Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Time, Volume 1

by François Guizot

In 1820, we were far from this free and impartial appreciation of our political history and the causes of our disasters. Re-engaged for five years in the track of the old rivalries of classes and the recent struggles of revolution, we were entirely occupied with the troubles and dangers of the moment, and anxious to conquer, without bestowing much thought on the price or future embarrassments of victory. I upheld with enthusiasm the cause of the new society, such as the Revolution had made it, holding equality in the eye of the law as the first principle, and the middle classes as the fundamental element. I elevated this cause, already so great, by carrying it back to the past, and by discovering its interests and vicissitudes in the entire series of our history. I have no desire to palliate my thoughts or words. "For more than thirteen centuries," I said, "France has comprised two races, the victors and the vanquished. For more than thirteen centuries, the beaten race has struggled to throw off the yoke of its conquerors. Our history is the history of this contest. In our own days, a decisive battle has been fought. That battle is called the Revolution.... The result was not doubtful. Victory declared for those who had been so long subdued. In turn they conquered France, and in 1814 were in possession beyond dispute. The Charter acknowledged this fact, proclaimed that it was founded on right, and guaranteed that right by the pledge of representative government. The King, by this single act, established himself as the chief of the new conquerors. He placed himself in their ranks and at their head, engaging himself to defend with them, and for them, the conquests of the Revolution, which were theirs. The Charter implied such an engagement, beyond all question; for war was on the point of recommencing. It was easy to foresee that the vanquished party would not tamely submit to their defeat. Not that it reduced them to the condition to which they had formerly humiliated their adversaries; they found rights, if they lost privileges, and, while falling from high supremacy, might repose on equality; but great masses of men will not thus abdicate human weakness, and their reason ever remains far in the rear of their necessity. All that preserved or restored to the ancient possessors of privilege a gleam of hope, urged and tempted them to grasp it. The Restoration could not fail to produce this effect. The fall of privilege had entrained the subversion of the throne; it might be hoped that the throne would restore privilege with its own re-establishment. How was it possible not to cherish this hope? Revolutionary France held it in dread. But even if the events of 1814 had not effected the Restoration, if the Charter had been given to us from another source and by a different dynasty, the mere establishment of the representative system, the simple return to liberty, would have sufficed to inflame and rouse up once more to combat the old race, the privileged orders. They exist amongst us; they live, speak, circulate, act, and influence from one end of France to the other. Decimated and scattered by the Convention, seduced and kept under by Napoleon, as soon as terror and despotism cease (and neither are durable) they re-appear, resume position, and labour to recover all that they have lost.... We have conquered the old system, we shall always conquer it; but for a long time still we shall have to combat with it. Whoever wishes to see constitutional order established in France, free elections, independent Chambers, a tribune, liberty of the press, and all other public liberties, must abandon the idea that, in this perpetual and animated manifestation of all society, the counter-revolution can remain mute and inactive."

At the very moment when I recapitulated, in terms so positive and forcible, the situation in which the Revolution, the Restoration, and the Charter had placed France, I foresaw that my words and ideas might be perverted to the advantage of revolutionary passions; and to confine them within their just interpretation, I hastened to add, "In saying that, since the origin of our monarchy, the struggle between two races has agitated France, and that the Revolution has been merely the triumph of new conquerors over the ancient possessors of power and territory, I have not sought to establish any historical filiation, or to maintain that the double fact of conquest and servitude was perpetual, constant, and identical through all ages. Such an assertion would be evidently falsified by realities. During this long progression of time, the victors and the vanquished, the possessors and the possessions—the two races, in fact—have become connected, displaced, and confounded; in their existence and relations they have undergone innumerable vicissitudes. Justice, the total absence of which would speedily annihilate all society, has introduced itself into the effects of power. It has protected the weak, restrained the strong, regulated their intercourse, and has progressively substituted order for violence, and equality for oppression. It has rendered France, in fact, such as the world has seen her, with her immeasurable glory and her intervals of repose. But it is not the less true that throughout thirteen centuries, by the result of conquest and feudalism, France has always retained two positions, two social classes, profoundly distinct and unequal, which have never become amalgamated or placed in a condition of mutual understanding and harmony; which have never ceased to combat, the one to conquer right, the other to retain privilege. In this our history is comprised; and in this sense I have spoken of two races, victors and vanquished, friends and enemies; and of the war, sometimes open and sanguinary, at others internal and purely political, which these two conflicting interests have mutually waged against each other."

On reading over these pages at the present day, and my entire work of 1820, I retain the impression, which I still desire to establish. On examining things closely and by themselves, as an historian and philosopher, I scarcely find any passage to alter. I continue to think that the general ideas therein expressed are just, the great social facts properly estimated, the political personages well understood and drawn with fidelity. As an incidental polemic, the work is too positive and harsh; I do not sufficiently consider difficulties and clouds; I condemn situations and parties too strongly; I require too much from men; I have too little temperance, foresight, and patience. At that time I was too exclusively possessed by the spirit of opposition.

