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Britain are not quite so rapid as in France, they are CHAP. not less remarkable, nor less decisive in their results.

IX.

1821.

108.

fects of the

Elec

toral Law.

No doubt, the great change in the Electoral Law of France, carried through with so much difficulty by the Great efDuke de Richelieu's administration, contributed largely change in to this result. The new principle introduced by that the le law, of giving the departmental electors representatives of their own in the Chamber, and of having them chosen, not by the electors generally, but by a fourth of their number who paid the highest amount of taxes, was a great change, not merely in its numerical results, upon the composition of the Chamber, but in the principle of representation itself. It was a return from the principle of the Revolution, which was that of a mere representation of numbers, to the general ancient representative system of Europe, which was that of classes. It was an abandonment of the principle of uniform representation, the most pernicious which can possibly be engrafted on the constitutional system, because it tends at once to introduce class government, and that of the very worst, because the most irresponsible kind. Some one class inevitably, under such a system, acquires the majority in the elections and in the legislature; and the moment it does so, and feels its strength, it commences and carries through a series of measures calculated for its own benefit, without the slightest regard to the effect they may have upon the interest of other classes, or the general prosperity of the state. The only way to check this is to introduce into the legislature the representatives of other classes, elected under a different suffrage, and thus prevent the selfishness of one class from becoming paramount, by permitting the selfishness of another class to combat it.

But although the introduction of the hundred and sixty departmental members, elected by "les plus imposés," was a most important step, and one in the right direction, yet another step was wanting to give the French nation

IX.

1821.

109.

the representative system in France.

CHAP. a proper representation. This was a representation of numbers. To base the whole legislature upon them is doubtless to introduce class government of the worst Defects of kind; but it is also a great mistake, which in the end may be attended with fatal consequences, to exclude them from the representation altogether. The interests of labour are not only not identical with those of monied wealth, but they are often adverse to it: the sequel of this history will place this beyond a doubt, with respect to the British islands. The condition of the great body of the working classes may not only be noways benefited, but essentially injured, by a representation resting entirely on property, especially of a commercial kind; because measures injurious to their welfare may be passed into law by the class which alone is represented. As the representative system of the Restoration in France, even when amended by the act of 1820, contained no provision whatever for the representation of the working classes, by allowing no vote except to those paying at least 300 francs yearly of direct taxes, it was wanting in a most important element both of utility and general confidence. It will appear in the sequel how large a share this defect had in inducing the great catastrophe which, ten years afterwards, proved fatal to the dynasty of the Restoration.

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Connected with this great defect in the French representative system was another circumstance, attended in the end with consequences not less disastrous. This was, that, while labour was unrepresented, religion was too much represented. This was the natural, and, in truth, unavoidable result of the irreligious spirit of the Revolution the reaction was as violent as the action; its opponents conceived, with reason, that it could be combated only with the weapons and with the fervour of the ancient faith. The class of considerable proprietors, in whom a decided majority of the Chamber of Deputies was now vested, was attached to this party from principle, tradi

tion, and interest. But although it is impossible to overestimate the salutary influence of religion on human society, it unhappily does not equally follow that the ascendancy of its professors in the legislature is equally beneficial. Experience has too often proved that the Parti-Prêtre is perhaps the most dangerous that can be intrusted with the administration of affairs. The reason

is, that those who direct are not brought into contact with men in the actual business of life, and they deem it their duty to be regulated, not by expedience, or even practicability, but solely by conscience. This disposition may make courageous martyrs, but it produces very bad legislators; it is often noble in adversity, but always perilous in prosperity. Power is the touchstone which the Romish Church has never been able to withstand, as suffering is the ordeal from which it has never failed to emerge, surrounded by a halo of glory. The danger of this party holding, as they now did, the reins of power, supported by a large majority in both Chambers, was much increased by the circumstance, that, though the peasants in the country were, for the most part, under the influence of the ancient faith, it was held in abhorrence by the majority of the working classes in the great towns, who were, at the same time, without any legal channel whereby to make their feelings influential in the legislature, but in possession of ample resources to disturb the established government.

