The American in Paris; vol. 1 of 2

by John Sanderson

The foreigners here are full of ill-bodings, and I hear nothing but revolutions in every rustling leap. We shall have our brains knocked out by the mob some one of these days. It rains nothing but Damiens and Ravaillacs, and Jacques Clements, all over town. Every one is prophetic; and I am going, after the general example, to cast the king’s horoscope quietly in my corner, and calculate for you his chances. It will be a pretty thing if I can’t eke out a letter from so important an event, and the only one of any kind that has happened since I have been in Paris.

The main strength of the government is the Chamber of Deputies, which is chosen by less than two hundred thousand electors. It represents, then, not the mass of the people, who are thirty-two millions, but property, which has a natural interest in peace and quietude upon any reasonable terms. Besides, the voters being divided into small electoral colleges, are tangible, and easily bribed by offices and local interests; and the members of the Chamber, also, are allowed to hold other offices, and are very eager to possess them; and if the king does not bind both these parties about his neck, he has less policy than the world gives him credit for. He has, with his ministry, one hundred and fifty thousand of these bribes at his disposal. So, also, has he a large majority of this Chamber in his favour. Freeholders paying less than two hundred francs annual tax are not entitled to a vote. These are murmuring and struggling for an extension of suffrage, but this they do not expect from a change, and are therefore in favour of the present dynasty.

This class, from the great division of property in the Revolution, is by far the most numerous. Not more than fifteen hundred landed proprietors of the kingdom have a revenue above twelve thousand pounds. The king has also his means of popularity with the poorer classes, amongst which I may mention the “Savings Banks,” established on the responsibility of the government; one hundred of these are in Paris alone. They not only encourage the economy, industry, and orderly habits of the lower classes, but bind them by the strongest of all interests to the government. For the active support of this power, there is a national guard of eight hundred thousand men, all proprietors, and having interests to hazard in a revolution. There is an immense regular army of near five hundred thousand men, and disaffection in this body would indeed be dangerous; but who is the master spirit, who can hope, of a force so dispersed, and with a continual change of position and officers, to concert a general plan of revolt? Finally, the chief learning and talent of the nation is on the side of the king.

In his councils you find such men as Thiers, Guizot, Royer Collard, Villemain, Barrante, Keratry, and a number of others of the same caste, who were the main instruments in setting up the present government, and have of course a personal interest in its support.

The elements of the opposition are the liberals in favour of a constitutional monarchy, with an extension of suffrage and other popular rights, unwilling to endure under their present rulers what they resisted under their predecessors; secondly, the republicans, downright enemies of all sorts of monarchy, and in favour of an elective government, as that of the United States; this party is numerous, but without any concentration of strength; and finally, the Carlists, the partisans of the ancient monarchy, and its legitimate sovereigns. These parties all abut against each other, and have scarce a common interest; and I do not see from what quarter any one of them can set up a rival dangerous to the existing authority.

The present king has industry and capacity in a high degree, and he exerts both diligently in improving the condition of the people. He favours agriculture, commerce, and the arts of peace; he thrives by his own wit, as well as by the silliness of his predecessors. New streets and houses are rising up to bless him all over Paris. The nation was dragooned into Louis XVIII. and Charles X. by foreign bayonets; Louis Philippe is its own free choice. He took part also in the Revolution, and cannot be feared as the partisan of anti-revolutionary doctrines; the peasants need not dread under his reign a restitution of the spoils of the nobility. He is also exemplary in private life; he rises early and looks after his business, knocks up his boys and packs them off to school with the other urchins of the city, and thinks there is no royal way to mathematics.

For his pacific policy alone he deserves to go to heaven. It cannot be doubtful, that war is one of the most aggravated miseries that can afflict our wretched human nature this side the grave. For the essential cause of their revolutions and national calamities, the French need not reason beyond a simple statistical view of their wars for the last five centuries. They had, in this period, thirty-five years of civil, and forty of religious wars; and of foreign wars, seventy-six on, and one hundred and seventy-six off, the French territory; and their great battles are one hundred and eighty-four. One does not comprehend why the judgments of heaven should not fall upon a nation which consumes a half nearly of its existence in carrying on offensive wars. And, moreover (a new virtue in a French king), Louis Philippe keeps no left-handed wives—no “Belles Feronières,” no “Gabrielle d’Etrées,” or “Madame Lavallières;” he sticks to his rib of Sicily, with whom he has nine children living, all in a fresh and vigorous health. Why then seek to kill a king recommendable by so many excellent qualities? Attempts at regicide are not always proofs of disloyalty in a nation.

A great number of desperate men, mostly the refuse of the army, have been turned loose upon the community, and these, in disposing of their own worthless lives, seek that of the king, in order to die gloriously upon the Place St. Jaques. I have no doubt that the majority of the nation desire ardently his safety. France has tried alternately the two extremes of human government, or rather misgovernment. She has rushed from an unlimited monarchy to a crazy democracy, and back into a military despotism. She has tilted the vessel on one side, then run to the other, and at length is taking her station in the middle. The general temper of the public mind now favours a moderate government, and this is wisdom bought at so dear a rate, that it would be underrating the common sense of the nation to suppose it will be lightly regarded.

Here is a copy of each of the Paris newspapers. You will see something of the spirit in which they are conducted, and one of the chief engines by which the nation is governed. There is certainly no country in which a newspaper has so great an influence, and none in which the editor is so considerable a man, as in Paris.

The Constitutionnel opposes and defends all parties, and is pleased and displeased with all systems of government. It courts the favour of the “Petite Bourgeoisie,” the shopkeepers, who are always restless and displeased, but their interests require a quiet pursuit of business. This is the most gossiping gazette of them all, and gossips very agreeably.