François Guizot

“ 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 extravagances 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. ”

“ 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 struggle which agitates society. Why is it that so many democracies—some of them very brilliant—have so rapidly perished? ”

“ It is in vain that you repeat that the days of fraternity are come; that Democracy, such as you establish it, puts an end to all hostilities or conflicts of classes, and assimilates and unites all orders of citizens. The truth, the terrible truth, gleams through these vain words. Interests, passions, pretensions, situations, and classes conflict on every side, with all the fury of boundless hopes and boundless fears. It is clear that the first acts of the Democratic Republic threaten to plunge herself and us into the chaos of social war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know no more deplorable spectacle than a power which, in the struggle between the good and the evil principle, continually bends the knee before the bad, and then attempts to resume an attitude of vigour and independence when it 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 development 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 occasion. ”

“ No, certainly!—the words aristocracy, democracy, nobility, bourgeoisie, or hierarchy, do not correspond to the constituent elements of modern French society, or express them with any truth or accuracy.
Does then this society consist solely of citizens equal among each other? Are there no different classes, and only individual diversities and 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? ”

“ Is it by such means that we can advance, or even barely keep our ground, on that glorious path of civilization in which labour acquired its proper rank and dignity? Do we not, on the contrary, mutilate, degrade, and disgrace labour, when we strip it of a part of its noblest claims, and substitute in their stead pretensions which are not only absurd and preposterous, but mean, in spite of their insolence? Lastly, does not such language show a gross misconception and violent perversion of the natural facts on which civil society in France is founded? ”

“ The contests between nobility and commonalty, aristocracy and democracy, masters and workmen, those possessing property and those dependent on wages, are all different forms and phases of the social struggle which has so long agitated France. And it is at the very moment when we are boasting of having reached the summit of civilization—it is while the most humane words that can issue from the lips of man are ringing in our ears, that this struggle is revived more violently, more fiercely than ever! ”

“ Nothing is more dangerous than what is at once strong and impossible. The Social Republic is strong; indeed how can it be otherwise? Availing themselves with ardour of every kind of liberty granted for the promulgation of ideas, its advocates are incessantly labouring to diffuse their principles and their promises through the densest ranks of society. There they find masses of men easy to delude, easy to inflame. They offer them rights in conformity with their desires. They excite their passions in the name of justice and truth. ”

“ 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 potent, for good and for evil, in man and in society, was formerly heard only transiently, locally, and among certain classes, which, though bound to other classes by the ties of a common country, were distinct and profoundly different from them. ”

“ Now you have only to examine his life, his soul, his acts, his thoughts, his words; you will not find a single mark of condescension, a single moment of indulgence, for the favourite ideas of Democracy. He constantly struggled—struggled even to weariness and to sadness—against its exactions. No man was ever more profoundly imbued with the spirit of government, or with respect for authority. ”

“ Landed property is the establishment of man as sovereign in the midst of nature. It satisfies not only his wants{43} and his desires, but tastes deeply implanted in his nature. For his family, it creates that domestic country called home, with all the living sympathies and all the future hopes and projects which people it. And whilst property in land is more consonant than any other to the nature of man, it also affords a field of activity the most favourable to his moral development, the most suited to inspire a just sentiment of his nature and his powers. ”

“ Whatever be the future destiny 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 necessity. All the elements of stability, all the conservative forces in the country must unite closely and act constantly together. It{68} is no more possible to extinguish democracy in the nation than liberty in the government. ”

“ Over what an immense extent, and with what fearful rapidity, have all the causes of social war and social destruction, which are always fermenting in the midst of us, each time burst forth! Which of us has not shuddered at the sudden discovery of the abyss over which we live—the frail barriers which separate us from it, and the destructive legions ready to rush forth upon society as soon as its jaws are unclosed? ”

“ 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 ardour and spontaneity of youth, and was rendered excusable by inexperience, but which now would be only a false and factitious excitement; a thin, an ineffectual veil thrown over bad passions and insane dreams. ”

“ Let not France, whatever be her peril, reckon on absolute power to save her. It would not justify her confidence. In her ancient society, absolute power reposed on a principle of moderation and of permanence; while, under the Emperor Napoleon, it contained a principle of strength, either of which it would vainly seek for now. Popular tyranny or military dictatorship may be the expedient of a day, but can never be a form of government. Free institutions are now as necessary to social peace as they are to individual dignity ”

“ 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 affections and all our self-devotion are kindled; it is in the circle of the Family that the noblest parts of our nature find satisfactions they would seek for else in vain; it is from that circle that, when circumstances demand, they can go forth to adorn and bless society. ”

“ 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 surrounded by an immense and excited multitude; you complain that you want means to act upon it, to enlighten, direct, control, and tranquillize it; that you have little intercourse with these men, save through the tax-gatherer and the policeman; that they are given over, without defence, to the inflammatory declamations of charlatans and demagogues, and to the blind violence of their own passions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is never without serious injury that one of the vital elements of human nature is uprooted out of any of the fields of human action; and the complete absence of tender and faithful attachments in that almost exclusive domain of abstract ideas and general or selfish interests, has robbed political life of a noble ornament and a great source of strength. It is of incalculable importance to society that there should be some safe retreat in which the affectionate dispositions—I would almost say passions—of the heart of man may expand in freedom ”

“ 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 employment of violence or risk of disturbance. The greater the spread and cultivation of the political spirit, the more does it teach men the necessity and the habit of seeing things as they are in their exact and naked truth. ”

“ 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 opprobrium 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: it must find issues, and encounter barriers on every side. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ensure.
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.{4}
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 ”

“ 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 everybody and everything—liberty will almost always suffice to enlighten or to control the wills of men, to prevent evil or to cure it: a little government—the least possible—may be allowed for the repression of extreme disorder and the control of brute force. ”

“ The permanent want of every community,—the first and most imperious want of France at the present day,—is, peace in the bosom of society itself.
A great deal has been said about unity and social fraternity. These are sublime words, but they ought not to make us forget facts. Nothing has a more certain tendency to ruin a people than a habit of accepting words and appearances as realities. ”

“ 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. ”