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OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
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troublait ses plus intimes affid^s. Le parti monarchique 6tait, ci
son sujet, plein de doute et d'inquietude, passant tour h tour de
I'espoir a la crainte, de la lumiere entrevue h d'epaisses tenebres.
Ni leurs doutes, ni leurs craintes, ni leurs desirs, ni les obscurites
de Monk n'egarepent la conduite des royalistes. Monk etait
I'homme que leur donnait ct leur imposait en meme temps la si-
tuation. II y avait, h tout prendre, plus de raisons d'esperer en
lui que de s'en raefier. C'etait encore une necessity h accepter.
Les royalistes comprirent et accepterent aussi celle-la. lis ne se
livrerent point aveuglement h Monk ; mais ils le seconderent dis-
cretement, I'attirant sans le compromettre, dociles h ses conseils,
vigilans. mais tranquilles derriere lui, comrae derriere un chef de
leur choix. Car il faut un chef h de tels desseins, et il n'y a de
chef que celui qu'on laisse faire en le soutenant.
Le succes repondit a la bonne conduite du parti monarchique
et de son chef.
Peuples, partis on individus, les horames, dans les grandes cir-
constances de leur destinee, se trompent de deux fa^ons diverses
et egalement fatales. Tantot, indecis et decourages, ils s'aban-
donnent a eux-memes, restent inactifs comrae des spectateurs im-
puissans, et s'en reraettent de tout leur sort h cette force inconnue
que, selon leur foi ou leur impi6te, ils appellent la Prqvidence. la
fatalite ou le hasard. Tantot, aveuglement confians et etourdis,
ils s'agitent selon les caprices de leur imagination ou de leur de-
sir, croyant que tout leur est possible, et que rien ne les emp^-
chera de reussir comme ils veulent et esperent. Dieu ne tolere et
ne laisse impunies ni I'une ni I'autre erreur. II veut que les
hommes prennent leur part dans la conduite de leurs propres af-
faires, et en acceptent le travail comme les chances. Et, en meme
temps, il ne souttre pas que les hommes se figurent qu'ils dispo-
seront a leur gre des evenemens, et que toutes choses se plieront
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DEMOCRACY IN FRMCE.
BY
^
MONSIEUE GUIZOT,
LATE PRIME MINISTER; AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF CIVILIZA-
TION," ETC., ETC.
University of California.
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
DR. FRANCIS LIEBKR,
Professor of History and Law in Columbia College, New York,
THE GIFT OF
MICHAEL REESE
Of San Frajicisco.
1873.
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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2007 witii funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
littp://www.arcliive.org/details/defnocracyinfrancOOguizricli
PREFACE
I VENTURE to believe that nothing will be foimd 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 forgotten. 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
m
PREFACE.
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.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
• PAGE
WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL ? . . .9
CHAPTER 11.
WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO
DEMOCRACY? 14
CHAPTER III.
OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 21
CHAPTER IV.
OF- THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC . . . . . . .29
CHAPTER V.
WHAT ARE THE REAL AND ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY
IN FRANCE ? 39
%.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
FA&E
POUTIOAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE . 56
CHAPTER VH.
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IK FRANCE
CHAPTER Vm.
CONCLUSION
f.
#
%
80
DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL?
MiRABEAx:, 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 sentiment — a sentiment of profound melancholy.
They thought their hopes deceived, their labors 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 honor 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 des-
tiny and the constitutional order of our country ?
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
3
W DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
false, the upright and the perverse, the practicable and the
chimerical, the salutary and the pestilent to be constantly-
mingled and confounded in her opinions, her institutions, and
the government 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, " sever-
ing the wheat from the tares, and the com 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
h£is 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 — Democracy.
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 Democratic
Monarchy : therefore it differs essentially from the ancient
Monarchy, and is adapted to the modern condition of so-
ciety."
The Republicans say, " The Republic is Democracy
governing itself. This is the only form of government in
harmony with a democratic society, its principles, its senti-
ments, and its interests."
Socialists, Communists, and Montagnards require that the
republic should be a pure and absolute democracy. This,
in their estimation, is the condition of its legitimacy.
SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL. 11
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 ostentation and to the extremest limits, believe
themselves 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 extirpated ; for on its
extirpation depends social peace, and, in her train, liberty,
security, prosperity, dignity, all the benefits, material or
moral, which social peace alone can insure.
The following are the causes to which the word Democracy
owes its power.
It is the banner of all the social hopes and ambitions of
man, — pure or impure, noble or base, rational or irrational,
possible or chimerical.
Now it is the glory of man to be ambitious. He alone,
of all created beings, does not passively resign 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 eradicate 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
justice and the desire for vengeance — the spirit of liberty and
the spirit of tyranny — the wish to rise and the wish to abase
J
12 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
what has risen — the ardent love of truth and the presump-
tuous 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 pro-
mises. It fosters every propensity, 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 the harshest, the most beneficent and the most destruc-
tive ; 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 Democracy
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 that is most po-
tent, for good and for evil, in man and in society, was for-
merly heard only transiently, locally, and among certain
classes, which, though bound to other classes by the ties of a
common country, were distinct and profoundly different
from them. They lived at a distance 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. Whe-
SOURCE OF THE PREVALENT EVIL. 13
ther it be false or true, noxious or salutary, when once a so-
cial idea arises, it penetrates every where, and its action is
universal and constant. It is a torch that is never extin-
guished ; a voice that is never wearied or hushed. Univer-
sality and publicity 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 sovereign
facts which enter into the designs of God with regard to
mankind.
Such being the fact, the empire of the word Democracy
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,
continuous, inevitable struggle of its good and evil instincts;
of its virtues and its vices ; of all its powers and faculties,
whether to improve or to corrupt, to raise or to abase, to cre-
ate or to destroy. Such is, from henceforth, the social state,
the permanent condition of our nation,
■ "it^ •
CHAPTER II.
WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO DE-
MOCRACY ?
There are men whom this fearful struggle does not alarm :
they have full confidence in human nature. According to
them, if left to itself, its progress 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 every thing — liberty will almost always suf-
fice 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 repression 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 inclination 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 of the
instincts of man found its proper place and received its due
DUTY OF GOVERNMENT. 15
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
latter misunderstand man, and deny God.
Let any man dive into his own heart and observe 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 con-
template 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 honor 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 assistance. To
believe that the free will of man tends to good, and is of it-
self sufficient to accomplish 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 imminent, the
16 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
P^ 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
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 assem-
blies, 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 intelligence and disin-
terested virtue and heroic moderation which I witnessed, I
shuddered as I saw a mighty torrent of insensate ideas, bru-
tal passions, perverse inclinations, and terrible chimeras, rise
and swell, minute by minute, ready to overflow, and sub-
merge a land where all the dikes that had contained it were
broken down. Society had gloriously repulsed the violation
of its laws and its honor, and now it was on the point of fall-
ing 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 insure the safety of the social fabric.
