Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Time, Volume 1

by François Guizot

Violently attacked in 1818, Marshal St. Cyr's recruiting bill has been since that date several times criticised, revised, and modified. Its leading principles have resisted assault, and have survived alteration. It has done more than last, through soundness of principle; it has given, by facts, an astounding denial to its adversaries. It was accused of striking a blow at the monarchy; on the contrary, it has made the army more devotedly monarchical than any that France had ever known,—an army whose fidelity has never been shaken, either in 1830 or 1848, by the influence of popular opinion, or the seduction of a revolutionary crisis. Military sentiment, that spirit of obedience and respect, of discipline and devotion, one of the chief glories of human nature, and the necessary pledge of the honour as of the safety of nations, had been powerfully fomented and developed in France by the great wars of the Revolution and the Empire. It was a precious inheritance of those rough times which have bequeathed to us so many burdens. There was danger of its being lost or enfeebled in the bosom of peaceful inaction, and during endless debates on liberty. It has been firmly maintained in the army which the law of 1818 established and incessantly recruits. This military sentiment is not only preserved; it has become purified and regulated. By the honesty of its promises and the justice of its arrangements in matters of privilege and promotion, the bill of Marshal St. Cyr has imbued the army with a permanent conviction of its rights, of its own legal and individual rights, and, through that feeling, with an instinctive attachment to public order, the common guarantee of all rights. We have witnessed the rare and imposing sight of an army capable of devotion and restraint, ready for sacrifices, and modest in pretension, ambitious of glory, without being athirst for war, proud of its arms, and yet obedient to civil authority. Public habits, the prevailing ideas of the time, and the general character of our civilization have doubtless operated much upon this great result; but the bill of Marshal St. Cyr has had its full part, and I rejoice in recording this honourable distinction, which, amongst so many others, belongs to my old and glorious friend.

The session of 1818, which opened in the midst of a ministerial crisis, had to deal with another question not more important, but even more intricate and dangerous. The Cabinet determined to leave the press no longer under an exceptional and temporary law. M. de Serre, at that time Chancellor, introduced three bills on the same day, which settled definitively the penalty, the method of prosecution, and the qualification for publishing, in respect to the daily papers, while at the same time they liberated them from all censorship.

I am one of those who have been much assisted and fiercely attacked by the press. Throughout my life, I have greatly employed this engine. By placing my ideas publicly before the eyes of my country, I first attracted her attention and esteem. During the progress of my career, I have ever had the press for ally or opponent; and I have never hesitated to employ its weapons, or feared to expose myself to its blows. It is a power which I respect and recognize willingly, rather than compulsorily, but without illusion or idolatry. Whatever may be the form of government, political life is a constant struggle; and it would give me no satisfaction—I will even say more—I should feel ashamed of finding myself opposed to mute and fettered adversaries. The liberty of the press is human nature displaying itself in broad daylight, sometimes under the most attractive, and at others under the most repelling aspect; it is the wholesome air that vivifies, and the tempest that destroys, the expansion and impulsive power of steam in the intellectual system. I have ever advocated a free press; I believe it to be, on the whole, more useful than injurious to public morality; and I look upon it as essential to the proper management of public affairs, and to the security of private interests. But I have witnessed too often and too closely its dangerous aberrations as regards political order, not to feel convinced that this liberty requires the restraint of a strong organization of effective laws and of controlling principles. In 1819, my friends and I clearly foresaw the necessity of these conditions; but we laid little stress upon them, we were unable to bring them all into operation, and we thought, moreover, that the time had arrived when the sincerity as well as the strength of the restored monarchy was to be proved by removing from the press its previous shackles, and in risking the consequences of its enfranchisement.

The greater part of the laws passed with reference to the press, in France or elsewhere, have either been acts of repression, legitimate or illegitimate, against liberty, or triumphs over certain special guarantees of liberty successively won from power, according to the necessity or opportunity of gaining them. The legislative history of the press in England supplies a long series of alternations and arrangements of this class.

The bills of 1819 had a totally different character. They comprised a complete legislation, conceived together and beforehand, conformable with certain general principles, defining in every degree liabilities and penalties, regulating all the conditions as well as the forms of publication, and intended to establish and secure the liberty of the press, while protecting order and power from its licentiousness;—an undertaking very difficult in its nature, as all legislative enactments must be which spring from precaution more than necessity, and in which the legislator is inspired and governed by ideas rather than commanded and directed by facts. Another danger, a moral and concealed danger, also presented itself. Enactments thus prepared and maintained become works of a philosopher and artist, the author of which is tempted to identify himself with them through an impulse of self-love, which sometimes leads him to lose sight of the external circumstances and practical application he ought to have considered. Politics require a certain mixture of indifference and passion, of freedom of thought and restrained will, which is not easily reconciled with a strong adhesion to general ideas, and a sincere intent to hold a just balance between the many principles and interests of society.

