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or produce created by a class that its political | among the urban consumers as overturned the importance in the long run depends, but upon governments both of the elder and

the proportions of the income enjoyed by it which is clear of debt, and of realized capital, which can at once be rendered available in a contest, either by swaying seats in Parliament or influencing the press.

165.

167.

younger branch of the house of Bour- Its exemplibon; thence an amount of suffering fication in in the producing classes in the latter, France and England. that has sent above three hundred thousand of the working class, for a course of As this ascendency of the moneyed class in years, annually out of the country, stopped the Great Britain is obviously the re- growth of its population, and caused its colonial Is this the sult of the magnitude of our realized provinces to take open steps to effect their inresult of a wealth, and that again has arisen from dependence. These events will not be lost upon general law the liberty and prosperity we have posterity. The ruin of constitutional freedom of nature? so long enjoyed, and the unexampled in France, the dissolution of the colonial emsuccess with which the war was attended, a pire of Great Britain, will be cheaply purchased very curious and in some respect melancholy if they impress upon mankind the eternal truths, consideration presents itself. Is this change, that a real representation in government is the and the check to the interests of industry thence essential need of civilized man, and can never arising, the effect of a general and irresistible be refused without imminent danger; that unilaw of nature, applicable to all times when sim-formity in the suffrage inevitably induces class ilar circumstances arise, or is it the result of a government; that the ruinous nature of such casual combination of events in the British Isl- government is in the direct proportion of the ands during the last half century? Is the trans-number admitted into the class; and that the ference of power from the land to the boroughs in England analogous to and produced by the same causes as that which removed power from the Roman senate, the strong-hold of the patricians, to the Dictator, the representative and idol of the urban multitude? and is the clamor for cheap bread, which in our times has changed the whole policy of the empire at bottom, the same as the cry, "Panem et Circenses !" which ruled the whole policy of the Cæsars, and in the end, by destroying the rural population in its heart, subverted the Roman Empire? If so, are we to rest in the mournful conclusion that the seeds of mortality are indelibly implanted in nations as well as individuals; that these seeds are quickened into life equally by victory and defeat, and that to both the lines of the poet are precisely applicable:

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that virtue, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour:

166. Great political truth

the Reform

The paths of glory lead but to the grave?" Without pronouncing decidedly on this deeply interesting question, upon which the world is as yet too young to form a conclusion that can be relied on, evolved by there is one truth which has been completely demonstrated by the conBill. stitutional experience in the last times, both of France and England, of permanent importance to mankind, and which will largely benefit the future generations of men. This is, that a uniform representation is but another name for class government, and that the governing class will always be found in that which is immediately above the lowest line of the suffrage. In France, when the line, under the Restoration, was drawn by the payment of £12 a year of direct taxes, that ruling class was found in sixty thousand of the richest proprietors in the country, but the poorest in the enfranchised class-those paying from £12 to £20 direct taxes, who were two-thirds of the ninety thousand electors. In England, by the Reform Bill, supreme power was vested in persons in boroughs paying from £10 to £20 rent; that is, the buying and selling class, interested chiefly in beating down the cost of production.

Thence a rigid system of protection in the former country, which produced such discontent

only way to avoid these evils is CLASS REPRESENT ATION. The Roman system of giving every citizen a vote, but a vote only in his own century, and ruling the state by the votes of the centuries, not the citizens, was the nearest approach to perfection in popular government ever yet made by man, and, beyond all doubt, gave them the empire of the world.

168.

