Nassau William Senior

“ I admit the anti-English prejudices of the Bourbons, and I admit that they are not likely to be abated by your alliance with a Bonaparte. But the opinions of a constitutional sovereign do not, like those of a despot, decide the conduct of his country. The country is anxious for peace, and, above all, peace with you—for more than peace, for mutual good-feeling. The Bourbons cannot return except with a constitution. It has become the tradition of the family, it is their title to the throne. There is not a vieille marquise in the Faubourg St.-Germain who believes in divine right. ”

“ We shall certainly meet you in Paris.
The noise made by the fall of Sebastopol has echoed even to this distant corner of France. It is a glorious event, and has delighted every Frenchman of every party and of every opinion, for in these matters we are one man.
I fear that the victory has been bought dearly. There is not a neighbouring village to which the war has not cost some of its children. But they bear it admirably. You know, that in war we show the best side of our character. If our civilians resembled our soldiers we should long ago have been masters of Europe. ”

“ Those seventy years of revolution have destroyed our courage, our hopefulness, our self-reliance, our public spirit, and, as respects by far the majority of the higher classes, our passions, except the vulgarest and most selfish ones—vanity and covetousness. Even ambition seems extinct. The men who seek power, seek it not for itself, not as the means of doing good to their country, but as a means of getting money and flatterers. ”

“ The foreign policy of the rulers of mankind, whether they be kings, or ministers, or senates, or demagogues, is generally so hateful, and at the same time so contemptible, so grasping, so irritable, so unscrupulous, and so oppressive—so much dictated by ambition, by antipathy and by vanity, so selfish, often so petty in its objects, and so regardless of human misery in its means, that a sovereign who behaves to other nations with merely the honesty and justice and forbearance which are usual between man and man, deserves the praise of exalted virtue. ”

“ We know not, as yet, whether we are to have peace or war. Whichever it be, a mortal blow has struck the popularity of Louis Napoleon. What maintained him was the belief that he was the protector of our material interests: interests to which we now sacrifice all others. The events of the last month show, with the utmost vividness, that these very interests may be endangered by the arbitrary and irrational will of a despot. The feelings, therefore, which were his real support are now bitterly hostile to him.
I feel, in short, that a considerable change in our Government is approaching. ”

“ The only opposition that is ventured is the abstaining from voting. Whatever be the office, whatever be the man, the candidate of the préfet comes in; but if he is a man who would have been universally rejected in a state of freedom, the bolder electors show their indignation by their absence. I do not believe that, even with peace, and with the prosperity which usually accompanies peace, such a Government could long keep down such a country as France. ”

“ As we sauntered over the gardens, our conversation turned on the old aristocracy of France.
'The loss of our aristocracy,' said Tocqueville, 'is a misfortune from which we have not even begun to recover. The Legitimists are their territorial successors; they are the successors in their manners, in their loyalty, and in their prejudices of caste; but they are not their successors in cultivation, or intelligence, or energy, or, therefore, in influence. Between them and the bourgeoisie is a chasm, which shows no tendency to close. ”

“ The First Republic was destroyed by the intemperance with which it trampled on every sort of tradition and authority, the First Empire by its abuse of victory and war, the Restoration by its exaggerated belief in divine right and legitimacy, the Royalty of July by its exaggerated reliance on purchased voters and Parliamentary majorities, the Second Republic by the conduct of its own Republicans. The danger to the Second Empire—its only internal danger, but I fear a fatal one—is its abuse of authority. ”

“ They are the body, small perhaps numerically, and now beaten down, of those who adore Constitutional Liberty. They have maintained the mutual good feeling between France and England against the passions of the Republicans and the prejudices of the Legitimists. I trust, as you trust, that this good feeling is to continue, but it is on precisely opposite grounds. My hopes are founded, not on the permanence, but on the want of permanence, of the Empire. I do not believe that a great nation will be long led by its tail instead of by its head. ”

“ The Préfet can destroy the prosperity of every commune that displeases him. He can displace the functionaries, close its schools, obstruct its public works, and withhold the money which the Government habitually gives in aid of local improvement. He can convert it, indeed, into a mere unorganised aggregation of individuals, by dismissing every communal functionary, and placing its concerns in the hands of his own nominees. There are many hundreds of communes that have been thus treated, and whose masters are now uneducated peasants. ”

“ At that very time, the ordonnance dismissing M. de Tocqueville had been signed, and Louis Napoleon knew that he would probably never see him again.'
'I do not,' said Ampere, 'give up the chance of a republic. I do not wish for one. It must be a very bad constitutional monarchy which I should not prefer to the best republic. My democratic illusions are gone. France and America have dispelled them: but it must be a very bad republic which I should not prefer to the best despotism. A republic is like a fever, violent and frightful, but not necessarily productive of organic mischief. ”

“ A despotism is a consumption: it degrades and weakens, and perverts all the vital functions.
'What is there now in France worth living for? I find people proud of our Italian campaign. Why should the French be proud that their master's soldiers have been successful in a war as to which they were not consulted; which, in fact, they disapproved, which was not made for their benefit, which was the most glaring proof of their servility and degradation? We knew before that our troops were better than the Austrians. What have we gained by the additional example of their superiority? ”

“ I am inclined to think that, if he had had to write, not on the institutions, but on the products of England, he would have discovered that beer was first made from grapes, and that the hop is a fruit of the vine—rather a degenerate product, it is true, of the wisdom of our ancestors, but as such worthy of respect. It is impossible to imagine an excess more opposite to that of his contemporaries in France, for whom it was enough that a thing was old for it to be bad. ”

