Les Misérables, page 235
CHAPTER IV--CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION
At the moment when the drama which we are narrating is on the point ofpenetrating into the depths of one of the tragic clouds which envelopthe beginning of Louis Philippe's reign, it was necessary that thereshould be no equivoque, and it became requisite that this book shouldoffer some explanation with regard to this king.
Louis Philippe had entered into possession of his royal authoritywithout violence, without any direct action on his part, by virtue of arevolutionary change, evidently quite distinct from the real aim of theRevolution, but in which he, the Duc d'Orléans, exercised no personalinitiative. He had been born a Prince, and he believed himself to havebeen elected King. He had not served this mandate on himself; he had nottaken it; it had been offered to him, and he had accepted it; convinced,wrongly, to be sure, but convinced nevertheless, that the offer was inaccordance with right and that the acceptance of it was in accordancewith duty. Hence his possession was in good faith. Now, we say it ingood conscience, Louis Philippe being in possession in perfect goodfaith, and the democracy being in good faith in its attack, the amountof terror discharged by the social conflicts weighs neither on theKing nor on the democracy. A clash of principles resembles a clash ofelements. The ocean defends the water, the hurricane defends theair, the King defends Royalty, the democracy defends the people; therelative, which is the monarchy, resists the absolute, which is therepublic; society bleeds in this conflict, but that which constitutesits suffering to-day will constitute its safety later on; and, in anycase, those who combat are not to be blamed; one of the two parties isevidently mistaken; the right is not, like the Colossus of Rhodes, ontwo shores at once, with one foot on the republic, and one in Royalty;it is indivisible, and all on one side; but those who are in error areso sincerely; a blind man is no more a criminal than a Vendean is aruffian. Let us, then, impute to the fatality of things alone theseformidable collisions. Whatever the nature of these tempests may be,human irresponsibility is mingled with them.
Let us complete this exposition.
The government of 1840 led a hard life immediately. Born yesterday, itwas obliged to fight to-day.
Hardly installed, it was already everywhere conscious of vague movementsof traction on the apparatus of July so recently laid, and so lacking insolidity.
Resistance was born on the morrow; perhaps even, it was born on thepreceding evening. From month to month the hostility increased, and frombeing concealed it became patent.
The Revolution of July, which gained but little acceptance outside ofFrance by kings, had been diversely interpreted in France, as we havesaid.
God delivers over to men his visible will in events, an obscure textwritten in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately make translations of it;translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, and of nonsense.Very few minds comprehend the divine language. The most sagacious, thecalmest, the most profound, decipher slowly, and when they arrive withtheir text, the task has long been completed; there are already twentytranslations on the public place. From each remaining springs a party,and from each misinterpretation a faction; and each party thinks that italone has the true text, and each faction thinks that it possesses thelight.
Power itself is often a faction.
There are, in revolutions, swimmers who go against the current; they arethe old parties.
For the old parties who clung to heredity by the grace of God, thinkthat revolutions, having sprung from the right to revolt, one has theright to revolt against them. Error. For in these revolutions, the onewho revolts is not the people; it is the king. Revolution is preciselythe contrary of revolt. Every revolution, being a normal outcome,contains within itself its legitimacy, which false revolutionistssometimes dishonor, but which remains even when soiled, which surviveseven when stained with blood.
Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. Arevolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. It is because itmust be that it is.
None the less did the old legitimist parties assail the Revolution of1830 with all the vehemence which arises from false reasoning. Errorsmake excellent projectiles. They strike it cleverly in its vulnerablespot, in default of a cuirass, in its lack of logic; they attacked thisrevolution in its royalty. They shouted to it: "Revolution, why thisking?" Factions are blind men who aim correctly.
This cry was uttered equally by the republicans. But coming fromthem, this cry was logical. What was blindness in the legitimists wasclearness of vision in the democrats. 1830 had bankrupted the people.The enraged democracy reproached it with this.
Between the attack of the past and the attack of the future, theestablishment of July struggled. It represented the minute atloggerheads on the one hand with the monarchical centuries, on the otherhand with eternal right.
In addition, and beside all this, as it was no longer revolution and hadbecome a monarchy, 1830 was obliged to take precedence of all Europe. Tokeep the peace, was an increase of complication. A harmony establishedcontrary to sense is often more onerous than a war. From this secretconflict, always muzzled, but always growling, was born armed peace,that ruinous expedient of civilization which in the harness of theEuropean cabinets is suspicious in itself. The Royalty of July rearedup, in spite of the fact that it caught it in the harness of Europeancabinets. Metternich would gladly have put it in kicking-straps. Pushedon in France by progress, it pushed on the monarchies, those loiterersin Europe. After having been towed, it undertook to tow.
Meanwhile, within her, pauperism, the proletariat, salary, education,penal servitude, prostitution, the fate of the woman, wealth, misery,production, consumption, division, exchange, coin, credit, the rights ofcapital, the rights of labor,--all these questions were multiplied abovesociety, a terrible slope.
Outside of political parties properly so called, another movement becamemanifest. Philosophical fermentation replied to democratic fermentation.The elect felt troubled as well as the masses; in another manner, butquite as much.
Thinkers meditated, while the soil, that is to say, the people,traversed by revolutionary currents, trembled under them withindescribably vague epileptic shocks. These dreamers, some isolated,others united in families and almost in communion, turned over socialquestions in a pacific but profound manner; impassive miners, whotranquilly pushed their galleries into the depths of a volcano, hardlydisturbed by the dull commotion and the furnaces of which they caughtglimpses.
This tranquillity was not the least beautiful spectacle of this agitatedepoch.
These men left to political parties the question of rights, theyoccupied themselves with the question of happiness.
