'The socialist tendencies which are imputed to this Second Empire, the
oath which it most imprudently imposes, its pretensions to form a dynasty
and its assertion of the principle most abhorrent to them, elective
monarchy, have thrown them back into disaffection. And I believe their
disaffection to be one of our great dangers--a danger certainly increased
by the Fusion. The principal object of the Fusion is to influence the
army. The great terror of the army is division in itself. It will accept
anything, give up anything, dare anything, to avoid civil war. Rather
than be divided between the two branches, it would have adhered to the
Empire. Now it can throw off the Bonapartes without occasioning a
disputed succession.'
'When you say,' I asked, 'that the Legitimists are not the successors of
the old aristocracy in cultivation, intelligence, or energy, do you mean
to ascribe to them positive or relative inferiority in these qualities?'
'In energy,' answered Tocqueville, 'their deficiency is positive. They
are ready to suffer for their cause, they are not ready to exert
themselves for it. In intelligence and cultivation they are superior to
any other class in France; but they are inferior to the English
aristocracy, and they are inferior, as I said before, to their ancestors
of the eighteenth century.
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