The deputies of the new Chamber arrived in Paris: of the 221, 202 had been re-elected; the Opposition numbered 270 votes: the Ministry 145; the Crown Party was therefore lost. The natural result would have been the resignation of the Ministry: Charles X. was stubbornly determined to defy everything, and the coup d'État was resolved upon.
Dieppe and back to Paris.
I left for Dieppe at four o'clock in the morning on the 26th of July, the very day on which the Ordinances appeared. I was in fairly good spirits, delighted that I was going to see the sea again, and I was followed, at some distance, by a terrible storm. I supped and slept at Rouen without learning anything, regretting that I was not able to visit Saint-Ouen and kneel before the beautiful Virgin in the Museum, in memory of Raphael and Rome. I arrived at Dieppe the next day, the 27th, at mid-day. I went to the hotel where M. le Comte de Boissy[191], my former secretary of legation, had engaged rooms for me. I dressed and went to call on Madame Récamier. She occupied an apartment whose windows looked out on the sands. I spent a few hours in talking and watching the waves. Suddenly Hyacinthe appeared; he brought me a letter which M. de Boissy had received, telling with great praises of the issue of the Ordinances. A moment later, my old friend Ballanche entered; he had come straight from the diligence and held the newspapers in his hand. I opened the Moniteur and read the official documents, without believing my eyes. One more government which deliberately flung itself from the towers of Notre-Dame! I told Hyacinthe to ask for horses, in order to set out for Paris again. I climbed back into my carriage, at seven o'clock, leaving my friends in anxiety. It is true that, for a month past, people had been murmuring something about a coup d'État, but no one had taken any notice of the rumour, which seemed absurd. Charles X. had lived on the illusions of the Throne: a kind of mirage is formed around princes, and it imposes upon them by displacing the object and making them see chimerical landscapes in the sky.
I took away the Moniteur with me. So soon as it was light, on the 28th, I read, re-read and commented on the Ordinances[192]. The Report to the King which served as a preamble struck me in two ways: the observations on the drawbacks of the press were just; but, at the same time, the author of those observations[193] displayed a complete ignorance of the actual state of society. No doubt ministers, to whatever shade of opinion they have belonged, have, since 1814, been harassed by the newspapers; no doubt the press tends to subdue the Sovereignty, to force the Royalty and the Chambers to obey it; no doubt, during the last days of the Restoration, the press, listening only to the dictates of its own passion, disregarding the interests and the honour of France, attacked the Algerian Expedition, enlarged on the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of failure; it divulged the secrets of our armament, instructed the enemy of the state of our forces, enumerated our troops and vessels, and even indicated the point selected for the disembarkation. Would the Cardinal de Richelieu and Bonaparte have brought Europe to the feet of France, if the mystery of their negociations had been thus revealed in advance, or the halting-places of their armies set forth?
All this is both true and hateful; but the remedy? The press is an element till lately unknown, a force formerly unheard of, now introduced into the world; it is speech in the shape of a thunder-bolt; it is the electricity of society. How can you prevent its existence? The more you aim at compressing it, the more violent the explosion. You must therefore bring yourself to live with it, as you live with the steam-engine. You must learn to use it while making it safe, either by gradually weakening it by common and domestic usage, or by gradually assimilating your manners and laws to the principles which will henceforth govern humanity. One proof of the powerlessness of the press in certain cases is derived from the very reproach which you made against it in regard to the Algerian Expedition: you have taken Algiers, in spite of the liberty of the press, in the same way as I had caused the war with Spain to be waged, in 1823, under the hottest fire of that liberty.
But what is not to be endured in the Report of the ministers is that shameless pretension, namely, that "the King has a power pre-existent to the laws." What, then, is the meaning of constitutions? Why deceive the nations with sham guarantees, if the monarch is able at will to alter the order of established government? And yet the signatories of the Report are so firmly persuaded of what they say that they hardly quote Article XIV.[194] to which I had long been prophesying that "they would confiscate the Charter;" they recall it, but only for memory, and as a superfluity of right of which they had no need.
The Ordinances of July.
The first Ordinance established the suppression of the liberty of the press in all its parts; this is the quintessence of all that had been elaborated during the last fifteen years in the dark closet of the police.
The second Ordinance reforms the law of election. Thus the two first liberties, the liberty of the press and electoral liberty, were torn up by the roots: and that, not by an iniquitous and yet legal act, emanating from a corrupt legislative power, but by "ordinances," as in the days of the King's will and pleasure. And five men, not lacking common-sense, were, with unexampled levity, precipitating themselves, their master, the Monarchy, France and Europe into a whirlpool. I did not know what was happening in Paris. I was hoping that a resistance, without overturning the throne, would have obliged the Crown to dismiss the ministers and recall the Ordinances. In the event of the triumph of the latter, I had resolved not to submit to them, but to write and speak against those unconstitutional measures.
If the members of the Diplomatic Body exercised no direct influence upon the Ordinances, they favoured them with their wishes; absolute Europe abhorred our Charter. When the news of the Ordinances reached Berlin and Vienna, where, for twenty-four hours, men believed in their success, M. Ancillon exclaimed that Europe was saved, and M. de Metternich displayed unspeakable delight. Soon, having learnt the truth, the latter was as much dismayed as he had been overjoyed: he declared that he had been mistaken, that public opinion was decidedly liberal, and he was already accustoming himself to the idea of an Austrian Constitution.