Now, on the contrary, we see a party in authority whose desires surpass their designs, and whose designs surpass their power. They would advance, and they do so; but at each step their hope lessens of attaining their end. Instead of being, like the Revolutionists, carried onwards by their momentum rather than their will, they are held back against their will by a force contrary to their momentum. With nothing, or almost nothing active and visible to oppose them, everything around is resistance; everything troubles and delays them—the instruments they employ, the air which surrounds them, the ground which they tread beneath their feet.
Whence arises this anomaly, and what does it reveal to us of the fate of the party? I do not care to busy myself with this question. I merely remark the general fact, and I do so because it has consequences of which I wish to avail myself.
It is in such moments that the truth is good to be told, although it will not be the better received by men to whom it is displeasing, or exercise more power over great events. No party disavows its origin, none acquires that high wisdom which, in changing its nature, would change its whole destiny; even if the progress it is able to make in skill or prudence is not sufficiently extended, or prompt to save them from that definitive fate to which Providence has devoted them. These parties are no more independent than other things of the action of time. Their internal dispositions become modified as well as their situation, and these modifications render them more or less accessible to the influence of truth. When a party is carried away by the general movement of the age, when it becomes the engine of a great social crisis, neither truth nor wisdom has any effect upon its career. It crushes all who oppose it, abandons all who counsel it, and hurries blindly onwards to a goal of which it is ignorant; and it is then that, in the midst of their greatest activity, we see most clearly the weakness of men—the mere tools in working out decrees alike beyond their understanding and their will. But when the social tempest is calmed, and Providence seems to have given up the management of human affairs to ordinary laws, and the contending parties have time to look around them, to study their course, and to measure their strength, we see them resume some reason with their freedom. Instead of the fever which devoured them, a new malady gains upon them, a slow and heavy dissolution, which, without destroying the predominant character or general intentions of the party, gives more independence to individuals, and more authority to wisdom. In the course of the Revolution, the partisans of monarchy detached themselves from the Constituents, the Constituents from the Girondins, and the Girondins from the Jacobins; but the Revolution, far from being stopped or slackened, pursued with even more violence its terrible career; and in proportion as these factions became wiser, they became less powerful.
Who would think now-a-days that any one of the parties into which we are divided could thus deliver itself up to the madness of its wishes and passions, denouncing and trampling whoever refused to cooperate, and that yet it would gain strength every day, and march rapidly towards success? Nothing like this can now be seen. If in these parties there be any one who still hopes to the contrary, he is a dreamer blind to passing events, and who has neither forgotten nor learnt. Whether conquerors or beaten, outs or ins, all parties are constrained to act with wisdom and prudence: the energy of fever will not now suffice for strength; they must rally around their banner all shades of interests or opinions; for they cannot suffer one to fall away without feeling instantly its loss in their own weakness. They must even bend in some measure before their more obstinate adversaries; and this is not a counsel I give, but a fact I observe, and one which in every day more apparent in their conduct.
It is seen clearly in the party now in power, and under two characters: there is a division in the party, and in a contrary direction to that which took place twenty-nine years ago. It is not the most violent, but the most moderate and prudent, who now take the management of its affairs—those who have the best chance of enlisting general interests and floating opinions.
Even these moderates are evidently driven farther than they desire, and perhaps may end in being overturned. But in their case they will not be replaced by the more violent; the party will drag itself from impotence to impotence, just as revolution is precipitated from fury to fury. And after the evil they have caused—the greatest evil in their power—dissolved by their success, as well as weakened by their old reverses, they will be forced to feel that they have undertaken an impossibility, and that no one in the present day is able to bring about a revolution in society.
Things being in this position, it may be advantageous to throw into the midst of parties what appears to me to be the truth. No one is more aware than myself that they will not make it their rule, but it will operate as a dissolvent, insinuating itself into their disorganised constitution. It will not be met by those proud convictions, that blind confidence, that idea of an ardent and insurmountable force, which prevented its access to the revolutionary parties. The party which predominates at the present day is full of doubt and fear; it has faith neither in its own doctrines nor its own destiny. In assuming to be the protector of order, it sometimes tries to appropriate the principles of liberty. Whether it courts them because it feels its own to be decayed, or merely as a mask, is of little consequence; what is certain is, that it is surrounded by obstacles, obliged to adopt the means of government it distrusts, to speak in a language which scandalises a portion of its adherents, to temporise, and to hesitate—and all these things open a way for truth, and give it opportunity as it advances to second the uncertainty, internal feebleness, and moral dissolution by which the party is beset. A simple fact will demonstrate this: in 1791 and 1792 the opposition in its harangues only served to irritate and accelerate the party which accomplished the Revolution. Now the opposition is not less displeasing to the governing party; but it startles it by a word, calms, obliges it to dissemble, and carries confusion into its proceedings and hesitation into its projects. It even enlightens the whole changing mass, insinuates ideas into its bosom, and necessitates a prudence before unthought of, and at which it grumbles and submits. Opposition, then, is not vain; it may have at the present moment few visible or direct effects, but it is at least able to sow, and the future will reap the fruits.
Such are the motives which impel me to write, and I believe them to be sufficient and well-founded.