L. 1807. 41. of Madame Under the combined influence of the entire suppression CHAP. of the liberty of the press, and the unwearied activity of imperial censors and police agents, every approach even to a free discussion on public affairs, or the principles Banishment either of government or social prosperity, was stifled in de Stael. France and its dependent monarchies; and one half of Europe, in the opening of the nineteenth century, and at the close of a struggle for extended privileges and universal information, was brought back to a darkness more profound than that of the middle ages. Never did papal ambition draw so close the fetters on human thought as imperial France did; the Jesuits were not such active agents in the extension of spiritual, as the police were in the establishment of temporal power. Madame de Stael and Madame Récamier were illustrious instances that the jealousy of the imperial government could not be relaxed even by the most brilliant or captivating qualities of the other sex. The former, long the object of Napoleon's duced, perhaps the most bitter was the daily spectacle of those we held most dear insulted or reviled in the journals or works published by authority, without the possibility of making a reply, over half of Europe."-DE STAEL Rév. Franç. ii. 377, 383. So far Madame de Stael, in painting the perversion of the press to the purposes of despotism in imperial France; mark now the picture of its operation in America, under the unrestrained sway of a numerical majority of electors. Among the immense crowd," says Tocqueville, "who, in the United States, take to the career of politics, I have met with few men who possess that independence of thought, that manly candour which characterised the Americans in their war of independence. You would say, on the contrary, that all their minds are formed on the same model, so exactly do they adopt the same opinions. I have sometimes met with true patriotism among the people, but rarely among their rulers. This is easily explained-supreme power ever corrupts and depraves its servants before it has irrevocably tainted its possessors. The courtiers in America, indeed, do not say, "Sire! Your Majesty!" Mighty difference! But they speak without intermission of the natural intelligence of their many-headed sovereign; they attribute to him every virtue and capacity under heaven; they do not give him their wives and daughters to make his mistresses-but, by sacrificing their opinions, they prostitute themselves to his service. What revolts the mind of a European in America, is not the extreme liberty which prevails, but the slender guarantee which exists against tyranny. When a man or a party suffers in the United States from injustice on the part of the majority, to whom is he to apply for redress? To public opinion? It is formed by the majority. To the legislative body? It is elected by the majority. To a jury? It is the judicial committee of the majority. To the executive power? It is appointed VOL. VIII. L L. 1807. CHAP. hostility, from the vigour of her understanding and the fearlessness of her conduct, was at first banished forty leagues from Paris, then confined to her chateau on the Lake of Geneva, where she dwelt many years, seeking in vain, in the discharge of every filial duty to her venerable father, to console herself for the loss of the brilliant intellectual society of Paris. At length the rigour of the espionage became such, that she fled in disguise through the Tyrol to Vienna; and, hunted out thence by the French agents, continued her route through Poland into Muscovy, where she arrived shortly before the invasion of 1812, happy to find in the dominions of the imperial autocrat that freedom which old Europe could no longer afford. Her brilliant work on Germany was seized by the orders of the police and consigned to the flames; and France owes the preservation of one of the brightest jewels in her literary coronet to the fortuitous concealment of one copy from the myrmidons of Savary. The world has no cause to regret the severity of Napoleon to the illustrious exile, whatever his biographer may have; 1 for to it we owe the Dix Années d'Exil, the most admir 1 Dix Ann. d'Exil, 74, 75, and Rev. Franç. ii. 309. 1 by the majority, and is the mere executor of its wishes. How cruel or unjust soever may be the stroke which injures you, redress is impossible, and submission unavoidable. I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America. The majority raises such formidable barriers to liberty of opinion, that it is impossible to pass them; within them an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond them. In democratic states, organised on the principles of the American republic, the authority of the majority is so absolute, so irresistible, that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and almost abjure his quality as a human being, if he means to stray from the track which it lays down. If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event will arise from the unlimited tyranny of the majority; anarchy will be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism." To the same purpose is the opinion of President Jefferson, the ablest advocate for democratic principles that ever appeared in the United States:-"The executive power," says he, "is not the chief danger to be feared; the tyranny of the legislature is the danger most to be feared." What testimonies from such minds, to the identity of the effect so long observed by political writers, as produced by unrestrained power, whether in an absolute despot or an irresponsible numerical majority; and of the necessity of establishing the foundations of the breakwater which is to curb the force of either imperial or democratic despotism in another element than that by which its own waves are agitated! And how remarkable a confirmation of L. 1807. able of her moral sketches; the three volumes on Ger- CHAP. many, the most eloquent of her critical dissertations; and the profound views on the British constitution, with which she has enriched her great work on the French Revolution. Madame Madame Récamier shared the enmity of Napoleon from 42. her generous attention to her persecuted friend. She had And of resisted his advances of an amorous kind, and this was an Récamier. offence not to be forgiven. Her friendship for Madame de Staël was the pretence for this severity. A transient visit of a few days to Coppet was assigned as a reason for 1 D'Abr. including her also in the sentence of banishment.1 The xiii. 124. graces which had won the admiration of all Europe, and which had disdained the advances of the Emperor himself, were consigned, in a distant province, to the privacy of rural retirement; and the ruler of the East and West deemed himself insecure on the throne of Charlemagne, De Staël, unless the finest genius then in Europe, and the most d'Exil, 74, beautiful woman in France, were exiled from his domi- Id. Rév. nions.2* The arrival of her friend, Madame Récamier, 309. at the place of banishment of Madame de Staël, proved the profound remark long ago made by Aristotle, that courtiers and demagogues not only bear a strong resemblance to each other, but are in fact the same men, varying only in the external character according to the ruling power which they severally worship!