The true cause of the difficulties which have been felt as so embarrassing, both in the British and French empires, in Great law the late stage of their political life, of nature on when the formation of a new consti- the subject. tution in both was set about, is the operation of a great law of nature, intended to limit the growth of empires, and promote the dispersion of mankind. This law is the simple fact, that whatever is plentiful becomes cheap, and money the very first of all things. The necessary elfect of this is, that labor becomes dear in the rich and old state, and the necessaries of life are raised at a more costly rate than in poor countries, where money is more scarce, and labor is cheap. The reciprocity system, the contraction of the currency, the free trade, were all efforts on the part of the moneyed classes to elude the operation of this law of nature; to render production cheap, when the circumstances of society had rendered it dear. The effect of this difference of price between the cost of raising provisions in the old and young state is, that if the country has the majority, a strict system of protection is established, to keep out the cheap food; if the towns, free trade and the cheapening system is introduced, to let it in.

limit popu

In either case a limit is imposed, when this difference of price has become con- 169. siderable, to the growth of the state Which is and the extension of its population: intended to in the one case by the check given lation in the to the industry of towns by dear later stages corn, in the other to the inhabitants of society. of the country by cheap; in the former case by the rivalry of foreign manufacturers, in the latter by that of foreign cultivators. France has recently exhibited an example of the former; Rome in ancient, and Great Britain in modern times, are instances of the latter: and the prodigious transference now going on of the Au

glo-Saxon race to America, attended by such vast effects to both hemispheres, is an illustration of the all-powerful agency of this cause upon the fortunes of mankind. However much we may be disposed to regret this when our own country alone is considered, we shall regard it in a very different light when the general progress of the species is taken into

view, and look upon it as the great means by which Providence, at the appointed season, arrests the growth of aged communities, transfers the seeds of prosperity to distant lands, provides an outlet to over-peopled communities, and lays the foundations in present suffering of the general dispersion and happiness of mankind.

CHAPTER XXIV.

FRANCE AND EUROPE FROM THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE IN 1830, TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS IN THE SAME YEAR.

Objects to which great

popular movements have been directed.

The real

evils of society are not

As great popular movements, such as the first | destruction of mercantile and the confiscation 1. French Revolution, or the Reform of landed property, one class only 3. passion in England, never arise but had prospered, and exhibited the Prosperity from the experience of serious public signs of general prosperity, amidst of the bourevils, so they never fail to terminate, the penury with which it was sur- geois class. when successful, in the removal of rounded. All the little wealth that remained what appeared to have been the in the provinces had been amassed in the hands cause, and generally was so, of the public suf- of the merchants and shop-keepers; and in fering. The insurrection of 1789 was occasion- Paris the bankers and bourgeois class had been ed by the pride of the noblesse, and directed immensely enriched by the effects of the very against the distinctions of rank; and it term- pacification which to the nation generally had inated in their abolition. The reform move-been the occasion of such bitter mortification. ment of England was induced by the selfish The bankers of the Chaussée d'Antin, the jewpolicy of the holders of realized wealth, and elers of the Palais Royal, the dress-makers of it was directed against the borough proprie- the Rue St. Honoré, had for the most part tors, through whom their power had been ex-made large fortunes from the expenditure of ercised; and it led to their abolition. The Rev- foreigners, chiefly English and Russians, who olution of 1830 was occasioned by the dread had flocked to Paris during the Restoration. of Jesuitical usurpation, and was meant to as- Nor was this prosperity in that class confined sert the freedom of thought; and it was direct- to the metropolis; it had extended also to the ed against Charles X. and Prince Polignac, who principal commercial and manufacturing towns. were conceived to be the instruments in the The silk manufacturers of Lyons, the wine-merhands of that party. They accordingly were chants of Epernay and Bordeaux, the cottonoverthrown. and the throne of France remain-spinners of Rouen, had been enriched by the ed open, exposed to become the prize of some increasing demand for their various productions fortunate soldier, some audacious demagogue. springing from the long peace of the Continent, But it is by no means equally certain that a and the growth of wealth which had in couse2. successful revolution will remove the quence taken place both in France and the adreal evils which afflict society, or joining states. In a word, the bourgeoisie of that, even if it does really eradicate France had risen into wealth and importance those which have previously been during the peace; an importance arising not removed by experienced, it may not induce oth-less from its own prosperity, than from the conthese con- ers still more wide spread and irreme-trast afforded by the general penury with which vulsions. diable. The remedy is sometimes it was surrounded. wrose than the disease. The warmest partisans of the Revolution now admit that it has done little for the real causes of human distress, and that under another name, and belonging to a different class, the oppressors of mankind have reappeared with undiminished power on the theatre of human events. The guillotine of the Committee of Public Salvation, the confiscations of the Convention, the revolutionary law of succession, had destroyed the great proprietors, and rendered impossible the reconstruction of their estates; but they had done nothing for the condition of the workmen, or the interests of the twenty-five millions of rural cultivators. On the contrary, their condition had become greatly worse than it was before the convulsions began; for the destruction of capital had deprived industry of support, the division of income had halved its market. Nothing remained to the poor but the cultivation of their little bits of land, for the most part unequal to the support of a family, and the fruits of which were wrenched from them by the ruinous land-tax, often amounting to 20 per cent., but which was altogether irremovable, for it had become the main stay of the revenue of

