Correspondence Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to | Page 4

conspiracy than it is a conspiracy in
travellers to look for their pistols when they see a band of robbers
advancing.
'M. Baze's proposition was absurd only because it was impracticable. It
was a precaution against immediate danger, but if it had been voted, it
could not have been executed. The army had already been so corrupted,
that it would have disregarded the orders of the Assembly. I have often
talked over our situation with Lamoricière and my other military
friends. We saw what was coming as clearly as we now look back to it;
but we had no means of preventing it.'

'But was not your intended law of responsibility,' I said, 'an attack on
your part?'
'That law,' he said, 'was not ours. It was sent up to us by the _Conseil
d'État_ which had been two years and a half employed on it, and ought
to have sent it to us much sooner. We thought it dangerous--that is to
say, we thought that, though quite right in itself, it would irritate the
President, and that in our defenceless state it was unwise to do so. The
_bureau_, therefore, to which it was referred refused to declare it urgent:
a proof that it would not have passed with the clauses which, though
reasonable, the President thought fit to disapprove. Our conspiracy was
that of the lambs against the wolf.
'Though I have said,' he continued, 'that he has been conspiring ever
since his election, I do not believe that he intended to strike so soon.
His plan was to wait till next March when the fears of May 1852 would
be most intense. Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One
was the candidature of the Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only
dangerous competitor. The other was an agitation set on foot by the
Legitimists in the _Conseils généraux_ for the repeal of the law of May
31. That law was his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he
feared that if he delayed, it might be abolished without him.'
'And how long,' I asked, 'will this tyranny last?'
'It will last,' he answered, 'until it is unpopular with the mass of the
people. At present the disapprobation is confined to the educated
classes. We cannot bear to be deprived of the power of speaking or of
writing. We cannot bear that the fate of France should depend on the
selfishness, or the vanity, or the fears, or the caprice of one man, a
foreigner by race and by education, and of a set of military ruffians and
of infamous civilians, fit only to have formed the staff and the privy
council of Catiline. We cannot bear that the people which carried the
torch of Liberty through Europe should now be employed in quenching
all its lights. But these are not the feelings of the multitude. Their
insane fear of Socialism throws them headlong into the arms of
despotism. As in Prussia, as in Hungary, as in Austria, as in Italy, so in
France, the democrats have served the cause of the absolutists. May
1852 was a spectre constantly swelling as it drew nearer. But now that
the weakness of the Red party has been proved, now that 10,000 of
those who are supposed to be its most active members are to be sent to

die of hunger and marsh fever in Cayenne, the people will regret the
price at which their visionary enemy has been put down. Thirty-seven
years of liberty have made a free press and free parliamentary
discussion necessaries to us. If Louis Napoleon refuses them, he will be
execrated as a tyrant. If he grants them, they must destroy him. We
always criticise our rulers severely, often unjustly. It is impossible that
so rash and wrong-headed a man surrounded, and always wishing to be
surrounded, by men whose infamous character is their recommendation
to him, should not commit blunders and follies without end. They will
be exposed, perhaps exaggerated by the press, and from the tribune. As
soon as he is discredited the army will turn against him. It sympathises
with the people from which it has recently been separated and to which
it is soon to return. It will never support an unpopular despot. I have no
fears therefore for the ultimate destinies of my country. It seems to me
that the Revolution of the 2nd of December is more dangerous to the
rest of Europe than it is to us. That it ought to alarm England much
more than France. We shall get rid of Louis Napoleon in a few years,
perhaps in a few months, but there is no saying how much mischief he
may do in those years, or even in those months, to his neighbours.'
'Surely,' said Madame de