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• Weaken—why the Church would not so much be weakened by the holding of ten noisy convotions a 8 it was last week by the scenes at St . Peter ' s , Eldad , where Protestant Episcopalians mobbed their bishop , and a member of the congregation of respectables so far forgot where he was as to cry out in the church , at the conclusion of a solemn prayer , " Encore ! " But the timid , the interested , and the stupid , all prefer a pleasjug sham to a painful real conformity ; ana they revel on the crust of the solid-looking abyss which will presently swallow them up . After alt then , the laity of the Church of
England do not believe in her sufficiently to permit her to be honest and free . Their prophet , Arc hdeacon Law , was , it seems , wiser than he knew , when he certified that the great patient of the day , the Church of England , required " repose . " The venerable old gentleman who spoke at one of the meetings for the election of proctors , and uttered the magical words , Quieta non m overe , might be supposed to hare had a prophetic insight into the mind of the Archdeacon : for the recommendations of both are radically the same . But they are only an unconscious paraphrase of the whine of Dr . Watts' famous
sluggard" You have waked me too soon—I must slumber again . " It is the peevish cry of sickness , not of health of indolence , not of activity . It may be the watchword of the Church of England , it is not the spirit of the teaching of Christ . It did not inspire the Apostles , —it did not urge on the Fathers ; the Martyrs were not dragged to the stake by acting upon it ; in the palmiest days of the Catholic Church , idleness and " laissezfaire " were not its principles . No Church , claiming a Divine mission , and believing its claim , ever proposed before to do its work by a " masterly inactivity . "
But so it is now ; and what is meant by " weakening" the Establishment , is disturbing the famous Whig compromise , which provides that the Church which professes to be the servant of God shall be the slave of man . Truly such a Church , were it not for the magnitude of the national interests afc stake , should call forth our pity rather than provoke our scorn .
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IS LOUIS NAPOLEON A STUPID MAN ? This is , in some respects , the question of the age . You can go nowhere , you cannot sit down to supper with a party of friends , without hearing it discussed . The capabilities of the question are such that wo earnestly recommend it to all the debating societies for the winter , as far more likely to promote a lively evening than any of the old questions , " Was Mahomet an impostorP " " Was Brutus justifiable in killing CuosarP" and tho like . For ourselves , wo can but state the question , and throw a stray remark or two into tlie discussion of it .
Louis Napoleon , say some , is a supremely stupid man , —perhaps , as far as a guess can go , the most stupid man connected with tho politics of Europe . Tho proofs they adduce arc various . In the iirst place , they say , the face of the man is the very ideal of a stupid face , —heavy , lumpish , pig-eyed , Dutch . Then , again , all who have had 'my dealings witli him in the way . of talk agree in declaring that they never mot a man whoso stupidit y was more impressive . Lawyers and Jawyers ' -clerks who had occasion to see him whilo
he was a refugee amongst ourselves , have- been heard to Hay , that tho only thing they marked in him was an extraordinary thick-headedness , which niade it impossible either to explain anything to I'nn , or to gel . a word out of him related , by any Sl pproach to elearncKH , to the business on hand . J'i France , too , the general opinion of those who
< ' » me most into contact with him before the 2 nd ° * -December was CJ '(\ s { un idiot . Then , Iuh books , jii the opinion at least of all tlioBo who know a thought when they nee it , are about as Htupid speciineriH of authorship un ever paused through ' ¦ 'e hands of a printer , tho most iamoiiH of them , 'he ldfies Napolcouimiues—being a mere jumble i
° ° P 4 'io rubbish , the-perusal of which in JIimIch | . » Nl . have driven his uncle mad . In fact , try m » , they Hay , by any tent by which tho intol' •¦ c . t of a man can be revealed in ordinary un"Kled intorcourRe with bis fellown , and the contusion muHl ; lx > , not only that Louis Napoleon in ^ very Ht ,,, | , i ( i man , but that positively you < le-H ( ' l > ° n' » i best when you . sum up his whole cluiructrr in <| 10 () m , W () nj stu p i , liti / . A" \ ory well , Ha , y others ; but what do you
