THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 



197 



tie between parties which, when it once occurs, 

 causes an outbreak of violence, and leads back 

 to civil war. 



Napoleon, besides restoring superstition for 

 his political ends, restored aristocracy, though 

 the fear of limiting his despotism made him dis- 

 like creating an hereditary House of Peers. This 

 also has been a hostile and disturbing force, 

 against which the Republic, founded on equality, 

 has always had and still has to contend. The 

 set of upstarts whom Bonaparte bedizened with 

 tinsel dukedoms of course gave themselves great- 

 er airs than the old nobility of France. Such a 

 fellow as Cambaceres was very particular about 

 being called Monseigneur ; but a certain union 

 of interest, if not a social union, has by this time 

 been brought about between old privilege and 

 new ; and the attack on the Republic under De 

 Broglie has been at least as much an aristocrat- 

 ic conspiracy as anything else. So manifest is 

 this as to found a hope that the army, which is 

 tolerably loyal to equality, if not to liberty, might 

 recoil from supporting what it must see to be an 

 aristocratic reaction. An aristocracy, while it 

 exists, will never cease to intrigue against institu- 

 tions based upon equality ; and the total prohibi- 

 tion of hereditary titles was justly felt by the fra- 

 mers of the American Constitution to be essential 

 to the security of their Republic. 



Another adverse force against which free in- 

 stitutions have to contend in France, too often 

 noted to need more than recognition in its place, 

 is the tendency, derived from the old regime, but 

 handed on in an intensified form by the Bona- 

 partes, to administrative centralization, which, 

 notwithstanding the improvement of local insti- 

 tutions, still decidedly preponderates over local 

 self-government. The influence exercised by De 

 Broglie and his accomplices over the elections, 

 through prefects of their appointment, is a fatal 

 proof of the fact. From the same inveterate spirit 

 of encroachment on one side, and submission on 

 the other, arises the want of independence in the 

 judiciary which has been so disgracefully dis- 

 played in the late political trials. The resistance 

 made by the constituencies to the prefects shows 

 that improvement is going on ; but a century of 

 effort is not too much to throw off maladies so 

 deeply seated as these. 



The special influence, however, to which we 

 wish here to point as having interfered with the 

 success of elective government, and as still im- 

 periling its existence in European countries gen- 

 erally, but notably in France, is the ignorant and 

 fallacious imitation of the British Constitution. 



We wish we could hope that the few words we 

 have to say on this point would meet the eye of 

 any French statesman, and direct his attention to 

 the subject. 



Burke denounced the political architects of 

 1789 for constructing their edifice according to 

 theoretic principles instead of building it on old 

 foundations, and he contrasted their folly with 

 the wisdom of the old Whigs. Considering that 

 the old Whigs were aristocrats who had inherited 

 the territorial plunder of the courtiers of Henry 

 VIII., and who desired to preserve that inheri- 

 tance, and, with it, the power of an aristocracy, 

 their economy in innovation was as natural as it 

 was wise. But it would have tasked the sagacity 

 of Burke to discover what old foundations for con- 

 stitutional government there were in the France 

 of 1789. France had then been, for at least a 

 century and a half, a despotism with a strictly 

 centralized administration. The semblance of 

 provincial government survived, but it masked 

 without really tempering the action of the satraps 

 of the monarchy ; and feudalism, crushed since 

 Richelieu, had left behind no genuine remnant of 

 local liberty, but only the antiquated machinery 

 of social oppression, which Richelieu had done 

 almost nothing to reform. Yet the political ar- 

 chitects of 1789 did build on old foundations, 

 the only old foundations which anywhere pre- 

 sented themselves — the foundations of the Eng- 

 lish Constitution. And it may confidently be 

 said that, compared with that renowned, time- 

 honored, and much-lauded model, the newest cre- 

 ation of the brain of Sieyes would have been a 

 safe and practical guide. The clock-work consti- 

 tutions of Sieyes displayed a fatal ignorance of 

 the real forces ; but at all events they involved 

 no incurable self-contradiction. It was not abso- 

 lutely impossible to make them work. But it 

 was absolutely impossible, and had been actually 

 proved to be so by English experience, to make 

 the British Constitution work, as the British Con- 

 stitution was understood by Frenchmen and by 

 Englishmen themselves. 



The received version of the British Constitu- 

 tion was that given by Montesquieu, in perfect 

 accordance with the forms of British constitu- 

 tional law. Montesquieu, a great genius in his 

 day, while he explained the forms with philosophic 

 eloquence, failed to pierce through them to the 

 real political forces. In this respect he is like 

 De Tocqueville, whose work, admirable in many 

 respects, is still an account of the forms, not of 

 the real forces, and, consequently, is of little 

 value as a practical guide to American politics, 



