66 Chapter IV
This was generally true of all countries. In England it was only in the 1760’s that
the substance of parliamentary debates came to be known “out of doors,” or out-
side the two parliamentary houses; here, however, since the dominant group in
Parliament was the governing group, led by the ministers themselves, the views
and purposes of government came to be known. Thus in England a public opinion
could take form around practical issues and concrete decisions, whereas in France,
where public opinion was beginning to grow as it did everywhere in the Atlantic
world, it took rather the form of what Tocqueville called literary politics. There was
no public discussion by men in executive office or hoping to be so, or by writers
associated with them and informed of their intentions. Discussion was carried on
rather by intellectuals, philosophes and hommes de lettres, or by pamphleteers depen-
dent on their sponsors. It tended either to be abstract on the one hand or to reflect
mere intrigue on the other. Writers at their best under these conditions might be
searching or even profound; at worst, they were merely voluble, polemical, or shal-
low; in either case they were uninformed.
Since the actual though unknown policies of the French government were often
perfectly justifiable, and could have been made to appeal to important segments of
the French population, it may be said that the main victim of the withholding of
public information was the French monarchy itself, and that its failure was a failure
of public relations. Or, in a more general sense, the unfortunate consequence was
to favor ideology at the expense of realism in French political consciousness at an
important stage in its early growth. The voice of opposition to government could
be heard, but not that of government itself. The irresponsible talked, where the re-
sponsible kept silent.
Even within what must be called the government it was the most irresponsible
parts that were the most public. The most visible aspects of the Bourbon monarchy
were the worst. The kings had in fact devised a form of public relations aimed at
impressing fellow monarchs, potent feudatories, and lesser people of an earlier day
when they had been more naive. Versailles symbolized this program. The royal
court at Versailles was a monument to everything grandiose, lavish, magnificent,
and openly displayed. It seethed also with the trivial and the petty. It represented,
in the highest degree, the influence upon government of the non- governmental,
the private, the “social.” Composed of the king, his wife, brothers, sisters, and rela-
tives, his intimates and confidants and those aspiring to such position, high
churchmen and princes of the blood, together with the households, retinues, and
functionaries attendant upon such personages, reinforced by great noblemen and
their clienteles, along with the mistresses, business agents, dependents, and ser-
vants of all and sundry, the court created an irresponsible and frothy environment
in which the functioning officers of government had to work, when, indeed, they
did not emanate from it in themselves. The Marquis d’Argenson, a firm upholder
of monarchy against aristocracy, though inclined to be petulant after his own re-
moval from office, described it very well, writing in 1750, privately in his diary:^2
The court, the court, the court! There is the whole evil.
The court has become the only senate of the nation. The lowest lackey2 Journal et mémoires (Paris, 1864), VI, 321–22.