full of life and vigour. She has not mounted so
 
 86 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE. [CH. VIII. 
 
 high, to descend in the name of equality to so low 
 a level. She possesses the elements of a good 
 political organization. She has numerous classes 
 of citizens, enlightened and respected, already ac- 
 customed to manage the business of their country, 
 or prepared to undertake it. Her soil is covered 
 with an industrious and intelligent population, who 
 detest anarchy, and ask only to live and to labour 
 in peace. There is an abundance of virtue in the 
 bosoms of her families, and of good feeling in the 
 hearts of her sons. We have wherewithal to strug- 
 gle against the evil that devours us. But the evil 
 is immense. There are no words wherein to de- 
 scribe, no measure wherewith to measure it. The 
 suffering and the shame it inflicts upon us are 
 slight, compared to those it prepares for us if it en- 
 dures. And who will say that it cannot endure, 
 when all the passions of the wicked, all the extra- 
 vagances of the mad, all the weaknesses of the 
 good, concur to foment it ? Let all the sane forces 
 of France then unite to combat it. They will not 
 be too many, and they must not wait till it is too 
 late. Their united strength will more than once 
 bend under the weight of their work, and France, 
 ere she can be saved, will still need to pray that 
 God would protect her. 
 
 THE END.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by W. CLOWES and SONS, 
 Stamford Street.
 
 University of California 
 
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 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
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