The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
nobody doubted that he would attempt a policy the reverse of Gregory’s.
We, who were in the secret, knew that he was not the choice of Austria,
and had no doubt that he would incline to France, and follow, to no
inconsiderable extent, the advice of Count Rossi, the French Ambassador,
and one of our friends.
At that time Guizot was at the head of the government of France under
Louis Philippe, a Protestant and a quasi-conservative statesman, but
with many sympathies with the European Liberals. He believed, or
professed to believe, that a change in the institutions of the
monarchical states in Europe, giving the people a moderate share in the
government, was demanded by the exigencies of European society, and if
freely offered by authority, and not given as a concession to the people
in arms to effect it, would be a wise and beneficial public measure, and
in an eminent degree politic too, as it would tend to extract the point
from the declamations of the radicals, and prevent, or at least
indefinitely postpone, the revolution with which all Western and Central
Europe was threatened. He had urged this policy upon Prussia, perhaps
upon Austria, certainly upon the smaller German states which had not yet
adopted the constitutional _régime_, and upon the Pope and the other
Italian princes.
We were perfectly well aware of Guizot’s policy, and knew equally well
how to turn it to our account. Your _doctrinaire_, _juste-milieu_, or
_via-media_ statesmen, who follow expediency, and govern without
principle, are generally regarded as wise, prudent, and eminently
practical, but they are among the shortest-sighted mortals to be
encountered, and are as miserable humbugs as the Genevan banker, M.
Necker, who could never understand that government was any thing more
than a question of finance, or its administration any thing more than
the administration of a joint-stock bank. When there is no serious
discontent on the part of subjects, and not the least danger of
revolution or insurrection, authority may modify without danger,
immediate danger at least, the constitution, in favor of popular power,
as the English government did in 1832; but when there is grave
discontent, with or without just cause, and a secret conspiracy is
forming in behalf of liberal or popular institutions, nothing is less
wise or statesmanlike than for authority to make popular concessions
with a view of forestalling and disarming it. The disaffected attribute
such concessions solely to the weakness and fears of the government, and
only rise in their demands, and conspire with the more energy and
courage.
The government, in times of general discontent, as was the case in
Europe from 1839 to 1848, should either concede all and abdicate itself,
or concede nothing, because, if it is to defend itself it needs all its
prerogatives and the concentration of all its powers. The advice of
Guizot was fitted only to weaken the powers that entertained it, and to
render them, in the hour of trial, timid and undecided; and it is only
where authority is timid, hesitating, and undecided, that a popular
revolution can ever succeed. The only wise and even merciful way in such
times is, to make, on the first outbreak, a free use of grapeshot and
the bayonet. There will be no second outbreak, however powerful or well
concerted the conspiracy may have been. Napoleon understood this, and
his nephew understands it, also, tolerably well. No man understands it
better than Nicholas, Autocrat of all the Russias, although his single
unarmed presence is ordinarily all that is necessary to quell an
insurrection in his capital.
There is no doubt that Pius the Ninth, during the first days of his
pontificate, followed, in temporal matters, the advice of the French
government, which, as far as I have been able to learn, never, since
Philip the Fair, has been guilty of giving the Pontiff advice not to his
own hurt. France advised the fatal amnesty and some sort of
quasi-popular institutions. The former was granted, the latter were
promised, and the world was made to believe that for once it had a
liberal Pope. There was nothing heard but _Evviva Pio Nono!_ throughout
Rome, Italy, France, England, and the United States. Radicals, Infidels,
Protestants, and even the Grand Turk, united in one grand chorus of loud
and prolonged exultation. It seemed, to those who saw only the external
manifestation, that all hostility to the Papacy had ceased, and that all
the world were on the eve of becoming Papists. Rome became one perpetual
festival. Songs, hymns, processions, benedictions, speeches, addresses,
congratulations, became the regular order of the day. Multitudes of
Catholics, honest, simple souls, really felt that the day of heresy and
schism, of conflict and trial, for the Church, was over. Some shrewd old
cardinals at Rome took their pinch of snuff, shrugged their shoulders,
and retired to their palaces. We, who knew what agencies were at work,
laughed in our sleeve, and, with all the chiefs of the liberal party,
called upon all the powers which we had prepared, visible and invisible,
to aid in increasing the general intoxication, not doubting but the
Papacy was at its last gasp. For we felt sure that if, by flattery, by
enthusiasm, by loud, long, and reiterated shouts of _Evviva Pio Nono!_
we could get the Pope fairly to enter the path of reform, or what was,
we supposed, the same thing for us, make the Catholic world believe he
had entered it, it was all over with the Papacy, therefore with
Christianity, law, and social order.
