Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

FOREIGN LITERATURE,
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

DECEMBER, 1849.

From the Edinburgh Review.

THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.

Histoire Philosophique du Règne de Louis XV. Par le COMTE DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Paris: 1847.

cessful, goes to render them very unsafe guides in the search for political truth. This tendency is, indeed, more or less inevitable in citizens of a state whose history, for the last two generations, has fatigued us with little else than the coarse and flaring colors of a revolutionary crisis. It was the same in ancient times; both after that marvelous century in which the quick Athenian genius ran through all the stages of national development; and again, when the great Roman Revolution first seated the Imperial chiefs of the democracy on the Curule Chairs. The glories of such an epoch as that which began in 1790, and through which France is still laboring, are too undeniable to make it possible that the

THE writer of this work is, as we understand, the father of the distinguished Deputy, and, for the present, Minister, whose literary reputation has been so widely spread in England by his philosophical examination of American democracy. It would be difficult to find two books that represent more creditably the respective opinions of the last and the present generations. The Démocratie en Amérique is remarkable for the wise candor and toleration with which its author confesses the defects of his favorite systems; and recognizes the points in which they might be improved by borrowing from monarchical or aristocratical examples. The Histoire Philosophique du Règne de Louis Quinze is equally free from most of the vices to which French literature seems now pecu-nation should ignore them-as has been atliarly exposed.

The historians of the modern French school have an incontestible excellence in their skillful arrangement and power of rapid analysis. But their tendency to acquiesce in the most unscrupulous policy, when suc

VOL. XVIII. NO. IV.

tempted by the compilers of Catholic and Legitimatist text-books for French schools: while, on the other hand, the blood and tears are still too recent for the children of proscribed parents t accept the Reign of Terror, as it is accepted and reverenced by

28

Barbés and Louis Blanc, or even as palliated by Lamartine. To reconcile, or rather to escape from committing themselves to, either of these extremes, their recent historians have mostly betaken themselves to a system that represents society as moving in an invariable current, which the frailties and passions of individuals can no more affect, than a child can disarrange the order of the tide by throwing pebbles into the waves. With such writers the end, of course, is everything; though they do not so much seek to justify, as totally to omit all consideration of, the means. Actions and events are regarded, in the meantime, merely as necessary steps in a predestined sequence, in relation to which their moral character is a matter of no concern.

66

M. Mignet is exclusively possessed with the idea of a great dynasty giving laws from Versailles to its Prefects at Madrid and Naples; and is no more disturbed in his enjoyment of the exciting struggle which was decided by the testament of Charles II., than M. de Gremonville was disturbed when Lionne intoxicated him with the gratifying assurance, que sa Majesté rous trouve le plus effronté des Ministres !—et en cela il vous fait la plus grande louange possible.' M. Capefigue relates the elevation of the profligate Dubois to the Cardinalate; and contents himself, for all commentary, with jumbling together a few phrases about an invincible law of equality in the Catholic Church. M. Bignon is entitled to more than ordinary allowance in this respect, in consequence of the more than ordinary temptation to which he was exposed: "je l'engage à écrire l'histoire de la diplomatie Française de 1792 à 1815," was among the bequests in the Testament de Napoléon. The same vice infects French writers, in their severest philosophy, and on topics most removed from the exciting accessories of the hour. M. Comte turns neither to right nor left, as the remorseless machinery of his system crushes every example of heroic individual exertion into its place in the world's preconstituted march. M. Cousin, with his eyes fixed on the radiant and beneficent image of the Dictator Cæsar, has no sympathies for the brave tenderness of Caius Gracchus, nor for the melancholy and majestic self-devotion of the younger Brutus.

"Negociations rélatives à la Succession d'Espagne sous Louis XIV." Par M. Mignet, vol ii. p. 248.

+ Cours de Philoso hie" (1838), par M. Victor Cousin, leg. xme.

We can see no merit, we must confess, in this cold abnegation of all moral sensibility; and feel, on the contrary, that history not only loses most of its utility, but at once lowers its dignity and deserts its duty, when it thus renounces its high Censorial functions; and declines to give judgment on the merits of those whose proceedings it is contented with recording. It is, accordingly, as an exception to this rule, that M. de Tocqueville's work seems to us most entitled to praise. To a rare power of historical arrangement, and to a still rarer one of historical compression, he adds a discriminating honesty, worthy (and we can cite no more honorable parallels) of Niebuhr and Hallam. To all appearance profoundly royalist in his convictions, he is never induced by his partisanship to extenuate the infamies of the Regency and the parc aux cerfs. He is still more free from the corrupting indifference with which M. Capefigue speaks of abominations-which have never been approached except by the foulest and basest of the Roman Cæsars,-if not in terms of actual approval, at least as the excusable concomitants of a high civilization and a brilliant court. And if at times M. de Tocqueville averts his eyes from this blind and enervated Royalty to the fiery baptism that awaited it, it is only to remind us that its crimes were severely (though not more severely than consistently) expiated in the Temple and on the Place de la Guillotine.

