What is the duty of government with respect to democracy?

Monsieur Guizot

There are men whom this fearful struggle does not alarm: they have full confidence in human nature. According to them, if left to itself, its progress is towards good: all the evils of society arise from governments which debase men by violence or corrupt them by fraud: liberty—liberty for everybody and everything—liberty will almost always suffice to enlighten or to control the wills of men, to prevent evil or to cure it: a little government—the least possible—may be allowed for the repression of extreme disorder and the control of brute force.

Others have a more summary way of disposing of all dread of the triumph of evil in man or in society. There is, they say, no such thing as natural and necessary evil, since no human inclination is bad in itself; it becomes so, only when it does not attain the end after which it aspires—it is a torrent which overflows its banks when obstructed. If society were organized in such a manner that each{8} of the instincts of man found its proper place and received its due satisfaction, evil would disappear, strife would cease, and all the various forces of humanity, harmoniously combine to produce social order.

The former of these speculators misunderstand man; the latter misunderstand man, and deny God.

Let any man dive into his own heart and observe himself with attention. If he have the power to look, and the will to see, he will behold, with a sort of terror, the incessant war waged by the good and evil dispositions within him—reason and caprice, duty and passion; in short, to call them all by their comprehensive names, good and evil. We contemplate with anxiety the outward troubles and vicissitudes of human life; but what should we feel if we could behold the inward vicissitudes, the troubles of the human soul?—if we could see how many dangers, snares, enemies, combats, victories, and defeats can be crowded into a day—an hour? I do not say this to discourage man, nor to humble or under-value his free will. He is called upon to conquer in the battle of life, and the honour of the conquest belongs to his free will. But victory is impossible, and defeat certain, if he has not a just conception and a profound feeling of his dangers, his weaknesses, and his need of assistance. To believe that the free will of man tends to good, and is of itself sufficient to accomplish{9} good, betrays an immeasurable ignorance of his nature. It is the error of pride; an error which tends to destroy both moral and political order; which enfeebles the government of communities no less than the government of the inward man.

For the struggle is the same, the peril as imminent, the aid as necessary, in society as in the individual man. Many of those now living have been doomed to see, several times in the course of their lives, the social edifice tottering to its fall, and all the props that should uphold, all the bonds that should unite it, failing. Over what an immense extent, and with what fearful rapidity, have all the causes of social war and social destruction, which are always fermenting in the midst of us, each time burst forth! Which of us has not shuddered at the sudden discovery of the abyss over which we live—the frail barriers which separate us from it, and the destructive legions ready to rush forth upon society as soon as its jaws are unclosed? For my own part, I was a spectator, day by day, hour by hour, of the purest, the wisest, the gentlest, and the shortest of these formidable convulsions; in July, 1830, I saw, in the streets and the palaces, at the gate of the national councils and in the midst of popular assemblies, society abandoned to itself, an actor or spectator of the revolution. And at the same time that I admired the generous sentiments, the proofs of strong intelli{10}gence and disinterested virtue and heroic moderation which I witnessed, I shuddered as I saw a mighty torrent of insensate ideas, brutal passions, perverse inclinations, and terrible chimeras, rise and swell, minute by minute, ready to overflow, and submerge a land where all the dikes that had contained it were broken down. Society had gloriously repulsed the violation of its laws and its honour, and now it was on the point of falling into ruins in the midst of its glory. Here it was that I learned the vital conditions of social order, and the necessity of resistance to ensure the safety of the social fabric.

