Arthur Ogle

“ He determined, so far as possible, to make his will felt; and the incapacity with which he was charged by Noailles and the anti-Prussian party in the Council was really incapacity to accept proposals at variance with every statesmanlike tradition. Without regard for the consequences to himself, he acted for what he thought to be the public interest—a process which no French statesman could then pursue without offending innumerable susceptibilities, and uniting every one, from the reigning favourite to the most insignificant chargé d'affaires, in a league of enmity against him. ”

“ Is not England a standing witness to the truth of your ideas? The King with his Parliament is legislator, as in France with his Council. The rest of the nation is governed according to municipal laws, as sacred as those of Parliament itself. ”

“ If it be allowed, in deference to French protest, that the influence of English philosophy upon the Revolution was slight and circuitous, it is no less true that the influence of the English people and polity was rapid, powerful and direct. In fanning the glow of revolutionary feeling during these seven or eight years at least, the comparative excellence of the English government was only less operative than the worthlessness of the French. It is a fact of which we hear very little, but with which d'Argenson at any rate was deeply impressed. ”

“ On the morning of September 1st, 1715, the eyelids of the Grand Monarque closed upon a long and fateful chapter in French history; and the hearts of men beat high again with the generous hopes of a newer time. France, and the humblest of her children, d'Argenson, had reached the parting of the ways. ”

“ D'Argenson's time had come at last. He had opposed without success the resolution of the Council; but his own credit had fallen with the defection of the man whose fidelity he had guaranteed. Nevertheless, he knew that persuasion was the least of his resources; and he resolved that it should be no fault of his if anything came of the overtures of the Empress.
His position is clear. It was not for nothing that for twenty years he had studied and thought upon public affairs; he was as deeply versed in the interests of the kingdom as the rest were skilled in the intrigue of the Court. ”

“ We had only to make this resolution understood at Madrid by some one who knew his own mind, and who would say to them once for all, 'Will you have all or nothing?' in order to give to Spain the Two Sicilies, which has been done by arrangement; or, if the worst came to the worst, to form a general league to act against Spain and the Emperor combined. For what better view could there be than that of giving prosperity to Italy, and banishing war for ever from the peninsula." [214]
D'Argenson's regret is almost passionate. ”

“ There is only too good reason to know that in many critical conjunctures, the foreign policy of France was only pursued because the Foreign Minister was powerless to avert it. Indeed there is reasonable ground for suspecting that no pains have been spared in comprehending everything but the Marquis d'Argenson himself; and that, if the perusal of his official despatches had been illumined by the study of his unofficial memoirs, the character of his action might have been explained more naturally than by the suggestion of stupidity or confusion of mind. ”

“ D'Argenson felt that for the rapid and decisive action which a great nation should be able to employ, a strong and united government was necessary: and that in the Monarchy France possessed such a government. He saw at the same time that that government had charged itself with a multitude of minute concerns which it could not possibly understand or supervise, and that consequently the rural districts were neglected, and local administration throughout the country was in a shameful state of nullity or disorder. ”

“ That is the thing I cannot get over; you have divested yourself in favour of the public of the dearest prejudice to which men can cling.... Good-bye. Go and make the French loved in Portugal, and leave me the hope that I shall see again a man who does so much honour to France. An Englishman had put upon his tomb: 'Here lies the friend of Philip Sidney;' allow me to write my own epitaph: 'Here lies the friend of the Marquis d'Argenson.'" [251]
"There is a place that one does not procure for cash down, and that I merit by the most respectful attachment and the most high esteem." ”

“ The only man who, by the duration and the vicissitudes of his career, has secured a precarious place in history, is M. de Maurepas. So much for the men; we have yet to see whether d'Argenson's estimate of the general administration could equally boast the warrant of fact.
There are two sides to the questions suggested by the government of Fleury. There is no denying that his negative policy conferred great benefits on France; there is equally little question that it sowed the seed of many a disaster. ”