DUTY OF GOVERNMENT. 17
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 important is it that government should
hold fast to its true character, and act its true part in the strug-
gle which agitates society. Why is it that so many demo-
cracies — some of them very brilliant — have so rapidly per-
ished ? 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 weak- -*>«»«•
t ness; they condemned them to falsehood. It is the melan-
choly condition of democratic governments, that while v^
charged — as they must be — with 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 princi-
ple, continually bends the knee before the bad, and then
attempts to resume an attitude of vigor and independence
when it becomes 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 develop-
ment of human nature — learn first on what conditions this
is attainable ; look forward to its consequences. Do not
blind yourselves to the perils and the combats it will occa-
sion. And when these combats and these perils arise, do
18 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
not require your leaders to be hypocritical or weak in their
dealings with the enemy. Do not force upon them the wor-
ship of idols, even were you yourselves those idols. Per-
mit them, nay command them, to worship and to serve the
true God alone.
I might here allow myself the satisfaction of recalling
the names of all the rulers who have fallen shamefully, be-
cause 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 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 or-
der strongly constituted ; without, national independence
firmly established. But had she ever a government which
treated her with greater severity, or showed less complaisance
for the favorite passions of Democracy ? As to the political
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 na-
tion were governed democratically or otherwise.
But Napoleon was a despot. If he rightly understood
and ably served some of the great interests of that new France
he had to govern, he profoundly misunderstood and injured
DUTY OF GOVERNMENT* • 19
others, not less sacred. How was it possible that one so hos-
tile to liberty should be favorable 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 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. Napoleon was, per-
haps, one of those men. That he mistook some of the essen-
tial wants of our time, nobody is more convinced than I am.
But he re-established order and authority in the midst of de-
mocratic France. He believed, and he proved, that it was
possible to serve and to govern a democratic society without
humoring 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 independence, 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 favorite ideas of Democracy,
He constancy struggled — struggled even to weariness and to
(
20 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
sadness — against its exactions. No man was ever more
profoundly imbued with the spirit of government, or with re-
spect for authority. He never exceeded the rights of power,
according to the laws of his 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 monarchi-
cal or aristocratical state. He was one of those who knew
that it is no more possible to govern from below in a repub-
» lie than in a monarchy — in a democratic than in an aristo-
cratic state of 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 in-
fallible consequence of the struggle which infallibly arises
in such societies, the possessor of power is continually called
on to decide between 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 Hercules 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.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.
I SHALL not speak of the republican form of government
otherwise than with respect. Considered in itself, it is a
noble form of government. It has called forth great vir-
tues ; it has presided over the destiny and the glory of great
nations.
But a republican government has the same vocation, 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 par-
ticular wants of the particular community which it is called
to govern.
The permanent want of every community, — the first i ^
and most imperi««s want of France at the present day, — is, CX^^'X'^^
peace in the bosom of society itself.
A great deal has been said about unity and social frater-
nity. 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 appear-
ances as realities. Whilst the shouts of unity and fraternity
r
22 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
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 strug-
gle between the different classes of society, of which the
Revolution of 1789 was the most general and mighty explo-
sion. The contests between nobility and commonalty, aris-
tocracy and democracy, masters and workmen, those posses-
sing property and those dependent on wages, are all differ-
ent 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 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 at-
tempt ? If time is allowed to it, it will restore social peace.
There is one circumstance which strikes me powerfully,
and causes me great anxiety : that is, the ardor manifested
28
by the republic to be expressly and officially called demo-
cratic.
The United States of America are universally admitted
to be the model of a Republic and a Democracy. Did it ^
ever enter the head of the American people to call the United
States a Democratic Republic ?
No ; nor is this astonishing. In that country there
was no struggle between Aristocracy and Democracy ; be-
tween an ancient aristocratical society and a new democra-
tic society : on the contrary, the leaders of society in the
United States, the descendants of the first colonists, the ma-
jority of the principal planters in the country and the princi-
pal merchants in the towns, who constituted the natural
aristocracy of the country, placed themselves at the head of
the revolution and the republic. The devotion, energy, and
constancy which they showed in the cause, were greater ^
than those displayed by the people. The conquest of their ^^^f^*^^^
independence, and the foundation of the republic, was not, 4^^"^^*
then, the work and the victory of certain classes over cer-'^ J"^^ ^"^
tain other classes; it was the joint work of all, led by the /" *
highest, the wealthiest, and the most enlightened, who had ^' y /
often great difficulty in rallying the spirit and sustaining the .
courage of the mass of the population.
Whenever officers were to be chosen for the bodies of
troops formed in the several States, Washington gave this
advice : — " Take none but gentlemen : 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
24 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
of the population does not zealously adopt it, it has no root ;
if the higher classes are hostile or indifferent to it, it can en-
joy no security. In either case, it is reduced to the neces-
sity 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 honorably, overcoming the defects and the storms
incident to their institutions ? Those only in which the re-
publican spirit was sincere and general ; which obtained, on
the one side, the attachment and the confidence of the peo-
ple, 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, tranquil in-
dependence, 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 de-
plorable 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 au-
thors. 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 society ; still angrily uttered against one class
by another, which, in its turn, hears it with terror directed
- ^
THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 25
against itself. All are in turn democrats as against those
above them, aristocrats as against those below ; threatening
and threatened, envious or envied, and exhibiting continual
and revolting changes of position, attitude, and language,
and a deplorable 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 domi-
nant 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 and decisive. It is not war that we
proclaimed in proclaiming a Democratic Republic, it is vic-
tory — the victory of Democracy. Democracy has conquer-
ed, and remains alone on the field of battle. She raises her
visor, announces her name, and takes possession of her con-
quest."
Such an answer is dictated by illusion or by hypocrisy.
How does a government, whether democratic or not, assert
and prove its victory, when that victory is real and deci-
sive? By restoring peace. Thus, and thus alone, could
the Democratic Republic have proved that it had conquered.
But does peace reign in France ? Is it even approaching ?
Do the various elements of society, willingly or unwillingly
satisfied or resigned, really believe in the existence and per-
manence of peace, and come to seek tranquillity, order, and
protection under the shelter of the Democratic Republic ?
Listen to the comments on the title assumed by the republi-
can government which are universally heard ; see the strik-
ing and menacing facts which are continually occurring, and
which are the consequence or the proof of those comments.
u
u,,^ "WvA^ -«-^c^w 'Mt.^V^ 'M>^«.-J-. *^ ^t^t/V^ ir^*.