so certainly

the state.

In the general confusion produced by the

were ad

But from this very prosperity had arisen another evil, which shook the very foun- 4. dations of society, and induced a se- The interries of causes and effects that imbit- ests of the tered and at length terminated the bourgeoisie reign of the succeeding sovereign. verse to The bourgeois in towns, thus power- those of laful by means of their wealth, their bor. sway in elections, and their influence with the press, of which they were the chief, often the sole readers, had no interests in common with labor; on the contrary, their interests were adverse to it. Living by trade in goods or money, their interest was to buy cheap and sell dear; the very reverse of the workman, whose interest was to produce dear and buy cheap. Their chief, often their only purchasers, were found among the dwellers in towns: the six millions of peasants, living on freeholds which yielded them from £2 to £10 each, took little or nothing off their hands in the way of purchases. Hence the policy which the Goxernment pursued to please the one, necessarily gave dissatisfaction to the other. The working classes trusted to the promises of the popular leaders, and the representations of the press generally supported the movement which overthrew Charles X. and acquiesced in the installation

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of the Citizen King. But they soon discovered | the pyramid of society was based on its head. their mistake, and long and bitter were the But when the numerous and opulent ranks of regrets which the discovery occasioned. The the bourgeoisie were admitted into the adminreign of Louis Philippe was nothing but a longistration, and interested in its preservation, a contest between labor and capital-between the very different state of things presented itself. interests of production and those of consump- Government now stood upon a much wider bation; and the animosity between these different sis, and could calculate on the support of a more classes in the end became so great that it over- numerous and energetic body of men. The turned his throne, and for a brief season estab- dense and thriving ranks of the bourgeoisie, inlished that of "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité" terested in power because they shared its spoils, in its stead. gave it their cordial support; their wealth was poured into its coffers; their youth filled the ranks of its National Guard; their influence gave it the command of the Legislature.

5.

led.

7.

But this very circumstance, while for long it secured their ascendency, in the end exposed it to ruin. A class of society Dangers to which had come to monopolize, in re- which this turn for its support, the whole patronage of Government, ere long became the object of envy. Louis Philippe experienced the truth of the old saying, that every place given away made three discontented and one ungrateful. Even the commissions in an army soon raised to 400,000 men, an expenditure increased from 900,000,000 francs (£36,000,000) to 1,500,000,000 (£60,000,000), and the 130,000 civil offices in the gift of the Tuileries, could not suffice for the wants of a nation in which Government employment had become, from the effects of the Revolution, the sole means of advancement. The rule of the bourgeoisie was overthrown in the end in France, from the same jealousy of those excluded from its emoluments which had proved fatal to that of the borough-holders in England. Influence-in other words, corruption-became the great engine of administration; M. Guizot avowed and vindicated it upon the ground that, as all other influences were gone, that of selfish motives alone remained to uphold the Government. But their mode of proceeding, however effective for a time, could not durably continue; for no system can be permanent which is found

