French & English

There is a strong resemblance between the great French and English political movements of modern times, but they differ from each other chronologically, and also in the terms by which they are usually described.

The resemblance is seen at once when we use the terms that are equally applicable to both. The word “Monarchy,” for example, is misleading, because it is still used in the case of England, where one man does not govern, and where popular representative institutions have irresistibly developed themselves. The word “Republic” is misleading in another way, because it is insidiously associated with communism by the enemies of genuine parliamentary government.

Such being the abusive power of words, it is evident that so long as we use the words “Monarchy” and “Republic” for England and France we convey the idea of a difference that does not really exist, at least with that degree of antagonism and contrast; but if we use the words “Absolutism” and “Liberty,” supposing “Absolutism” to mean government by one person, invested with authority, and “Liberty” to mean national self-government, not anarchy, then we shall much more clearly perceive the resemblance in the political movement of the two countries.

This being said for the sake of clearness, I need only remind the reader that England preceded France by at least a hundred years in the movement from absolutism to liberty, and that this difference of chronology has exercised a very strong influence on English opinion about French affairs. The English have all along had the advantage of a much riper political experience, and they resemble a mature man who has forgotten the mistakes of his own youth and the violence of his boyish temper, whilst he sees those defects in one who is fifteen years younger than himself.

During all the difficult time of the French passage from absolutism to liberty, the English had a way of treating the French political evolution which was peculiarly their own. They refused to see anything natural or regular in the remarkable process that was going on before their eyes, and perceived only a series of accidents combined with spasmodic human efforts in one direction or another. They did not discern that, through the accidents and the efforts, a great natural force was acting with real though not always visible constancy, the same force which had abolished absolutism in England itself, and produced the great English experiment in representative government.

I have been struck by a passage in one of Mr. W. R. Greg’s well-known Essays in Enigmas of Life, where he speaks with a total absence of sympathy for the growth of free institutions in France, and betrays the curious but common English belief that if somebody had done something which was easy at a particular time, such institutions might have been prevented from taking root in the country.

“In France,” Mr. Greg wrote, “as is every year becoming more recognised by all students of her history, the ochlocracy, which is now driving her to seemingly irretrievable downfall, is traceable to the fatal weakness of monarch and ministers alike in February 1848, when a parliamentary demand for a very moderate extension of a very restricted franchise was allowed to become, first a street riot, and then a mob revolution, though ordinary determination and consistency of purpose among the authorities might have prevented it from ever growing beyond the dimensions of a mere police affair, and have crushed it at the outset.”

This, I should say, is an extremely English way of looking at French affairs. The “ochlocracy” (why not simply have said “popular government”?) is driving France to irretrievable downfall—a result not wholly displeasing to her neighbours—and the democratic development might have been prevented if the bourgeois king and his ministers had only shown “ordinary determination.” A wiser king than Louis Philippe would, no doubt, have made the change to complete democracy gentler and easier by timely concessions; but the ultimate establishment of democratic institutions was inevitable in any case, and inevitable long before Louis Philippe ascended his precarious throne.[22] It was inevitable from the hour when Mirabeau gave his immortal answer to the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé: “Nous sommes ici par la volonté du peuple, et nous n’en sortirons que par la puissance des baïonnettes.” From that hour, on the 23d of June 1789, when the “will of the people” was openly recognised in a French parliament as superior to the will of the king, the establishment of what Mr. Greg called an “ochlocracy,” in its complete development, was simply a question of time. How much parliamentary institutions have gained strength in a hundred years may be realised by imagining the effect of a royal summons to the Chamber of Deputies at the present day. There would be no need of a Mirabeau to resist and resent it with indignant eloquence of voice and gesture; at the most, it would excite a smile.

For myself, I am much more struck by the resemblance than by the difference between England and France in the great political metamorphosis that has come over both countries and is not yet quite completed in either. I see a wonderful resemblance in the course of events, in the evolution of opinion, and in those general tendencies which are far more important than any mere historical accidents, but I see at the same time a great difference in dates and most curious inequalities of pace. The comparison may be made clearer by supposing that two authors are at work upon two books. The elder has begun his manuscript much sooner than the other, but he has not gone on with it very quickly, except at odd times of inspiration. The younger seems to have plagiarised his opening chapters from his predecessor, there are so many striking points of likeness, but after a time he goes on in his own way and works the faster of the two, notwithstanding frequent goings back caused by immense erasures. Just now it seems as if he had left the elder writer behind, but their different ways of work make this very difficult to determine. Neither of the books is as yet completed. As they advance, their general similarity of tendency and purpose becomes every day more manifest. This vexes the rival authors, who would have preferred to find themselves original.

