Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  France is today instinctively, not perhaps in ideology completely, but, I repeat, instinctively, deeply, republican. She has achieved equality, she worships it. (‘Very good!’) She distrusts hierarchy, she fears authority, she has no superstitious respect for power, she does not believe in the hereditary rights of princes. France, in the secret fibres of her being, is thoroughly republican.

  So why was there hesitation about accepting the Republic? Because the people had reason to fear that it meant socialist anarchy, from which, ‘as the honourable M. de Lamartine has said,’ it might seek refuge with a phantom – taking a name for a man. (‘Very good, very good!’ said the Assembly again, on registering this anti-Napoleonic thrust.) The Assembly must reassure the people by endorsing the political revolution and repudiating the social one; and it could best do that by burning its boats and making the presidency a guarantee of an ordered future, by adopting the method of popular election. Tocqueville’s logic was not impeccable, but these remarks were greeted by such a hubbub of acclamation that the sitting had to be suspended for ten minutes.9

  These two speeches show the point which Tocqueville had reached by the autumn of 1848; he did not depart from it while the Second Republic lasted. One consequence was that he became a firm supporter of the Cavaignac government (even though he thought it deeply mediocre) and of Cavaignac’s candidacy for the presidential election, somewhat to his surprise: as he reminded Beaumont, he had never been a ministerialist before.10 When Cavaignac, hoping to broaden his support, decided to appoint some ministers from Tocqueville’s faction Tocqueville hoped to be among them, but the post he wanted was that of minister of education, for which Cavaignac thought he was much too right wing: he had long ago committed himself to what was called ‘freedom to teach’ (liberté d’enseignement) – in other words, official recognition of Catholic schools and certificates – and secularism, keeping the Church out of the classroom, was already an article of faith among good Republicans such as Cavaignac himself. Besides, Tocqueville that autumn was still clamouring (at least in his letters to Beaumont) for a strong policy of what he called order; he wanted Cavaignac to break completely with the républicains de la veille and reach out to the rue de Poitiers; it was even necessary to be reactionary. Cavaignac, who wanted to unite the Republicans, and whose governmental programme was not unlike that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as F. A. de Luna pointed out long ago), might well feel that Tocqueville was not the man for him, if such remarks came to his ears, as they probably did. Tocqueville accepted the situation, admitting that ‘if my name appeared in the new Cabinet it would be a banner of reaction’. He contented himself with his appointment as the French delegate to an international conference due to meet at Brussels to discuss the crisis in Italy. It would mean that he and Beaumont, whom Cavaignac had sent as ambassador to London, would once again be working closely together, and meanwhile he could explore in the archives of the foreign ministry.11

  Very shortly all these plans and aspirations came to nothing. The Brussels conference never met. The new constitution was promulgated on 12 November: Tocqueville’s old friend Mme Ancelot saw it being read out in a muddy public square by Armand Marrast, President of the Assembly,* peering through spectacles while trying to take shelter from the rain under an umbrella. She thought he looked grotesque, ‘and the law died under weight of ridicule.’12 On 10 December the first presidential election in French history was held. With the partial exception of the Bonapartists no-one understood how to fight such a contest. Cavaignac did not campaign and the resultant inertia of the public administration almost amounted, in Tocqueville’s opinion, to treason. The rue de Poitiers, as a body, decided to sit out the business, not realizing that it thereby forfeited its claim to leadership.13 The Left did not see the importance of uniting behind a single candidate, and there was no mechanism – no nominating convention, for example – by which it could do so. But the Bonapartists, who since the spring had single-mindedly been studying how to bring Prince Louis Napoleon forward, were comparatively well-prepared. After his rejection by Cavaignac, Tocqueville, in rage and anxiety, found himself on the sidelines. It was cruel, he said, in such a crisis, ‘to have a clear idea of what should be done, to feel in oneself the courage to do it, and to be able to do almost nothing.’14 He gave up hope of victory for Cavaignac, who had come to epitomize the hated Republic: the 45-centime tax was still being collected (with some difficulty), the countryside was still alienated. But he may have been surprised at the actual results: Louis Napoleon received just over 5.5 million votes, or 74 per cent of the total, while Cavaignac received just under 1.5 million (19.5 per cent); the rest – Ledru-Rollin, Raspail, Lamartine – were nowhere (poor Lamartine received only 17,914 votes). Turnout was 75 per cent of the electorate, down from the spring, but the Bonaparte victory could not have been much more convincing. It showed that Prince Louis had not needed the rue de Poitiers, although many of its members had rallied to him as the lesser of two evils (Cavaignac’s programme of reform having been too much for them). Tocqueville, just before election day, remarked that ‘Prince Louis is simultaneously supported in the provinces by those who want to overthrow the Republic and in Paris by a large body of ultra-republicans’; the exiled Guizot observed that ‘it is a great deal to be simultaneously a national glory, a revolutionary guarantee, and a principle of authority.’ For the first time in a generation French nationalism, as bound up with the memory of the Emperor, could find legitimate political expression, and the peasants were given a candidate who was at once an assurance that they would keep their gains from the great Revolution and an embodiment of state authority: the name of Napoleon seemed a promise of order, prosperity and prestige. The army deserted Cavaignac for Bonaparte at the polls. In short, a new and formidable political force had arisen. Characteristically, Thiers and his followers failed to recognize it. Sounding like the equally misguided Cicero commenting on Octavian, Thiers remarked of the new president, ‘he is a cretin whom we will lead.’ No doubt this got straight back to Louis Napoleon.15