make of the 2 nd of December and a few other such facts P Is it only in books or in talk with lawyers ' -clerks and literary gentlemen that a man can show ability ; and does a deep astute brain never lodge behind pig ' s eyes and a lumpish visage P Can that be a stupid man who planned the coup-d'Stat , outwitted France and her ablest generals , seated himself in the dictator ' s chair , and is now , after occupying it steadily for nearly a year , about to have himself declared Emperor ? Louis Napoleon may not be what is called a
bright or brilliant intellect ; he could not keep a table in a roar by his humour , nor electrify a public audience by his eloquence , nor solve a biquadratic equation , nor write an article in the Times , nor experiment on the Cobra de Capello , nor enlighten you and me and a select company of other clever fellows with original and wise sayings on those profound subjects which men agitate when they smoke cigars . At the play of genius and intellectual repartee , Douglas Jerrold would double him up in two minutes , or
use him from the first as a permanent butt ; and in talk with Herbert Spencer on the philosophy of society , he would seem a most deplorable blockhead . All this is very true , but doing what he has done , and being where he is by such means as have brought him there , can he be a stupid man ? Give him , his own way of showing talent , and would he not show it ? If , starting from one position in society , where he should seem but a blockhead beside such men as Douglas Jerrold and Herbert Spencer , he could in a few years , by his own scheming and perseverance , arrive at another position in society where he might take liis revenge by having Douglas
Jerrold shot and Herbert Spencer incarcerated by course of recognised law , must there not have been an expenditure of intellect—call it low cunning , or what you will—in the process by which he had thus pushed or wriggled himself along from , the one position to the other P In short , must not Louis Napoleon be regarded , not as a stupid man , but as one of those mysterious , silent , blockhead-looking men , who are very far from being blockheads , and who , peeping out upon the world with small heavy eyes , and quite incapable of putting brain into their words , contrive , on fitting occasion , to put a good deal of brain into their deeds P General Monk was a
man who , when any ono asked him a question , did not make a highly intellectual reply , but only turned the quid over in his mouth , mumbled a word or two as he looked at his questioner , and then ended the colloquy with a squirt of tobaccojuice . Yet Monk was an able man . May not Louis Napoleon be such another P May not his life anterior to 1848 have been but something analogous to the idiotcy of Brutus , while that subsequently-respected . Roman was known only as a hanger-on about the stables of Tarquinius Superbus , with his hair uncombed , his hands listless in his toga-pockets , and a piece of straw in liis idiotic mouth P
] VL Victor Hugo , who is certainly no friend to Louis Napoleon , rather inclines to the second supposition . He does not , indeed , rate Louis Napoleon as a very able man ; but he thinks it iy not by any means accurate to call him astupid man . " His brain is a muddled ono , " he says ; " it is a , brain with gaps in it ; but , here and there thoughts tolerably connected may be discovered in it . It is a book with some of the leaves torn out . Louis Napoleon has a ii . ved idea , ; but a
iixed idea is not idiotcy . . He knows what he wants , and he goes at it;—athwart justice , athwart law , athwart reason , athwart honour , athwart humanity- —all true ; still , he goes at it . . lie is no fool . He is a man of a different time from ours . Ho appears absurd and . stupid because ho is not seen along with persons ol a like species . " This is Victor Hugo ' s estimate of the man whom he hates , and of whom he has had opportunities to know something .
What Victor Hugo says is very good , but for our present purpose it is not satisfactory . Ih Ijouis Napoleon a stupid man or not ? For our j )! i , rt , as far as our present evidence goes , we are inclined to nay that Ik ; is . We nay so provisionally , and till wo have bettor evidence to the contrary . For , in the first place , wo have no faith in that current distinction between speech and action , which would make it out that a man may net like an angel , and talk like poor IN )! I . A man who acts ably cannot speak like a blockhead ; and a man who speaks really well , in the deepest sense of tho word well , has the faculty for acting well
precisely in the same proportion . Get anyhow you can a collection of a celebrated man ' s sayings , spoken or written : they may be few and far between , so that they may be held in a duodecimo , or multitudinous and dense so as to fill five folios ; but many or few , denaa or rare , good grammar or bad grammar , they are precisely equal to , and representative of the entire stuff and material that was in the man .