26 DEMOCRACY I» FRANCE^' '^ / ^
^ 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 har-
assed nations ?
There are facts of such magnitude, clearness, and pro-
minence, that no human force or fraud can succeed in hid-
ing them. It is in vain that you repeat that the days of fra-
ternity are come ; that Democracy, such as you establish it,
' puts an end to all hostilities or conflicts of classes, and as-
similates 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 Re-
public 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 government of the
state : so far from diminishing my anxiety, these serve but to
r^ increase it. For if the banner of the Democratic Republic
appears to me to bear the inscription of social war, its con-
stitution seems to me to lead directly to revolutionary
l^ despotism. I find in it no distinct powers, possessed of
sufficient inherent strength to exercise a reciprocal control ;
no solid ramparts, under the shelter of which various rights
and interests can take root and flourish in safety ; no
THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. 27
organization of guarantees ; 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 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 constitutes.
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 prevailed. A
great number of men attached to the interests of their
country, said, or thought, "Let us wait; let us try — per-
haps the republic will be different now from what it was
heretofore; let the experiment be tried — let it not be dis-
turbed 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 foundation.
On the other hand, justice compels us to acknowledge
that the leaders of the republic have endeavored to belie
28 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
the predictions of its adversaries and the fears of the public.
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 main-
tain the public credit. These meritorious efforts do honor
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 foot-
ing, and lose ground at every step. They have sunk into
the revolutionary rut ; and though they struggle not to
plunge deeper into it, they cannot, 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 condi-
tions 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 experi-
ments, oflen 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 character
and aspect ; but they can produce nothing but a copy.
How long, whatever be its ultimate success or failure,
the present attempt will last, nobody knows. But hitherto
France has evidently reason to fear that its first and para-
, mount interests — social peace and political liberty — will be
placed, or left, by the Democratic Republic, in immense
danger.
/7
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 fermentation — the sixteenth century in
Germany, in the course of the Reformation — and the seven-
teenth in England during the political revolution, — had their
Socialists and their Communists, thinking, speaking, and act-
ing 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 which every ingredient is thrown to the
surface and exposed to view.
30 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
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 preten-
sions 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 stea-
dily and endeavor to fathom its lowest depths.
I wish to avoid all circumlocution, to throw aside all dis-
guises, 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 fun-
damental idea.
This fundamental idea is to be found, explicitly or impli-
citly, in the language of all the leaders of the Social Repub-
lic, though all do not avow, and some are perhaps not even
conscious that they entertain 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 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
THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. Si
natural and primitive, or progressively created by the intel-
ligence and the labor of man.
Certain men, certain families, or certain classes have ac-
quired the exclusive enjoyment of some (indeed the greater
part) of the most essential and productive of these good
things ; or, in other words, these things, or the means of pro-
curing 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 equal-
ly accessible, and to enjoy them in its turn like its predeces-
sors.
Therefore all special and perpetual appropriation 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 ef-
fects, it may be as if it were abolished ?
Here the leaders of the Social Republic differ greatly
among themselves. Some recommend slow and gentle mea.
sures ; others urge prompt and decisive ones. Some have
recourse to political means — for example, a certain organi-
32 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
zation of existence and labor in common ; others try to in-
vent economical and financial expedients — for example, a
series of measures designed to destroy the net revenue of
property, whether in land or capital, and thus to render pro-
perty itself useless and illusory. But all these schemes ori-
ginate in the same design and tend to the same result ; the
abolition or the nullification of personal, domestic, and hered-
itary property ; and of all institutions, social or political,
which are based upon personal, domestic, and hereditary
property.
Such, through all the diversity, obscurity, ambiguity, and
contradiction of the ideas which circulate among the adhe-
rents of the Social Republic, 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 individuals 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 succeesion.
The permanent union and progressive development
/
THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC.
^^
which are the consequences of this unbroken succession of
man to man, and generation to generation, characterize the
human race. They constitute its peculiarity and its great
ness, and mark man for sovereigiity ux this world, and for
immortality beyond it. .i- /iila^h su) •
From this are derived, and 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 perpetual life of mankind, amidst the
bounded appearance 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 subsis-
tence 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 animals.
Among them there exists no tie, no influence, which survives
the individual, and extends to the race. There is no per-
manent appropriation, no hereditary transmission, no unity
nor progress in the life of the species ; — nothing but indi-
viduals 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 hu-
man species the equal and incessantly fluctuating share of
the goods and pleasures of sense, the doctripes of the Social
T^ ^ r//)^',^^ jkc4^iA^ >^^^/^
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 instinct that
God presides over his destiny, and that it is not wholly ac-
complished in this world. Naturally 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 Republic, 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. Ac-
cording then to this doctrine, God is evil, for it is in his name
that men are persuaded 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 enjoy-
ments of this life and the equal distribution of these enjoy-
ments ; 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 of sense, according to
F
THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 35
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 society.
Not only of society as at present constituted, but of all
human society whatsoever : for all society rests on founda-
tions which it is the object of the Social Republic to over-
throw. 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 distribution
and the possessors of property at his own good pleasure, he
would be guilty of great iniquity, and occasion great suffer-
ing. He would not, however, destroy society. But if he
pretended to give the ideas with 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 the Social Republic, and returning to the natural con-
ditions of social order.
The Social Republic is then at once odious and impossi-
36 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
ble. 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 ardor of every kind of liberty
/ granted for the promulgation of ideas, its advocates are in-
/ cessantly laboring to diffuse their principles and their pro-
/ mises through the densest ranks of society. There they
L 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 honor of human
nature 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 sufficient 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 self-
ishness is awakened; sincere devotedness joins hands with
brutal passions ; and, in the terrible fermentation which en-
sues, evil predominates ; the portion of good mingled with
it acts only as its veil and its instrument.
We have no right to complain, for it is we ourselves who
incessantly add fuel to the fire — and this is the most deep-
j seated of our maladies. It is we who give to the Social
I Republic its chief strength. It is the chaos of our political
i
THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC. 37
ideas and our political morality — that chaos disguised some- <
times under the word democracy, sometimes under that of '
equality, sometimes under that of people — which opens all j
the gates, and throws down all the ramparts of society before
it. We sa y that Democracy is every thing. The men ofl
the Social Republic reply, " Democracy is ourselves." We
proclaim, in language of infinite 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 chimeri-
cal, which prevails in our own policy, our own language,
our own acts — this it is which has enfeebled our arm for de-
fence, 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, whither-
soever they may lead, see things as they really are, assign
to the different 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 dis-
appear, and although we may not have entirely crushed its
38 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
efTorts nor annihilated its dangers (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 in-
cessantly 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.
l^yk
CHAPTER V.
