'Under Louis Philippe they had neither, but it was in a great measure their own fault.
'They have neither under this Government, for its principle is to rest on the army and on the people, and to ignore the existence of the educated classes.
'You see that in its management of the press. 'Montalembert, or Guizot, or Falloux, or I may publish what we like. We are not read by the soldier or by the proletaire.[1] But the newspaper press is subject to a slavery to which it was never reduced before. The system was first elaborated in Austria, and I daresay will be copied by all the Continental autocrats, for no inventions travel so quickly as despotic ones.
'The public avertissements are comparatively unimportant. Before a journal gets one of those its suppression has probably been decided on. Every day there are communications between the literary police and the different editors. Such or such a line of argument is altogether forbidden, another is allowed to be used to a certain extent. Some subjects are tabooed, others are to be treated partially.
'As the mental food of the lower orders is supplied by the newspapers, this paternal Government takes care that it shall not be too exciting.'
[Footnote 1: The lowest class.—ED.]
Paris, Monday, April 13.—Tocqueville, Jobez, Marcet, St.-Hilaire,[1] Charles Sumner, and Lord Granville breakfasted with us.
The conversation turned on public speaking.
'Very few indeed of our speakers,' said Tocqueville, 'have ever ventured to improvise: Barrot could do it. We have told him sometimes that a speech must be answered immediately; and when he objected that he had nothing to say, we used to insist, and to assure him that as soon as he was in the tribune, the ideas and the words would come; and so they did. I have known him go on under such circumstances for an hour; of course neither the matter nor the form could be first rate, but they were sufficient.'
'In fact,' said Lord Granville, 'much of what is called improvisation is mere recollection. A man who has to speak night after night, gets on most subjects a set of thoughts, and even of expressions, which naturally pour in on him as soon as his argument touches the train which leads to them.