  Even before the election the careerists had begun to join him. Among them was Odilon Barrot, who according to Tocqueville was afraid of ending his long career in irrelevance and liked the idea of playing mentor to ‘the little great man’. Rémusat, more brutally, said that Barrot wanted to be remembered as something more than a muddler and windbag. It was through Barrot that Tocqueville first met the prince, who, no doubt by pre-arrangement, gate-crashed a dinner given by Barrot, apparently late in the autumn, for Tocqueville and Rémusat. Rémusat snubbed him (and later decided that he had been wrong to do so); we do not know how Tocqueville behaved (he nowhere refers to the incident), but like Rémusat he refused to be drawn into a political discussion; and later the two of them (who now saw eye to eye on most public matters) agreed that it would be a good thing if all Louis Napoleon’s agents were as maladroit as Barrot.16

  Louis Napoleon took his oath of office before the Constituent Assembly on 20 December, pledging absolute loyalty to the Republic; it was generally suspected that one day he would forget having done so and make himself Emperor. Meanwhile France had to be governed, as difficult a task as ever. One of the chief problems was the Assembly, which now went some way to justifying Tocqueville’s distrust of supreme single chambers. Its work was done, its mandate exhausted; it should have been giving way to a new assembly elected under the constitution, but it clung to power, delaying the new elections for months (they were finally held on 13 May 1849), and even then refusing to dissolve until the very last minute. Hundreds of the representatives knew that they would not get into the Legislative Assembly, which was to have fewer members than the Constituent and in which the Right would be much stronger; but they did not make good use of their last days, exerting themselves chiefly in factious opposition: Ledru-Rollin was constantly proposing impeachments. Confronted by such a body Louis Napoleon found it difficult even to put together a cabinet. (The previous cabinet had left office with Cavaignac.) The legitimists
refused to work with him, save for Falloux, who had gone into politics solely to further the interests of the Catholic Church. The Republicans, rightly regarding the president as a rival, also refused to co-operate, and the Orleanists, as we have seen, meant to manipulate him: Thiers and Molé would not take office, but they offered general support in the Assembly – reserving the right to withdraw it when they saw fit. Lamartine, to whom Louis Napoleon made overtures, would only agree to serve if no-one else would – hardly a formula for success. That left the eager Barrot, who took office on the same day as the president himself. Even he was not entirely tractable, but he happened to be the one leading French politician whom Louis Napoleon knew well, and the president had learned patience in his long years of exile, conspiracy and prison. He skilfully used the first months of his term to improve his standing, for example by efficiently and bloodlessly suppressing a street revolt in Paris in late January, and by making frequent visits to the hospitals when cholera returned to France that summer.

  Tocqueville played very little part in politics at this time; he was seriously ill in January and February, and only shakily convalescent during March, April and May. The most precise account of his symptoms comes in a letter to Clamorgan of 22 January, in which he says that he has been suffering from a violent grippe, which first attacked his chest and then his guts. Perhaps it was indeed influenza: Marie was ill in some way early in January, Tocqueville may very well have caught an infection from her, and such a malady would explain his relapses during February and the lassitude which lasted for weeks. But the possibility cannot be overlooked that this was his first serious attack of tuberculosis: the pattern resembles that of his last illness in 1858–9. By the spring he was somewhat better, but felt desperately in need of a holiday, and in writing to Beaumont he referred to his health as ‘that very incomplete condition to which I give the name’.17