WHAT ARI THE REAL AND ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY
IN FRANCE?
The firsi step towards extricating ourselves out of the chaos
in which ve are plunged, is, a full understanding and frank
admission of all the real and essential elements of which
society in Frtnce is now composed.
It is became 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 ol which it is constituted, or by doing violence to
them.
Let us Irst advert to that civil order which forms the
basis of Freich society, as of every other society.
Family ; oroperty of all kinds, whether land, capital, or
wages ; labor, under all its forms, individual or collective,
intellectual or manual ; the situations in which men are
placed, or the relations which are introduced among them
40 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
by the incidents of family, property, and labor ; — such are
the constituents 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, labor of every description, are gov-
erned by the same laws, and possess or confer the sa«ie civil
rights. There are no privileges ; that is, no laws cr rights
peculiar to particular families, or to property or labor of
particular 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 2nd equality
of rights can neither prevent nor remove.
As to property, whether in immovable:^ or movables,
land or capital, there are rich and poor j tiere are large,
middling, and small properties.
The great proprietors may be less numerous and less
wealthy, and the middling and small proprietors mo-y be more
numerous and more powerful, than they were formerly, or
than they are in other countries ; but this does )ot prevent
the inequality amongst them from being real and s^eat enough
to occasion a radical difference and inequaliy of social
position. /
From diversities of position founded on propffty, I pass on
to those founded upon labor, of every kind an/ degree, from
the highest intellectual, to the lowest manual labor. Here
too I meet with the same fact. Here too di/ersity and in-
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY. 41
equality 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
labor 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 multitude, that are multiplied. It
is as if Providence did not permit human laws to have any
influence over the intellectual rank of its creatures, or the
extent and magnificence of its gifts.
In the other trades or professions, in which labor is chiefly
material and manual, there are also different and unequal
situations. Some, by intelligence and good conduct, accu-
mulate 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 condition
of men dependent upon the daily casualties of wages.
3*
42 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
Thus, throughout the whole extent of civil society, —
whether among those who depend on labor, or those possessed
of property, — diversity and inequality of situation arise and
coexist with unity of laws and equality of rights.
How, indeed, can it be otherwise ? If we examine 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 un-
der very different forms and very differently distributed.
1. Men living on the income of their property, whether
in land or capital, without seeking to increase it by their
own labor ;
2. Men occupied in increasing by their own labor the
property, whether in land or capital, which they possess ;
3. Men living by their labor 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 intimate connection
and a profound harmony between these facts and the nature
of man, which we know, on the one hand, and the mysteries
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY. 43
of his destiny, of which we can only obtain a dim and dis-
tant glance, on the other.
Nor is this all. Independently of these diversities and
inequalities among individuals, whether proprietors or labor-
ers, other diversities and other inequalities exist among the
kinds of property and of labor. 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.
Movable property, or capital, has acquired, and contin-
ues to acquire, an ever increasing extension and importance
in the communities of modern Europe. It is evident that
the progress of civilization in our times is entirely in favor
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 as-
similate immovable to movable property : to render land as
transferable, as divisible, as convenient to possess and to im-
prove 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 favorable 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 po^ess it addict themselves more
and more to the enjoyment of it, and those who do not pos-
sess it are more and more eager after its acquisition. The
great proprietor is returning to the taste for living on his
estate : the tradesman, who has earned a competence, retires
t
44 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
to the country to enjoy repose : the peasant thinks of nothing
but how to add field to field. Whilst every thing is done to
favor the development of capital, landed property is more
in request and more prized than ever.
yi It may be confidently predicted that if, as I hope, social
./ order triumphs over its insane or depraved enemies, the
t attacks of which landed property is now the object, and the
. ^ clangers with which it is threatened, will, in the end, enhance
f^^l its preponderance in society.
Whence arises this preponderance? Is it merely be-
cause, 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 restore 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.
•* Movable 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 pro-
cure the satisfaction of his wants and his desires. Landed
property is the establishment of man as sovereign in the
fA^Cu^ . \j^trrid~^ -A/Z-v-V-^^^-AL^^y^'^
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY. 45
midst of nature. It satisfies not only his wants 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 con-
sonant than any other to the nature of man, it also affords a
field of activity the most favorable to his moral develop-
ment, the most suited to inspire a just sentiment of his nature
and his powers. In almost all the other trades or profes-
sions, 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, pru-
dence and vigilance, are as necessary here as elsewhere to
the success of his labors, but they are evidently no less (. ^
insufficient than they are necessary. It is God who rules ^ j/ly^^
the seasons and the temperature, the sun and the rain, and iA/Xf^^
all those phenomena of nature which determine the success ^i^^^Jfj^
or the failure of the labors of man on the soil which he cul- fXJt^t
tivates. There is no pride which can resist this dependence, 'a '*
: ^f
no address which can escape it. Nor is it only a sentiment ^'^ ^^
of humility as to his power over his own destiny which is '* >^ y
thus inculcated upon man ; he learns also tranquillity and {/^>%y^
patience. He cannot flatter himself that the most ingenious ^j
inventions or the most restless sctivity will insure his sue- JLoM'
cess ; when he has done all that depends upon him for the ■- i ,
» /
tion in which man is placed by the possession and cultivation
cultivation and the fertilization of the soil, he must wait with
resignation. The more profoundly we examine the situa-
46 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
of the soil, the more do we discover how rich it is in salutary-
lessons to his reason, and benign influences on his character.
Men do not analyze these facts, but they have an instinctive
sentiment of them, which powerfully contributes to that pe-
culiar respect in which they hold property in land, and to
the preponderance which that kind of property enjoys over
every other. This preponderance is a natural, legitimate,
and salutary fact, which, especially in a great country,
society at large has a strong interest in recognizing and
respecting.
What I have just shown with relation to property, is
equally true with relation to labor. It is the glory of
modern civilization to have understood and proclaimed the
moral value and the social importance of labor; 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
j I fatal vice, of the state of things which prevailed in France
J up to the sixteenth century, I should say, without hesitation,
I the contempt in which labor was held. Contempt of labor
and pride in idleness are certain signs either that society is
under the dominion of brute force, or that it is verging to its
decline. Labor is the law which God has enjoined on man.
It is by labor that he developes and improves every thing
around him — by labor that he developes and improves his
own nature. Labor is become the surest pledge of peace
between nations. The respect and the liberty enjoyed by
labor tend more than any thing 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.
.«.