We have many works that detail the patient exertions by which separate departments of the great Bourbon Monarchy were elaborated to their culminating grandeur. But it is curious to observe how instinctively most French writers have shrunk from the unattractive turpitudes that prepared its decay. M. de Tocqueville, however, takes up the history of France from the moment when the Grand Monarque is laid in St. Denys, full of years and honors; and honestly as well as skillfully traces, till the very eve of their outbreak, the causes of dissolution which were already undermining the stately fabric he had erected. cumbrous ceremonial of Versailles, and the sanctimonious exterior enforced by Madame de Maintenon, gave way at once to the wildest profligacy. The exaggerated tone of high-flown loyalty was succeeded by cynical ridicule and ostentatious heartlessness. Court and nation together sank lower and lower in corruption; till at last, on the tardy accession of a religious and conscientious Prince, he finds himself unable to rally

The

round his polluted Throne a single sentiment | dable alliance of the French and Spanish of respect or confidence. Cabinets. The aggrandizement permitted to the House of Savoy was a standing grievance to the Power in whose Italian preponderance we were then most deeply interested. The clumsy stipulations for which we had exchanged our hold on Dunkirk, were evaded by the extension of the neighboring fortifications at Mardyck. But the Whig government, we repeat, acted wisely in accepting the situation as their predecessors had left it. Through fifteen years they labored zealously to modify and improve it; and at length the policy, which, though it was once for a short time opposed by Walpole, is inseparably and most justly associated with his name, realized its crowning triumph at the Treaty of Vienna in 1731.

Internally, the history of the long and inglorious reign of Louis XV. is a succession of tyrannical edicts and financial embarrassments. Its external history, which we are here principally to consider, may be divided into three periods-corresponding closely enough with similar periods in that of England. The first of these includes the compulsory peace which followed the War of the Spanish Succession (A. D. 1713-1732); and of this epoch the Regent Orleans and Sir Robert Walpole are the main representatives. The next period includes the War of the Austrian Succession (1742-1748); the chief agents in which are Marshal Belleisle and (perhaps we may add) Lord Carteret. The last commences with the Seven Years' War (1756-1763); in which the Duc de Choiseul and William Pitt wielded against each other the full energies of their respective nations. It is difficult to say during which of these periods France was most effectually discredited. But through them all there moves the living embodiment and representative of his day,-the worthless, frivolous, and brilliant Duc de Richelieu.

The first period we have named is characterized by the gradual modification of the Treaties of Utrecht. These treaties were, in the second and third decades of the eighteenth century, what the Treaties of Vienna have been to our own generation till within the last year, the recognized basis of European international law. Concluded by Bolingbroke's Tory administration in the hour of extreme political need, they were yet wisely and honorably accepted by George I. and his Whig Cabinet. There has seldom been an instance in which a departure from that rule of international good faith, to which the new government conformed, would have been so nearly justifiable. The treaties in question had been purchased for the House of Bourbon by the violation of solemn alliances abroad; and at home by cabals, in which a knot of conspirators played on the prejudices of an imbecile Queen and an ignorant faction, till their reckless partisanship was scarcely distinguishable from treason. Nor had the tranquillity secured for Europe been such as to excuse the means by which it had been attained. Between Spain and Austria, the nominal principals in the War of the Succession, there existed only a precarious armistice. England and Holland still fancied themselves in danger from the formi

However France might be exhausted by the War of the Succession, it is scarcely possible that the continuance of peace would long have been compatible with the life of Louis XIV. Even during the reign of Queen Anne, his evasion of the treaties for which his English partisans had sacrificed their honor and all the promise of their future career, had been so glaring, as to extort even from Harley's government a decent and perfunctory protest. But at the accession of the House of Hanover, causes of irritation were daily multiplied. Bolingbroke and Ormond were welcomed at Versailles with splendid hospitality. The profession of high Jacobinism became fashionable even with men like St. Simon, the habitual frondeurs of the Court. Lord Stair, the English ambassador of King George, was scarcely received at half a dozen houses in Paris; while the titular honors of King James were effectually acknowledged at St. Germain. Active preparations were carried on in the French ports for a descent by the Pretender on the English coast. But we were saved from actual attack by the death of Louis XIV., and the Regency of the Duke of Orleans. That prince had long been disliked by all who adhered closely to his uncle's military and diplomatic policy. Lord Stair, therefore, bent upon employing the interval of peace in quietly reconstructing the great Protestant Alliance, warmly encouraged him to assume the sole Regency, and offered him the whole moral support of England.

From the marriage of Philip, the Regent's father, with Henrietta of England, in 1661, down to the Fêtes of the Palais Royal, in 1830, there attaches to the House of Orleans an unusual continuity of historical interest

« AnteriorContinuar »