This direful social contest, the most widespread which can agitate any comEffect of the munity, was rendered the more viospread of lent in France at this period from the machinery, effect of the immense discoveries steam, and which they were compelled to adopt railways. from their industrious neighbors. Steam was then altering the face of the world; the discovery of Watt was changing the destinies of mankind. However much the powers of that mighty agent and the multiplication of machinery may augment the industrial capabilities of a nation, and add to the sum total of its wealth, it is in vain to assert that in the first instance at least it is not a very great drawback to the interests of labor. If one man or woman can be brought by the aid of machinery to do the work of fifty men, what is to become of the remaining forty-nine, especially in a country which has no colonies or external outlets for its industry? The entire produce may be greatly increased by such application, but it never can be so in any thing like the proportion in which the demand for labor is diminished. The common sense and experience of mankind have every where taught them the sophistry of the hackneyed arguments put forth on this subject by the economical writers on the side of the capitalists, whose interest is cheap production; and thence the constant hostility of the working classes in every country to the introduction of the machinery by which their labor is to be supplanted. Perhaps in the ended on class influence or interest. the rival interests of capital and labor may be When the government of Charles X. was adjusted, and the workmen thrown out by ma- overthrown, and he himself driven 8. chinery in one line may find employment in into exile, three parties remained in The Repubanother; but this can only be the work of time, France, and divided society between licans: their and of a very gradual absorption of industry them. So equally were they bal- chances of under the most favorable circumstances. And anced, and so narrowly were the in France the circumstances, so far from being chances of each poised, that it was hard to say favorable, were just the reverse; for the Rev- with whom, in the scramble for power, the suolution had at once destroyed the capital, swept preme authority would ultimately rest. away the colonies, and all but ruined the com-formidable from their resolution, and the commerce of the country; and the various vents mand which physical strength gave them of the which might take off the displaced labor of metropolis, the REPUBLICANS stood foremost on the nation were wholly awanting. Hence the the stage, and, to all appearance, were destined eighteen years from 1830 to 1848 were a period to carry off the prize. They had made the Revof almost ceaseless industrial distress in France,olution; it was their spirit which had animated and the animosity of the working classes against the government of Louis Philippe was, almost from its very commencement, far greater than it had been against that of Charles X.

6.

success.

Most

the masses, and thrown a hundred thousand armed workmen on the streets of Paris; to all appearance, the crown and the government were at their disposal. Perhaps, if they had The same circumstances, however, which so possessed a leader of greater ambition or resofearfully augmented this general dis-lution, they might have secured it, and a new Increased content among the working classes, republic have restored, for a brief season, the strength of increased in a still greater degree the reign of anarchy in France, to be speedily supthe Govern- strength of the Government to resist planted by the vigor of despotism. But great it. As long as the monarchy stood as the chances of this party were, it had to conon the remnant of the nobility and the increas- tend with as great difficulties. The recollection ing Parti-prêtre, as it did during the reign of of the Convention, the Reign of Terror, weighCharles X., it rested on a flimsy foundation; | ed like an incubus on its energies. The work,

ment.

ing classes, especially in the great towns, were nearly unanimous in its favor; but it is not by that class alone that a change of government ever has been or ever can be effected. Leaders are required to direct its strength, capital to support its efforts, general concurrence to sanction its undertakings. These were all awanting to the Republicans of 1830. The bankers had not risked their capital to let the fruits of the struggle be reaped by the prolétaires; the journalists were not disposed to cede their places in the cabinet to the workmen; the shop-keepers dreaded a stoppage of their sales, and the termination of the lucrative purchases of the English, from the establishment of a republic. All these classes were extremely will ing to use the workmen as auxiliaries, and to take advantage of their courage and numbers to overthrow the Bourbons; and they lauded, on every occasion, their valor and patriotism to the skies; but they had no intention of sharing the fruits of victory with them.

9.

leonists:

their chances.

