Historical Characters: Mackintosh, Talleyrand, Canning, Cobbett, Peel

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

“2nd. A government exposes itself when it obstinately refuses, and that for a lengthened period, what the time proclaims as necessary.

“The mind is never completely stationary. The discovery of yesterday is only a means to arrive at a fresh discovery to-morrow. One is nevertheless justified in affirming that it appears to act by impulses, because there are moments when it appears particularly desirous of bringing forth—of producing; at others, on the contrary, when, satisfied by its conquests, it appears to rest itself, and is occupied in putting the treasures it has acquired in order, rather than in seeking after new ones. The seventeenth century was one of these fortunate epochs. The human intellect, dazzled by the immense riches which the art of printing had put at its disposal, paused to gaze in admiration on the wondrous sight. Giving itself up entirely to the enjoyment of letters, science, and art, its glory and happiness became concentrated in the production of masterpieces. All the great men of the time of Louis XIV. vied with each other in embellishing a social order, beyond which they saw nothing, and desired nothing, and which appeared to them made to last as long as the glory of the great king, the object alike of their respect and of their enthusiasm. But when they had exhausted the fertile mine of antiquity, their intelligent activity found itself almost compelled to search elsewhere, and discovered nothing new, except in speculative studies that embrace all the future, and of which the limits are unknown. It was amidst these dispositions that the eighteenth century dawned—a century so little resembling the preceding one. To the poetical lessons of Telemachus succeeded the theories of ‘the Esprit des Lois,’ and Port Royal was replaced by the Encyclopædia.

“I pray you to observe, gentlemen, that I neither censure nor approve: I simply relate.

“In calling to mind all the calamities poured out upon France during the Revolution, we must not be altogether unjust towards those superior men that brought it about; and we ought not to forget, that if in their writings they have not always been able to avoid falling into error, we owe to them the revelation of some great truths. Above all, let us not forget that we ought not to make them responsible for the precipitation with which France rushed practically into a career which her philosophers merely indicated. Thoughts were turned at once into action, and one might well say, ‘Woe to him who in his foolish pride would go beyond the necessities of his epoch! Some abyss or revolution awaits him.’ But when we simply follow the necessity of an epoch, we are certain not to go astray.

“Now, gentlemen, do you wish to know what were in 1789 the real necessities of that epoch? Turn to the mandates of the different orders represented in the National Assembly. All that were then the reflected wishes of enlightened men are what I call necessities. The Constituent Assembly was only their interpreter when it proclaimed liberty of worship, equality before the law, individual liberty, the right of jurisdiction (that no one should be deprived of his natural judges), the liberty of the press.

“It was little in accordance with its epoch when it instituted a single chamber, when it destroyed the royal sanction, when it tortured the conscience, &c. &c. And, nevertheless, in spite of its faults, of which I have only cited a small number—faults followed by such great calamities—posterity which has begun for it accords to it the glory of establishing the foundation of our new public rights.

“Let us hold, then, for certain, that all that is desired, that all that is proclaimed good and useful by all the enlightened men of a country, without variation, during a series of years diversely occupied, is a necessity of the times. Such, gentlemen, is the liberty of the press. I address myself to all those amongst you who are more particularly my contemporaries—was it not the dear object and wish of all those excellent men whom we so admired in our youth—the Malesherbes, the Trudaines—who surely were well worth the statesmen we have had since? The place which the men I have named occupy in our memories amply proves that the liberty of the press consolidates legitimate renown; and if it destroys usurped reputations, where is the harm?

“Having proved my first proposition, that the liberty of the press is in France the necessary result of the state of its society, it remains for me to establish my second proposition—that a government is in danger when it obstinately refuses what the state or spirit of its society requires.

“The most tranquil societies, and those which ought to be the most happy, always number amongst them a certain class of men who hope to acquire by the means of disorder those riches which they do not possess, and that importance which they ought never to have. Is it prudent to furnish the enemies of social order with pretexts for discontent, without which their individual efforts to promote disturbance would be impotent?

“Society in its progressive march is destined to experience new wants. I can perfectly understand that governments ought not to be in any hurry to recognise them; but when it has once recognised them, to take back what it has given, or, what comes to the same thing, to be always suspending its exercise, is a temerity of which I more than any one desire that those who conceived the convenient and fatal thought may not have to repent. The good faith of a government should never be compromised. Now-a-days, it is not easy to deceive for long. There is some one who has more intelligence than Voltaire; more intelligence than Bonaparte; more intelligence than each of the Directors—than each of the ministers, past, present, and to come. That some one is everybody. To engage in, or at least to persist in, a struggle against what according to general belief is a public interest, is a political fault,—and at this day all political faults are dangerous.