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TO MRS. GROTE. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 [1861]

Edition used:

Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the translator of Napoleon’s Correspondence with King Joseph. With large Additions. In Two Volumes (London: Macamillan, 1861). 2 vols.

Part of: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols.

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TO MRS. GROTE.

Compiègne, February 24, 1855.

I write to you again from Compiègne, my dear Mrs. Grote. We can scarcely tear ourselves from this place, solitary and even uncomfortable as it is in many respects. We have led a quiet yet well-employed life, which in spite of its monotony is not without its charm. It is possible that we may wait two or three weeks before we settle ourselves in Paris.

I continue to take a painful interest in the fate of your brave army. I am interested in it for its own sake, and also, as I was saying the other day to Senior, for that of your institutions, to which such an inefficient and inexperienced administration is very damaging, to the great delight of the enemies of political liberty. If you do not succeed in remedying this evil promptly, (and this seems to me impossible), both England and her Government will be much impaired by this struggle, whatever may be your material gains by the war, and however admirable the courage of your soldiers.

I cannot help thinking that all this may influence much, and long, and in an unexpected manner, even the progress of your affairs at home. I think that you may be pushed rather more rapidly than heretofore down the slope (not a very rapid one luckily for you), which is gradually leading you away from aristocratic institutions, at least from what was formerly meant by those words. It will be very difficult for you to have such a near view of the immense advantages of centralization in case of war, or that you should be long in contact with an army in which every soldier aspires to be, and can become, an officer, without important consequences. Will not the result of all these events be a thorough revolution in your army? and will a revolution begun there end there?

You are perhaps the only nation in the world (except perhaps Russia, and she less than you) whose officers are all gentlemen. I own that an army commanded entirely by gentlemen is not always the best versed in the art of war. It often knows better how to fight than how to provide for its subsistence, or even to manœuvre before and after the battle. We felt this under our old monarchy. But an army officered by gentlemen has many merits, which the present circumstances make us forget. The chief of these is that such an army prevents internal revolutions, while other armies make them, or allow them to be made.

Reeve wrote to me the other day, that the aristocracy had never been so strong in England; for it had never behaved with more distinguished gallantry. Military services are not enough to preserve an aristocracy. If they were, ours would not now be fallen into dust. For who could lavish life more unreservedly than the nobles of France, in every age, and from the greatest down to the least? My grandfather and great-uncle died in battle, or of their wounds. Their father and grandfather did the same, and there is not a family in my neighbourhood that might not make the same boast; and yet there are no traces of their power. The last gun which defended the old manor-house of Tourlaville, half-sunken in the ground, serves only as a stake to fasten cattle to, and the house itself has been turned into a farm. The first time that Reeve comes to visit me, I shall take him thither, to show him the fate of an aristocracy which knows how to die, but not how to govern. Till now yours has been capable of both, and therefore it still lives, though the atmosphere of the age is by no means favourable to plants of that description.

I send you a long gossip, but it will at least prove to you the pleasure which I find in conversing with you. We are delighted to hear that there is a chance of our seeing you in the spring.