n 1854

TOCQUEVILLE DURING THE EMPIRE

FROM DECEMBER 23, 1851 TO APRIL 20, 1858.

CONVERSATIONS

PARIS, 1851-2.

[The _coup d'etat_ took place on the 2nd, and Mr. Senior reached Paris on
the 21st of December.--ED.]

_Paris, December_ 23, 1851.--I dined with Mrs. Grot and drank tea with
the Tocquevilles.

[1]'This,' said Tocqueville, 'is a new phase in our history. Every
previous revolution has been made by a political party. This is the first
time that the army has seized France, bound and gagged her, and laid her
at the feet of its ruler.'

'Was not the 18th fructidor,' I said, 'almost a parallel case? Then, as
now, there was a quarrel between the executive and the legislature. The
Directory, like Louis Napoleon, dismissed the ministers, in whom the
legislature had confidence, and appointed its own tools in their places,
denounced the legislature to the country, and flattered and corrupted the
army. The legislature tried the usual tactics of parliamentary
opposition, censured the Government, and refused the supplies. The
Directory prepared a _coup d'etat._ The legislature tried to obtain a
military force, and failed; they planned an impeachment of the Directory,
and found the existing law insufficient. They brought forward a new law
defining the responsibility of the executive, and the night after they
had begun to discuss it, their halls were occupied by a military force,
and the members of the opposition were seized in the room in which they
had met to denounce the treason of the Directory.'

'So far,' he answered, 'the two events resemble one another. Each was a
military attack on the legislature by the executive. But the Directors
were the representatives of a party. The Councils and the greater part of
the aristocracy, and the _bourgeoisie_, were Bonapartists; the lower
orders were Republican, the army was merely an instrument; it conquered,
not for itself, but for the Republican party.

'The 18th brumaire was nearer to this--for that ended, as this has begun,
in a military tyranny. But the 18th brumaire was almost as much a civil
as a military revolution. A majority in the Councils was with Bonaparte.
Louis Napoleon had not a real friend in the Assembly. All the educated
classes supported the 18th brumaire; all the educated classes repudiate
the 2nd of December. Bonaparte's Consular Chair was sustained by all the
_elite_ of France. This man cannot obtain a decent supporter.
Montalembert, Baro