Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 1

by Dawson Turner

(Rouen, June, 1818.)

Abandoning, for the present, all discussion of the themes of the elder day, I shall occupy myself with matters relating to the living world. The fatigued and hungry traveller, whose flesh is weaker than his spirit, is often too apt to think that his bed and his supper are of more immediate consequence than churches or castles. And to those who are in this predicament, there is a material improvement at Rouen, since I was last here: nothing could be worse than the inns of the year 1815; but four years of peace have effected a wonderful alteration, and nothing can now be better than the Hôtel de Normandie, where we have fixed our quarters. Objection may, indeed, be made to its situation, as to that of every other hôtel in the city; but this is of little moment in a town, where every house, whatever street or place it may front, opens into a court-yard, so that its views are confined to what passes within its own quadrangle; and, for excellence of accommodations, elegance of furniture, skill in cookery, civility of attendance, nay, even for what is more rare, neatness, our host, M. Trimolet, may challenge competition with almost any establishment in Europe. For the rent of the house, which is one of the most spacious in Rouen, he pays three thousand francs a year; and, as house-rent is one of the main standards of the value of the circulating medium, I will add, that our friend, M. Rondeau, for his, which is not only among the largest but among the most elegant and the best placed for business, pays but five hundred francs more. This, then, may be considered as the maximum at Rouen. Yet Rouen is far from being the place which should be selected by an Englishman, who retires to France for the purpose of economizing: living in general is scarcely one-fourth cheaper than in our own country. At Caen it is considerably more reasonable; on the banks of the Loire the expences of a family do not amount to one-half of the English cost; and still farther south a yet more sensible reduction takes place, the necessaries of life being cheaper by half than they are in Normandy, and house-rent by full four-fifths.

A foreigner can glean but little useful information respecting the actual state of a country through which he journeys with as much rapidity as I have done. And still less is he able to secern the truth from the falsehood, or to weigh the probabilities of conflicting testimony. I therefore originally intended to be silent on this subject. There is a story told, I believe, of Voltaire, at least it may be as well told of Voltaire as of any other wit, that, being once in company with a very talkative empty Frenchman, and a very glum and silent Englishman, he afterwards characterized them by saying, "l'un ne dit que des riens, et l'autre ne dit rien." Fearing that my political and statistical observations, which in good truth are very slender, might be ranked but too truly in the former category, I had resolved to confine them to my own notebook. Yet we all take so much interest in the destinies of our ancient rival and enemy, (I wish I could add, our modern friend,) that, according to my usual habit, I changed my determination within a minute after I had formed it; for I yielded to the impression, that even my scanty contribution would not be wholly unacceptable to you.

France, I am assured on all sides, is rapidly improving, and the government is satisfactory to all liberal men, in which number I include persons of every opinion, except the emigrants and those attached exclusively to the ancien régime. Men of the latter description are commonly known by the name of Ultras; and, speaking with a degree of freedom, which is practised here, to at least as great an extent as in England, they do not hesitate to express their decided disapprobation of the present system of government, and to declare, not only that Napoléon was more of a royalist than Louis, but that the King is a jacobin. They persuade themselves also, and would fain persuade others, that he is generally hated; and their doctrine is, that the nation is divided into three parties, ready to tear each other in pieces: the Ministerialists, who are few, and in every respect contemptible; the Ultras, not numerous, but headed by the Princes, and thus far of weight; and the Revolutionists, who, in point of numbers, as well as of talents and of opulence, considerably exceed the other two, and will, probably, ultimately prevail; so that these conflicts of opinion will terminate by decomposing the constitutional monarchy into a republic. To listen to these men, you might almost fancy they were quoting from Clarendon's History of the Rebellion in our own country; so entirely do their feelings coincide with those of the courtiers who attended Charles in his exile. Similar too is the reward they receive; for it is difficult for a monarch to be just, however he may in some cases he generous.

Yet even the Ultras admit that the revolution has been beneficial to France, though they are willing to confine its benefits to the establishment of the trial by jury, and the correction of certain abuses connected with the old system of nobility. Among the advantages obtained, they include the abolition of the game laws; and, indeed, I am persuaded, from all I hear, that this much-contested question could not receive a better solution than by appealing to the present laws in France. Game is here altogether the property of the land-owner; it is freely exposed for sale, like other articles of food; and every one is himself at liberty to sport, or to authorize his friend to do so over his property, with no other restriction than that of taking out a licence, or port d'armes, which, for fifteen francs, is granted without difficulty to any man of respectability, whatever may be his condition in life. In this particular, I cannot but think that France has set us an example well worthy of our imitation; and she also shews that it may be followed without danger; for neither do the pleasures of the field lose their relish, nor is the game extirpated. The former are a subject of conversation in almost every company; and, as to the latter, whatever slaughter may have taken place in the woods and preserves, at the first burst of the revolution, I am assured that a good sportsman may, at the present time, between Dieppe and Rouen kill with ease, in a day, fifty head of game, consisting principally of hares, quails, and partridges.

