OPINION OF PRINCE TALLEYRAND ON THE PLAN OF LAW RELATIVE TO JOURNALS AND PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS.
Delivered in the Chamber of Peers, in the sitting of Tuesday, July 24, 1821.
“Gentlemen,—In presenting myself before this assembly, I experience the embarrassment of feeling the utter inutility of the observations I am about to make, but to which, nevertheless, I consider it my duty to give utterance. By a deplorable fatality, the causes of which it is not my purpose at present to inquire into, the questions in appearance submitted to our consideration, are already resolved—irrevocably resolved. We discuss, as though our discussions were affairs of some import; whilst, in reality, we are but the instruments of imperious necessity. Laws and budgets are laid before us, and they who would naturally be our opponents in discussing them, are not here; their absence operates as a sort of command upon us. The Chamber of Peers, by the position in which it is placed, will soon degenerate into a Court of Registration, a mere semblance of the constitutional hierarchy. Hence, it follows, that those who absolutely desire to see in France a real Chamber of Peers—that those who regard it as essential to the monarchy—seeing it annihilated for the present, look forward to the future. In their inability to remedy the present evil, they indulge in prophetic warnings, which it is easy to turn into ridicule; or they offer advice which levity despises and weakness rejects.
“I apply, gentlemen, these considerations to the law now submitted to your attention. Is it the work of the Ministry? No; for, on the one hand, it is more limited in its duration than the primitive law, a circumstance of which I am certainly not disposed to complain; and, on the other hand, its restrictions extend to literature, science, and the arts, (heretofore exempt from the coercion of the censorship:) and at these restrictions I am assuredly not disposed to rejoice. Is it certain that these various modifications meet the concurrence of the majority of this Chamber? Possibly they do not; and yet, what can we do? Are we free to amend, in our turn, the amendments of the all-powerful Chamber of Deputies? No, gentlemen; and I say so, not with the view of reflecting blame on the Chamber of Deputies, (which has merely exercised its constitutional privileges in a very constitutional manner,) but to complain that the Chamber of Peers is stripped of all its privileges by tardy presentations, which leave it neither time to deliberate nor power to resist.
“Convinced as I am that the fate of the present law is determined beforehand; that a discussion, however warm, will not influence its rejection, or even tend to modify its effects; I present myself here, less for the purpose of opposing it, than to prevent its reappearance, when it shall have lived through its legal period of existence. I speak for the interest of the future session, and not for the interest of the present one. I do not hope, gentlemen, to convince you now; my object is to pave the way for a more free and more profound discussion at a future time.
“The liberty of the press, applied to politics, is, as has already been stated, neither more nor less than the liberty of the journals.
“We are all desirous to enjoy the blessings of representative government; it is the government which the king has granted to us.
“Representative government cannot exist without the liberty of the press, which is one of its essential instruments; indeed, its principal instrument. Every government has its own machinery; and it must always be borne in mind that institutions which are salutary to one government, may be injurious to another. It has been proved to demonstration by several members of this Chamber, who, during the present and preceding sessions, have spoken on the subject now under consideration, that, without the liberty of the press, there can be no representative government. I will not, therefore, weary you by repeating that which you must all have heard or read, and which must frequently have been the subject of your own meditations.
“But there are two points of view in which it appears to me that the question has not been adequately considered, and which I will reduce to the two following propositions—
“I. The liberty of the press is a necessity of the age.
“II. A government endangers its stability when it obstinately refuses to grant that which the age proclaims to be necessary.
“The human mind is never completely stationary. The discovery of yesterday is but the medium for arriving at a new discovery to-morrow. Nevertheless it is true that human intelligence would seem to advance by crises; there are periods when that intelligence is urged forward by the desire of creating and producing; and there are times when, satisfied with its acquisitions, it appears to repose within itself, and to be occupied in arranging and setting in order the riches it possesses, rather than in earning new wealth. The seventeenth century was one of these fortunate epochs. The human mind, amazed at the vast treasures of which it had become possessed through the invention of printing, seemed to stop short in its onward movement, as if eager to rest in the enjoyment of its magnificent heritage. Revelling in the luxuries of literature, science, and the arts, it set its glory on the production of master-pieces. The great men of the age of Louis XIV. vied one with another in embellishing a state of society, beyond which they could see nothing or wish for nothing, and which seemed destined to endure as long as the glory of the great king who engrossed all their respect and enthusiasm. But the fertile mine of antiquity being exhausted, the activity of the human mind was turned, as it were by force, into another channel, and it found novelty in those speculative studies which embrace the whole future, and whose limits are indefinable. Such were the circumstances which ushered in the commencement of the eighteenth century, destined to prove so dissimilar to the century that had preceded it. The poetic lessons of Telemachus were succeeded by the theories of the Esprit des Lois; and the Port-Royal was superseded by the Encyclopedia.
