--ED.]
_Sunday, August_ 18.--After breakfast when the ladies were gone to
church, I talked over with Ampere and Beaumont Tocqueville's political
career.
'Why,' I asked, 'did he refuse the support of M. Mole in 1835? Why would
he never take office under Louis Philippe? Why did he associate himself
with the Gauche whom he despised, and oppose the Droit with whom he
sympathised? Is the answer given by M. Guizot to a friend of mine who
asked a nearly similar question, "Parce qu'il voulait etre ou je suis,"
the true one?'
'The answers to your first question,' said Beaumont, 'are two. In 1835
Tocqueville was young and inexperienced. Like most young politicians, he
thought that he ought to be an independent member, and to vote, on every
occasion, according to his conscience, untrammelled by party connections.
He afterwards found his mistake.
'And, secondly, if he had chosen to submit to a leader, it would not have
been Mole.
'Mole represented a principle to which Guizot was then vehemently
opposed, though he was afterwards its incarnation--the subservience of
the Ministry and of the Parliament to the King. In that house of 450
members, there were 220 placemen; 200 were the slaves of the King.
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