“ Prussia, if her power developed, might one day be strong enough to stand alone against the Austrian House; and France would be free to watch the contest, and might leave the rivals to ruin each other. But this was still in the future; and the time was yet apparently distant when a responsible French minister could entertain the idea of an Austrian alliance.
It is true that there was already an Austrian party in the Council; there is always such a party in any council. There are men who cannot resist the fascination of cheap success, who are devoted to a policy of ease with honour. ”

“ These d'Argenson would have swept away; and in doing so he would have reduced the French nobility, or rather he would have raised it, to the position actually occupied by one of the most powerful aristocracies in the world, the nobility of England.
No more cruelly keen-sighted man than d'Argenson ever lived. He only differs from most men of equal vision in that his clear perception of life as it was did not breed in him disgust and cynical acceptance. His mind could command two worlds, the real and the ideal ”

“ With M. Chauvelin, he had banished from his ministry its only element of constructive strength. D'Argenson had been glad that the man whose "ideas were too great and lofty," was in power no longer, and only too ready to take shelter beneath the bourgeois policy of Fleury. [241] He was not long in discovering his error. The world is not a bourgeois creation, nor can it be governed upon bourgeois principles; and if genius in power is often destructive, it is none the less often necessary. ”

“ He alone could see that so long as the Prussians remained in Breslau, France would be sure of a powerful ally, and the right hand of Austria would be paralysed in Europe; while, upon the other hand, if Frederick were compelled to bow before fate and Maria Theresa, the heiress of Austria would draw the sword of Charles V. against her own enemy and the enemy of her House. Months before, d'Argenson had revealed his feeling in one of those master-sayings of depth and directness, which only tend to strengthen the belief that his history deserves to be re-written. ”

“ It was not the chance or the exigency of the moment that led to the famous Negotiation of Turin. We can scarcely say how long d'Argenson had dreamed of the liberation of Italy; [364] but for years past he had clung to the idea with something of the fervour of a religious faith. It was the one indulgence in the luxuries of idealism of which he refused to deprive himself. The hope was an inspiring one, and not a year had elapsed since his accession to the ministry, when he began his famous attempt to realise it.
The key to the position was held by the King of Sardinia. ”

“ What a pity it is that a brother of mine should think only of himself, should desire nothing but for himself, should be in everything the centre of his circle! Such a passion excludes public spirit. It leaves no room for that love of the common good, which one should long for after one's simple happiness, and far before one's own aggrandisement ”

“ In a word, the French King had to choose between indelible dishonour and the disdainful rejection of his terms.
If these reasons were decisive to the King, they were not less so to d'Argenson himself. [295] No man longed so much as he for peace; but he was not prepared to purchase it with the humiliation of his country, and with the undreamed aggrandisement of that hated House against which, all his life, he had consistently inveighed. The provinces were henceforth to be beaten with scorpions; for the efforts of France had been as nothing to that which the new enterprise would involve. ”

“ His estrangement from the world had wholly unfitted him for the arts of complaisance and intrigue; and there was something within him which protested that they were as far beneath him as they were beyond his reach. D'Argenson went his own way; he found that it led nowhither. He was to learn that without those arts which he coveted and despised, devotion, disinterestedness, were no passport to power; yet, it is good to reflect, he would never consent to lose his devotion in the ignobler interests of a private life. ”

“ D'Argenson's proposal was a very different one. He saw very clearly that as a great political instrument the French noblesse existed no longer; and that if local government was to be reformed, the reform must come from the people themselves. If these shopkeepers, peasants and the rest, had no political tradition or knowledge, they were primarily concerned in acquiring it; and he enunciates, perhaps for the first time, the great principle of all democratic development, the principle that in matters of government interest is more valuable than intelligence. ”

“ Yet it is comforting to find, in reading such passages, that if there is an utter absence of delicacy or reserve, there is an equal freedom from mere smirking prurience; the man's breath is tainted by the fashion of the time, but at least his heart is whole.
Sometimes again d'Argenson's feeling for the ideal, which explains so many of amiable vagaries, is seen taking wing and soaring away to the sound of his own laughter. ”

“ As a general constitutional proposition d'Argenson's plan is admirable enough; but when considered in relation to the paramount need of France at that particular moment it becomes a very master-work of statesmanship and sagacity. He alone could diagnose the conditions of the disease and discern the only remedy it was possible to apply. It is scarcely half the truth to say that the French Revolution was induced by bad government; there were times when the Government had been infinitely worse. ”

