When, in 1820, the censorship put an end to the Conservateur, I scarcely expected, four years later, to recommence the same polemics under another form and through the medium of another press. The men who fought by my side in the Conservateur, like myself, demanded the restoration of the liberty of the press and the pen; they were in opposition like myself, in disgrace like myself, and they called themselves my friends. On attaining power in 1820, through my labours even more than their own, they turned against the liberty of the press: the persecuted became persecutors; they ceased to be and to call themselves my friends; they maintained that the license of the press had begun only on the 6th of June 1824, the day of my dismissal from office; their memory was short: had they re-read the opinions which they pronounced, the articles which they wrote against another ministry and in favour of the liberty of the press, they would have been obliged to acknowledge that they, at least in 1818 or 1819, were the submanagers of license.
On the other hand, my former adversaries were drawing closer to me. I tried to connect the partisans of independence with the Legitimate Royalty, with more success than when I rallied the servants of the throne and the altar to the Charter. My public had changed. I was obliged to warn the Government of the dangers of absolutism, after having cautioned it against popular enthusiasm. Accustomed as I was to respect my readers, I did not give them a line which I had not written with all the care of which I was capable: many of those opuscules of a day have cost me more pains, in proportion, than the longest works that have come from my pen. My life was incredibly full. Honour and my country recalled me to the battle-field. I had reached an age at which men have need of rest; but, if I had judged my years by the ever-increasing hatred with which oppression and meanness inspired me, I might have believed myself restored to youth.
I collected a society of writers around me to give uniformity to my combats. Among them were peers, deputies, magistrates, young authors commencing their career. To my house came Messieurs de Montalivet[263], Salvandy[264], Duvergier de Hauranne[265], many others who were my pupils and who retail to-day, as new things under the Representative Monarchy, things which I taught them and which occur on every page of my writings. M. de Montalivet has become Minister of the Interior and a favourite of Philip's; men who care to follow the variations of a destiny will find this note rather curious:
"Monsieur le vicomte,
"I have the honour to send you the statement of the mistakes which I found in the table of judgments of the Royal Court that has been communicated to you. I have verified them again, and I think I may answer for the correctness of the list enclosed.
"Pray, monsieur le vicomte, accept the homage of the profound respect with which I have the honour to be,
"Your very devoted colleague and sincere admirer,
"Montalivet."
This did not prevent my "respectful colleague and sincere admirer," M. le Comte de Montalivet, in his day so great a partisan of the liberty of the press, from making me, as an abettor of that liberty, enter M. Gisquet's[266] prison.
An abstract of my new war of polemics, which lasted five years but ended by triumphing, will prove the strength of ideas against facts even when supported by the power. I was thrown on the 6th of June 1824; on the 21st, I had descended into the arena; I remained there till the 18th of December 1826[267]: I entered alone, stripped and bare, and I emerged victorious. I am making history here in making an extract from the arguments which I employed.
My polemical warfare.
"We have had the courage and the honour to wage a dangerous war in presence of the liberty of the press, and it was the first time that this noble spectacle was given to the monarchy. We soon repented of our honesty. We had set the newspapers at naught when they could injure only the success of our soldiers and our captains; it became necessary to reduce them to servitude when they dared to speak of the clerks and ministers....
"If those who administer the State seem completely ignorant of the genius of France in serious matters, they are no less foreign to it in those graceful and ornamental matters which are mingled with and beautify the life of civilized nations.
"The bounties which the Legitimate Government lavishes upon the arts surpass the aids awarded to them by the Usurping Government; but how are they dispensed? Vowed by nature and taste to oblivion, the distributors of those bounties seem to have an antipathy to renown; so invincible is their obscurity that, when they approach lights, they make them turn pale; one would say that they pour money on the arts to extinguish them, as on our liberties to stifle them...[268]
"If even the narrow mechanism within which France is pinched resembled those finished models which one examines through the magnifying-glass in the collector's cabinet, the delicacy of that curiosity might interest one for a moment; but not at all: it is a small thing badly constructed.
"We have said that the system followed nowadays by the administration offends against the genius of France: we will try to prove that it also disregards the spirit of our institutions.
"The Monarchy has been restored in France without effort, because it has the strength of our whole history, because the crown is worn by a family which has almost seen the nation born, which has formed it, civilized it, which has given it all its liberties, which has made it immortal; but time has reduced that monarchy to its realities. The age of fictions in politics is past: one can no longer have a government of adoration, of cult and of mystery; each one knows his rights; nothing is possible without the limits of reason; and, down to favour, the last illusion of absolute monarchies, everything is weighed, everything valued to-day.
"Let us make no mistake; a new era is commencing for the nations; will it be a happier one? Providence knows. As for us, it is given to us only to prepare ourselves for the exigencies of the future. Let us not imagine that we can go back: our only safety lies in the Charter.
"The Constitutional Monarchy was not born among us of a written system, even though it has a printed Code; it is the daughter of time and of events, like the Old Monarchy of our fathers.
"Why should not liberty maintain herself in the edifice raised by despotism and filled with its traces? Victory, still so to speak decked with the three colours, has taken refuge in the tent of the Duc d'Angoulême; the Legitimacy inhabits the Louvre, even though the eagles be still seen there.
"In a constitutional monarchy, the public liberties are respected; they are considered as the safeguard of the Sovereign, the people and the laws.
"We understand representative government otherwise. A company is being formed (they say even two rival companies, for competition is needful) to corrupt the newspapers with bribes of money. They are not afraid to maintain scandalous prosecutions against proprietors who have refused to sell themselves; they would like to force them to be stigmatized by the sentence of the tribunals. This trade being repugnant to men of honour, they enlist, to support a Royalist ministry, libellers who have persecuted the Royal Family with their calumnies. They recruit all who served in the former police and in the imperial ante-chamber, even as our neighbours, when they wish to procure sailors, send the press-gang into the taverns and disorderly houses. Those convict-crews of free writers are embarked on five or six bought newspapers, and what they say is called 'public opinion' at the Ministers[269]'."
*
There, very greatly abridged, and still perhaps at too great length, is a specimen of my polemical warfare in my pamphlets and in the Journal des Débats: in it will be found all the principles that are being proclaimed to-day.