From Jacobin to Liberal by Marc-Antoine Jullien;R. R. Palmer;

Author:Marc-Antoine Jullien;R. R. Palmer; [Palmer;, Marc-Antoine Jullien;R. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400821013
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHIST

FORTY YEARS OLD in 1815, Marc-Antoine Jullien had half his adult life still before him. It would bring him some modest satisfactions, for he was already known as a writer on education, and would soon enjoy a limited repute as editor of the Revue Encyclopédique. He would have liked, however, to take a more active part in public life, as he had done with the Committee of Public Safety in 1793–1794, and again on his missions under Bonaparte after 1799. He was never again to have any such official duties.

Louis XVIII, restored to his throne for the second time in July 1815, immediately reinstituted his constitutional charter of the year before. It provided for a parliament in two houses, a Chamber of Peers appointed by the king from among persons of noble rank, and a Chamber of Deputies elected at meetings of electoral colleges, which were distributed throughout the country. Jullien qualified as a member of the electoral college of the department of the Seine. There were only about 100,000 such electors in all France, who qualified by paying a direct tax of at least 300 francs, and so were a small affluent minority, but the law also set a lower tax requirement for certain military persons and members of the Legion of Honor, and in this way Jullien became an elector. On several occasions he described himself as an électeur éligible, that is, qualified also to sit in the Chamber of Deputies. There were only about 20,000 éligibles in the whole country, who paid a direct tax of 1,000 francs. Since Jullien was not so rich he may have qualified as a member of the Legion of Honor.

He attempted repeatedly to play a part in the elections. He did so by publishing pieces of advice to the electoral colleges, and even hoped to be elected himself. He worked in conjunction with more eminent liberals, for example the Marquis de Lafayette, who in 1817 supplied him with information on the British parliamentary system. Yet the result was always frustration. An unpleasant note of self-pity became evident in his writings. He complained that he had always been misunderstood, unappreciated, and calumniated. The “calumnies” concerning his past, as he called them, must have circulated by word of mouth, very likely at meetings of the electoral colleges themselves. What he had written about Bonaparte, the Empire, and the Hundred Days had been published anonymously, if at all. He had put his name to tracts and speeches printed during the Terror, but these were all ephemeral productions, later destroyed or hidden by their frightened recipients. His letters to Robespierre had been published by the Convention in 1795, but only as a pamphlet which few would possess twenty years later. But there were many still alive in 1815 who could remember Jullien as the young terrorist at Bordeaux.

Or some might think him merely a trimmer, willing to work for any regime in his own interest, and then abandon it. He had served Robespierre, and turned against him.

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