But, while these men thus restrict the benefits derived from the revolution, the case is far different with individuals of the other parties, all of whom are loud and unanimous in its praises. The good resulting from the republic has been purchased at a dreadful price, but the good remains; and those, who now enjoy the boon, are not inclined to remember the blood which drenched the three-colored banner. Thirty years have elapsed, and a new generation has arisen, to whom the horrors of the revolution live only in the page of history. But its advantages are daily felt in the equal nature and equal administration of the laws; in the suppression of the monasteries with their concomitant evils; in the restriction of the powers of the clergy; in the liberty afforded to all modes of religious worship; and in the abolition of all the edicts and mandates and prejudices, which secured to a peculiar sect and caste a monopoly of all the honors and distinctions of the common-wealth; for now, every individual of talent and character feels that the path to preferment and power is not obstructed by his birth or his opinions.

The constitutional charter, in its present state, is a subject of pride to the French, and a sure bulwark to the throne. The representative system is beginning to be generally appreciated, and particularly in commercial towns. The deputies of this department are to be changed the approaching autumn, and the minds of men are already anxiously bent upon selecting such representatives as may best understand and promote their local interests. Few acts of the Bourbon government have contributed more powerfully to promote the popularity of the King, than the law enacted in the course of last year, which abolished the double election, and enabled the voters to give their suffrages directly for their favorite candidate, thus putting a stop at once to a variety of unfair influence, previously exerted upon such occasions. The same law has also created a general interest upon the subject, never before known; the strongest proof of which is, that, of the six or eight thousand electors contained in this department, nearly the whole are expected now to vote, whereas not a third ever did so before. The qualifications for an elector and a deputy are uniform throughout the kingdom, and depending upon few requisites; nothing more being required in the former case, than the payment of three hundred francs per annum, in direct taxes, and the having attained the age of thirty; while an addition of ten years to the age, and the payment of one thousand francs, instead of three hundred, renders every individual qualified to be of the number of the elected. The system, however, is subject to a restriction, which provides, that at least one half of the representatives of each department shall be chosen from among those who reside in it.

In the beginning of the revolution, a much wider door was open: all that was then necessary to entitle a man to vote, was, that he should be twenty-one years of age, a Frenchman, and one who had lived for a year in the country on his own revenue, or on the produce of his labor, and was not in a state of servitude. It was then also decreed, that the electors should have each three livres a day during their mission, and should be allowed at the rate of one livre a league, for the distance from their usual place of residence, to that in which the election of members for their department is held. Such were the only conditions requisite for eligibility, either as elector or deputy; except, indeed, that the citizens in the primary assemblies, and the electors in the electoral assembly, swore that they would maintain liberty and equality, or die rather than violate their oath[^[48]].

The wisdom and prudence of the subsequent alterations, few will be disposed to question: the system, in its present state, appears to me admirably qualified to attain the object in view; and such seems the general character of the French Constitutional Charter, which unites two excellent qualities, great clearness and great brevity. The whole is comprised in seventy-four short articles; and, that no Frenchman may plead ignorance of his rights or his duties, it is usually found prefixed to the almanacks. Some persons might, indeed, be inclined to deem this station as ominous; for, since the revolution began, the frame of the French government has sustained so many alterations, that, considering that several of their constitutions never outlived the current quarter, they may be fairly said to have had a new constitution in each year. How far the Bourbon charter will answer the purpose of serving as the basis of a code of laws for the government of an extensive kingdom, time only can determine. At present, it has the charm of novelty to recommend it; and there are few among us with whom novelty is not a strong attraction. Our friends on this side of the water are greatly belied, if it be not so with them.

The finances of the French municipalities are administered with a degree of fairness and attention, which might put many a body corporate, in a certain island, to the blush. Little is known in England respecting the administration of the French towns: the following particulars relating to the revenue and expences of Rouen, may, therefore, in some measure, serve as a scale, by which you may give a guess at the balance-sheet of cities of greater or lesser magnitude.—The budget amounted for the last year to one million two hundred thousand francs. The proposed items of expenditure must be particularized, and submitted to the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior, before they can be paid. In this sum is comprised the charge for the hospitals, which contain above three thousand persons, including foundlings, and for all the other public institutions, the number and excellence of which has long been the pride of Rouen. You must consider too, that every thing of this kind is, in France, national: individuals do nothing, neither is it expected of them; and herein consists one of the most essential differences between France and England. To meet this great expenditure, the city is provided with the rents of public lands, with wharfage, with tolls from the markets and the halles; and, above all, with the octroi, a tax that prevails through France, upon every article of consumption brought into the towns, and is collected at the barriers. The octroi, like turnpike-tolls or the post-horse duty with us, is farmed; two-thirds are received by the government, and the remaining one-third by the town. In Rouen it produced the last year one million four hundred and fifty thousand francs.—If, now, this sum appears to you comparatively greater than that of our large cities in England, you must recollect that, with us, towns are not liable to similar charges: our corporations support no museums, no academies, no learned bodies; and our infirmaries, and dispensaries, and hospitals, are indebted, as well for their existence as their future maintenance, to the piety of the dead, or the liberality of the living. Nor must we forget that, even in this great kingdom, Rouen, at present, holds the fifth place among the towns; though it was far from being thus, when Buonaparté, uniting the imperial to the iron crown, overshadowed with his eagle-wings the continent from the Baltic to Apulia; and when the mural crowns of Rome and Amsterdam stood beneath the shield of the "good city" of Paris.