If we place ourselves at the standpoint of statesmen, with all due
reserves of course, what are the qualities of a king who issues
from a revolution? He may be, and it is useful that he should be,
revolutionary; that is to say, have played a personal part in the
revolution, have become either compromised or renowned in it, and
have wielded the axe or drawn the sword. What are the qualities of a
dynasty? It must be national; that is to say, distantly revolutionary,
not through acts done, but through ideas accepted. It must be composed
of the past and be historical, and of the future and be sympathetic.
All this explains why the first revolutions are satisfied with finding
a man, Napoleon or Cromwell, while the second are determined on finding
a family, like the House of Brunswick or the House of Orléans. Royal
houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which bends
down, becomes rooted in the ground, and grows into a fig-tree. Each
branch of the family may become a dynasty, on the sole condition that
it bends down to the people. Such is the theory of clever men.
This, then, is the great art,--to give success the sound of a
catastrophe, so that those who profit by it may also tremble at it;
to season every step taken with fear; to increase the curve of the
transition until progress is checked; to spoil this daybreak, denounce
and retrench the roughness of enthusiasm; to cut angles and nails; to
pad the triumph, muffle the right, roll the giant people in flannel,
and put it to bed at full speed; to place this excess of health under
medical treatment, and regard Hercules as a convalescent; to dilute
the event in expediency, and offer to minds thirsting for the ideal
this weak nectar; to take precautions against extreme success, and
provide the revolution with a sunshade. 1830 practised this theory,
which had already been applied to England by 1688. 1830 is a revolution
arrested half-way, and a moiety of progress is almost right. Now, logic
ignores this as absolutely as the sun ignores a rush-light. Who check
revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie. Why? Because the bourgeoisie
represent satisfied self-interest. Yesterday appetite was felt, to-day
fulness, and to-morrow satiety. The phenomenon of 1814, after Napoleon,
was reproduced in 1830 after Charles X. Attempts have been made, though
wrongly, to convert the bourgeoisie into a class, but they are merely
the contented portion of the population. The bourgeois is a man who
has at last time to sit down, and a chair is not a caste. But through
a desire to sit down too soon, the progress of the human race may be
arrested, and this has frequently been the fault of the bourgeoisie;
and people are not a class because they commit a fault, and selfishness
is not one of the divisions of the social order. However, as we must
be just even towards selfishness, the condition for which that portion
of the nation called the bourgeoisie yearned after the shock of 1830
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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