“ What makes the thing amusing is, that the Government which uses this violent mode of lodging the working classes, is the very same Government which, by its mad public works, by drawing to Paris suddenly a hundred thousand workmen, and by destroying suddenly ten thousand houses, has created the deficiency of habitations. It seems, however, that the systematic intimidation and oppression of the rich in favour of the poor, is every day becoming more and more one of the principles of our Government. ”

“ As there is no line of policy to be changed, the upsetting is merely to put in the people who are now out.
If the Ministry falls, the man least to be pitied will be our friend Lewis. He will go out after having obtained a brilliant triumph on his own ground, and he will enjoy the good fortune, rare to public men, of quitting power greater than he was when he took it, and with the enviable reputation of owing his greatness, not merely to his talents, but also to the respect and the confidence which he has universally inspired. ”

“ The heavy continued weight of Russia has, ever since the death of Alexander, kept down all energy and independence of action, and even of thought, on the Continent. She has been the patron of every tyrant, the protector of every abuse, the enemy of every improvement. It was at her instigation that the Congress of Verona decreed the enslavement of Spain, and that in the conferences of Leybach it was determined to stifle liberty in Italy. Every court on the Continent is cursed with a Russian party ”

“ A time when we are engaged in an honourable and serious war—a war in which, with the great and faithful ally whom I have always desired, and the sympathy of all Europe, we are defending civilisation against an enemy, barbarous indeed, but so formidable as to require our undivided energy and our undivided attention. ”

“ Dangerous as it is to speak of a foreign country, I venture to say that England is mistaken if she thinks that she can continue separated from the rest of the world, and preserve all her peculiar institutions uninfluenced by those which prevail over the whole of the Continent.
In the period in which we live, and, still more, in the period which is approaching, no European nation can long remain absolutely dissimilar to all the others. ”

“ I begin to think that a man not invested with a considerable amount of political power can do but little good by slaving at the oar of independent political action. Now, on the contrary, what a vast effect a writer can produce, when he possesses the requisite knowledge and endowments! In his cabinet, his thoughts collected, his ideas well arranged, he may hope to imprint indelible traces on the line of human progress. What orator, what brilliant patriot at the tribune, could ever effect the extensive fermentation in a whole nation's sentiments achieved by Voltaire and Jean Jacques? ”

“ All Louis Napoleon's words and looks, are, whether intentionally or not, misleading. Now that his having direct issue seems out of the question, and that the deeper and deeper discredit into which the heir presumptive is falling, seems to put him out of the question too, we are looking to this journey with great alarm. We feel that, for the present, his life is necessary to us, and we feel that it would be exposed to many hazards. He ought to incur some military risks, if he is present at a battle or an assault, and his courage and his fatalism, will lead him to many which he ought to avoid. ”

“ On vous croit absolument dans notre dépendance, et du sein de la grande inimité qui règne entre les deux peuples, je vois naître des idées qui, le jour où nos deux gouvernements cesseront d'être d'accord, nous précipiteront dans la guerre contre vous, beaucoup plus facilement que cela n'eut pu avoir lieu depuis la chute du premier Empire. Cela m'afflige, et pour l'avenir de Alliance anglaise (dont vous savez que j'ai toujours été un grand partisan) , et non moins aussi, je l'avoue, pour la cause de vos institutions libres. Ce qui se passe n'est pas de nature à la relever dans notre esprit. ”

“ Lord John seems to me well pleased with the present state of affairs—which he thinks, I believe with reason, will bring him back to power. He thinks that Malmesbury and Disraeli are doing well, and praises much the subordinates of the Government. Considering that no one believes Lord Derby to be wise, or Disraeli to be either wise or honest, it is marvellous that they get on as well as they do. The man who has risen most is Lord Stanley, and, as he has the inestimable advantage of youth, I believe him to be predestined to influence our fortunes long. ”

“ If Louis Napoleon pleases the vanity of France by military glory, and rewards her exertions by a triumphant peace; if he employs his absolute power in promoting her prosperity by further relaxing the fetters which encumber her industry; if he takes advantage of the popularity which a successful war, an honourable peace, and internal prosperity must confer on him, to give to her a little real liberty and a little real self-government ”

“ Universal suffrage is a detestable element of government, but it is a powerful revolutionary instrument'
'But,' I said, 'the people will not have an opportunity of using that instrument. All the great elective bodies have some years before them.'
'That is true,' said Tocqueville, 'and therefore their rage will break out in a more direct, and perhaps more formidable, form. Depend on it, this Government can exist, even for a time, only on the condition of brilliant, successful war, or prosperous peace. It is bound to be rapidly and clearly victorious. ”

“ To the west the ground rises to a wild common commanding the sea, the lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, La Hogue, and a green plain covered with woods and hedgerow trees, and studded with church towers and spires of the picturesque forms of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. It has no grand features, except the sea and the rocky coast of the Cherbourg peninsula, but it is full of variety and beauty. I can understand Tocqueville's delight in the house and in the country. The weather is perfect ”

“ Now this Government holds a man responsible for every thought that an indiscreet or an incautious friend, or a concealed enemy, or a tool of power reveals. If it succeeds in this attempt, it will not rest satisfied with this victory over the remnant of our freedom. It is not in the nature of things that it should. A Government that will not tolerate censure must forbid discussion. You are now asked to put down writing. When that has been done, conversation will be attacked. Paris will resemble Rome under the successors of Augustus. ”