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY. 47
has it happened that the word Idbor^ so honorable 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 labor, 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 protecting labor,
is not in fact waged in its behalf, nor, if successful, would
redound to its advantage. It is, on the contrary, directed
against labor, whose ruin and degradation would be its infal-
lible result.
Labor, like family, property, and every thing else in this
world, is subject to natural and general laws ; among which
are, diversity and inequality of the kinds and results of la-
bor, and of the stations of those by whom it is performed.
Intellectual labor is superior to manual. Descartes, who
enlightened France, and Colbert, who laid the foundations of
her prosperity, performed a labor 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 labor can secure to the dull, the lazy,
or the licentious. The variety of tasks and vocations allot-
ted to man is infinite. Labor is every where — in the house
of a father of a family, who educates his children and super-
intends his aifairs ; in the cabinet of a statesman who takes
part in the government of his country ; in that of the ma-
gistrate who administers its laws -, of the philosopher who
instructs, and of the poet who charms it; in the fields.
48 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
on the ocean, on the highways, in the manufactories and the
workshops ; and in every situation, in every variety of la-
bor, in every class of laborers, diversity and inequality arise
and subsist ; inequality of intellectual power, of moral merit,
of social importance, of material wealth. These are the na-
tural, primitive, universal laws of labor, 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 labor, founded on the decrees of God and the
free actions of man, which it is the object of this war to abol-
ish ; and to substitute — what ? — the degradation and the ruin
of labor, by the reduction of all labor and all laborers to the
same level ! Examine the meaning which is usually affixed
to the word labor in the language of these enemies of social
order. They do not distinctly say that material and man-
ual work are the only real work ; indeed they occasionally
affect great respect for purely intellectual labor : but they
omit to mention the various sorts of higher labors which are
performed on every stage of the social scale ; their whole
attention is absorbed by material labor, which they constant-
ly represent as the kind of labor 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 labor, the opinion that theirs only has a claim to
the name and the rights of labor. Even when speaking not
of labor, but of laborers, they hold the same levelling and
depreciating language ; ascribing the rights of labor to work-
men, as such, independently of all degrees of personal merit.
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY, 49
Thus the coarsest and most ordinary labor 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 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 la-
bor acquired its proper rank and dignity ? Do we not, on
the contrary, mutilate, degrade, and disgrace labor, when
we strip it of a part of its noblest claims, and substitute in
their stead pretensions which are not only absurd and pre-
posterous, but mean, in spite of their insolence ? Lastly,
does not such language sh®w a gross misconception and vio-
lent perversion of the natural facts on which civil society m
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 virtue of their interests,
opinions and sentiments, and the ruling power under which
they live. Let us endeavor here to determine also the real
and essential elements of which society is now composed in
France.
In a free country, or in one struggling to become free, |
50 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
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 than
those inherent in every constitutional state ; the party of the
Government and that of the Opposition. There are neither
Legitimists nor Orleanists. The Republic exists, and will
not suifer the principle of its existence to be attacked ; and
as this is the indisputable right of every established govern-
ment, it is by no means my intention to contest or to in-
fringe it.
But there are things so inherent in society, that prohibit-
ive laws, even when obeyed, fail to eradicate 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 attached to a princi-
ple and to a name ; but it also occupies a great substantive
place both in the history and on the soil of France. It rep-
resents all that remains of the elements so long predominant
throughout 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 sud-
denly burst forth in 1789, mighty, aspiring, and glorious.
Though the French Revolution overthrew the ancient fabric
of French society, it could not annihilate its elements. In
spite of the convulsions by which they were dispersed, and
in the midst of the ruins by which they are surrounded, these
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY. 61
still subsist, and are still considerable in modern France. At
every succeeding crisis they evidently acquiesce more com-
pletely 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 disown-
ing their character.
Moreover, does any body believe that the party which en-
deavored to found a constitutional monarchy 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
ascendency of the middle classes in France, incessantly sup-
plied by recruits from the bulk of the population, is the cha-
racteristic feature in our history since 1789. Not only have
they conquered that ascendency, but they have justified their
claims to it. Amidst the grievous errors into which they J
have fallen, and for which they have paid so dearly, they
have shown that they really possessed the qualities that con-
stitute the strength and greatness of a nation. On all emer-
gencies, for all the wants of the country in war or peace, and
to every kind of social career, this class has abundantly fur-
nished men, nay, generations of men, able, active, and sin-
cerely devoted to the service of their country. When called
on in 1830 to found a new monarchy, 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 passions, they earnestly de-
52 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
sired constitutional order, and they faithfully observed it. At
hom^, they respected and maintained universal, legal, and
practical 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 pro-
per 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 po-
litical ignorance and impotence than elevation of mind or
rectitude of judgment. It is, however, indisputable that po-
litical parties having no other attachment than that excited
by proper names, and no other strength than that deriv-
ed from personal affections, would be extremely feeble and
inefficient. But can any body 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 con-
trary, that these parties are far more the offspring of the ge-
neral course of events than of attachment to persons ? that
they are of a social, as well as of a political nature, and cor-
respond to the most deep-rooted and indestructible elements
of society in France ?
Around these great parties floats the mass of the popula-
tion ; holding to the one or the other by its interests, its ha-
bits, or its virtuous and rational instincts ; but without any
strong or solid adhesion, and incessantly assailed and worked
upon by Socialists and Communists of every shade. These
ELEMENTS OP SOCIETY. 53
last do not constitute political parties, for they do not espouse <
any political principle, nor advocate any peculiar political
organization. Their only endeavor is to destroy all the in-
fluences, and to break all the ties, material or moral, which
bind the part of the population living by the labor 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 authori-
ties ; 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 ^ J
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 an-
other. There is, however, one striking fact : whether sin-
cere or depraved, blind Utopians or designing Anarchists,
all these disturbers of social order are Republicans. Not
that they are more attached or more submissive to republi- %/
can government than to any other ; for every regular andy \j
efficient government, whether republican or monarchical, is
equally odious to them ; but they hope that under a republic
they shall find stronger weapons to aid their attacks, and fee-
bler barriers to resist them. This is the secret of their pre-
ference.
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 diver-
sities and inequalities ; diversities and inequalities which
54 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
can neither be obliterated in civil life by unity of laws and
equality of rights, nor in political life by a republican
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 conjecture, but
a statement of facts.
Now what is the import and tendency of these facts ?
Shall we find in them the ancient classifications 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 posi-
tion form, or tend to form, a hierarchy of classes analogous
to those which formerly existed in French society ?
