CORKRAN'S HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL CONSTI- TUENT ASSEMBLY. * HISTORIES of
particular assemblies are rarely successful efforts ; and the most successful are those in which ideas rather than actions are the subject of the meeting. Yet of all the laborious records of religions Councils, how few are remembered save by the ecclesiastical student or the historian. The Assembly of Divines under James the First is chiefly memorable to most readers for the shrewd, racy, unconscious buf- foonery of its royal president. Paul Sarprs History of the Council of Trent possesses a monumental durability for the importance of its deci sions to the Romish Church, and its connexion with the history of the Reformation; but few save professional readers know the book. The histories of the Assemblies of the first French Revolution are useful as a guide to what was said and done; but their subject, devoid of action, has little interest for the general reader : those who wish to use them for historical purposes should consult the original records.
To write the history of a Constituent Assembly whose existence has just terminated in our very presence, and before we can by any possibility tell what part of its proceedings is likely to have any permanent influ- ence, or what that influence is to be, looks an ill-judged undertaking. Mr. Corkran has escaped the difficulties of his task by not writing a his- tory at all. The proceedings of the late Constituent Assembly are merely a peg on which to hang a summary sketch of the Revolution, with por- traits of its leading Parliamentary actors ; which in effect embraces all the actors. We learn less of the actual debating and voting of the Assembly than might be learned from the prdcis of the English daily press : any- thing approaching to a formal debate, or even to the elaborate report of an oration, is systematically avoided. The leading subjects as they come before the Assembly are briefly indicated ; the member most conspi- cuously engaged on that occasion is described, and his " character " drawn with enough of biographical notice to convey an idea of his ante- cedents when needed. It might be supposed that certain events of action would be shut out by this course ; but they are not, for in some way or other they all come before the Assembly. That body had to vote the supplies for the Ateliers Nationaux, and at last to stop them; the mem- bers had to listen to diatribes against the " massacres " at Rouen by the National Guards, and outbreaks in other places ; the Assembly itself was invaded on the 15th of May, and constant reports were brought to it of the progress of the insurrection in June : so that, by a little dexterous management, as much prominence is given to the doings out of doors as to the sayings within. Portraits of the members, however, form the great feature of the history. The most striking characteristic of the work is the author's personal knowledge. He seems to have been present at much of what he relates, if not at all ; and to have an actual acquaintance with the spokesmen and placemen he delineates. From the memoranda of a journal, if he keeps a journal, he could have written the whole without the necessity of having recourse to any other records, so general is his account of the business of the Constituent Assembly. Hence, Mr. Corkran's descriptions have freshness and originality, whatever deficiency they may exhibit in other respects. His book is much better than might have been expected, and much superior to any other accounts we have met with. His portraits, being the result of his own perception of men and their qualities, have an advantage over any narrative of facts ; the best view of which, after all, was presented by the correspondence of the daily press, as the best ex- planatory commentary was to be found in their leading articles. No work that we have seen from "any single hand" gives so full, so vivid, or so picturesque a view, as may be drawn from the files of the diurnals. Anonymous authority will henceforth be the authority for the picturesque parts of history; which is better, however, than lying legends, invented long after the event. From Mr. Corkran's frequent attendance at the Assembly, and his constant moving about when anything is going on, it seems probable that he is himself a foreign correspondent. But he is a superior speci- men of the class, with more matter and closeness than they generally dia. play : he is not free from a tendency to interruptive disquisition, but he has less of it, and what he has is of a better kind, than is often found among newspaper correspondents. He has also a turn for smart and * History of the National Constituent Assembly, from May 1848. By 5. F. Cork- ran, Esq. In two volumes. Published by Bentley. pointed phraseology ; which would tell better were his style terser. The effect of his happy sentences is sometimes marred by the multitude of words around them.
