The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville

by Alexis de Tocqueville

As to the President, I did not know him yet, but it was evident that we could not rely upon him to support us in his Council, except where the jealousy and hatred were concerned with which our common adversaries inspired him. His sympathies must always lie in an opposite direction; for our views were not only different, but naturally opposed to one another. We wanted to make the Republic live: he longed for its inheritance. We only supplied him with ministers where he wanted accomplices.

To these difficulties, which were in a sense inherent to the situation and consequently permanent, were added passing ones which it was not at all easy to surmount: the revolutionary agitation revived in part of the country; the spirit and habits of exclusion spread and already rooted in the public administration; the Roman expedition, so badly conceived and so badly conducted that it was now as difficult to bring it to an end as to get out of it; in fact, the whole legacy of mistakes committed by our predecessors.

There were reasons enough for hesitation; and yet I did not hesitate. The idea of taking a post from which fear kept so many people off, and of relieving society from the bad pass in which it had been involved, flattered at the same time my sense of honour and my pride. I was quite aware that I should only be passing through power, and that I should not stay there; but I hoped to stay long enough to be able to render some signal service to my country and to raise myself. This was enough to attract me.

I at once took three resolutions:

First, not to refuse office if an opportunity offered;

Second, only to enter the Government together with my principal friends, directing the principal offices, so that we might always remain the masters of the Cabinet;

Third and last, to behave every day when in office as though I was to be out of it the next day, that is to say, without ever subordinating to the necessity of maintaining my position that of remaining true to myself.

The next five or six days were wholly taken up in fruitless endeavours to form a ministry. The attempts made were so numerous, so overlapping, so full of small incidents—great events of one day forgotten the next—that I find it difficult to retrace them in my memory, in spite of the prominent part which I myself played in some of them. The problem was undoubtedly a difficult one to solve under its given conditions. The President was willing enough to change the appearance of his ministry, but he was determined to retain in it the men whom he considered his principal friends. The leaders of the Monarchical parties refused themselves to take the responsibility of government; but they were not willing either that it should be entrusted entirely to men over whom they had no hold. If they consented to admit us, it was only in a very small number and in second-rate offices. We were looked upon as a necessary but disagreeable remedy, which it was preferable only to administer in very small doses.

Dufaure was first asked to join alone, and to be satisfied with the Public Works. He refused, demanded the Interior, and two other offices for his friends. After much difficulty they agreed to give him the Interior, but they refused the rest. I have reason to believe that he was at one time on the point of accepting this proposal and of again leaving me in the lurch, as he had done six months ago. Not that he was treacherous or indifferent in his friendships; but the sight of this important office almost within reach, which he could honestly accept, possessed a strange attraction for him. It did not precisely cause him to abandon his friends, but it distracted his thoughts from them, and made him ready to forget them. He was firm, however, this time; and not being able to get him by himself, they offered to take me with him. I was most in view at that time, because the new Legislative Assembly had just elected me one of its vice-presidents.[14] But what office to give me? I only thought myself fit to fill the Ministry of Public Instruction. Unfortunately that was in the hands of M. de Falloux, an indispensable man, whom it was equally important to the Legitimists to retain, of whom he was one of the leaders; to the religious party, who saw in him a protector; and finally to the President, of whom he had become the friend. I was offered Agriculture, and refused it. At last, in despair, Barrot came and asked me to accept the Foreign Office. I myself had made great efforts to persuade M. de Rémusat to accept this office, and what happened on this occasion between him and me is so characteristic that it is worthy of being retold. I was very anxious that M. de Rémusat should join the ministry with us. He was at once a friend of M. Thiers and a man of honour, a rather unusual combination; he alone was able to assure us, if not the support, at least the neutrality of that statesman, without infesting us with his spirit. Overcome by the insistency of Barrot and the rest of us, Rémusat one evening yielded. He had pledged us his word, but the next morning he came to withdraw it. I knew for certain that he had seen M. Thiers in the interval, and he confessed to me himself that M. Thiers, who was then loudly proclaiming the necessity of our accepting office, had dissuaded him from joining us. "I fully saw," he said, "that to become your colleague would not be to give you his assistance, but only to expose myself to be quarrelling with him before long." Those were the sort of men we had to deal with.

I had never thought of the Foreign Office, and my first impulse was to refuse it. I thought myself unsuited to fill an office for which nothing had prepared me. Among my papers I have found a trace of these hesitations, in the notes of a conversation which took place at a dinner which some of my friends and I had at that time....