Even then I suspected this myself; and perhaps the success I obtained inspired the doubt. I am not naturally disposed to opposition; and the more I have advanced in life, the more I have become convinced that it is a part too easy and too dangerous. Success demands but little merit, while considerable virtue is requisite to resist the external and innate attractions. In 1820, I had as yet only filled an indirect and secondary position under the Government; nevertheless I fully understood the difficulty of governing, and felt a degree of repugnance in adding to it by attacking those to whom power was delegated. Another conviction began also from that time to impress itself upon me. In modern society, when liberty is displayed, the strife becomes too unequal between the party that governs and those who criticize Government. With the one rests all the burden and unlimited responsibility; nothing is looked over or forgiven: with the others there is perfect liberty and no responsibility; everything that they say or do is accepted and tolerated. Such is the public disposition, at least in France as soon as we become free. At a later period, and when in office, I endured the weight of this myself; but I may acknowledge without any personal reluctance, that while in Opposition I first perceived the unjust and injurious tendency of this feeling.

By instinct, rather than from any reflective or calculated intention, I conceived the desire, as soon as I had committed an act of declared hostility, of demonstrating what spirit of government was not foreign to my own views. Many sensible men inclined to think that from the representative system, in France at least, and in the state in which the Revolution had left us, no sound plan could emanate, and that our ardent longings for free institutions were only calculated to enervate power and promote anarchy. The Revolutionary and Imperial eras had naturally bequeathed this idea; France had only become acquainted with political liberty by revolutions, and with order by despotism; harmony between them appeared to be a chimera. I undertook to prove, not only that this chimera of great minds might become a reality, but that the realization depended upon ourselves; for the system founded by the Charter alone contained, for us, the essential means of regular government and of effective opposition, which the sincere friends of power and liberty could desire. My work, entitled, 'On the Means of Government and Opposition in the Actual State of France,' was entirely dedicated to this object.

In that treatise I entered into no general or theoretic exposition of policy, the idea of which I expressly repudiated. "Perhaps," I said, in my preface, "I may on some future occasion discuss more general questions of predominant interest in regard to the nature and principles of constitutional government, although their solution has nothing to do with existing politics, with the events and actors of the moment. I wish now to speak only of power as it is, and of the best method of governing our great and beautiful country." Entirely a novice and doctrinarian as I then was, I forgot that the same maxims and arts of government must be equally good everywhere, and that all nations and ages are, at the same moment, cast in a similar mould. I confined myself sedulously to my own time and country, endeavouring to show what effective means of government were included in the true principles and regular exercise of the institutions which France held from the Charter, and how they might be successfully put in practice for the legitimate advantage and strengthening of power. With respect to the means of opposition, I followed the same line of argument, convinced myself, and anxious to persuade the adversaries of the then dominant policy, that authority might be controlled without destroying it, and that the rights of liberty might be exercised without shaking the foundations of established order. It was my strong desire and prepossession to elevate the political arena above the revolutionary track, and to imbue the heart of the constitutional system with ideas of strong and legal conservatism.

Thirty-six years have since rolled on. During this long interval I participated, for eighteen of those years, in the efforts of my generation for the establishment of a free government. For some time I sustained the weight of this labour. That government has been overthrown. Thus I have myself experienced the immense difficulty, and endured the painful failure, of this great enterprise. Nevertheless, and I say it without sceptical hesitation or affected modesty, I read over again today what I wrote in 1821, upon the means of government and opposition in the actual state of France, with almost unmingled satisfaction. I required much from power, but nothing, I believe, that was not both capable and necessary of accomplishment. And notwithstanding my young confidence, I remembered, even then, that other conditions were essential to success. "I have no intention," I wrote, "to impute everything to, and demand everything from, power itself. I shall not say to it, as has often been said, 'Be just, wise, firm, and fear nothing;' power is not free to exercise this inherent and individual excellence. It does not make society, it finds it; and if society is impotent to second power, if the spirit of anarchy prevails, if the causes of dissolution exist in its own bosom, power will operate in vain; it is not given to human wisdom to rescue a people who refuse to co-operate in their own safety."

When I published these two attacks upon the attitude and tendencies of the Cabinet, conspiracies and political prosecutions burst forth from day to day, and entailed their tragical consequences. I have already said what I thought on the plots of that epoch, and why I considered them as ill based, as badly conducted, without legitimate motives or effectual means. But while I condemned them, I respected the sincere and courageous devotion of so many men, the greater part of whom were very young, and who, though mistaken, lavished the treasures of their minds and lives upon a cause which they believed to be just. Amongst the trials of our time, I scarcely recognize any more painful than that of these conflicting feelings, these perplexities between esteem and censure, condemnation and sympathy, which I have so often been compelled to bestow on the acts of so many of my contemporaries. I love harmony and light in the human soul as well as in human associations; and we live in an epoch of confusion and obscurity, moral as well as social.

How many men have I known, who, gifted with noble qualities, would in other times have led just and simple lives, but who, in our days, confounded in the problems and shadows of their own thoughts, have become ambitious, turbulent, and fanatical, not knowing either how to attain their object or how to continue in repose!

In 1820, although still young myself, I lamented this agitation of minds and destinies, almost as sad to contemplate as fatal to be engaged in; but while deploring it, I was divided between severe judgment and lenient emotion, and, without seeking to disarm power in its legitimate defence, I felt a deep anxiety to inspire it with generous and prudent equity towards such adversaries.