The liberty of the press, that stormy guarantee of modern civilization, has already been, is, and will continue to be the roughest trial of free governments, and consequently of free people, who are greatly compromised in the struggles of their rulers; for in the event of defeat, they have no alternative but anarchy or tyranny. Free nations and governments have but one honourable and effective method of dealing with the liberty of the press,—to adopt it frankly, without undue complaisance. Let them not make it a martyr or an idol, but leave it in its proper place, without elevating it beyond its natural rank. The liberty of the press is neither a power in the State, nor the representative of the public mind, nor the supreme judge of the executive authorities; it is simply the right of all citizens to give their opinions upon public affairs and the conduct of Government,—a powerful and respectable privilege, but one naturally overbearing, and which, to be made salutary, requires that the constituted authorities should never humiliate themselves before it, and that they should impose on it that serious and constant responsibility which ought to weigh upon all rights, to prevent them from becoming at first seditious, and afterwards tyrannical.
The third measure of importance in which I was concerned at this epoch, the reform of the general system of public instruction, by a Royal ordinance of the 17th of February, 1815, created much less sensation than the Law of the Press, and produced even less effect than noise; for its execution was entirely suspended by the catastrophe of the 20th of March, and not resumed after the Hundred Days. There were more important matters then under consideration. This measure was what is now called the de-centralization of the University.[6] Seventeen separate Universities, established in the principal cities of the kingdom, were to be substituted for the one general University of the Empire. Each of these local colleges was to have a complete and separate organization, both as regarded the different degrees of instruction and the various scholastic establishments within its jurisdiction. Over the seventeen Universities a Royal Council and a great Normal School were appointed, one to superintend the general course of public teaching, and the other to train up for professors the chosen scholars who had prepared themselves for that career, and who were to be supplied from the local Universities. There were two motives for this reform. The first was a desire to establish, in the departments, and quite independent of Paris, leading centres of learning and intellectual activity; the second, a wish to abolish the absolute power which, in the Imperial University, held sole control over the establishments and the masters, and to bring the former under a closer and more immediate authority, by giving the latter more permanence, dignity, and independence in their respective positions. These were sound ideas, to carry out which the decree of the 17th of February, 1815, was but a timid rather than an extended and powerful application. The local Universities were too numerous. France does not supply seventeen natural centres of high learning. Four or five would have sufficed, and more could not have been rendered successful or productive. The forgotten reform which I am here recalling had yet another fault. It was introduced too soon, and was the result, at once systematic and incomplete, of the meditations of certain men long impressed with the deficiencies of the University system, and not really the fruit of public impulse and opinion. Another influence also appeared in it, that of the clergy, who silently commenced at that time their struggle with the University, and adroitly looked for the extension of their personal power in the progress of general liberty. The decree of the 17th of February, 1815, opened this arena, which has since been so fiercely agitated. The Abbé de Montesquiou hastened to bestow on the clergy an early gratification, that of seeing one of their most justly esteemed members, M. de Beausset, formerly Bishop of Alais, at the head of the Royal Council. The Liberals of the University gladly seized this occasion of increasing their action and independence; and the King, Louis XVIII., voluntarily charged his civil list with an additional million for the immediate abolition of the University tax, until a new law, contained in the preamble of the decree, should come into operation to complete the reform, and provide from the public funds for all the requirements of the new system.
It becomes my duty here to express my regret for an error which I ought to have endeavoured more urgently to prevent. In this reform, the opinion and situation of M. de Fontanes were not sufficiently estimated. As head of the Imperial University, he had rendered such eminent services to public instruction, that the title of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour was far from being a sufficient compensation for the retirement which the new system rendered, in his case, desirable and almost necessary.
But neither reform in public education, nor any other reform, excited much interest at that moment, when France was entirely given up to different considerations. Having scarcely entered on the new system, a sudden impression of alarm and mistrust began to rise and expand from day to day. This system was liberty, with its uncertainties, its contests, and its perils. No one was accustomed to liberty, and liberty contented no one. From the Restoration, the men of old France promised themselves the ascendency; from the Charter, new France expected security. Both were dissatisfied. They found themselves drawn up in presence of each other, with their opposing passions and pretensions. It was a sad disappointment for the Royalists to find the King victorious without their being included in the triumph; and it was a bitter necessity which reduced the men of the Revolution to the defensive after they had so long domineered. Both parties felt surprised and irritated at their position, as equally an insult to their dignity and an attack upon their rights. In their irritation, they gave themselves up, in words and projects, to all the fantasies and transports of their wishes and apprehensions. Amongst the rich and powerful of the old classes, many indulged, towards the influential members of the new, in menaces and insults. At the Court, in the drawing-rooms of Paris, and much more in the provinces, by newspapers, pamphlets, and conversation, and in the daily conduct of their private lives, the nobles and the citizens, the clergy and the laity, the emigrants and the purchasers of national property, allowed their animosities, their ill humour, their dreams of hope and fear, to exhibit themselves without disguise. This was nothing more than the natural and inevitable consequence of the extreme novelty of the system which the Charter, seriously interpreted and exercised, had suddenly introduced into France. During the Revolution there was contest; under the Empire silence; but the Restoration introduced liberty into the bosom of peace. In the general inexperience and susceptibility, the excitement and stir of freedom amounted to civil war on the eve of re-commencement.