English critics usually take France during her revolutionary period and compare her with England at another stage when she has got through her revolutionary and is in her reforming period. A more just comparison would be to take England between 1630 and 1730, and France between 1780 and 1880. There are so many points of resemblance between the two that history has almost repeated itself. Our ancestors decapitated a king and the French decapitated theirs; the difference being that the axe was used in one case, and a more ingenious mechanical contrivance in the other. After the execution of Charles I., the English were not yet ripe for liberty, so they fell under the dictatorship of a soldier; the French did exactly the same. When the English were not disposed to endure the Stuarts any longer, they sent them across the Channel. When the French were not disposed to endure the Bourbons any longer, they sent them across the Channel. The constant tendency in both countries has been to increase the power of the representative chamber and diminish that of the nominal head of the State, with this final result: that in France the National Assembly (the two chambers meeting as one) is declared to be sovereign, and in England the Marquis of Hartington has openly attributed sovereignty to the House of Commons, quoting Professor Dicey in reply to an old-fashioned member who stood aghast at what seemed to him an almost treasonable employment of the word.[23]

There is, however, one very real and essential difference between the English and the French progress towards democracy. The point of departure is the same, the sovereignty of the king; the point of arrival is the same, the sovereignty of the people; but the intermediate stage is not the same. Thanks to the strength of her aristocracy, and especially to its fine energy and spirit, England has been able to pass through a highly convenient intermediate stage, that of an aristocratic republic preserving monarchical appearances. France has not been able to do this, though she tried the experiment in imitation of England, the reason for her inevitable failure being that she had not the kind and quality of aristocracy that was necessary for such a work. In all very disturbing changes there is nothing so convenient, nothing so conducive to prudent deliberation, as a shelter whilst the change is going on. If you destroy your old house to build a new one on its site, you will be glad to hire a temporary residence in the neighbourhood. The English were most fortunate in this, that they had a fine, substantial-looking mansion to retire to, a dignified building that looked as if it would last for ever; the French were out in the cold, and had to dwell in tents, by which I mean their temporary written constitutions.

The transition to democratic government was not easy in an old country like France, where the monarchy, in such comparatively recent times as those of Louis XIV., had been the strongest and most splendid monarchy in the world, the realisation of that ideal monarchy in which the king is not simply a figure-head, but a governor whom all in his realm obey, they being his real, not nominal, subjects, thrown under his feet by a destiny outside of choice. Neither was Louis XIV. simply a governor; he was at the same time a kind of demigod, who dwelt in the midst of a ceremonious cultus whereof he was the centre and the object. And although this great prince had degraded the nobility into courtiers, the noble class was still a numerous and a coherent caste which had to be pulverised by democratic legislation before the democratic principle could be finally established. Surely it is not surprising that every step in advance should have been followed by a reaction. Restorations, periods of lassitude, experiments, mistakes—all these were the natural concomitants of a transition for which French history shows no precedent; yet so long as the transition was actually in progress how few Englishmen understood it—how few of them perceived that the modern democratic idea was always, in spite of appearances, steadily making its way!

The English revolution has differed from the French in one important particular. The English have no written constitutions, and therefore they do not violate them, there being nothing, in fact, to violate. Although the change of dynasty was made openly, and the Protestant succession established, it has been possible for another revolution to take place in complete obscurity, a revolution far more radical than any change of dynasty, and of far greater political importance than the religion of the king. The reader knows that I am alluding to the establishment of cabinet government. This, the greatest of all revolutions, has accomplished itself so insidiously that nobody can tell the date of it. French revolutionary dates are all perfectly well known, but this momentous English date is a mystery even to the English.

What gives especial importance to the English system of cabinet government is that it has been exactly copied by France. The United States of America have a system of their own, presidential government, that the French entirely overlooked when they made their present constitution, though some of the more thoughtful amongst them now regret that it was not adopted in preference to the English.[24] In France, as in England, the Lower House elects the cabinet by overthrowing every cabinet that does not happen to please it, and a French cabinet, like an English one, lives a precarious life, dependent either upon its representation of the ideas most prevalent in the Chamber, or else on servile submission to its will. Such is the delusive effect of words, that the use of the words “Republic,” “President,” “Senate,” makes unthinking people believe that the French have adopted the American system rather than the English. There is only one essential difference between England and France, and that has been quite recently discovered. The French deputies have found out a way of making the president retire by declining to accept cabinet offices under him, and in case of real or seeming necessity this method will certainly be resorted to again. On the other hand, no human being can foresee by what method an English House of Commons would compel an unpopular Sovereign to abdicate.[25]

The compulsory retirement of President Grévy and the peaceful election of his successor have completed the modern French system of making all changes of persons possible without violence. This is perhaps the best guarantee for internal tranquillity, especially in a country like France, where political reputations are soon used up and services almost immediately forgotten. It is also, in its far-reaching consequences, the most important ultimate result of the French Revolution.