’You see that in its management of the press.  ’Montalembert, or Guizot, or Falloux, or I may publish what we like.  We are not read by the soldier or by the proletaire.[1] But the newspaper press is subject to a slavery to which it was never reduced before.  The system was first elaborated in Austria, and I daresay will be copied by all the Continental autocrats, for no inventions travel so quickly as despotic ones.

’The public avertissements are comparatively unimportant.  Before a journal gets one of those its suppression has probably been decided on.  Every day there are communications between the literary police and the different editors.  Such or such a line of argument is altogether forbidden, another is allowed to be used to a certain extent.  Some subjects are tabooed, others are to be treated partially.

’As the mental food of the lower orders is supplied by the newspapers, this paternal Government takes care that it shall not be too exciting.’

[Footnote 1:  The lowest class.—­ED.]

Paris, Monday, April 13.—­Tocqueville, Jobez, Marcet, St.-Hilaire,[1] Charles Sumner, and Lord Granville breakfasted with us.

The conversation turned on public speaking.

‘Very few indeed of our speakers,’ said Tocqueville, ’have ever ventured to improvise:  Barrot could do it.  We have told him sometimes that a speech must be answered immediately; and when he objected that he had nothing to say, we used to insist, and to assure him that as soon as he was in the tribune, the ideas and the words would come; and so they did.  I have known him go on under such circumstances for an hour; of course neither the matter nor the form could be first rate, but they were sufficient.’

‘In fact,’ said Lord Granville, ’much of what is called improvisation is mere recollection.  A man who has to speak night after night, gets on most subjects a set of thoughts, and even of expressions, which naturally pour in on him as soon as his argument touches the train which leads to them.

‘One of our eminent speakers,’ he continued, ’Lord Grey, is perhaps best when he has not had time to prepare himself.  He is so full of knowledge and of inferences, that he has always enough ready to make an excellent speech.  When he prepares himself, there is too much; he gives the House more facts and more deductions than it can digest.’

‘Do you agree with me,’ I asked, ’in thinking that Lord Melbourne was best when he improvised?’

‘I agree with you,’ answered Lord Granville, ’that his set speeches were cold and affected.  He was natural only when he was quite careless, or when he was much excited, and then he was admirable.’

‘Did not Thiers improvise?’ I asked.

‘Never,’ answered Tocqueville.  ’He prepared himself most carefully.  So did Guizot.  We see from the “Revue retrospective” that he even prepared his replies.  His long experience enabled him to foresee what he should have to answer.  Pasquier used to bring his speech ready written.  It lay on the desk before him, but he never looked at it.’