systematically and,
at the same time, honestly. For the measures proposed by a Government
are, for the most part, good. But, during the latter part of Louis
Philippe's reign, it was easy, for the Government proposed merely to do
nothing--either abroad or at home. I do not complain of the essence of M.
Guizot's foreign policy, though there was a want of dignity in its forms.

'There was nothing useful to be done, and, under such circumstances, all
action would have been mischievous.

'But at home _every_ thing was to be done. Our code required to be
amended, our commerce and our industry, and our agriculture required to
be freed, our municipal and commercial institutions were to be created,
our taxation was to be revised, and, above all, our parliamentary
system--under which, out of 36,000,000 of French, only 200,000 had votes,
under which the Deputies bought a majority of the 200,000 electors, and
the King bought a majority of the 450 deputies--required absolute
reconstruction.

'Louis Philippe would allow nothing to be done. If he could have
prevented it we should not have had a railroad. He would not allow the
most important of all, that to Marseilles, to be finished. He would not
allow our monstrous centralisation, or our monstrous protective system,
to be touched. The owners of forests were permitted to deprive us of
cheap fuel, the owners of forges of cheap iron, the owners of factories
of cheap clothing.

'In some of this stupid inaction Guizot supported him conscientiously,
for, like Thiers, he is ignorant of the first principles of political
economy, but he knows too much the philosophy of Government not to have
felt, on every other point, that the King was wrong.

'If he supposed that Tocqueville wished to be in his place, on the
conditions on which he held office, he was utterly mistaken.

'Tocqueville was ambitious; he wished for power. So did I. We would
gladly have been real Ministers, but nothing would have tempted us to be
the slaves of the _pensee immuable_, or to sit in a Cabinet in which we
were constantly out-voted, or to defend, as Guizot had to do in the
Chamber, conduct which we had disapproved in the Council.

'You ask why Tocqueville joined the Gauche whom he despised, against the
Droit with whom he sympathised?

'He voted with the Gauche only where he thought their votes right. Where
he thought them wrong, as, for instance, in all that respected Algeria,
he left them. They would have a