Tocqueville, August 16, 1850.—The Château of Tocqueville is built of granite, and parts of it appear to be very ancient, particularly three round towers. One is detached and roofless, but may once have been connected with the body of the castle. Another contains two inhabited stories, besides one on the ground, which looks as if it had been the dungeon; the third is filled by a large winding staircase of granite. The inhabited rooms are principally modern, that is to say, of the time of Louis XIII., and form a very agreeable house.

The Count de Tocqueville offered to his son a much finer castle, Tourlainville, on an eminence about two miles from Cherbourg; but it is a shell, and would have cost 100,000 francs to render it habitable, so the Tocquevilles wisely preferred their present less ambitious residence. Though on high land and not a mile and a half from the sea, it has no sea-view.

At Tocqueville I found, besides M. and Madame Alexis de Tocqueville, his father and his elder brother, with two sons and a daughter. Madame de Tocqueville appears to be quite recovered. She complains, however,

of bronchitic affection whenever the weather is damp, Alexis de Tocqueville speaks of

and is easily fatigued.

himself as well. He can talk as much as he likes, and intends to attend the Conseil général on the 26th, where he will have not only to speak but to debate.

The Count looks like a fine old man of sixty-five or sixty-six, but is really seventy-eight. His hair is white and has been so for the last fifty-seven years, for it was turned in 1793, when he was imprisoned for nine months with six members of his family, and saw them all leave the prison on one afternoon for trial, judgment, and execution. His own trial was fixed for the 10th thermidor. So that if Robespierre's fall had been delayed two days we should have lost 'La Démocratie en Amérique,' and all that we may hope is to follow.

One gets used to everything, even to imminent death. The disagreeable time in every day was about half-past three, when those selected for trial were summoned. The Count accustomed himself to pass from three to four in sleep.

We talked after dinner of the new election law.

Tocqueville said that his Government intended to pass an amended election law, really to effect the purpose which is the pretext of this, the exclusion of the vagabond population. How this will work no one can say. It is so obscurely worded that it receives different interpretations everywhere. The only thing certain is, that it will destroy at least three millions of votes, many of them those which, if the principle of universal suffrage is to be retained, well deserve to be preserved. In Tocqueville, for instance, no heads of families had taken the trouble to register their sons, lodgers, or servants.

1850.]

Prospects of Parties.

ΙΟΙ

All these, probably a majority of the voters, would have been excluded if Tocqueville had not sent round to them papers to be filled up.

August 17.-I talked over with Tocqueville the prospects of the four great parties.

'The terror,' he said, 'which the Republic at first spread has passed off. Men see that it does not necessarily bring with it war, paper currency, and bankruptcy. still less confiscation and the guillotine. But it is not trusted; the feeling of the mass of the people, of the peasant, the artisan, and the shop-keeper, as well as of the proprietor and the merchant, is against a constantly shifting chief. Far from valuing the power of electing a new quasi-king every four years, they detest it. "We must," they say, “have something permanent.” The Republican party, therefore, as a party, has become powerless. Two years hence, or perhaps sooner, some different form of government will be established.'

'Will it then be the return of the Orleans family, excluding the elder branch?'

'That seems scarcely possible; their legal claims are no better than those of Changarnier or of Lamartine. All that their friends can say is, that the people have a right to choose their rulers, and would do wisely in choosing them. But their friends are a minority, small when compared with the number who are indifferent to them, and not large when compared with the number who are positively hostile to them.'

'Will it be the return of Henri V.?'

'The great obstacle to this is the association of the

Bourbon name with the old régime; that Government, gay and brilliant as it looks in our histories and in our memoirs, must have been horribly bad, for the detestation of it is almost the only feeling that has survived the sixty years of revolution that have passed since its fall. ·

'The French can bear oppression, they can bear to see their children carried off by the conscription, and their property by the tax-gatherer, but they cannot bear the privileges and petty vexations of feudalism. You saw the roofless tower in the court. My grandfather used it as a colombier. He kept there 3,000 pigeons. No one was allowed to kill them, and no one else in the commune could keep them. In 1793, when the peasants were the masters, they did no harm to any of the rest of our property. We have lived among them as protectors and friends for centuries-but they rose en masse against the pigeons, killed everyone of them, and reduced the tower to its present state. When I first was a candidate I failed, not because I was not personally popular, but because I was gentilhomme. I was met everywhere by the proverb: "Les chats prennent les souris." My opponent was of a humble family which had risen to wealth and distinction in the Revolution. This is the most favourable combination in the hands of a man of ability. Mere wealth is mischievous; it gives no influence, and it excites envy. The only time when it led to political power, was just after the revolution of 1848. Every possessor of property, and few persons in the provinces are quite without it, was alarmed. And the