The first article in the Conservateur[42] describes the position of things at the moment when I entered the lists. During the two years for which the paper lasted, I had successively to treat of accidents of the day and to examine interests of importance. I had occasion to criticize the dastardliness of that "private correspondence" which the Paris police was publishing in London. This "private correspondence" might calumniate, but could not dishonour: that which is base has not the power of debasing; honour alone is able to inflict dishonour.
"Anonymous calumniators," I said, "have the courage to say who you are; a little shame is soon over; add your names to your articles: it will be only one contemptible word the more."
I used sometimes to laugh at the ministers, and I gave vent to that ironical propensity which I have always reproved in myself.
Finally, under date 5 December 1818, the Conservateur contained a serious article on the morality of interests and on that of duty: it was this article, which made a stir, that gave birth to the phrase of "moral interests" and "material interests," first put forward by me, and subsequently adopted by everybody. Here it is, much abridged; it rises above the compass of a newspaper, and it is one of my works to which my reason attaches some value. It has not aged, because the ideas which it contains are of all time:
"The ministry has invented a new morality, the morality of interests; that of duties is abandoned to fools. Now this morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a quarter of a century.
"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but seduction; and by seduction I mean all that is flattering and specious in any false doctrine. Men often mistake error for truth, because each faculty of the heart or the mind has its false image: coldness resembles virtue, reasoning resembles reason, emptiness resembles depth, and so on.
"The eighteenth century was a destructive century; we were all seduced. We distorted politics, we strayed into guilty innovations while seeking a social existence in the corruption of our morals. The Revolution came to rouse us: in pushing the Frenchman out of his bed, it flung him into the tomb. Nevertheless, the Reign of Terror is, perhaps, of all the epochs of the Revolution, that which was least dangerous to morality, because no conscience was forced: crime appeared in all its frankness. Orgies in the midst of blood, scandals that ceased to be so by dint of being horrible: that is all. The women of the people came and worked at their knitting round the murder-machine as round their fire-sides: the scaffolds were the public morals and death the foundation of the government. Nothing was clearer than the position of every one: there was no talk of 'speciality,' nor of 'practicality,' nor of a 'system of interests.' That balderdash of little minds and bad consciences was unknown. They said to a man, 'You are a Royalist, a nobleman, rich: die;' and he died. Antonelle[43] wrote that no count had been found against certain prisoners, but that he had condemned them as aristocrats: a monstrous frankness, which, notwithstanding, allowed moral order to subsist; for society is not ruined by killing the innocent as innocent, but by killing him as guilty.
"Consequently, those hideous times are times of great acts of self-devotion. Then women went heroically to the scaffold; fathers gave themselves up for their sons, sons for their fathers; unexpected assistance was introduced into the prisons, and the priest who was being hunted consoled the victim by the side of the executioner who failed to recognise him.
On moral interests.
"Morality, under the Directory, had to combat the corruption of morals rather than of doctrines; license prevailed. Men were hurled into pleasures as they had been heaped up in the prisons; they forced the present to advance joys on the future, in the fear of seeing a revival of the past. Every man, not having yet had time to create himself a home, lived in the street, on the public walks, in the public rooms. Familiarized with the scaffolds, and already half cut off from the world, they did not think it worth the trouble to go indoors. There was question only of arts, balls, fashions; people changed their ornaments and clothes as readily as they would have stripped themselves of their lives.
"Under Bonaparte the seduction commenced again, but it was a seduction that carried its own remedy: Bonaparte seduced by means of the spell of glory, and all that is great carries a principle of legislation within itself. He conceived that it was useful to allow the doctrine of all peoples to be taught, the morality of all times, the religion of eternity.
"I should not be surprised to hear some one reply:
"'To base society upon a duty, is to build it on a fiction; to place it in an interest, is to establish it in a reality.'
"Now it is precisely duty which is a fact and interest a fiction. Duty, which takes its source in the Godhead, descends first into the family, where it establishes a real affinity between the father and the children; from there, passing into society and dividing into two branches, in the political order it rules the relations of the king and the subject; in the moral order it establishes the tie of service and protection, of benefits and gratitude.
"Duty is therefore a most positive fact, since it gives to human society the only lasting existence that the latter can have.
"Interest, on the contrary, is a fiction when it is taken as people take it to-day, in its physical and rigorous sense, since it is no longer in the evening what it was in the morning; since it changes its nature at each moment; since, founded on fortune, it has fortune's fickleness.
"By the morality of interest, every citizen is at enmity with the laws and the government, because in society it is always the great number that suffers. People do not fight for abstract ideas of order, of place, of the mother-land; or, if they fight for them, it is because they attach ideas of sacrifice to them; then they emerge from the morality of interest to enter into that of duty: so true is it that the existence of society is not to be found outside that sacred limit.
"He who does his duty gains esteem; he who yields to his interest is but little esteemed: it was very like the century to draw a principle of government from a source of contempt! Bring up politicians to think only of what affects them, and you shall see how they will dress out the State; by that means you will have only corrupt and hungry ministers, like those mutilated slaves who governed the Lower Empire and who sold all, remembering that they themselves had been sold.
"Mark this: interests are powerful only so long as they prosper; when times are harsh, they become enfeebled. Duties, on the contrary, are never so energetic as when they are painful to fulfil. When times are good, they grow lax. I like a principle of government which grows great in misfortune: that greatly resembles virtue.
"What can be absurder than to cry to the people:
"'Do not be devoted! Have no enthusiasm! Think only of your interests!'
"It is as though one were to say to them:
"'Do not come to our assistance, abandon us if such be your interest.'
"With this profound policy, when the hour of devotion shall have come, each one will shut his door, go to the window, and watch the Monarchy pass[44]."
*
Such was this article on the morality of interest and the morality of duty.
On the 3rd of December 1819, I again mounted the tribune of the Chamber of Peers: I raised my voice against the bad Frenchmen who were able to give us as a motive for tranquillity the watchfulness of the European armies:
"Had we need of guardians? Were they still going to talk of circumstances? Were we again, by means of diplomatic notes, to receive certificates of good conduct? And should we not only have changed a garrison of Cossacks for a garrison of ambassadors?"
From that time forward, I spoke of the foreigners as I have since spoken of them in the Spanish War; I was thinking of our delivery at a moment when even the Liberals contended with me. Men opposed in opinion make a deal of noise to attain silence! Let a few years arrive, and the actors will descend from the stage and the audience no longer be there to hiss or applaud them.