Resistance not only to evil, but to the principle of evil; not only to disorder, but to the passions and the ideas which engender disorder—this is the paramount and peremptory duty of every government. And the greater the empire of Democracy, the more important is it that government should hold fast to its true character, and act its true part in the struggle which agitates society. Why is it that so many democracies—some of them very brilliant—have so rapidly perished? Because they would not suffer their governments to do their duty, and fulfil the objects for which governments are instituted. They did more than reduce them to weakness; they condemned them to falsehood. It is the melancholy condition of democratic governments, that while charged—as they must be—with{11} the repression of disorder, they are required to be complaisant and indulgent to the causes of disorder; they are expected to arrest the evil when it breaks out, and yet they are asked to foster it whilst it is hatching. I know no more deplorable spectacle than a power which, in the struggle between the good and the evil principle, continually bends the knee before the bad, and then attempts to resume an attitude of vigour and independence when it becomes necessary to resist its excesses. If you will not have excesses, you must repress them in their origin. If you wish for liberty—for the full and glorious development of human nature—learn first on what conditions this is attainable; look forward to its consequences. Do not blind yourselves to the perils and the combats it will occasion. And when these combats and these perils arise, do not require your leaders to be hypocritical or weak in their dealings with the enemy. Do not force upon them the worship of idols, even were you yourselves those idols. Permit them, nay command them, to worship and to serve the true God alone.

I might here allow myself the satisfaction of recalling the names of all the rulers who have fallen shamefully because they submitted basely to be the slaves or the tools of the errors and passions of the democracies it was their duty and their vocation to govern; but I had rather dwell on the memory of those who lived gloriously by resisting them. It is{12} more to my taste to prove the truth by examples of the success which crowns wisdom, than by those of the disasters which attend on folly.

Democratic France owes much to the Emperor Napoleon. He gave her two things of immense value: within, civil order strongly constituted; without, national independence firmly established. But had she ever a government which treated her with greater severity, or showed less complaisance for the favourite passions of Democracy? As to the political constitution of the state, Napoleon’s only care was to raise power from the abasement into which it had fallen, to restore to it all the conditions of force and greatness. In this he saw a national interest paramount to all others, whether the nation were governed democratically or otherwise.

But Napoleon was a despot. If he rightly understood and ably served some of the great interests of that new France he had to govern, he profoundly misunderstood and injured others, not less sacred. How was it possible that one so hostile to liberty should be favourable to the political propensities of Democracy?

I shall not contest this. I run no risk of forgetting that Napoleon was a despot, for I have not to learn it now—I thought so when he was living. It may, however, be asked whether he could have been otherwise? whether he could have tolerated political liberty, and whether we were then in a state to receive{13} it? I shall not attempt to decide these questions. There are men, and very great men, who are suited to certain diseased and transitory crises, and not to the sane and permanent state, of society. Napoleon was, perhaps, one of those men. That he mistook some of the essential wants of our time, nobody is more convinced than I am. But he re-established order and authority in the midst of democratic France. He believed, and he proved, that it was possible to serve and to govern a democratic society without humouring all its inclinations. This is his real greatness.

Washington has no resemblance to Napoleon. He was not a despot. He founded the political liberty, at the same time as the national independence, of his country. He used war only as a means to peace. Raised to the supreme power without ambition, he descended from it without regret, as soon as the safety of his country permitted. He is the model for all democratic chiefs. Now you have only to examine his life, his soul, his acts, his thoughts, his words; you will not find a single mark of condescension, a single moment of indulgence, for the favourite ideas of Democracy. He constantly struggled—struggled even to weariness and to sadness—against its exactions. No man was ever more profoundly imbued with the spirit of government, or with respect for authority. He never exceeded the rights of power, according to the laws of his{14} country; but he confirmed and maintained them, in principle as well as in practice, as firmly, as loftily, as he could have done in an old monarchical or aristocratical state. He was one of those who knew that it is no more possible to govern from below in a republic than in a monarchy—in a democratic than in an aristocratic society.

Democratic societies enjoy no privilege which renders the spirit of government less necessary in them than in others; no privilege which renders their vital conditions different or inferior to those required elsewhere. By an infallible consequence of the struggle which infallibly arises in such societies, the possessor of power is continually called on to decide between the contrary impulses by which he is solicited to make himself the artisan of good or the accomplice of evil, the champion of order or the slave of disorder. The mythic story of the choice of Hercules is the daily and hourly history of his life. Every government, whatever be its form or its name, which, by the vice of its organization or situation, or by the corruption or feebleness of its will, cannot fulfil this inevitable task, will speedily pass away like an evil phantom, or will ruin the democracy it affects to establish.

 "Democracy in France" by Monsieur Guizot