The Ancient Regime | Page 9

needs. Nothing but experience can determine this; it must have time to ascertain whether the political structure is convenient, substantial, able to withstand inclemency, and adapted to customs, habits, occupations, characters, peculiarities and caprices. For example, the one we have tried has never satisfied us; we have during eighty years demolished it thirteen times, each time setting it up anew, and always in vain, for never have we found one that suited us. If other nations have been more fortunate, or if various political structures abroad have proved stable and enduring, it is because these have been erected in a special way. Founded on some primitive, massive pile, supported by an old central edifice, often restored but always preserved, gradually enlarged, and, after numerous trials and additions, they have been adapted to the wants of its occupants. It is well to admit, perhaps, that there is no other way of erecting a permanent building. Never has one been put up instantaneously, after an entirely new design, and according to the measurements of pure Reason. A sudden contrivance of a new, suitable, and enduring constitution is an enterprise beyond the forces of the human mind.
In any event, I came to the conclusion that if we should ever discover the one we need it would not be through some fashionable theory. The point is, if it exists, to discover it, and not to put it to a vote. To do that would not only be pretentious it would be useless; history and nature will do it for us; it is for us to adapt ourselves to them, as it is certain they will accommodate themselves to us. The social and political mold, into which a nation may enter and remain, is not subject to its will, but determined by its character and its past. It is essential that, even in its least traits, it should be shaped on the living material to which it is applied; otherwise it will burst and fall to pieces. Hence, if we should succeed in finding ours, it will only be through a study of ourselves, while the more we understand exactly what we are, the more certainly shall we distinguish what best suits us. We ought, therefore, to reverse the ordinary methods, and form some conception of the nation before formulating its constitution. Doubtless the first operation is much more tedious and difficult than the second. How much time, how much study, how many observations rectified one by the other, how many researches in the past and the present, over all the domains of thought and of action, what manifold and age-long labors before we can obtain an accurate and complete idea of a great people. A people which has lived a people's age, and which still lives! But it is the only way to avoid the unsound construction based on a meaningless planning. I promised myself that, for my own part, if I should some day undertake to form a political opinion, it would be only after having studied France.
What is contemporary France? To answer this question we must know how this France is formed, or, what is still better, to act as spectator at its formation. At the end of the last century (in 1789), like a molting insect, it underwent a metamorphosis. Its ancient organization is dissolved; it tears away its most precious tissues and falls into convulsions, which seem mortal. Then, after multiplied throes and a painful lethargy, it re-establishes itself. But its organization is no longer the same: by silent interior travail a new being is substituted for the old. In 1808, its leading characteristics are decreed and defined: departments, arondissements, cantons and communes, no change have since taken place in its exterior divisions and functions. Concordat, Code, Tribunals, University, Institute, Prefects, Council of State, Taxes, Collectors, Cours des Comptes, a uniform and centralized administration, its principal organs, are still the same. Nobility, commoners, artisans, peasants, each class has henceforth the position, the sentiments, the traditions which we see at the present day (1875). Thus the new creature is at once stable and complete; consequently its structure, its instincts and its faculties mark in advance the circle within which its thought and its action will be stimulated. Around it, other nations, some more advanced, others less developed, all with greater caution, some with better results, attempt similarly a transformation from a feudal to a modern state; the process takes place everywhere and all but simultaneously. But, under this new system as beneath the ancient, the weak is always the prey of the strong. Woe to those (nations) whose retarded evolution exposes them to the neighbor suddenly emancipated from his chrysalis state, and is the first to go forth fully armed! Woe likewise to him whose too violent and too abrupt evolution