Cromwell's speeches are as good as his actions ; Wellington ' s despatches and speeches fall pre * cisely as far short of Napoleon ' s proclamations , conversations , and dictations , as Wellington on the whole fell short of Napoleon on the whole ; and what Monk mumbled was exactly as clever , if you only heard it , as what he intrigued and did . If , then , Louis Napoleon has ability , it is to be discovered , not only in his coup d ' etat and the
like , but also in whatever can be authentically certified to have proceeded from his mouth or his pen . As to what has proceeded from his mouth , we can judge but at second-hand , but we consider the lawyers' and the lawyers' clerks' to be not bad evidence ; and this evidence certainly goes to prove that , had he offered himself for any situation on the strength of nothing more than his immediate intellectual recommendations , he
wotdd have been dismissed as incompetent . Of his writings , or what are reputed to be his writings , we can judge more directly . We read them pretty well through about the time of his election to the Presidency : and then at least we agreed very decidedly with the opinion that they were poor rubbish . Still , we are open to conviction . If any one authentic speech of Louis Napoleon ' s , or any one saying in any such speech , is presented to us , exhibiting the least approach to intellectual insight , we will pro tanto admit his talent . If ,
for example , the saying reported to have been used by him on a recent occasion , " The history of humanity is the history of armies , " be really his , we will admit that , muddled though his brain , may be , yet , as Victor Hugo says , there are points of lucidity in it . Until that or something equivalent is proved , however , Louis Napoleon , President of France , and author of the coup d ' etat as he is , nay , even should he be Emperor of France , and . have Michel Chevalier and a hundred other intellectual notorieties to kiss his boot .
will be nothing more to us than tho writer of the Ideas Napoleoniennes ; and that is , a man with a most hazy , most stupid , most impervious , most muzzy , most uneducated head . We do not fear the difficulty in which such an opinion will lead us . If hitherto our notion has been that worldly success , tho achievement of a prominent historical position , is only possible with intellectual superiority , then , if wo do not
find more reason than wo yet have to call Louia Napoleon an intellectually superior man , we must just improve our philosophy of human nature by striking that notion out of our creed . In that case , the right conclusion will be , not that Louis Napoleon is a man of intellect after all , but only that we have not yet sufficiently appreciated the social function of stupidity working under certain conditions .
Louis Napoleon's reputation fj > r political ability rests on two things—his retaining his place so firmly prior to the ro ///> d ' etat , and the coup d ' etat if .. self . The one was a kind of negative feat , tho ability displayed in which consisted , if in anything , in the ability not to he turned out ; the other was a positive feat , consisting in the instantaneous and successful creation of a new sot of (• ircunista . nces in Paris , by arrests , sabres , money , and inusket-shots . Now , in either case , it appears to us , it is too much to suppose that the result was brought about by the intellectual vigour of the man most conspicuously interested — that man being one of whom we had no reason otherwise to think that he possessed intellectual
vigour . What do wo know about that complexity of causes which kept Louis Napoleon nailed to the President's chair till I ) eceniber , IN 51 P and how can wo assign their due proportions in this eU ' eot to the causes which we do recognise as independent of tho mini hiniBelf—the recollection of the vote of tho people , the fatigue and reaction of the bourgeoisie , the activity of the politicians who found ' reason to support him , and the mutual antipathies of the politicians who wished to turn liirnoul . P And mo with tho eorip d' < Uat . What < lo we know of I lie multiplicity of the things and forces th . it converged in tlint act , in that curious moment ? How fake that compound thing , tho c dUHat , in our hands , and tear it into its ori-
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October 3 D , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 1039
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 30, 1852, page 1039, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1958/page/11/
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