of the Government without conditions to a man whom he es= teemed, this support was to be considered as an intolerable burden or a humiliating bargain; he observed with truth that isolation is not independence, and that a deputy is more or less engaged to whatever party may return him; lastly, he urged that the ministerial party was not a mere band of dependents, but a body of men acting together from convictions in defence of the parliamentary institutions of the country, a task at no time easy, and certainly rendered more difficult by the opposition and hostility of men of M. de Tocqueville's own character. This correspondence left no unfriendly feeling between these two eminent men; they were both of them consummate gentlemen, and each knew that the other was contending, not for an interest, but for a principle. Men of that stamp are more eager to sacrifice a personal interest than to trade on it.

Two years later, at the general election of 1839, when M. de Tocqueville had made his way in the department, and had become an object of real attachment to his immediate neighbours and of respect to all the country round, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by a great majority, and he retained his seat under all circumstances as long as there was a free Parliament in France.

We

Nevertheless we have adverted to this occurrence because it marks the first important step of M. de Tocqueville in public life by a fixed predetermination to join the Opposition, and to owe nothing at any time to the King's Government. take the liberty to say that this step on his part, and on the part of several of the able men with whom he acted, was a most unfortunate one for his own public utility, and for the welfare of parliamentary government in France. That form of Government was not so firmly established that it could resist the attacks of those who were in the main sincerely attached to the constitution, though they disapproved the policy of the Ministry and the Court; and no one repeated more emphatically than M. de Tocqueville his prophetic warnings that it was not this or that Minister, this or that system, but representative Government itself which was at stake and in danger. The fixed idea of his life was that the constitution would be undermined by the democratic passions of the nation, and encroached upon by the insincerity of the Court, until nothing stable would remain, and the overthrow of the Parliamentary system would be followed at no distant time by the despotism of a single ruler. But with a foreknowledge of this danger, which no one else possessed to the same degree, and which as expressed in his earlier writings and speeches looks like a gleam of superhuman

intelligence, what political conduct ought he to have pursued? He thought it his duty to throw the weight of his lofty intellect and unblemished character on the side of the Opposition. But what was that Opposition? He himself admits in one of his letters that there never had been a real constituted Opposition in France capable of fighting its way to a majority, and then assuming the direction of affairs. M. Thiers, if he was to be considered its head, was certainly quite as far removed from Tocqueville's standard of political morality as M. Guizot. To thwart the schemes of the court, and once or twice a year to deliver a few set speeches against the policy of a Cabinet, was, after all, a wretched substitute for true political life. He acknowledged himself that he had no party spirit, yet he acted with those to whom party spirit was the sole guide, on the principle, as he himself expressed it, On n'a quelque chance de maîtriser les 'mauvaises passions du peuple, qu'en partageant celles qui sont 'bonnes.' Under this influence his votes on some of the party divisions of the day were votes which we disapproved at the time, and to which we look back with regret. They failed to promote any good object; they assisted to strengthen the very evil they were designed to oppose.

M. de Beaumont observes with great candour that Tocqueville was not fitted by nature for opposition; he had none of the passions which belong to it; his speeches were earnest, but not impetuous; his caution and conscientiousness restrained him from extreme steps; and in the tribune of the Chamber he fell far short of the greatest orators of his time. The most useful acts of his parliamentary life were his reports on the questions of negro emancipation in the French colonies, on prison discipline, and on the administration of Algeria, which are masterpieces of their kind, and ought to be republished with his principal speeches.

In our judgment the result of his political career would have been still more honourable to himself, and far more useful to his country, if, instead of wasting long years in the sterile warfare of opposition, he had joined the Cabinet. He would there have acquired a practical knowledge of affairs, which, in fact, he never fully obtained, and he would have thrown his clear discernment and disinterested patriotism on the side of a more liberal and dignified policy. To those of his friends who sometimes ventured to urge this course upon him, he was wont to reply — ' It may be so. But I hold it to be impossible to serve the King. 'When he is gone we shall see.' There was a radical incompatibility between Tocqueville's chivalrous conception of high political principles, not one of which he would have sacrificed

for the wealth of empires, and the system of expedients in which the King was no mean proficient and which he regarded as the art of government. Perhaps, too, there was a latent trace of resentment, almost unconsciously entertained, on the part of the royalist gentleman against the son of the Duc of Orleans and the King of the Barricades. But in this M. de Tocqueville was wrong. Had the King been a thousand times less worthy of respect than Louis Philippe actually was, he was not the less the head of the state, and it was not consistent with practical political wisdom to stand aloof from the Court. The parliamentary government of England continued to strike root under the two first Georges, who, both as sovereigns and men, were immeasurably below the King of the French. Had Sir Robert Walpole thrown his talents on the side of Opposition, the House of Hanover might have been overthrown, but we know not who would have been the gainer by it. Doubtless the Government of Louis Philippe and M. Guizot committed errors which led to its political destruction; but what is equally certain is that for a long period of years the Opposition were the unconscious tools of those factions which eventually upset the dynasty and the constitution itself.