No, certainly ! — the words aristocracy, democracy, no-
hility, iourgeoisie, or hierarchy, do not correspond to the con-
stituent 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 inequalities, devoid of all
political importance ? Is there nothing but a great and
uniform democracy, which seeks satisfaction in a republic at
the risk of finding repose in a despotism ?
Neither is this the fact; either of these descriptions
would equally misrepresent the true state of our society.
We must emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of words,
and see things as they really are. France is extremely
new, and yet full of the pastj whilst the principles of
ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY. 55
unity and equality have determined her organization, she
still contains social conditions and political situations pro-
foundly different and unequal. 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 described, may en-
feeble each other by perpetual conflicts, 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 coexistence 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 ?
CHAPTER VJ.
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. Some-
times the democratic 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 pre-
dominance. 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 com-
patible with that of his rival.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 57
This war was suspended by the Emperor Napoleon.
He rallied around him the class3s which had formerly pos-
sessed, and those which actually enjoyed, power and influ-
ence ; 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 elements acquired strength ; but
though neither could succeed in suppressing the other, each
was impatient 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 bour-
geois, 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 mid-
dle classes, and the people — must completely renounce the
hope of excluding and annihilating each other. Let them
vie with each other in influence ; let each maintain its posi-
4
2
\^
58 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
tion and its rights, or even endeavor to extend and improve
them, for in such efforts consists the political life of a coun-
try. But there must be an end of all radical hostility : they
must resign themselves to live together, 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 ele-
ments of our society be brought to tolerate each other's exis-
tence, and to fulfil their several functions in the government
of the country ? :
I reply, by such an organization of that government as
\ / I iifiay assign to each its place and functions ; may concede
something to the wishes, while it imposes limits to the ambi-
tion, 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 con-
stitutional organization. It is this : — " National unity in-
volves 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 characterizes
both revolution and despotism. The Convention and Louis
XLV. exclaimed alike, " L'Etat, c'est moi."
It is as false as it is tyrannical. A nation is not a vast
aggregate of men, consisting of so many thousands or mil-
lions, 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
POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 59
shape and constitution naturally impressed upon them by the
primitive laws of God and the free acts of man. The diver-
sity of these elements 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 repre-
sentative 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 re-
presented in the government by powers corresponding to
each ?
No, certainly : society is not a federation of professions,
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 representatives to the centre of government only be-
cause they cannot all repair thither themselves, and are
compelled to reduce themselves to a number which can meet
in one place and deliberate in common. Social unity requires
that there should be but one government ; but the diversity
of the social elements equally requires that this government
should not be one sole power.
There is a natural process of attraction and concentration
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
multitude of particular and different elements are thus re-
■n
60 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
duced to a small number of principal and essential 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 repre-
sents the whole nation ; and which affords them an arena for
free discussion, where they can maintain their opinions, their
interests and their rights, and exert their proper influence
over the resolutions of the assembly, and consequently over
the government of the state.
We are then to infer from this that we have discharged
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 I"
/^lection and discussion constitute the entire basis which
( is to sustain the social edifice ; election and discussion
afford a sufficient guarantee for all interests, rights, and
V liberties !
I Such a theory betrays a strange ignorance of human
k^ature, human society, and the French people.
^. I will put a single question. The interests of society are
I twofold ; those of stability and conservation on the one hand,
[ and those of activity and progress on the other. If you
wanted to secure the interests of activity and progress, would
POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 61
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 wil-
ling protectors, and you would do well. But all these va-
rious 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 relations to other powers. If the interests of stability and
conservation are committed wholly to the chances of the
composition of a single elective assembly, 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 dif-
ferent 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 per- \
manent elements of society must find in the government J
itself, powers corresponding to them, and offering a pledge
for their security. A diversity of powers is equally indis-
pensable to conservation and to liberty.
It is a matter of amazement that this truth should be dis-
puted, for the very men who dispute it have made a great
step towards its admission and application. After establish-
ing unity of power at the head of the state, they have ad-
mitted a division of powers lower down, on account of the
diversity of functions. They have carefully separated the
legislative, executive, administrative, and judicial powers; thus
practically acknowledging the necessity of giving guarantees
V/
62 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
to different interests, by the separation and the different con-
stitution 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 highest as well as in the subordinate spheres of govern-
ment?
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 harmony among
the powers of the state, and security against their excess, is
to be found in their weakness. People are afraid of every
kind of authority ; and in order to prevent their destroying
each other, or encroaching upon liberty, they ingeniously
endeavour to undermine them all in turn.
This is a monstrous error. Every weak power is a
power doomed to perish by extinction or by usurpation. 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 com-
monalty has become strong by successive conquests of its
rights from the aristocracy and the king. Of the three con-
POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 63 s„ /
stitutional powers, two retain much of their primitive great- ,^^/
ness, and rest firmly on their deep and primeval roots ; the '
third has risen to greatness, and has gradually 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 es-
tablish constitutional monarchy in France, its firmest ad-
herents desired an ancient and historical basis for royalty ;
for the Chamber of Peers, an hereditary seat in the legis-
lature, and for the Chamber 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 phan-
toms.
In the United States, notwithstanding the difference of
names, situations, manners, and institutions, Washington,
Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, when founding the Re-
public, recognized 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 dis-
tinct as the general institutions of the country would permit,
and as diflierent as their several functions.
Diversity of origin and of nature is one of the conditions
essential to the intrinsic and real strength of powers, and this
again is the condition indispensable to political harmony and
social peace.
Nor is it only at the summit and centre of government
V
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 saicT in favor of cen-
tralization 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 dangers of
society. The struggle is no longer confined to the centre ; it
agitates the whole nation. Since property, family, and all
the bases of society, are attacked every where, they must
every where 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
supported 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 administration, as well as the government of the country :
the central government ought to uphold the banner of social
order, but it cannot bear the whole burden of it unaided.
I speak always on the presumption that I am speaking to
a free country, and of a free government ; for it is under free
governments that the safety of society demands all these
conditions : they have evidently no application to absolute
governments.
Absolute power is, however, subject to certain conditions.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 65
as well as liberty. It is far from being always possible
where it would be submitted to, nor can it be obtained wher-
ever 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
demanded. 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 high and pure fountains which
nourish deep convictions and far-reaching hopes.
Let not France, whatever be her peril, reckon on abso-
lute 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 Empe-
ror 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 institutions are now
as necessary to social peace as they are to individual dignity ;
and power, whatever be its nature or origin, whether repub-
4*
66 DEMOCRACY IT FRANCE.
lican or monarchical, 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. Whatever be the future des-
tiny of France, we shall not escape from the necessity of a
constitutional government ; we are condemned, for our own
salvation, 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 ne-
cessity. All the elements of stability, all the conservative
forces in the country must unite closely and act constantly
together. It is no more possible to extinguish democracy in
the nation than liberty in the government. That immense
movement which has been communicated to every country
and agitates all their deepest recesses; 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. Democracy, 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 :
POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 67
it must find issues, and encounter barriers on every side.