To meet the difficulties of such a state of things, to preserve at the same time liberty and peace, to cure the wounds without restraining the blows, no Government could have been too strong or too able. Louis XVIII. and his advisers were unequal to the task. With regard to a liberal system, they were neither more experienced nor inured than France herself. Their acts appeared to be regulated by no steady conviction: they believed that the Charter would check the birth of discontent; but when discontent manifested itself rather vehemently, they hastened to calm it down by abandoning or modifying the measures through which it had been excited. The celebrated rescript of Count Beugnot,[7] on the observance of Sundays and religious festivals, ended in an abortive law which never came into operation. The offensive expressions of Count Ferrand, on introducing to the Chamber of Deputies the bill for the restitution of unsold estates to their old proprietors,[8] was loudly disavowed, not only in the speeches, but in the resolutions and conduct of the Government in that matter. In reality, the interests which imagined themselves threatened were in no danger whatever; and in the midst of the alarms and remonstrances of France, the King and his principal ministers were much more inclined to yield than to contend. But having performed this act of constitutional wisdom, they believed themselves emancipated from all care, and relapsed back into their old tastes and habits, desirous also to live in peace with their ancient and familiar friends. It was indeed but a modified power, which attached importance to its oaths, and conceived no formidable designs against the new rights and interests of the country; but it was also an authority without leading vigour, isolated and a stranger in its own kingdom, divided and embarrassed within itself, weak with its enemies, weak with its friends, seeking only for personal security in repose, and called upon hourly to deal with a stubborn and restless people, who had suddenly passed from the rugged shocks of revolution and war to the difficult exercise of liberty.
Under the prolonged influence of this liberty, such a Government, without obstinate prejudices, and disposed to follow public opinion when clearly expressed, might have corrected while strengthening itself, and from day to day have become more competent to its task. But this required time and the concurrence of the country. The country, discontented and unsettled, neither knew how to wait nor assist. Of all the knowledge necessary to a free people, the most essential point is to learn how to bear what displeases them, that they may preserve the advantages they possess, and acquire those they desire.
There has been much discussion as to what plots and conspirators overthrew the Bourbons, and brought back Napoleon, on the 20th of March, 1815,—a question of inferior importance, and interesting only as an historical curiosity. It is certain that from 1814 to 1815 there existed in the army and with the remnants of the Revolution, amongst generals and conventionalists, many plans and secret practices against the Restoration, and in favour of a new Government,—either the Empire, a regency, the Duke of Orleans, or a republic. Marshal Davoust promised his support to the Imperial party, and Fouché offered his to all. But if Napoleon had remained motionless at the island of Elba, these revolutionary projects would, in all probability, have successively failed, as did those of the Generals d'Erlon, Lallemand, and Lefèvre Desnouettes, even so late as the month of March. The fatuity of the contrivers of conspiracy is incalculable; and when the event seems to justify them, they attribute to themselves the result which has been achieved by mightier and much more complicated causes than their machinations. It was Napoleon alone who dethroned the Bourbons in 1815, by calling up, in his own person, the fanatical devotion of the army, and the revolutionary instincts of the popular masses.
However tottering might be the monarchy lately restored, it required that great man and a combination of these great social powers to subvert it. Stupefied and intimidated, France left events to their course, without opposition or confidence. Napoleon adopted this opinion, with his admirable penetration:—"They allowed me to arrive," he said to Count Mollien, "as they permitted the others to depart."
Four times in less than half a century we have seen kings traverse their realms as fugitives. Different enemies have described, with evident pleasure, their helplessness and destitution in flight,—a mean and senseless gratification, which no one, in the present day, has a right to indulge. The retreats of Napoleon in 1814 and 1815 were neither more brilliant nor less bitter than those of Louis XVIII. on the 20th of March, 1815, of Charles X. in 1830, and of Louis Philippe in 1848. Each state of greatness endured the same degradation; every party has the same need of modesty and mutual respect. I myself, as much as any participator, was impressed, on the 20th of March, 1815, with the blindness, the hesitation, the imbecility, the misery of every description, to which that terrible explosion gave birth. It would afford me no pleasure, and would lead to no advantage, to repeat them. People are too much inclined at present to conceal their own weaknesses under a display of the deficiencies of royalty. I prefer recording that neither royal nor national dignity were wanting at that epoch in noble representatives. The Duchess d'Angoulême, at Bordeaux, evinced courage equal to her misfortunes, and M. Lainé, as president of the Chamber of Deputies, protested fearlessly on the 28th of March, in the name of justice and liberty, against the event at that time fully accomplished, and which no longer encountered, through the wide extent of France, any resistance beyond the solitary accents of his voice.