CHAP.

IX.

1821.

111.

the reac

Liberal in

Although the change in the Electoral Law was the immediate cause of the majority which the Royalists now Cause of got in the Chamber, yet the real and ultimate cause is to tion against be looked for in circumstances of wider extension and stitutions. more lasting effects. It was the violence and crimes of the Liberal party over Europe which produced the general reaction against them. It was the overthrow of government in Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont, and the absurd and ruinous institutions established in their stead, which alarmed every thinking man in France: the

IX.

1821.

CHAP. assassination of the Duke de Berri, the projected assassination of the Cabinet Ministers in London, the attempted insurrection in the streets of Paris, opened the eyes of all to the means by which the hoped-for change was to be effected. The alteration in the Electoral Law in France was itself an effect of this change in the public mind; for it took place in a Chamber heretofore decidedly Liberal. A similar modification had taken place in the views of the constituency, for the Royalists were now, for the first time for five years, in a majority in the arrondissements with regard to which no change had been made. It is Louvel, Thistlewood, and Riego, who stand forth as the real authors of this great reaction in Europe, and of the long stop to the progress of freedom which resulted from it-a memorable instance of the eternal truth, that no cause is in the end advanced by means at which the general mind revolts, and that none are such sufferers from the effects of crime as those for whose interest it was committed.

112.

Death of Napoleon. May 5.

1 Hist. of Europe,

c. lxxxix. $ 26.

While France was thus undergoing the political throes and changes consequent on its great Revolution, and the forcible change of the dynasty which governed it, and at the very moment when the infant prince was baptised who, it was hoped, would continue the ancient race of the Bourbon princes, that wonderful man breathed his last upon the rock of St Helena who had so long chained the destinies of the world to his chariot-wheels. Since his transference, by the unanimous determination of the allied sovereigns, to that distant and melancholy place of exile, he had alternately exhibited the grandeur of a lofty, the weaknesses of a little, and the genius of a highly gifted mind. He said at Fontainebleau, when he took leave of his faithful guards, that what "they had done together he would write ;" and he had fulfilled the promise, in part at least, with consummate ability.

ap

IX.

1821.

It is hard to say whether his fame does not now rest CHAP. nearly as much on his sayings and thoughts recorded at St Helena, as on all the mighty deeds which he achieved in Europe. Yet even here, and when his vast genius alternately revealed the secrets of the past, and pierced the depths of the future, the littlenesses of a dwarf peared in striking contrast to the strength of a giant. He was irritable, jealous, and spiteful, not less than able, discriminating, and profound; his serenity was disturbed by his being addressed with the title of General, or attended, at a distance, by an English orderly in the course of his rides; and exaggeration, falsehood, and envy, appeared in his thoughts and writings, not less than genius, capacity, and depth. His character, as revealed by misfortune, that touchstone of the human heart, affords the most striking proof of the truth of Dr Johnson's observation, that no man ever yet raised himself from a private station to the government of mankind, in whom great and commanding qualities were not blended with littlenesses which would appear inconceivable in ordinary men.

on his cap

Without doubt, it must ever be a matter of deep re- 113. gret to every generous mind, and to none so much so as Reflections to the inhabitants of Great Britain, that it was necessary tivity. to impose any restraint at all on the latter years of so great a man. How much more grateful would it have been to every honourable mind, to every feeling heart, to have acted to him as Xerxes did, in the first instance at least, to Themistocles, and in the spirit to which he himself appealed when he said, that he placed himself on the hearth of the "greatest, the most powerful, and the most persevering of his enemies." But there was this essential difference between the two cases-Themistocles, when he took refuge in the dominions of the great king, had not given his word and broken it. Napoleon had been treated with signal lenity and generosity when, after having

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