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'It is your business, and that of Belgium, to put yourselves into such a state of defence as to force him to make his spring on Italy. There he can do you little harm. But to us Frenchmen the consequences of war must be calamitous. If we fail, they are national loss and humiliation. If we succeed, they are slavery.'

'Of course,' I said, 'the corruption that infects the civil service must in time extend to the army, and make it less fit for service.'

'Of course it must,' answered Tocqueville. 'It will extend still sooner to the navy. The matériel of a force is more easily injured by jobbing than the personnel. And in the navy the matériel is the principal.

'Our naval strength has never been in proportion to our naval expenditure, and is likely to be less and less so every year, at least during every year of the règne des fripons!

Tuesday, May 24.—I breakfasted with Sir Henry Ellis and then went to Tocqueville's.

I found there an elderly man, who did not remain long. When he went, Tocqueville said, 'That is one of our provincial prefects. He has been describing to us the state of public feeling in the South. Contempt for the present Government, he tells us, is spreading there from its headquarters, Paris.

'If the Corps Législatif is dissolved, he expects the Opposition to obtain a majority in the new House.

'This,' continued Tocqueville, 'is a state of things with which Louis Napoleon is not fit to cope. Opposition makes him furious, particularly Parliamentary oppo

1853.]

Effect of a Plebiscite.

43

sition. His first impulse will be to go a step further in imitation of his uncle, and abolish the Corps Législatif, as Napoleon did the Tribunat.

'But nearly half a century of Parliamentary life has made the French of 1853 as different from those of 1803 as the nephew is from his uncle.

'He will scarcely risk another coup d'état; and the only legal mode of abolishing, or even modifying, the Corps Législatif is by a plébiscite submitted by ballot to universal suffrage.

'Will he venture on this? And if he do venture, will he succeed? If he fail, will he not sink into a constitutional sovereign, controlled by an Assembly far more unmanageable than we deputies were, as the Ministers are excluded from it?'

'Will he not rather,' I said, 'sink into an exile?'

'That is my hope,' said Tocqueville, 'but I do not expect it quite so soon as Thiers does.'

CORRESPONDENCE.

St. Cyr, July 2, 1853.

I am not going to talk to you, my dear Senior, about the Emperor, or the Empress, or any of the august members of the Imperial Family; nor of the Ministers, nor of any other public functionaries, because I am a well-disposed subject who does not wish that the perusal of his letters should give pain to his Government. I shall write to you upon an historical problem, and discuss with you events which happened five hundred years ago. There could not be a more innocent subject.

I have followed your advice, and I have read, or rather re-read, Blackstone. I studied him twenty years ago. Each time he has made upon me the same impression. Now, as then, I have ventured to consider him (if one may say so without blasphemy) an inferior writer, without liberality of mind or depth of judgment; in short, a in short, a commentator and a lawyer, not what we understand by the words jurisconsulte and publiciste. He has, too, in a degree which is sometimes amusing, a mania for admiring all that was done in ancient times, and for attributing to them all that is good in his own. I am inclined to think that, if he had had to write, not on the institutions, but on the products of England, he would have discovered that beer was first made from grapes, and that the hop is a fruit of the vine—rather a degenerate product, it is true, of the wisdom of our ancestors, but as such worthy of respect. It is impossible to imagine an excess more opposite to that of his contemporaries in France, for whom it was enough that a thing was old for it to be bad. But enough of Blackstone; he must make way for what I really want to say to you.

In comparing the feudal institutions in England in the period immediately after the conquest with those of France, you find between them, not only an analogy, but a perfect resemblance, much greater than Blackstone seems to think, or, at any rate, chooses to say. In reality, the system in the two countries is identical. In France, and over the whole Continent, this system produced a caste; in England, an aristocracy. How is it that the word

1853.]

Institutions in France and England. 45

gentleman, which in our language denotes a mere superiority of blood, with you is now used to express a certain social position, and amount of education, independent of birth; so that in two countries the same word, though the sound remains the same, has entirely changed its meaning? When did this revolution take place? How, and through what transitions? Have no books ever treated of this subject in England? Have none of your great writers, philosophers, politicians, or historians, ever noticed this characteristic and pregnant fact, tried to account for it, and to explain it ?

If I had the honour of a personal acquaintance with Mr. Macaulay, I should venture to write to ask him these questions. In the excellent history which he is now publishing he alludes to this fact, but he does not try to explain it. And yet, as I have said before, there is none more pregnant, nor containing within it so good an explanation of the difference between the history of England and that of the other feudal nations in Europe. If you should meet Mr. Macaulay, I beg you to ask him, with much respect, to solve these questions for me. But tell me what you yourself think, and if any other eminent writers have treated this subject.

You must think me, my dear friend, very tiresome with all these questions and dissertations; but of what else can I speak? I pass here the life of a Benedictine monk, seeing absolutely no one, and writing whenever I am not walking. I expect this cloistered life to do a great deal of good both to my mind and body. Do not think that in my convent I forget my friends.

My wife

and I constantly talk of them, and especially of you and of our dear Mrs. Grote. I am reading your MSS.,' which interest and amuse me extremely. They are my relaxation. I have promised Beaumont to send them to him as soon as I have finished them.

St. Cyr, December 8, 1853.

I must absolutely write to you to-day, my dear Senior. I have long been wishing to do so, but have been deterred by the annoyance I feel at not being able to discuss. with you a thousand subjects as interesting to you as they are to me, but which one cannot mention in a letter; for letters are now less secret than ever, and to insist upon writing politics to our friends is equivalent to their not hearing from us at all. But I may, at any rate, without making the police uneasy, assure you of the great pleasure with which we heard that you intended paying us a little visit next month.

There is an excellent hotel at Tours, where you will find good apartments; for the rest, I hope that you will make our house your inn. We are near enough to Tours for me to walk there and back, and we regulate our clocks by the striking of theirs; so you see that it is difficult to be nearer.

I think that it is a capital idea of yours to visit French Africa. The country is curious in itself, also on account of the contrasts afforded by the different populations which spread over the land without ever mixing.

1 Mr. Senior's Journals.-ED.

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