Democracy is a fertilizing, but muddy stream, whose waters
are never beneficent till the turbid and impetuous current
has spread itself abroad and subsided 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 cutting 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 demo-
cracy may always find safe channels and indestructible bar-
riers. 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 enlightened political spirit, then France, and the demo-
cracy of France, are saved. If the conservative elements
remain disunited and disorganized, Democracy will destroy
France, and will perish under the ruins she has made.
CHAPTER VII.
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE.
The political conditions which I have just specified are in-
dispensable to the re-establishment of social peace in France ;
but they alone will not suffice. Such a work requires some-
thing more than a good organization of powers ; it requires
a certain measure of prudence and virtue on 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
institutiojis must in the end depend on the men who live un-
der 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 prac-
tically Christian, what would be its conduct in the midst
of the terrible difficulties by which it is agitated and per-
plexed ?
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 69
The rich and great of the earth would earnestly and per-
severingly labor 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 corresponding 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 satisfac-
tion of their wants in regular and assiduous labor, the im-
provement of their condition 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 men-
dacity 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 more anti-Christian than
the ideas, the language, or the influence of the present race
of reformers of social order. If Communism and Socialism
prevailed, Christianity must become extinct ; if Christianity
1
70 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
were more potent, Communism and Socialism would soon
sink into the chaotic mass of obscure and forgotten extrava-
gances.
I wish to be perfectly just ; and while attacking notions
which are the disgrace and the curse of our times, I would
acknowledge whatever germ of morality 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, sympathy, 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.
r" 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 convicted of
presumption, and sympathy ended in social war and the
scaffold. The hopes that were fulfilled appeared insignifi-
cant, compared to those that had vanished like dreams.
Never did experience 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,
I they exalt without measure his nature and his power : rather,
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 71
I ought to say, they miserably degrade them, for they pro-
mise 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 idola-
try 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 ;
J if he abaseth himself, I exalt him." We ought continually
to bear in mind and to apply these admirable words. Cer-
tainly 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
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 every thing from him, by promising him
every thing ; whose expectations from him are as boundless
as those they labor 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 support of which he stands in need, — to
those men I would say with Pascal, " If man exalteth him-
self, I abase him." And facts, — recent, glaring, incontro-
vertible facts, — say it far more impressively than I.
]
72 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
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 enthusiasm which then was genuine as
well as general, had the ardor 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
hearts against a tender sympathy in its weal or woe ; but He
does forbid us to exalt our own nature into an idol. He com-
mands us to see it as it is ; without illusion and without cold-
ness ; 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 ardor still remaining in the world,
nor to infuse additional doubt and indifference into hearts al-
ready so lukewarm and uncertain. But neither can I add
to their delusions. 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
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 73
neither warm nor enlighten. Instead of reviving and invi-
gorating our belief in the great truths which are the whole-
some 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. But the revolutionary spirit can do nothing to
appease these wants ; the scenes and the harangues, the pre-
dictions and the recollections which it suggests, can only re-
tard the work. The honor 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 ele-
ment and the last rampart of society. Whilst, in general
society, every thing becomes more and more mobile, person-
al, 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 domes-
tic life that the ideas and the virtues which form a counter-
poise 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 coun-
try to the restless waves of this stormy sea. It is in the bo-
som of domestic life, and under its influences, tliat private,
the basis of public, morality is most securely maintained.
74 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
There too, and in our days there almost exclusively, the
affections of our nature, — friendship, 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 devoted attachments
strengthened political connections. These times are past,
never to return. In the vast and complicated and ever-
moving society of our days, general interests and principles,
the sentiments 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 power-
ful 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 at-
tachments in that almost exclusive domain of abstract ideas
' 5^«HUr^nd general or selfish interests, has robbed political life of a
^.y noble ornament and a great source of strength. It is of in-
^ rf calculable importance to society that there should be some
p" safe retreat in which the affectionate dispositions — I would al-
^ most say passions— of the heart of man may expand in free-
dom ; and that, occasionally emerging from that retreat, they
may exhibt their presence and their power by some beautiful
examples in that tumultuous region of politics in which they
are so rarely found. But these social virtues must be nursed
in the bosom of domestic life ; these social affections must
spring from family affections. Home, the abode of stability
and morality, also contains the hearth at which all our affec-
>UM.
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 75
tions and all our self-devotion are kindled ; it is in the circle
of the Family that the noblest parts of our nature find satis-
factions they would seek for else in vain ; it is from that cir-
cle 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 services 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 employ-
ment 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 indulge complacently in
illusions about facts, as if facts would, with equal com-
placency, take the form that they desire, — is the radical and
characteristic weakness^of men slill 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 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 designs and pretensions. The political spirit,
true and sincere to itself, becomes prudent and reasonable
towards others. Nothing inclines men more to moderation
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
76 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
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 con-
stantly exercised, and which become the habitual objects of
its inquiry and its veneration. It thus maintains, or re-
establishes, 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 existence, and the
more the political shall gain upon the revolutionary spirit,
the more tranquil will the society of France become, and
the more firmly will it rest upon its foundations.
Nevertheless, neither the domestic nor the political 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 unhappy ; 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 constitution 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 ;
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 77
in habitual and intimate intercourse with the highest and the
lowest ; equally the monitors of greatness and the consolers
of misery. This tutelary power, spite of the abuses and the
faults 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. Nobody 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 ene-
mies to repel, and some conflicts to sustain, but their victory
is certain ; they have in their favor the prevailing institu-
tions, 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 influence with acrimony, would
therefore be a puerile alarm and a fatal error. You are sur-
rounded by an immense and excited multitude ; you com-
plain 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 police-
man ; that they are given over, without defence, to the in-
flammatory declamations of charlatans and demagogues, and
to the blind violence of their own passions. Dispersed among
them, you have men whose express mission and constant
78 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
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 influence which you vainly
seek elsewhere. And would you not second these men in
their work, when they can second you so powerfully in
yours, precisely in those obscure inclosures where you so
rarely penetrate, and where the enemies of social order enter
continually, and sap all their foundations ?
There is, it is true, a condition attached to the favor
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 anarchical
and chimerical ideas which it is their peculiar vocation to
combat. I will make as large concessions as can be re-
quired, 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 in-
fluences ; 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 favor of tranquillity
than of strife, and will assist more than they will embarrass
you.
