L. 1807. CHAP. end which the cause of freedom has to combat, and the one against which, therefore, it behoves its real friends in an especial manner to be on their guard. The anarchy which is the first effect of democratic ascendancy, necessarily and rapidly terminates in military despotism: that despotism itself, from its brutality and violence, cannot, in any well-informed state, be of very long endurance. But the irresistible sway of a centralised government, established by a democratic executive, and sustained by the aid of selfish support from the popular party, may finally crush the spirit and extinguish all the blessings of freedom, by removing all the practical evils which preceding convulsions had occasioned, enlisting alike the friends of order and the partisans of democracy in its ranks, and engaging the most influential portion of the people by interested motives in its support. It was neither the vengeance of Marius nor the proscriptions of Sylla, neither the aristocracy of Pompey nor the genius of Cæsar, which finally prostrated the liberties of Rome; it was the centralised government of Augustus which framed the chains that could never be shaken off. There is the ultimate and deadly foe of freedom; there the enemy, ever ready to break in and reap the last spoils of the discord and infatuation of others. And wherever such a centralised system has grown up in an old-established state, after a severe course of democratic suffering, it is not going too far to assert that the cause of freedom is utterly hopeless, and that the seeds of death are implanted in the community.* Striking opinion of M. de Tocqueville on this subject. * I am happy to find this opinion, which I have long entertained, supported by the great authority of M. de Tocqueville. "If absolute power," says he, "should re-establish itself, in whatever hands, in any of the democratic states of Europe, I have no doubt it would assume a new form unknown to our fathers. When the great families and the spirit of clanship prevailed, the individual who had to contend with tyranny never felt himself alone; he was supported by his clients, his relations, his friends. But when his estates are divided, and races are confounded, where shall we find the spirit of family? What force will remain in the influence of habit among a people changing perpetually, where every act of tyranny will find a precedent in previous disorders, where every crime can be justified by an example; where nothing exists of sufficient anti L. 1807. 94. It is in these predisposing circumstances that we must CHAP. look for the real causes, not merely of the despotism of Napoleon, but of the ready reception which it met with from all classes, and the alacrity with which the fervent It was the passions of democracy were converted at once into the who dedebasing servility of Asiatic despotism. The Repub-dom in lican writers fall into the most palpable error when they accuse that great man of having overturned the principles of the Revolution, and of being the real cause of its terminating in the establishment of arbitrary power. So far from it, he carried out these principles to their natural and unavoidable result; he did no more than reap the harvest, from the crop which had been sown by other and very different hands. The real authors of the despotism of Napoleon were those who overturned the monarchy of Louis. It was Sièyes and Mirabeau, and the enthusiastic spirits of the Constituent Assembly, who set in motion the chain of causes and effects which necessarily, in their final result, induced the chains of the empire. Doubtless, Napoleon availed himself with great skill Republicans stroyed free France. 95. which Na advantage to establish power. of the extraordinary combination of circumstances which Ability with had thus in a manner presented despotism to his grasp. poleon took The leading principles of his government, as Madame de of these cirStael has well observed, were to respect studiously the cumstances interests which the Revolution had created, to turn its despotic passions into the career of military conquest or civil ambition, to open the career of success alike to all who deserved it, and to rule public opinion by a skilful use quity to render its destruction an object of dread, and nothing can be figured so new that men are afraid to engage in it? What resistance would manners afford which have already received so many shocks? What could public opinion do, when there do not exist twenty persons bound together by any common tie-when you can no more meet with a man, a family, a body corporate, or a class of society, which could represent or act upon that opinionwhen each citizen is equally poor, equally impotent, equally isolated, and can only oppose his individual weakness to the organised strength of the central government? To figure anything analogous to the despotism which would then be established amongst us, we would require to recur not to our own annals- we would be forced to recur to the frightful periods of Roman tyranny, L. 1807. 1 Rév. 255. CHAP. of the influence of the press.1 No maxims more likely to govern an active, energetic, and corrupted people, could possibly have been devised; but still they would have Franc. ii. failed in producing the desired effect, and the attempt to enslave France would have proved abortive, even in his able hands, if success had not been rendered certain by the madness and guilt which preceded him. And in executing the mission on which he firmly believed he was sent the closing the wounds and putting a stop to the horrors of the Revolution-we are not to imagine that he was to blame, so far at least as his domestic government was concerned. On the contrary, he took the only measures which remained practicable to restrain its excesses, or put a period to its suffering; and subsequent experience has abundantly proved that every government which was founded on any other principles, or practically gave the people any share of that power for which they had so passionately contended, involved in itself the seeds of its speedy destruction. 