The well-being of man, that was what they wanted to extract fromsociety.
They raised material questions, questions of agriculture, of industry,of commerce, almost to the dignity of a religion. In civilization, suchas it has formed itself, a little by the command of God, a great deal bythe agency of man, interests combine, unite, and amalgamate in amanner to form a veritable hard rock, in accordance with a dynamic law,patiently studied by economists, those geologists of politics. These menwho grouped themselves under different appellations, but who may all bedesignated by the generic title of socialists, endeavored to pierce thatrock and to cause it to spout forth the living waters of human felicity.
From the question of the scaffold to the question of war, their worksembraced everything. To the rights of man, as proclaimed by the FrenchRevolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of the child.
The reader will not be surprised if, for various reasons, we do nothere treat in a thorough manner, from the theoretical point of view, thequestions raised by socialism. We confine ourselves to indicating them.
All the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonicvisions, revery and mysticism being cast aside, can be reduced to twoprincipal problems.
First problem: To produce wealth.
Second problem: To share it.
The first problem contains the question of work.
The second contains the question of salary.
In the first problem the employment of forces is in question.
In the second, the distribution of enjoyment.
From the proper employment of forces results public power.
From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness.
By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution mustbe understood.
From these two things combined, the public power without, individualhappiness within, results social prosperity.
Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nationgreat.
England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealthadmirably, she divides it badly. This solution which is complete onone side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence,monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for therest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly,feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, whichsates public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the Statein the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur inwhich are combined all the material elements and into which no moralelement enters.
Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem.They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partitionabolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition madeby the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is thereforeimpossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth isnot the same thing as dividing it.
The two problems require to be solved together, to be well solved. Thetwo problems must be combined and made but one.
Solve only the first of the two problems; you will be Venice, you willbe England. You will have, like Venice, an artificial power, or, likeEngland, a material power; you will be the wicked rich man. You will dieby an act of violence, as Venice died, or by bankruptcy, as Englandwill fall. And the world will allow to die and fall all that is merelyselfishness, all that does not represent for the human race either avirtue or an idea.
It is well understood here, that by the words Venice, England, wedesignate not the peoples, but social structures; the oligarchiessuperposed on nations, and not the nations themselves. The nationsalways have our respect and our sympathy. Venice, as a people, will liveagain; England, the aristocracy, will fall, but England, the nation, isimmortal. That said, we continue.
Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy, and protect the poor,suppress misery, put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble bythe strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man whois making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust,mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor, mingle gratuitous andcompulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of sciencethe base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at oneand the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men, renderproperty democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal,so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easiermatter than is generally supposed; in two words, learn how to producewealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral andmaterial greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.
This is what socialism said outside and above a few sects which havegone astray; that is what it sought in facts, that is what it sketchedout in minds.
Efforts worthy of admiration! Sacred attempts!
These doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the unforeseennecessity for the statesman to take philosophers into account, confusedevidences of which we catch a glimpse, a new system of politics to becreated, which shall be in accord with the old world without too muchdisaccord with the new revolutionary ideal, a situation in which itbecame necessary to use Lafayette to defend Polignac, the intuition ofprogress transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, thecompetitions to be brought into equilibrium around him, his faith inthe Revolution, perhaps an eventual indefinable resignation born of thevague acceptance of a superior definitive right, his desire to remain ofhis race, his domestic spirit, his sincere respect for the people, hisown honesty, preoccupied Louis Philippe almost painfully, and there weremoments when strong and courageous as he was, he was overwhelmed by thedifficulties of being a king.
He felt under his feet a formidable disaggregation, which was not,nevertheless, a reduction to dust, France being more France than ever.
Piles of shadows covered the horizon. A strange shade, gradually drawingnearer, extended little by little over men, over things, over ideas;a shade which came from wraths and systems. Everything which had beenhastily stifled was moving and fermenting. At times the conscience ofthe honest man resumed its breathing, so great was the discomfortof that air in which sophisms were intermingled with truths. Spiritstrembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of a storm.The electric tension was such that at certain instants, the first comer,a stranger, brought light. Then the twilight obscurity closed in again.At intervals, deep and dull mutterings allowed a judgment to be formedas to the quantity of thunder contained by the cloud.
Twenty months had barely elapsed since the Revolution of July, the year1832 had opened with an aspect of something impending and threatening.
The distress of the people, the laborers without bread, the last Princede Condé engulfed in the shadows, Brussels expelling the Nassaus asParis did the Bourbons, Belgium offering herself to a French Princeand giving herself to an English Prince, the Russian hatred of Nicolas,behind us the demons of the South, Ferdinand in Spain, Miguel inPortugal, the earth quaking in Italy, Metternich extending his hand overBologna, France treating Austria sharply at Ancona, at the North no oneknew what sinister sound of the hammer nailing up Poland in her coffin,irritated glances watching France narrowly all over Europe, England, asuspected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering and tohurl herself on that which should fall, the peerage sheltering itselfbehind Beccaria to refuse four heads to the law, the fleurs-de-lyserased from the King's carriage, the cross torn from Notre Dame,Lafayette lessened, Laffitte ruined, Benjamin Constant dead inindigence, Casimir Périer dead in the exhaustion of his power; politicaland social malady breaking out simultaneously in the two capitals of thekingdom, the one in the city of thought, the other in the city of toil;at Paris civil war, at Lyons servile war; in the two cities, the sameglare of the furnace; a crater-like crimson on the brow of the people;the South rendered fanatic, the West troubled, the Duchesse de Berry inla Vendée, plots, conspiracies, risings, cholera, added the sombre roarof tumult of events to the sombre roar of ideas.
