You may have heard these two observations of America:
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
And
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
Those are not quotations of today. They come from the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who traveled around the United States in the 1830s and compiled his observations into the famous book, “Democracy in America,” published in 1835, which we all were supposed to have read in high school.
To understand de Tocqueville, consider where he came from. He was born only 12 years after the Reign of Terror. The French revolution was not the stuff of history but an event that still echoed.
The French revolutionaries of 1789 liked to think that they were inspired by the American revolution of 1776. There’s an important difference in what happened after each Revolution. After a short-lived weak confederation, the 13 states organized a new federal government, and our basic government structure has stayed the same since.
Not so the French. They went from the revolution of 1789 to the republic and the reign of terror of 1792, had a civil war and a counterrevolution, were displaced by Napoleon in 1799, restored the monarchy in 1814, pushed out Napoleon, got him back, pushed him out again, and got the king back – all in less than 50 years.
One of the classic "what if" questions is "If you could invite anyone in history to a dinner party, who would you ask?"
For one of my historical dinner parties I would invite the people who set de Tocqueville on his way. The first is the person who brought about the end of the French monarchy, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794).
Robespierre was a young lawyer, barely 30 when he led the French Convention to abolish the monarchy and not yet 35 when he persuaded the Convention to execute Louis XVI in January 1793. He had a vision of the ideal Republic. He prepared the very liberal constitution of 1793, but never implemented it. He led the French toward his goal – until they saw that he was ordering the deaths of anyone who stood in his way. Seeing their own danger, the Convention organized against him. In July 1794 he left France the same way that King Louis had departed, head first.
Imagine that you could hear de Tocqueville interview Robespierre. If Robespierre could rewrite history, would he have pushed Louis XVI to the guillotine? Would he have executed hundreds of his political enemies? Or would he listen to de Tocqueville’s recounting of American success and understand that he could have brought about the same result for France?
Every case has two sides. If we dine with Robespierre, we will invite Louis XVI. You may know him for marrying Marie Antoinette and how they met their end. There’s much more to his story.
Louis XVI succeeded his father in 1775. Louis began his reign as a reformer. He tried to abolish serfdom. He tried to get rid of the land tax and the labor tax. He tried to foster religious tolerance. On the spectrum of French kings he was a liberal and a reformer. He supported the American revolution, but the resulting national debt combined with bad grain harvests led to the lower and middle classes becoming as unhappy with him as the aristocracy had been. He made all sides angry.
He could not stave off the French revolution in 1789, he was arrested and deposed in 1792, and he went to the guillotine in January 1793.
We can imagine De Tocqueville, after a glass or two of a fine Bordeaux, encouraging Louis and Robespierre to argue about whether Louis could have avoided the revolution and execution. Would Louis have gone into exile to save the lives of himself and his family? Or would he, like a sea captain, “go down with the ship”?
I’d invite a fourth person to join us, one you’ve likely never heard of other than as the namesake of a station on the Paris Metro. His name is Chretien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721-1794). Why him?
The French Convention included many lawyers. Malesherbes was one of them. Malesherbes offered to defend Louis XVI at his trial, knowing that by defending the unpopular king he was risking his own life as a very visible royalist. He was right - fifteen months after Louis XVI went to the guillotine, Malesherbes died the same way, together with his daughter, his granddaughter, and their husbands. Did Malesherbes regret dying for his belief in the principle that every accused person is entitled to a defense?
I wouldn't pose the question myself, but I'd encourage Alexis de Tocqueville to ask Malesherbes, as I expect he would; de Tocqueville was his great-grandson.