This war was suspended by the Emperor Napoleon. He rallied around him the classes which had formerly possessed, and those which actually enjoyed, power and influence; and by the security which he offered them, by the continual turmoil in which he kept them, or by the yoke which he imposed upon them, he established and maintained peace.
After him, from 1814 to 1830, and from 1830 to 1848, this war was renewed. A great progress had been made. Liberty had become real. Both the ancient aristocratic, and the modern democratic elements acquired strength; but though neither could succeed in suppressing the other, each was impatient of its adversary’s existence, and eagerly strove for the mastery.
And now a third combatant has entered the arena. The democratic party having divided itself into two conflicting sections, the workmen are now arrayed against their masters, or the people against the middle classes. This new war, like the former, is a war to the death; for the new aspirant is as arrogant and exclusive as the others can have ever been. The sovereignty, it is said, belongs of right to the people only; and no rival, ancient or modern, noble or bourgeois, can be admitted to share it.
Every pretension of this kind must be withdrawn, not by one only, but by all of the contending parties. The great elements of society among us—the old aristocracy, the middle classes, and the people—must completely renounce the hope of excluding and annihilating each other. Let them vie with each other in influence; let each maintain its position and its rights, or even endeavour to extend and improve them, for in such efforts consists the political life of a country. But there must be an end of all radical hostility: they must resign themselves to live together, side by side, in the ranks of the government as well as in civil society. This is the first condition of social peace. How, it may be asked, can this condition be satisfied? How can the different elements of our society be brought to tolerate each other’s existence, and to fulfil their several functions in the government of the country?
I reply, by such an organization of that government as may assign to each its place and functions; may concede something to the wishes, while it imposes limits to the ambition, of all.
I am here met by an idea, perhaps the most false and fatal of all those current in our days on the subject of constitutional organization. It is this:—“National unity involves political unity. There is but one people: there can exist at the head and in the name of this people, but one power.”
This is the idea which most completely characterizes both revolution and despotism. The Convention and Louis XIV. exclaimed alike, “L’Etat, c’est moi.”
It is as false as it is tyrannical. A nation is not a vast aggregate of men, consisting of so many thousands or millions, occupying a certain extent of ground, and concentrated in, and represented by, a unit, called king or assembly. A nation is a great organic body, formed by the union within one country of certain social elements which assume the shape and constitution naturally impressed upon them by the primitive laws of God and the free acts of man. The diversity of these elements is, as we have just seen, one of the essential facts resulting from those laws; and is absolutely inconsistent with the false and tyrannous unity which it is proposed to establish at the centre of government, as representative of that society in which it never exists.
What then, it is said, must all the elements of society, all the groups of which it is naturally composed, all the various classes, professions, and opinions it contains, be represented in the government by powers corresponding to each?
No, certainly: society is not a federation of professions, classes, and opinions, which treat, by their several delegates, of the affairs which are common to them all; any more than it is a uniform mass of exactly similar elements, which send their representatives to the centre of government only because they cannot all repair thither themselves, and are compelled to reduce themselves to a number which can meet in one place and deliberate in common. Social unity requires that there should be but one government; but the diversity of the social elements equally requires that this government should not be one sole power.