If we were under that proximate necessity of acting,
which affords a light indispensable to those who want to do
more than lay down general principles of action, it would be
our business to inquire by what practical means, by what
MORAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE. 79
positive institutions or laws, the domestic, the political, and
the religious spirit might be duly strengthened and developed
in our country. At present I shall only add one word.
We cannot treat with great moral forces as if they were
mercenary and suspected auxiliaries. 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 every thing
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 ne-
cessary 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.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION.
Let not France deceive herself. Not all the experiments
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 govern-
ment. 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 every thing : — Republic — Empire — Con-
stitutional 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 —
Constitutional Monarchy in England, the Empire in Russia,
and the Republic in North America — endure and prosper.
Have we the monopoly of all impossibilities ?
Yes ; so long as we remain in the chaos in which we are
plunged, in the name, and by the slavish idolatry, of Democ-
racy ; so long as we can see nothing in society but Democ-
CONCLUSION. 81
racy, as if that were its sole ingredient ; so long as we seek
in government nothing but the domination of Democracy, as
if that alone had the right and power to govern.
On these terms the Republic is equally impossible as the
Constitutional Monarchy, and the Empire, as the Republic ;
for all regular and stable government is impossible.
And liberty— legal and energetic liberty4-is no less im^\^
possible than stable and regular government.
The world has seen great and illustrious communities
reduced to this deplorable condition ; incapable of supporting
any legal and energetic liberty, or any regular and stable
government ; condemned to interminable and sterile political
oscillations, 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
labors 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 exertions, conquests, hopes, and
sufferings. France is full of life and vigor. She has not
mounted so 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, enlight-
ened and respected, already accustomed to manage the
business of their country, or prepared to undertake it. Her
soil is covered with an industrious and intelligent population,
4
82 DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE.
who detest anarchy, and ask only to live and to labor 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 struggle against the evil that devours us.
But the evil is immense. There are no words wherein to
describe, 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 endures. And who
will say that it cannot endure, when all the passions of the
wicked, all the extravagancies 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.
1
DEUX PREFACES DE M. GUIZOT.
Ainsi qu'on a pu le voir dans notre correspondance (Courrier du
d3 courant), M. Guizot vient de faire paraitre, a Paris, sous le litre de
Monk et WAftHiNOTON, deux volumes, qui ont cause une certaine sen-
sation. Ces livres ne sent pas nouveaux cependant : I'un n'est rien autre
chose que I'introduction qu'il a ecrite, il y a quelques mois, pour une
Edition nouvelle de son Histoire de la Rivolution (V Angleterre ; I'autre
eat tout bonnement I'etude biographique dont il a fait preceder, il y a
quelque part huit ou dix an», la traduction des lettres choisieg de
Washington, d'apres la grande edition americaine de Jared Sparks.
Mais M. Guizot a eu soin de rendre a ces ceuvres de son passe une
actualite plus ou raoins piquante, en les renfor9ant de prefaces inspirees
par les circonstaiaces actuelles. Dans I'un, il apprecie le loyal fondateur
d'une Republique:; dans I'autre, I'astucieux restaurateur d'une monar-
chie, 11 y ajoute Haturellement un examen de la situation de la France,
des considerationa sur le pa.83e et sur I'avenir, et des allusions qui, de la
part d'un ami de I'ordre, auraient pu etre moins blessantes.
Quelques journaux du parti de I'ordre se sont emus de cette espece
de manifestation, qui est une atteinte portee a la paix conclue tacite-
ment entre les hommes politiques appartenant aux diverses nuances de
ee parti, t Comment se fait-il, dit la Patrie, que M. Guizot quitte sa
retraite, et rompe le silence pour introduire sur une scene, dont le rideau
doit etre baisse en ce moment, deux nouveaux personnages de carac-
teres opposes, et creer, en quelque sorte, une peripetie au milieu d'un
•ntr'acte ? s
- Nous ne pensons pas, quoi qu'en dise la Patrie, quo ces opuscules de
M. Guizot soient da nature a creer la moindre peripetie, a jeter la
moindre perturbation dans les esprits ; mais I'opinion d'un homme qui a
eu tant d'influence sur nos de&tinees, ne saurait etre sans importance, et
nos lect«urs pouvant desirer la connaitre, nous avons cru devoir repro-
duire les deux prefacf
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1
WORKS BY M. MICHELET.
Published by D. Appleton S^ Co., 200 Broadway
HISTORY OF FRANCE,
FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD.
TRANSLATED BY G. H. SMITH, F. G. S.
Two handsome 8vo, volumes. $ 3 50.
" So frrapliic, so life-like, so dramatic a historian as Michelet, we know noi wliijr*
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IS you peruse iiia animated pages, virhere we find notiiing of diffuseness or irreloviui
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HISTORY
OP THE
ROMAN REPUBLIC.
One handsome l2mo. volume. Paper cover 75 cts. Cloth $1.
" M. Michelet, in his Hiiitory of the Roman Republic, first introduces the readoi
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reader the desire to investigate the ancient history of this wonderful land. He next
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arranged, and saves the u leducated reader tlie trouble of investigating the sources,
while he givfs to the more educated mind an impetus to study the literature from
which he gives very accurate quotations in his notes. He describes the peculiaritiei
anfi the life of tho Roman people in a masterly manner, and he fascinates every
reader, by the brilliant clearness and vivid freshness of his style, while he shows
himself a good historian, by the justness and impartiality with which he relates and
philosophizes"
THE LIFE
OF
MARTIN LUTHER,
GATHERED FROM HIS OWN WRITINGS
By M. Michelet: translated by G. H. Smith, F. G. S.
One handsome volume, 12mo. Cloth 75 cts.. Paper cover 50 cts.
■''his work is not an historical romance, founded on the life of Martin Luther,
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eE>«e to his childhood, and which Luther himself has left undescribed, the translator
"i&a rarely found occasion to make his own appearance on the scene. *****
It is almost JTivariably Luther himself who speaks, almost invariably Luther related
by Luther. — Kxtrtut from M. MicheltCs Preface.
THE PEOPLE.
TRANSLATED BY G. H. SMITH, F. G. S.
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" This boei ii more than a book ; it is myself, therefore it belongs to you. * *
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derived it from my observation, from my relations of friendship and of neighborhood j
lave picked it up upon the roads. Chance loves to favor those who follow out one
contiruous idea. Above all, I have found it in the recollections of my youth. To
know tho life of the people, their labor and their sufferings, I had but to interrogate
luT memory, — Extract frun Authinr''a Preface.
STANDARD HISTORICAL WORKS.
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THE HISTORY OF ROME,
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BY THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D.,
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