Mr. Corkran's want is the common want—that of depth. He cannot explain what is not obvious, and he has the rhetorician's liking for riddles. Circumstances give a temporary interest to the following summary of the Career and character of Marshal Bugeaud ; but there must be some reason for his universal success, which we ought to have—" Nature well known no prodigies remain." "Let as now divert our eye from a man against whom there was once a fatal coalition of all parties, towards one in whose favour there has been an enduring combination—one indeed so rare as to present a phesnomenon in its way. Mar- shal Bugeaud is the spoiled child of fortune. He is great in spite of himself; nay, he is great in consequence of acts that would, taken singly, have overwhelmed another man with unpopularity. The Legitimista identified him with the im- prisonment of the Dutcheas of Berry at Blaye. The Republicans connected him with some severe repression of troubles; and thought of the terrible sang fiend with which he appeared in the Chamber before Datong, whom he had shot in a duel, had been laid in his grave. The army reproached him with his treaty of Tafna, made with Abd-el-Kader, by which the subtle Emir was enabled to gain time, recruit his strength, and lead the best generals of France a ten-years chase. No Government could insure his obedience, and even towards the Court he was unruly. He planned and ordered the inconceivable iniquity of the suffocation of a tribe, men, women, children, with horses and cattle, in the caverns of the Debra. When finally recalled, he, contrary to orders and to the express wishes of his Government, marched an army into the mountains of Kabylia, where dwelt a mercantile trading community, like all such disposed to avoid war; and then he wantonly, and without political necessity or serious object, burned, wasted, and ravaged the district. Yet this man, the torment of Marshal Soult, the restive servant of the Court, the plague of every Government, a grotesque and comical pamphleteer, has throughout all changes found himself the petted, flattered, pampered idol of all parties. For his government of a province in which he never fought a battle, he was created a Marshal of France; for a battle on the borders of Morocco with wild irregular Moorish horsemen who could not approach infantry in squares, he was made a Duke. By the Court his eccentricities were forgiven, because he was the selected sword of an expected Regency. He was called upon at the twelfth hour to fulfil the implied engagement, and perhaps he would have fulfilled it had he been allowed. The Provisional Government had hardly been Installed, when Marshal Bugeaud offered it his adhesion. Within half a year, we behold him a member of the National Assembly, courted and complimented by the Right benches, the champion of the middle classes ; and he is now, under the Republic, Commander-in-chief of the titular army of the Alps, marching from town to town, proclaiming himself the shield of society, allowing it to be reasonably sus- pected that he would desire above all things to find a Milan in the faubourgs of the metropolis. "The Legitimists have forgiven him Blaye; the Orleanists his hasty allegi- ance to the Republic; none think, for no one ever did think, of reproaching him with the Dahra massacre, and his making a Palatinate of Kabylia. The strange favour bestowed on such a man was not honourable to the Monarchy. It does not now speak well for the moral feelings of parties. The Marshal never, it is true, could be accused of subserviency; on the contrary, he was remarkable for a rude independent audacity. Would he have acted so, did he not know that he was wanted? He understood that service would be expected from him, such as he was capable of fulfilling with terrible fidelity. Backed by Court favour, of the steadfastness of which he had no reason to doubt, he cared little for the orders of superiors, and by his assumed independence gratified his vanity. That which is surprising is, that this man should be above all the hero of the middle classes. The National Guard have unbounded confidence in him. He is to those guard- ians of society menaced by the Socialist, that which he was to the Court menaced by the Republicans. He speaks much and writes much, and professes to be an agriculturist as well as a warrior. He is a William Cobbett in his farm, a Duke of Alba in the field. Fall of external bonhonimie, but with a heart of steel. In person he is large and coarse, yet his silver hair and ruddy complexion please the eye, and in some degree explain his personal attractiveness. No man with the same homely good look ever executed hardier acts. Blaye was a more objection- able duty than St. Helena, and the erudite pages of Sismondi have to be searched for a pendant to the Dahra."
The following is Mr. Corkran's explanation of a circumstance which, frequently mooted before, has been much talked about since February 1848—the predominance of writers for the journals of France in public affairs. ,It is perhaps too much to say that these men are not politicians because they are writers but writers because they are politicians, since they begin as publicists ; but the journal seems a stepping-stone to the Chamber and office,—a test of qualification, analogous to " the great Whig primum mobile of all human affairs, the barrister of six years' standing."
"Although every paper has the stamp of personality upon it, yet the writer, unless he be a man of very great eminence, is not so much considered as the party leader whose organ the paper professes to be. The &irk is not M. Chem- bo]e's, but Odilon Barrot. The Constieutionnel is not Wren or Merman, but Thiers; although neither Barrot nor Thiers wrote except on rare occasions in these organs of their parties. Le Bien Public is not M. Pelletan, but Lamartine; and the Reforms is Ledru-Rollin. " Thus it happened under the Monarchy, that, as there could not be political associations or clubs, the journal became the central point of parties and factions —the voice, the rendezvous, the government of the political sect. The journal was not a mere mercantile speculation, seeking to attract customers, and its writers obscure unknown men, drudging in the dark, or uttering mysterious oracles under the plural mask, but an active power, aspiring to rule and govern- ment. On this account, the personality of the paper is in France as indispen- sable as is the personality of a political association in England. Men must know their leaders when they can call meetings and speak; those leaders speak, and have little need of personal displays in the press. As speeches fill the columns of papers, so leading articles diminish in importance. It was often re- marked, that even Paris journals lost their influence when the Chambers met. A consideration of these circumstances may help to explain the abiding connexion that has so long existed between French statesmen and the press. The journal being the only means through which a politician can make himself heard, every distinguished statesman begins his career by making himself heard through that channel without disguise, and never afterwards separates himself from it; but, like a lecturer at the Sorbonne, transplanted to the Cabinet, continues to speak through a suppliant, while his name figures on the sessional programme."
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