Weekly national intelligencer., 1857-10-10
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

ToCQUEvILLE de PAcademle Franchise Deuxieme
edition. Paris: Michel Levy Freres 1856.
If we have long delayed to direct the attention
of our readers to this latest production of NJ. DE
'TocoUEvILLE, it has only been because we laid it
aside for careful perusal than we could find
time to give it Immediately its first appearance
in France. Whatever proceeds from the philoso-
phical pen of this distinguished publicst and states
man or statesman he is in the truest sense of the
term) deserves something more than that fugitive
reading which, in this day of multtudinous issues
from the groanlng press, is the most that can be
awarded to much the larger portion of what it was
once fashionable to call the Literature of the
times" And NJ. DE ToooUEvILLE has a special
claim upon the respectful attention and regard of
American readers; his great work on the present
attitude and inherent tendencies of Democracy in
America" having shown him to be critic of our
institutions no less candid than profound in the fine
analysis to which he subjected them during his tour
OF personal observation in this country, now many
years ago. and since which time the progress Of DO
htical development among us has confirmed the sa-
gacity of his judgment by converting many of his
auguries into accomplished facts
The present work does not profess to tell the
story OF the French Revolution 1t undertakes to
perform much more difficult and, for the ends of
philosophical history, a much more useful task by
seeking rather to penetrate and disclose the very
heart Of the ancien regime, which contained as in
an envelope, the influencing agencies which gave to
that great event its peculiar character and have in
ed 1t with such disastrous lustre And we ha-
nothing in saying that he who remains igno-
of the important facts and conclusions con-
lined in NJ. de Tocquevile's treatise, and which
are now for the first time brought to light, must
ever lack some of the most weighty elements for
the formation of correct judgment in the mat
ter both of the causes and effects of that farre-
sounding cataclysm. Here, for the first time,
will be found exposition the result of wide orr
ginal research as well as remarkable sagacty) of
the moral, social and political antecedents and con-
sequents of civil conyulsion which, though ga
thering blackness at the same time throughout
nearly the whole of Europe, first burst forth in
France with all its fury, where indeed it was the
natural offspring of the very society it was destined
to destroy but in destroying which it left in full
force and efficacy many of the odious Institutes
that gave it birth.
1t Is this latter branch of the inquiry which has
evidently afforded the writer his strongest incentive
to the composition of the present work Standing
as he does at the head of that small but intrepid
band OF French Constituencies in whom no ad-
versity seems to quench the ardor of their devo-
ton to civil liberty, and whose faith in its final
acceptance by France seems quite equal in its firm
ness and simplicity to that by which the s' elders
OF biblical celebrity have obtained good report"
NJ de Tocqueyille so far from cropping among the
ruins OF the past with musty enthusiasm which
bespeaks the antiquary has rather turned his inyes
LEGATIONS to the illustration of facts and principles
which are even now incarnated in the very body
and organism of Imperial France under his Majesty
Napoleon Ill. Indeed, at time when it has been
so common for prints like La Presse and La Patrie
to receive the censorial advertisement for their
hardlhood IN presuming to crtiese the measures or
policy OF the Emperor, we have been not little
surprised to find that publishing house in Paris
has not serupled to put Its imprint to volume
which certainly contains more of direct and covert
assault upon the maxims of the established rtqime
IN France than has been adventured by the most
liberal organs of public opinion since the re-estab-
hshment OF the NapoleoRic dynasty His Imperial
Majesty evidently stands more in awe of the news
paper than of the philosophical treatise and there
fore allows the academcian to indulge in freedom
-t anlmadEeFsien which X would not be safe for the
humber journalist to imtate-afact that sufficiently
indicates which of the two in the estimation of the
Emperor, is endowed with the greater power in
giving shape and direction to public opinion in
France
1t may be proper to observe, in connexion with
this statement, that NJ. de Tocqueville, while ex-
pressing the hope that he has written the present
work without prejudice, Is himself frank 10 admit
in the outset Of the book that he lays no claim to
the merit of having written Withoa feeling, (sans
passion and adds that il could be hardly expected
Of Frenchman to do 30 when he speaks Of his
country and thinks Of the present time. He con-
fesses, therefore, that in studying the ansient
ciety Of France in each Of les parts he has never
wholly lost sight Of the modern How true this is
win appear from few examples which we cite BY
way Of illustration.
Abiding 10 the night Of suffrage, nomiaaHy
granted TO the people Of the towns in choosing their
municipal assemblies under the ancient monarchy,
the author remarks
Nothing is more common in history than such
spectacle Nearly all the princes who have destroyed
civil liberty have in the beginning sought to maintain its
forms-s fact which is from the days of Augustus
70 IL Is thus that they fatter themselves with
the hope Of adding the moral force which is always
supplied oy the popular sanction the advantages which
absolute power alone afford"
To the same purport is the following:
when compare these vain semblances of liberty
lunder the aaeen regime with the real impotence that
tsched to them discover thus early and small scale
how Government the most absolute can be combined
with some Of the forms of the most extreme democracy
in such that to the injury of oppression is added
the ridicule of seeming not to see it.
Under the old monarchy, at the present time,
there was not town, burgh village hamlet however
small, in France not hospital, mandatory convent
or college, which could exercise independent will in
the management of its private affairs or administer ac
cording to its Judgment its peculiar property Then
now the Government held all Frenchmen aDard and
if the insolenee of that term yet forthcoming
the thing itself was already at hand''
7 In commenting on the official prtpizege which the
ancient monarchy claimed for its subordinate func-
tionaries NJ de Tocquevie does not hesitate to say
that the evils Of such responsibility in Govern
.ment agents still survive in full force
The only essential difference between the two epochs
is this: before the revolution the Government could
shield its agents only by to illegal and arbi
trary measures while since that time has been legally
empowered to let them violate the laws
Who does not see the sardonic smile directed at
the Moniteur in the subjoned pregnant comment? !?
'sThe effort Ito create interesting newspaper from
the official reports of the nendas spread throughout the
departments seems to have met with small success, for