96. But this, however great an evil, was unavoidable And although nothing can be more certain than that centralisation is the ultimate extinguisher of freedom, and the insidious foe which, elevated on its triumphs, is finally destructive of its principles, yet it is not, in such a state of society as that of France in the time of Napoleon, to France was be regarded as an evil which it was the duty of a real nation of the patriot to resist. As long, indeed, as the elements of freedom exist in a state-that is, as long as the higher and middle classes retain their public spirit and their posses in the state in which on the termi Revolution. when, manners being corrupted, old recollections effaced, habits destroyed, opinions wavering, liberty deprived of its asylum under the laws, could no longer find a place of refuge; where, no guarantee existing for the citizens, and they having none for themselves, men in power made a sport of the people, and princes wore out the clemency of the heavens rather than the patience of their subjects. They are blind indeed who look after democratic equality for the monarchy of Henry IV. or Louis XIV. For my own part, when I reflect on the state to which many European nations have already arrived, and that to which others are fast tending, I am led to believe that soon there will be no place among them but for democratic equality or the tyranny of the Caesars."TOCQUEVILLE, ii. 258, 259. What a picture of the effects of democratic triumph from a liberal writer, himself an eye-witness of its effects! L. 1807. sions it is impossible that public jealousy can be too CHAP. strongly aroused on this subject, or that it can be too often impressed upon the people, that if all the interests of the state are centred in the hands of the executive, be it monarchical or democratic, the extinction not only of the rights but of the spirit of freedom is at hand, and nothing remains to the state but an old age of decrepitude and decline. But if the people would shun these evils, they must pause on the threshold of their career, and avoid the destruction of the property or influence of those classes inferior to the throne, though superior to themselves, whose influence forms an essential ingredient in the composition of public freedom. The English did so. The rights of the middle ranks, the church, and the aristocracy, survived the triumphs of Cromwell, and in consequence two hundred years of liberty have been enjoyed by the British nation. The French did not do so: the church, the middle ranks, and the aristocracy, were utterly destroyed during the fervour of the Revolution; and the result has been, that, notwithstanding all their subsequent sufferings, they have not enjoyed one hour of real freedom. ever since been lished in Many struggles have ensued, and may ensue, for the 97. possession of supreme power; many revolutions of the Despotic palace have shaken, and may hereafter shake the fabric of power has their society; but no attempt has been made, or will be estab made, to limit the power of their executive, or extend the France. liberty of their people. The centralised despotic government of Napoleon still remains untouched-the question with all parties is, not whether its powers shall be restrained, but who shall direct them. Universal suffrage itself affords no sort of security against such a result the quasi monarchy of Louis Napoleon was established in France in 1849 by a majority of four millions of electors, within a year of the communist and socialist fervour of 1848. The more popular and democratic the faction is which gains the ascendancy, the more formidable does the action of the state machine become, because the weaker L. 1807. CHAP. is the counteracting force which is to restrain its motions. If the extreme democratic party were to succeed to power, the force of the centralised government, based on the support of the people, would, in a short time, become well-nigh insupportable. In the triumphs which they achieved, and the crimes which they committed, the early Revolutionists poured the poison which ever proves fatal to freedom through the veins of their country; with their own hands they dug the grave of its liberties. Nothing remained to their descendants but to lie down and receive their doom. When this last deplorable effect has taken place, it becomes the duty of the patriot no longer to resist the centralising system; but to support it as the only species of administration under which, since freedom is unattainable, the minor advantage of a tranquil despotism can be attained. 98. Ultimate effect on dom of re democracy in England, and its tri umph in France. It was a rule in one of the republics of antiquity, that no public monument should be voted to any person who general free- had been engaged in the administration of affairs till ten sistance to years after his death, in order that the ultimate effect of his measures, whether for good or for evil, should be first fully developed. Judging by this principle, to how few characters in the French Revolution will the friends of freedom in future times rear a mausoleum; to how many will the abettors of arbitrary power, if their real opinions could be divulged, be inclined to erect statues! Looking forward for the short period of only eighteen years, not a month in the lifetime of a nation, and seeing in the servility and sycophancy of the empire the necessary effects of the vehemence and injustice of the Constituent Assembly, what opinion are we to form of the self-styled patriots and philosophers of the day, who thus, in so short a time, blasted the prospects and withered the destiny of their country? Who were the real friends of freedom? Mr Pitt and Mr Burke, who, by combating the ambition of democracy and coercing its extravagance in this country, have bequeathed to their descendants the |