Interpreting American Democracy in France: The Career of Édouard Laboulaye, 1811-1883 by Walter D. Gray

Abstract

124BOOK REVIEWS centralized system which Consalvi, anxious to promote papal power, pragmatically preserved wherever feasible. Hughes stresses that the papacy's assumption of a monopoly of police power, except in Rome itself, carried widi it a monopoly of responsibUity. The faüure of the central government to provide the order and security deemed essential by the elites destabilized it. Dismayed by the ineffective and arbitrary papal police, angry at their diminished role in a centralized system controUed by Rome, and fearful of the criminality and sporadic radicalism ofthe lower classes, especiaUy after 1848, the elites came to embrace a cautious, liberal reformism which gradually led them to look to Piedmont for safety. The author makes a contribution to our understanding of the 1831 and 1848 revolutions in Bologna by showing that fear of anarchy was "a prime mover" in sparking an interlocking series ofevents that led from the formation of citizen patrols to a reluctant seizure of power by the elite. Indeed, the establishment of a Civic Guard in Bologna in 1847 triggered an Austrian reaction which had national repercussions. Although the study reveals corruption , brutality, and poUtical repression, it is fair and balanced throughout, eschewing the depiction ofunrelenting Roman tyranny that liberals frequently present. In fact, one often sympamizes with the struggle of a succession of papal authorities who sincerely tried with inadequate resources to reform the system. The shifting variety ofsecurity organizations between 1815 and I860, along with the fact that the police and the armed "public force" in Bologna had different but, it seems, overlapping responsibilities, can occasionally create difficulties, but the work is finely written and the chapter-ending conclusions are models of clarity. This monograph demonstrates the need for simUar regional studies. There are useful charts and references to the many archives consulted. There is no general bibliography, which would have been helpful. Raymond L. Cummings Villanova University (Emeritus) Interpreting American Democracy in France: The Career of Edouard Laboulaye, 1811-1883. By Walter D. Gray. (Newark: University of Delaware Press. 1994. Pp. 178. »3350.) In this clear and compact book, Walter D. Gray looks at one ofthe forgotten luminaries of nineteenth-century France. In the 1850's, 1860's, and 1870's, Edouard Laboulaye was the successor to TocquevUle—the uncontested authority on American history and politics in France. He was also, like TocquevUle , an ardent defender of the American constitution. During the Second Empire, he was a prominent symbol of opposition, lecturing on the virtues of a broad suffrage, a bicameral legislature, decentralized government, and BOOK REVIEWS125 property rights as Professor of Comparative Law at the Collège de France. A newspaper article from 1869 reported on Laboulaye's course on American poUtics: "So great was the demand of seats that many would wait through the hour of the lecture before him___ Young and eager faces were seen beside those who wore the shrewder expression of years. Rough, uncultured men mingled their hearty applause with die more cultivated and high-bred" (p. 30). As a liberal who was more concerned with establishing checks on power than on transferringpower absolutely to the people, Laboulaye was an outsider not only to the Empire but also to the French republican tradition. Though he became a senator for life during the Third Republic, his views were out of step again with the times, particularly on religious matters. For Laboulaye was a devout Catholic in a country in which Catholicism and republicanism were considered inherently antithetical. He condemned French Catholics for their opposition to democracy and French democrats for their anticlericalism. He underscored the fact that Catholic culture flourished in the American republic; indeed, he believed mat America showed that democracy and the true spirit ofChristianity were naturaUy compatible. But his efforts were futile. A polarization was inevitable. French Catholics were shocked by the Paris Commune in 1871 when the archbishop of Paris and fifty priests were held hostage and later shot. Speaking of the Republicans, Gambetta told the Chamber of Deputies in 1877: "there is one thing which—equal to the Ancien Régime—disgusts this country ... it is clerical domination!" And he added the deadly words, "It is rare indeed for a Catholic to be a patriot...