No doubt some of the enthusiasm manifested was real, but a great deal of
it was feigned, for the precise purpose of imposing upon the public. We
were not ourselves for a moment deceived. We felt sure that Mastai was a
genuine Pope, that he could hardly be deceived by the demonstrations
which must have been painful to him; which, in fact, gave him no rest,
and which, under pretence of unbounded devotion to him, were becoming
unmanageable, secretly undermining his throne, and growing into a real
conspiracy against his freedom of action. We knew well there must come a
point beyond which he could make no further concession, and our plan was
to get the Catholic populations of Europe so committed to the cause we
pretended he favored, that when that point was reached, we could turn
the popular enthusiasm against him, and he find himself disarmed and
powerless to resist it. In this it is well known that we fully
succeeded.
We should not have gone so far, and succeeded so rapidly, perhaps, had
we not been aided by English politics. Lord John Russell and Lord
Palmerston did not disappoint my expectations. At the time of our visit
to Rome, the government of Louis Philippe was in the zenith of its
glory. The wily monarch seemed to have fully confirmed his throne, and
his prime minister was successful in urging upon a large number of
princes constitutional reforms, and it seemed likely, for a moment, that
the revolutionary party would spend its fury harmlessly under the lead
of the sovereigns themselves. But he deeply offended England by the
Spanish match, the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with an Infanta of
Spain. By this marriage, he seemed to have completed his circle of
alliances, and to have made himself too powerful for English politics,
and was rendering himself still more so by the constitutional reforms he
was urging upon German and Italian princes. It was necessary to thwart
him, and put an end to his illegitimate reign. Lord Minto was
despatched, and other agents instructed to confer with the chiefs of the
revolutionary party in Italy, and also in France, and encourage them to
insist on reforms effected by the people from below, and to refuse to be
satisfied with reforms effected from above by the princes. These chiefs
were assured of the sympathy, perhaps they were promised the assistance,
of the English government, which makes it a point to support a
revolutionary party in every foreign state.
In the mean time, all the batteries we had erected were opened. Exeter
Hall, and the Protestant Alliance were in full operation, and I thought
it quite certain that a force was accumulated and brought to bear on the
Rock of Peter that would shiver it into ten thousand atoms. Our presence
was no longer necessary at Rome, and after Easter of 1847, we went to
Paris, to fire a train in that city of combustibles. We were not needed
there, for having had interviews with the chiefs of the revolutionary
party in Geneva, we had already prepared them. They had more than
profited by our instructions; they had even improved on them, and stood
in closer relation to the Unknown Force than we did ourselves. All we
could do to aid on the revolution which broke out the following
February, was to persuade some of the leading Liberals to introduce the
“peaceful agitation,” reduced to so perfect a system by O’Connell in
Ireland, which was done in what were called the “Reform Banquets.”
All France at that moment was, in some sense, revolutionary. Guizot, at
the head of the government, was a reformer, as I have shown, but only on
condition that authority took the initiative. But, to admit the
necessity or propriety of any reforms or changes was a tacit concession
altogether to the prejudice of the existing order. After Guizot and his
party, came the dynastique reformers, such as Thiers and Odillon-Barrot,
who wished the Orleans family to possess the throne, but to deprive the
throne of all effective power, and to establish a parliamentary
despotism. The watchword of these at that moment was, the extension of
the electoral franchise. There were at that time, out of a population of
thirty-six millions, only about two hundred thousand electors. After the
dynastique reformers, came the Catholic party, led on by the noble,
learned, eloquent, and singularly pure-minded Montalembert, a man of
principle, of faith and conscience, with whom religion was a living and
all-pervading principle. This party consulted, first of all, the freedom
and independence of the church, and was comparatively indifferent to the
dynastique question. Its drapeau was neither that of Henri Cinque nor
that of the House of Orleans, but religion and social order. The
watchword at that time was, Freedom of Education, denied by the monopoly
secured to the University, which educated in a pantheistic, Voltarian,
or an irreligious sense. As the government sustained the University, and
denied freedom of Education guarantied by the constitution, they opposed
the government.
Behind these came the Legitimists, the adherents of the elder branch of
the Bourbons, filled with old Gallican reminiscences, and whose
watchword was Henri Cinque. They were opposed to the existing
government, ready to take active measures to overthrow it, and were
ready to support the church, in so far as she demanded nothing for
herself, and would lend all her resources to uphold and decorate the
throne. They were a set of superannuated old gentlemen, with polished
manners and courtly address, decorated with some very respectable
prejudices, but wholly ignorant of their times, and incapable of
learning. They were a clog on the Catholic party, and were chiefly
answerable for the reëstablishment of the Bonapartists and the present
Napoleonic Cæsarism in their beautiful country. However, they were
opposed to Louis Philippe, and ready to effect a change.
After the Legitimists, who were royalists and opposed to the existing
government, came the Republicans, moderate and immoderate; the moderates
having for their organ _Le National_, the immoderates _La Réforme_.
These, however, were all opposed to monarchy, whether in the elder or
younger branch of the Bourbons, and wished the _république_,—some, as