“I beg you to observe, gentlemen, that I am neither concurring nor approving, but merely narrating.
“On looking back to the disasters which befel France during the Revolution, we should guard against being wholly unjust to those master spirits whose writings gave the first impulse to that great event. We must not forget that if those writers did not always steer clear of error, yet that we owe to them the revelation of many great truths. We must bear in mind that those men are in no way responsible for the inconsiderate precipitancy with which France, almost unanimously, rushed into the career which they had merely traced out in perspective. Views which had been only theoretically developed were suddenly carried into practical effect; and the result has shown the awful consequences which ensue when man, prompted by insane self-confidence, ventures to go beyond the necessities of the age—the gulf of misfortune then yawns before him. But in merely working such changes as are dictated by the wants of the age, we are certain not to diverge very far from the right course.
“Now, gentlemen, let us see what were the real necessities of the age in the year 1789. The changes which were suggested by the mature reflection of enlightened men may be fairly regarded as necessities. The Constituent Assembly was merely the interpreter of those necessities when it proclaimed the liberty of religious worship, equality in the eye of the law, the free right of jurisdiction, (every one being amenable to his natural judges,) and the liberty of the press.
“But the Constituent Assembly was not in accordance with the spirit of the age when it instituted a single Chamber; when it destroyed the royal sanction; when it tortured consciences, &c. Yet, notwithstanding the errors of that Assembly, (errors of which I have named only a few, and which were followed by great calamities,) it will enjoy, in the judgment of posterity, the glory of having established the bases of our new public law. The august author of the charter—the monarch who is worthy of France, as France is worthy of him—has consecrated in his noble work the only great principles furnished by the Constituent Assembly.
“Let us take it for granted that laws which are wished for—which are proclaimed to be good and salutary by the most enlightened men of a country, and which have been so proclaimed during a series of years—are necessities of the age. One of these laws, gentlemen, is the liberty of the press. I appeal to all those among you who are most especially my contemporaries—was not the liberty of the press an object ardently desired by all those excellent men whom we have admired in our youth—the Malesherbes, the d’Estignys, and the Trudaines?—who, to say the least, were not inferior to any of the statesmen who have flourished since their time. The place which the men I have just named occupy in our recollections, sufficiently proves that the liberty of the press consolidates legitimate renown, and if it ruins usurped reputations, where is the evil?
“If I have said enough to prove that the liberty of the press is, in France, the necessary result of the present state of society, it now only remains for me to establish my second proposition—viz., that a government endangers its stability when it obstinately refuses to grant that which the age proclaims to be a necessity.
“In the most tranquil and happy conditions of society there is always a certain number of men who aspire to gain, by the help of disorder, the wealth which they possess not, and the importance which they ought not to possess. Is it wise to place in the hands of these enemies of social order, weapons of discontent, without which their perversity would ever remain powerless? Why give them the privilege of continually claiming the fulfilment of a promise? They will but abuse that privilege, and in this instance they are not, as in some others, seeking merely a chimerical good.
“Society, in its progressive advance, is destined to feel new necessities. I readily admit that governments ought not rashly to acknowledge them or to convert them into laws. But when these necessities have once been acknowledged, to take back what has been granted, or (which amounts to the same thing) to withhold that which has been granted, or to suspend it unceasingly, is a dangerous course, of which I earnestly hope those who have put it in practice may not have reason to repent. A government should never compromise its own good faith. In the present age, it is not easy to carry on deception for any lengthened period of time. There is a power whose wisdom is superior to that of Voltaire, whose intelligence is greater than that of Bonaparte—a power, in short, superior to the directors or to any of the ministers, past, present, or to come—that power is the great mass of mankind. To engage, or at least to persist, in a conflict on any question on which the majority of the world conceive their interests to be at stake, is an error, and all political errors are dangerous.
“When the freedom of the press exists, when people know that their interests will be defended, they trust that time will render them justice, however tardily that justice may come. They rely on hope, and with reason, for even hope cannot be long deceived. But when the liberty of the press is restricted, when no complaint is permitted to be heard, discontent forces a government either into too much weakness or too much severity.
“But these reflections are carrying me too far, and I must conclude. For the interest of the King and of France, I demand a repressive law, and I vote against the censorship.”