The next party which stood prepared to dispute the palm with the Republicans The Napo was the NAPOLEONISTS; but their chances at that period were decidedly inferior. They had, indeed, in their favor the mighty name of the Emperor, and the magic of his glorious exploits; but though they spoke powerfully to the imagination of the young and ardent part of the people, their influence generally was by no means so great as it has since become. The reason was, these events were too near; distance had not "lent enchantment to the view." All men of middle age could recollect the double capture of Paris; a third visit of the Cossacks was present to every full-grown imagination. Add to this, that the King of Rome, sunk down into the modest title of Duke of Leuchtenberg, was absent, under Austrian influence, in whose service he held a regiment, and no visible member of the Imperial family was at hand to direct or encourage its partisans. The party of the Republicans was based on a principle, but that of Napoleon II. was rested on a man; and without the man a personal party can seldom make any successful effort.

10.

chances.

adem and the perils with which it was environed. But no similar terrors or qualms of conscience paralyzed his adherents, who, relieved of all responsibility consequent on the change of government, expected only to enjoy its rewards. M. Lafitte, and the chief bankers and capitalists of Paris, belonged to this party, from the very obvious reason, that, by placing the Duke of Orleans on the throne, they would be placing themselves in the administration. They had powerful support from M. Guizot, M. Thiers, and other able journalists, who also hoped to share in the spoils of victory, and, in truth, saw no other mode of escape from the distracted state of the country. The example of England spoke powerfully to the historic intellects of this influential class of politicians; and it seemed to them almost an indication of providential will, that, when the elder branch of the Bourbons, like the Stuarts, had lost the throne by the ambition of the Romish party, a younger branch should remain to open to France a future of freedom and prosperity.

11.

retirement.

During these anxious days, big with the fate of France and of Europe, the Duke of Orleans remained in privacy and ob- The Duke scurity in the neighborhood of Paris. of Orleans He was neither at the Tuileries, where remains in honor and duty called him to stand by his sovereign and benefactor in the hour of danger, nor at the Hôtel de Ville, where ambition and selfishness might possibly open to him the path to a throne by the overthrow of that benefactor. Accurately informed by M. Lafitte and his other partisans of every thing that was going forward in the capital, he yet kept aloof from its stirring scenes, and seemed anxious only, in his elegant retirement of Neuilly, to detach himself from the political struggles in which, more than any human being in existence, he was himself interested. In this there was no affectation; he really felt the wish to abstain from the strife which his conduct indicated. He was consumed with anxiety, fearful to take any decided step, and desirous to receive the impress of events rather than impress his signet-mark upon them.

12.

tween the

"Which

On the morning of the 30th July, when the If the Napoleonists wanted a head and wealth contest was obviously decided, and to sustain their exertions, this could it was necessary to fix upon a gov- Important The Orlean- not be said of the ORLEANISTS, who ernment, M. Glandevès, the Governor conversaists their had both the one and the other. The of the Tuileries, waited on M. Lafitte, tion be Duke of Orleans had obtained, from when the following conversation took Baron de the generous munificence of Charles X., the en-place between them. "Sir," said the Glandeves tire restoration of the immense estates of the baron to the banker, "you have now and Lafitte. family, and his expenditure, though great, was been master of Paris for twenty-four hoursstill within his ample income. Throughout all do you wish to save the monarchy?" the phases of the Revolution, a considerable monarchy, sir-that of 1789 or 1814?" "The party had adhered to this family, and it had constitutional monarchy." "To save it, only been much increased on the Restoration, from one way remains, which is to crown the Duke of the apparent stability of the throne, and the Orleans." "The Duke of Orleans! The Duke obvious chances of succession which they en- of Orleans-but do you know him?" "For fif joyed from the precarious life of the infant teen years." Well, but what are his titles to Duke of Bordeaux, who alone stood between the crown? That boy whom Vienna has eduthem and its acquisition. To this party the cated can at least invoke the memory of his unwise proceedings of Charles X. and the Par- father's glory; and it must be admitted the ti-prêtre had long been the subject of close ob- passage of Napoleon has written his annals in servation and intense interest, and his fall seem- characters of fire upon the minds of men. But ed, as the death of the Duke of Bordeaux would what prestige surrounds the Duke of Orleans! have done, at once to open the crown to their do the people even know his history? How ambition. The Duke himself was irresolute, many of them have heard his name?" "I see and undecided between the attractions of a di- in that a recommendation, and not a disadvant

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