  Next to his physical weakness, his chief concern at this period was the matter of his re-election to the Assembly. His letters to Clamorgan and to other constituents show him delicately evading the traps surrounding him. For although the Manche had not voted for Louis Napoleon quite so overwhelmingly as some other departments, it had given him a majority of 65 per cent, and Tocqueville’s emphatic support for Cavaignac had not gone unnoticed. He could have protected himself against any ill consequences by signing up with the rue de Poitiers, but that would have meant repudiating most of the colleagues with whom he had worked since May 1848, and he did not think that he could do so honourably, or disavow his record. Independence, as usual, was his chosen course and, to judge by the result, the wisest one: he was one of only two representatives for the Manche to be re-elected of those who had won in April 1848 (even Havin lost), and he came head of the poll. His position thus became one of unquestionable pre-eminence, and he had got there while scarcely lifting a finger: he did not visit his constituency once during the campaign. To enquiries he answered merely that his record could be judged from his speeches and votes in the Assembly, as recorded in the Moniteur.18 He drafted an election manifesto but decided not to issue it because it would change no opinions. Nevertheless it is of great interest, for it is the clearest possible summary of his political views and actions during the first year of the Second Republic. It shows yet again what a very conservative liberal he was. There were repeated affirmations of his loyal support for the Republic, and in this we can be certain that he was sincere: in February he had written a long private letter to George Grote in which he said that if order and prosperity could be restored France would adjust better to the republican form of government than to any other, ‘since at bottom our social organization, our tastes, our instincts, our very vices, are republican’. It was just what he had said in his speech of 5 October, and shows him taking the final step, which he could not do at the time of the Démocratie, though the logic of that book pointed unmistakably towards it. But for the rest of the document he gloried in negatives. He had, he said, resisted socialism and the right to work; he had voted in the Assembly for the suppression of political clubs, for the limitation of press freedom, for the imposition of a state of siege in Paris,* and against all measures not based on ‘the doctrines of a sound political economy’: for example, the nationalization of the railways, a tax on mortgages, shortening the working day, progressive taxation and the abolition of the system by which the middle class could buy their sons out of compulsory military service (although abolition had been strongly supported by his friend General de Lamoricière and by General Cavaignac). He even boasted of his vote with the majority for lifting the parliamentary immunity of Louis Blanc and Marc Caussidière, thus driving them into undeserved exile (once more we seem to hear Guizot’s perplexed question, ‘Why don’t we think the same?’).† Tocqueville concluded by saying that he had believed from the first that the Republic could exist only if it suppressed licence, reformed all abuses of liberty, and set up a strong and generally accepted executive power. He had already said that he trusted Louis Napoleon to respect the Constitution; the implication was that he would be a desirably strong executive.19

  This assessment was perhaps Louis Napoleon’s reward for his attempts to cultivate Tocqueville and his group. Tocqueville had at first thought him honest but very mediocre, but after dining at the Elysée and sitting next to his host throughout the meal he wrote to Clamorgan that he was less confident in his assertions: ‘You know that I am not without a certain skill in reading men. But I cannot yet paint the intellectual portrait of this one. A private education and several years in prison have bestowed on his features and his conversation a discretion which defeats the observer. So I am postponing my conclusions.’ In early May the president appointed him to yet another committee for the investigation of French prisons; he interpreted this to Clamorgan (who was relied on to spread the word to the voters) as proof that he was recognized as a loyal supporter of Louis Napoleon and his government. Perhaps Tocqueville already sensed that he was seen as a possible minister; he may even have been sending out signals of his availability. At any rate, these manoeuvres did him no harm. At the election he received 82,404 votes out of 94,481 cast, and in August was elected president of the conseil-général.20

  Tocqueville was not present in the Manche to savour these triumphs. Election day found him in Germany, whither he had gone a few days earlier, ostensibly to improve his health by a much-needed rest.

  It seems that he planned a very Tocquevillean rest. He wanted to repeat the exploits of his youth by studying the revolutionary situation in Germany. How his interest in that country originated is not known: perhaps he was influenced by his fellow academician Cousin, who introduced the French to Hegel; or perhaps he read the newspapers and began to realize that Germany was becoming an ever-more important force in Europe. Whatever the reason, she became a preoccupation that lasted the rest of his days. In 1849 he tried to get introductions to leaders in both the liberal and conservative parties, and hoped that he would reach Berlin.21 But Marie was with him, and was no Beaumont: travel always made her ill, and she collapsed at Bonn. Then urgent letters from Rivet and Beaumont brought Tocqueville back to France on 25 May or thereabouts: he had to leave Marie to fend for herself.

  The crisis which recalled him was less an event than a panic among the conservatives. The legislative elections had reduced the number of Cavaignac republicans in the Assembly to eighty, and returned some 500 candidates of the party of order; but this overwhelming victory gave the conservatives little pleasure, for to their terror the Mountain won 150 seats. A century and a half later it looks as if a two-party system were struggling to emerge, but the conservatives, quite irrationally, felt that they were once more staring ruin in the face. Government stock fell by 5 per cent. Characteristically, Odilon Barrot made matters worse by resigning. He said later that he did so because the more conservative Assembly needed a more conservative ministry; but that hardly fits the outcome, which was a more Republican one. It is more probable that Barrot was trying to strengthen his posi
tion against both the party of order and the president. The Burgraves, as Thiers and Molé were now known, in ironic allusion to an unsuccessful play of that name by Victor Hugo, still refused to take office,* but they intended to control the cabinet through their command of the majority in the Assembly. Louis Napoleon had not yet shown his hand, but there were indications that he too intended to be master: in a letter to Barrot about the crisis he remarked that the first necessity was to give a clear and energetic lead to the administration: ‘We must choose men devoted to my person, from prefects to police inspectors ... We must get rid of most of the officials appointed by M. Dufaure.’ (This was an allusion to Dufaure’s brief service as minister of the interior under Cavaignac.) ‘Finally, it is necessary to reawaken everywhere the memory not of the Empire, but of the Emperor ...’ If Barrot saw anything in this letter, it was only an opportunity to show who was really in charge: no-one could be found to replace him as prime minister, so he agreed to remain, and invited Dufaure to join the government and bring two friends with him: Lanjuinais, and Tocqueville as foreign minister.22