'But though, I repeat, I do not desire or expect the permanence of the Empire, I do not wish for its immediate destruction, before we are prepared with a substitute. The agents which are undermining it are sufficiently powerful and sufficiently active to occasion its fall quite as soon as we ought to wish for that fall.'
'And what,' I said, 'are those agents?'
'The principal agents,' he answered, 'are violence in the provinces and corruption in Paris. Since the first outbreak there has not been much violence in Paris. You must have observed that freedom of speech is universal. In every private society, and even in every café hatred or contempt of the Government are the main topics of conversation. We are too numerous to be attacked. But in the provinces you will find perfect silence. Anyone who whispers a word against the Emperor may be imprisoned, or perhaps transported. The prefects are empowered by one of the decrees made immediately after the coup d'état to dissolve any Conseil communal in which there is the least appearance of disaffection, and to nominate three persons to administer the commune. In many cases this has been done, and I could point out to you several communes governed by the prefect's nominees who cannot read. In time, of course, tyranny will produce corruption; but it has not yet prevailed extensively in the country, and the cause which now tends to depopularise him there is arbitrary violence exercised against those whom his agents suppose to be their enemies.
'On the other hand, what is ruining him in Paris is not violence, but corruption.
'The French are not like the Americans; they have no sympathy with smartness. Nothing so much excites their disgust as friponnerie. The main cause that overthrew Louis Philippe was the belief that he and his were fripons—that the representatives bought the electors, that the Minister bought the representatives, and that the King bought the Minister.
'Now, no corruption that ever prevailed in the worst periods of Louis XV., nothing that was done by La Pompadour or the Du Barry resembles what is going on now. Duchâtel, whose organs are not over-acute, tells me that he shudders at what is forced on his notice. The perfect absence of publicity, the silence of the press and of the tribune, and even of the bar—for no speeches, except on the most trivial subjects, are allowed to be reported—give full room for conversational exaggeration. Bad as things are, they are made still worse. Now this we cannot bear. It hurts our strongest passion—our vanity. We feel that we are exploités by Persigny, Fould, and Abbattucci, and a swarm of other adventurers. The injury might be tolerated, but not the disgrace.
'Every Government in France has a tendency to become unpopular as it continues. If you were to go down into the street, and inquire into the politics of the first hundred persons whom you met, you would find some Socialists, some Republicans, some Orleanists, &c., but you would find no Louis Napoleonists. Not a voice would utter his name without some expression of contempt or detestation, but principally of contempt.
'If then things take their course—if no accident, such as a fever or a pistol-shot, cut him off—public indignation will spread from Paris to the country, his unpopularity will extend from the people to the army, and then the first street riot will be enough to overthrow him.'
'And what power,' I said, 'will start up in his place?'
'I trust,' answered Tocqueville, 'that the reins will be seized by the Senate. Those who have accepted seats in it excuse themselves by saying, "A time may come when we shall be wanted." Probably the Corps Législatif will join them; and it seems to me clear that the course which such bodies will take must be the proclamation of Henri V.'