I should be unwilling to assert that in the measures proposed and passed in 1819, on the liberty of the press, we had completely avoided these rocks, or that they were in perfect harmony with the state of men's minds, and the exigencies of order at that precise epoch. Nevertheless, after an interval of nearly forty years, and on reconsidering these measures now with my matured judgment, I do not hesitate to look on them as grand and noble efforts of legislation, in which the true points of the subject were skilfully embraced and applied, and which, in spite of the mutilation they were speedily doomed to undergo, established an advance in the liberty of the press, properly understood, which sooner or later cannot fail to extend itself.

The debate on these bills was worthy of their conception. M. de Serre was gifted with eloquence singularly exalted and practical. He supported their general principles in the tone of a magistrate who applies, and not as a philosopher who explains them. His speech was profound without abstraction, highly coloured but not figurative; his reasoning resolved itself into action. He expounded, examined, discussed, attacked, or replied without literary or even oratorical preparation, carrying up the strength of his arguments to the full level of the questions, fertile without exuberance, precise without dryness, impassioned without a shadow of declamation, always ready with a sound answer to his opponents, as powerful on the impulse of the moment as in prepared reflection, and, when once he had surmounted a slight hesitation and slowness at the first onset, pressing on directly to his end with a firm and rapid step, and with the air of a man deeply interested, but careless of personal success, and only anxious to win his cause by communicating to his listeners his own sentiments and convictions.

Different adversaries presented themselves during the debate, from those who had opposed the bills for elections and recruiting the army. The right-hand party attacked the two latter propositions; the left assailed the measures regarding the press. MM. Benjamin Constant, Manuel, Chauvelin, and Bignon, with more parliamentary malice than political judgment, overwhelmed them with objections and amendments slightly mingled with very qualified compliments. Recent elections had lately readmitted into the assembly these leaders of the Liberals in the Chamber of the Hundred Days. They seemed to think of nothing but how to bring once more upon the scene their party, for three years beaten down, and to re-establish their own position as popular orators. Some of the most prominent ideas in the drawing up of these three bills, were but little in conformity with the philosophic and legislative traditions which since 1791 had become current on the subject. They evidently comprised a sincere wish to guarantee liberty, and a strong desire not to disarm power. It was a novel exhibition to see Ministers frankly recognizing the liberty of the press, without offering up incense on its shrine, and assuming that they understood its rights and interests better than its old worshippers. In the opposition of the left-hand party at this period, there was much of routine, a great deal of complaisance for the prejudices and passions of the press attached to their party, and a little angry jealousy of a cabinet which permitted liberal innovation. The public, unacquainted with political factions, were astonished to see bills so vehemently opposed which diminished the penalties in force against the press, referred to a jury all offences of that class, and liberated the journals from the censorship,—measures which in their eyes appeared too confident. The right-hand party held dexterously aloof, rejoicing to see the Ministers at issue with reviving opponents who were likely soon to become their most formidable enemies.

It was during this debate that I ascended the tribune for the first time. M. Cuvier and I had been appointed, as Royal Commissioners, to support the proposed measures,—a false and weak position, which demonstrates the infancy of representative government. We do not argue politics as we plead a cause or maintain a thesis. To act effectively in a deliberative assembly, we must ourselves be deliberators; that is to say, we must be members, and hold our share with others in free thought, power, and responsibility. I believe that I acquitted myself with propriety, but coldly, of the mission I had undertaken. I sustained, against M. Benjamin Constant, the general responsibility for the correctness of the accounts given of the proceedings of the Chambers, and, against M. Daunou, the guarantees required by the bill for the establishment of newspapers. The Chamber appeared to appreciate my arguments, and listened to me with attention. But I kept on the reserve, and seldom joined in the debate; I have no turn for incomplete positions and prescribed parts. When we enter into an arena in which the affairs of a free country are discussed, it is not to make a display of fine thoughts and words; we are bound to engage in the struggle as true and earnest actors.

As the recruiting bill had established a personal and political reputation for Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, so the bills on the press effected the same for M. de Serre. Thus, at the issue of a violent crisis of revolution and war, in presence of armed Europe, and within the short space of three sessions, the three most important questions of a free system—the construction of elective power, the formation of a national army, and the interference of individual opinions in public affairs through the channel of the press—were freely proposed, argued, and resolved; and their solution, whatever might be the opinion of parties, was certainly in harmony with the habits and wishes of that honest and peaceably disposed majority of France who had sincerely received the King and the Charter, and had adopted their government on mature consideration.