At length the storm came. By no man had it been so clearly foreseen as by M. de Tocqueville, and for several months before the catastrophe he had carefully abstained from all participation in that mad system of agitation which produced the popular banquets and republican demonstrations of 1847. On the 27th January 1848, soon after the opening of the last session of the Constitutional Parliament, he rose in the Chamber of Deputies, and said

'They tell me that there is no danger because there are no disturbances; they say that as there is no visible perturbation on the surface of society, there are no revolutions beneath it. Gentlemen, allow me to say that I think you wrong. Disturbance is not abroad, but it has laid hold of men's minds. The working classes are quiet, and are not agitated as they have sometimes been by political passions; but can you not perceive that these passions, which were political, are now social? Can you not see that opinions and ideas are spreading amongst them which tend not only to overthrow this or that law, this or that minister, or even this or that government, but society itself, and to shake the foundations on which it rests? Can you not hear what is daily repeated, that everything which is above their own condition is incapable and unworthy to govern them; that the present division of wealth in the world is unjust; that property rests upon no equitable basis? And are you not aware that when such opinions as these take root, when they are widely diffused, when they penetrate the masses, they will bring about, sooner or later, I

know not when, I know not how, the most tremendous revolutions. Such, Sir, is my conviction; we are slumbering on a volcano. I am certain of it.' (Vol. i. p. 66.)

Within four weeks the explosion took place. The King fled. The Republic was proclaimed; and not only the Republic, but all the demoniac passions of a socialist revolution were let loose on France.

Then, indeed, neither Tocqueville nor any one of his political friends hesitated as to the part they were called upon to pursue. In the first Revolution the sanguinary violence of a small faction had prevailed over the great majority of the nation. Under the second Republic, the nation itself, appealed to by universal suffrage, gave an unequivocal answer to the call, and elected an Assembly firmly resolved to defend property and public order. An attempt was made by the Revolutionists to annihilate the Assembly itself; it was saved by a miracle; a few days later the fate of the nation hung on the issue of a battle in the streets of Paris. Thanks to the courage and union of the Assembly, the law triumphed, and the country was saved. In all these events M. de Tocqueville took an active part; and we are informed by his biographer that the volume in which he has recorded them, for the information of posterity, is complete, and will one day see the light. Tocqueville had naturally been selected by the constituent body as one of the members of the Committee to frame the new Republican Constitution; and it is a curious example of the difficulty of governing human affairs that a constitution, now universally acknowledged to be a masterpiece of absurdity, was the work of several men of undoubted intellectual power and political foresight. An attempt was made by Tocqueville to induce his colteagues to adopt the principle of a second Chamber; but this and every other attempt to construct the machinery of a true Republican Government utterly failed. The Republic was destined to a short-lived existence, between the frenzy of democratic socialism on the one hand, and the violence of that popular reaction which speedily assumed the name of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte. The newly-elected President of the Republic had long appreciated the philosophical insight of M. Tocqueville into the nature of democratic institutions; and perhaps he inferred that the predictions of a single dominion, wth which his books abound, were naturally to be fulfilled, in a restoration of the Empire. Soon after his election to the Presidency he invited M. de Tocqueville to dinner, placed him by his side, and paid him marked attentions. On leaving the Elysée, Tocqueville said— ‘I have been dining with a man

'who believes in his own hereditary right to the Crown as firmly 'as Charles X. himself.'

One chance remained to avert the final catastrophe. It was possible that the President might still be content to accept a constitutional position; to govern by responsible Ministers who hoped to effect a revision of the constitution by legal means. At any rate, to abandon or to oppose him was to compel him to resort to an immediate coup d'état. On this principle M. de Odilon Barrot and the leading liberals formed an administration on the 2nd June 1849, in which M. de Tocqueville took the important office of Minister of Foreign Affairs. We shall not enter at length into the transactions in which he was engaged. As he said, on quitting his office four months later I have 'contributed to maintain order on the 13th June, to preserve the 'general peace, to improve the relations of France and England. These are recollections which give some value to my passage through affairs. I need hardly say anything to you 'of the cause which led to the fall of the cabinet. The Pre'sident chooses to govern alone, and to have mere agents and 'creatures in his Ministers. Perhaps he is right. I don't ex'amine that question, but we were not the men to serve him I on these terms.'

On one point, however, we think it proper to enter into some further details, although M. de Beaumont has passed it over in silence. We allude to the expedition against Rome. That celebrated expedition, even more embarrassing in its consequences than it was supposed to be at the time, occurred while M. de Tocqueville held the Foreign department in France. He conducted the first negotiations with the Pope; and it is therefore of importance to show precisely what were then his own views and those of the French Government. For this purpose we shall translate two letters, not included in M. de Beaumont's collection, which were addressed by M. de Tocqueville to an English friend at that time:

'Paris, 9th July, 1849. - I attach so much importance to the opinion of enlightened men in England, that I sit down to write you a few lines, though I have but little time for this sort of correspondence; but I want to furnish you with the latest information on this affair of Rome. I am better placed than any one to speak of it, for, as you have remarked, I am an entire stranger to all the decisive measures which have hitherto marked the course of this proceeding. When I took office the order to attack Rome was already given; it might even be supposed that Rome was already taken; at any rate, it was certain that our army was committed: and things having got

VOL. CXIII. NO. CCXXX.

H H