“ In the first place, though popular criticism is irascible and alert, it has yet made but little way; the people, though beginning to despise the monarch, are still devoted to the monarchical tradition. Further it has to be borne in mind that when the Government did endeavour to act with vigour and to prosecute measures of constructive reform, it was hampered and clogged at every turn by the influence of the privileged orders: while there was no great popular organisation upon which it could lean for support. ”

“ Qualities are virtuous in proportion as they are necessary; and events have thrown a suggestive light upon the relative value of the various virtues in the France of the Eighteenth Century. We see that there was something more real and rare than those elegant adornments, those small dexterities, which were then so dearly prized: that they afford but thin subsistence for a society bereft of honesty, devotion, depth of vision, and soundness of heart. Those qualities d'Argenson possessed, and the children of this world laughed at him. Their [Pg 53] generation does not last for ever ”

“ To accept a peace upon any such terms as Maria Theresa would be willing to grant would have been to inflict a blow upon the future of French foreign policy, from which it might not recover for half a century or more. The last would have been seen of French influence in Central Europe: the upstart of Brandenburg would be swept into the sea: two centuries of effort might be totally erased: and Maria Theresa would resume the throne from which Charles V. had descended. If not to the King, to d'Argenson at least, such a prospect was at once conclusive. ”

“ So runs the tale for many years. General declamation against the incompetence of the ministers is exchanged for a scathing relentless impeachment of every branch of the administration. The Journal of 1739 contains some of the most terrible pictures ever drawn of the internal condition of France; and the government of the interior is arraigned with all the triumphant detail of an unanswerable indictment. When the extreme of misery had passed, there remained the vicissitudes of foreign policy to sharpen the bitterness of d'Argenson's pen. ”

“ D'Argenson had surrounded the authority of the Crown with a sacred barrier; behind that barrier the people might exercise all the effective powers of popular control: beyond it they were forbidden to pass. In the proposal of Turgot that barrier was destroyed. Above the circle of Provincial Estates he desired to constitute a Municipality of the Whole Realm; by doing so he would have brought the sphere of popular action into direct juxtaposition with that of the Crown, and have surrounded the very palace gates with the acclamations or with the clamour of the people. ”

“ The unity of policy is lost; general plans are treated as chimerical systems, or as 'great questions,' which certainly do create genuine terror among the smallest heads which our nation has ever seen at its own. ”

“ It is from these pages that we catch the impression of d'Argenson's power. We feel that a man cannot act in one year like a blind, blundering doctrinaire, and write like a statesman in the next. It may be useful to glance very lightly at the history of the time as it appeared to one of its most sagacious observers. In doing so we are in the hands of a cicerone who is not satisfied to speak by rote.
In December, 1747, after speaking sorrowfully of the national prospects, d'Argenson writes:—
"Will any one have the hardihood to propose an advance towards republican government. ”

“ Among men of enlightenment [Pg 160] (philosophes) I hear nothing but the confident assertion that even anarchy is to be preferred to it; for it leaves to each inhabitant at least the enjoyment of his property, and whatever disorders or acts of violence may occur are to the prejudice of private people only, and not, as now, to the body of the state" (September, 1752) . [387]
These eight years of clamour and coercion, violence and weakness, produced a very profound impression upon French society, and upon d'Argenson himself. ”

“ His descriptions of the French provinces are the most striking examples of d'Argenson's power. They display, not merely a mastery of facts, but a masterful hold upon their meaning; and they are informed by the pure and unaffected habit of humanity which he had learnt in an older than the Philosophic school. ”

“ We have to guard against confounding d'Argenson's philosophical disquisitions with his definite project of reform. He held himself bound to establish principles as well as to formulate proposals, and he expressly declares that the writer of such a work as his must seek the counsels of perfection, however distant they may seem at the moment from the realm of practical politics. And herein is d'Argenson's greatness as a political [Pg 251] thinker, that he never fails to see, or to see the distinction between, what is best in principle and what is possible in practice. ”