-See TOCQUEVILLE, De l'Amérique, ii. 145, 146, 156, 157; JEFFERSON'S Correspondence, iv. 452; and ARISTOTLE, De Pol. c. 27. * Napoleon's jealousy of Madame Récamier's beauty and influence carried him to still more unjustifiable lengths. Her husband, who was a great banker in Paris, became bankrupt, and he seriously proposed in the council of state, that she should be subjected to a joint responsibility with him for the debts of the bank! "I am of opinion," said he, "that in case of bankruptcy, the wife should be deprived of all her conjugal rights; because our manners sanction the principle, that a wife must follow the fortune of her husband; and that would deprive her of all inducement to make him continue his extravagancies." "The class of bankers," says Pelet, the impartial reporter of these important debates, "always excited the Emperor's jealousy, because they were an independent class who had no need of the government, while the government often stood in need of their assistance. Besides that, in wishing to render Madame Récamier responsible for her husband's debts, he was actuated by a special spite against that celebrated lady. The little court with which she was surrounded, on account of her incomparable beauty, excited his jealousy, as much as the talents of Madame de Staël. Elevated as he was above all others, he could not see without pain, that she shared with him the public attention. He was more Dix Ann. 75,177,191. Fran. ii. L. CHAP. the greatest alleviation of the ennui under which the latter laboured during her exile from Paris. It was said to be "the alliance of Genius and Beauty." 1807. 43. are rendered. Oct. 12. Another decree of the senate soon after inflicted a The judges mortal wound on the independence of the judicial estabremovable lishment, by enacting that their commissions for life at pleasure. should not be delivered to them till after five years' previous service, and then only on the condition that their conduct had been entirely satisfactory to the Emperor. He reserved to himself the exclusive power of judging on the continuance or dismissal of every judicial functionary, from the highest to the lowest, with the aid of commissioners, appointed and exclusively directed by himself. From this time the independence of the bench over the whole French empire was totally destroyed, and practically every judge held his office during the pleasure merely of the Emperor. Several instances of arbitrary dismissal of judges, if they pronounced decrees disagreeable to government, took place; but they were less frequent than might have been expected, from the universal spirit of slavish sub1 Moniteur, mission which seized the magistrates of every grade, and rendered them not merely, during the whole reign of Napoleon, the servile instruments of his will, but led them formally, after his fall, to invoke the re-establishment of despotic power.1 Oct. 12, 1807. Montg. vi. 282, 283. Thiers, viii. 167, 169. 44. crees against Following up the same arbitrary system, it was enacted Severe de- by an imperial decree on 11th January 1808, that not any conniv. only should every seaman or passenger on board a vessel English arriving in any harbour of France, who should declare that commerce. it came from an English harbour, or had been searched by ance at Jan. 11, 1808. English cruisers, receive a third of the value of the vessel or cargo, but that every public functionary who should irritated by it than he would have been by a decided opposition to his government. Even the celebrity of M. Gall, and his well-known system of craniology, excited his jealousy; he could not endure that he should be more talked of than himself."-PELET, Opinions de Napoléon dans le Conseil d'Etat, 261. The well-known story told in Boswell of Goldsmith, at Antwerp, taking the pet, because two handsome young ladies at the window of the inn excited more attention than himself, is nothing to this.-See BOSWELL'S Johnson. L. 1807. connive in the slightest degree at the infringement of CHAP any of the decrees against English commerce, should be brought before the criminal court of the department of the Seine, which was erected into a tribunal for that special purpose, and indicted for high treason. Bales of English goods, of great value, were publicly burned in all the chief cities of the countries which directly or indirectly acknowledged the French influence; and at the moment that the unhappy owners were begging from the executioners a few shreds which the flames had spared, to cover their children from the inclemency of the weather, the Emperor, by means of licenses, was daily carrying on Moniteur, an extensive commerce in these very articles, and amass- Montg. vi. ing enormous sums at the Tuileries, by the sale of the Stael, Rev. right to deal in those goods, the traffic in which brought 251. death to any inferior functionary.1 1 Jan.11,1808. 299. De Franç. ii. 45. thirst for France. Meanwhile, the thirst for public employment in France, always great among that energetic and aspiring people, Universal rose to a perfect mania. The energy of the Revolution, public emthe ardent passion for individual elevation which consti- ployment in tuted its secret but main spring, was now wholly turned into that channel; and by a change of circumstances, remarkable indeed, but not unnatural, the same desire which, when revolutionary elevation was practicable, convulsed all the nation with democratic fervour, now that court favour was the only avenue to promotion, led to the extremity of oriental obsequiousness. The prefects, who had the patronage of all the numerous government offices within their jurisdiction, held a court, and exercised an influence equal to that of petty sovereigns; the ministers of state were besieged with innumerable applications for every office that fell vacant; the Emperor himself received hundreds of petitions for every situation in his gift, from the highest to the lowest. All ranks, classes, and parties concurred in this selfish struggle. The old noblesse, with a few honourable exceptions, vied with each other for the most trifling appointments in the |