M. de Tocqueville, when he wrote these words, was
lamenting that in France, “freedom was forsaken;”
“a thing for which it is said that no one any
longer cares in France.” He did not, it
seems to me, perceive that, as in America the best
guarantee of freedom is the reverence for a religion
or religions, which are free themselves, and which
teach men to be free; so in other countries the best
guarantee of slavery is, reverence for religions which
are not free, and which teach men to be slaves.
But what M. de Tocqueville did not see, there are
others who will see; who will say: “If
religion be the pillar of political and social order,
there is an order which is best supported by a religion
which is adverse to free thought, free speech, free
conscience, free communion between man and God.
The more enervating the superstition, the more exacting
and tyrannous its priesthood, the more it will do
our work, if we help it to do its own. If it
permit us to enslave the body, we will permit it to
enslave the soul.”
And so may be inaugurated a period of that organised
anarchy of which the poet says:
It is not life, but death, when
nothing stirs.
LECTURE II—CENTRALISATION
The degradation of the European nobility caused, of
course, the increase of the kingly power, and opened
the way to central despotisms. The bourgeoisie,
the commercial middle class, whatever were its virtues,
its value, its real courage, were never able to stand
alone against the kings. Their capital, being
invested in trade, was necessarily subject to such
sudden dangers from war, political change, bad seasons,
and so forth, that its holders, however individually
brave, were timid as a class. They could never
hold out on strike against the governments, and had
to submit to the powers that were, whatever they were,
under penalty of ruin.
But on the Continent, and especially in France and
Germany, unable to strengthen itself by intermarriage
with the noblesse, they retained that timidity which
is the fruit of the insecurity of trade; and had to
submit to a more and more centralised despotism, and
grow up as they could, in the face of exasperating
hindrances to wealth, to education, to the possession,
in many parts of France, of large landed estates; leaving
the noblesse to decay in isolated uselessness and
weakness, and in many cases debt and poverty.
The system—or rather anarchy—according
to which France was governed during this transitional
period, may be read in that work of M. de Tocqueville’s
which I have already quoted, and which is accessible
to all classes, through Mr. H. Reeve’s excellent
translation. Every student of history is, of
course, well acquainted with that book. But as
there is reason to fear, from language which is becoming
once more too common, both in speech and writing,
that the general public either do not know it, or
have not understood it, I shall take the liberty of
quoting from it somewhat largely. I am justified
in so doing by the fact that M. de Tocqueville’s
book is founded on researches into the French Archives,
which have been made (as far as I am aware) only by
him; and contains innumerable significant facts, which
are to be found (as far as I am aware) in no other
accessible work.
