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TO HENRY REEVE, ESQ. - 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 HENRY REEVE, ESQ.

Tocqueville, November 7, 1856.

Many thanks, my dear Reeve, for your kind present of the two Edinburgh Reviews; they form a valuable volume. I have read, indeed studied, with much interest and instruction, your article on the Austrian Concordat. You have put into it, knowingly or not, an anti-Catholic spirit, which is a symptom of our times. I am inclined to think that you exaggerate the prevalence of Ultra-montanism, and its Papal origin.

What is passing in Rome is a symptom of a general and more important phenomenon, which you disregard—the re-awakening of a Catholic spirit over the whole world, the new and youthful life which has been breathed into this ancient body.

Do you suppose that the destruction of Gallicism, and the adoption of Ultra-montanism by the majority of the clergy, and of their flocks, in France, are owing to the Pope? By no means. The French Catholics are led towards it spontaneously, by motives with which Rome has nothing to do. It is not the Pope who tries to assume spiritual despotism, but the faithful who excite him to do so.

This excitement, though not universal, is general throughout the Catholic world. I was surprised to find it as strong in Germany as in France. You ought to study this phenomenon: no one could do it better. The present attitude of Rome is rather an effect than a cause. This is my conviction.

Permit me another observation: those who talk of the liberty of the Church fall often into a confusion of thought, which you have not altogether escaped. The Church may be said to be enslaved when the Pope, instead of being, as the Council of Constance supposed him to be, a constitutional monarch, becomes a despot, unrestrained by any general or local rights among the faithful. This is the present tendency. You protest very properly against this tendency, and you say that it leads to the slavery of the Church. But you do not appear to see that there is another slavery, and in Catholic—perhaps, too, in Protestant countries—a still worse slavery, where the Church is so thoroughly in the hands of the State as to become an instrument of government; of this Russia is an example. No slavery can be more formidable nor more mischievous. Those who see with pleasure a Catholic sovereign shake off the yoke of Rome, should take care that the clergy, by becoming independent of the Pope, do not become the servants of the prince; that he does not force them to give to his passions, or to his despotism, a religious sanction. Do not forget that Bossuet, who established against Rome the four articles of the Gallican Church, wrote a book to prove the divine right of kings, and the duty of passive obedience.

I think that there is a middle course. I believe that both the Pope and the King may have each his own share of ecclesiastical power. But I say, that to limit the authority of the Pope is not liberty, unless the authority of the King be also limited; and that if I must choose between the two slaveries, I had rather subject the Church to its spiritual chief, and thus separate altogether the spiritual and temporal powers, than place both Church and State under the sceptre of a layman.

Adieu! my friend. A thousand regards, and particularly to Mrs. Reeve.