FRENCH NOBILITY.
AVERY dull book, just published, draws attention to a very interesting subject—the history of the French nobility, from the year 1789 to the present year of grace, 1863. A Monsieur N. Batjin has undertaken to sketch the life, death, _and resurrection of the "noblesse de France" by means of a large pair of scissors and a weighty paste-pot, with a complete file of the funniest newspaper in the world, the Moniteur Universel. The "Histoire complete "* thus gummed together, dull reading though it is, forms a strange kaleidoscopic picture, the exami- nation of which suggests a crowd of moral, social, and political reflections. Scene the first gives the famous sitting of the Assemblee Nationale of June 19, 1790, in which the French noblesse and everything attaching thereto was suppressed " for ever." For full twelve years after, there was not the vestige of a nobility in France, till Napoleon created, step by step, a new in- stitution on the ruins of the old one. The Emperor's feeling on the subject is graphically expressed in a conversation at St. Helena, reported by Las Cases. " I rose from out of the crowd," he ex- claimed ; " it was necessary to build a wall around my person to prevent my being slapped on the back by every adventurer. The French are naturally inclined to undue familiarity ; and I particularly had to guard myself against those who had jumped both feet together to the top of society." However, deeply as he felt the necessity of the " wall " of rank and etiquette in his own position, Napoleon went to work with extraordinary carefulness in the formation of the new aris- tocracy. The first stone of this new establishment he laid in May, 1802, in the decree organizing the chivalric order of the Legion of Honour. This was followed in May, 1804, by the appointment of a number of high dignitaries of State, with magnificent titles, and still more magnificent incomes. There was but a step now to the creation of a hereditary nobility, which took place on the 11th of March, 1808. On that day, solemn Cambaceres, " Prince arch-chancellor of the empire," went in great pomp to the Senate, desiring the members of this most uninfluential body to " register" an Imperial decree for the institution of a new noblesse, based on merit and money. The terms were liberal. An income of 200,000 francs, or 8,0001. per annum, entitled the pos- sessor to a dukedom ; a fortune of 30,000 francs, or 1,2001., brought with it a claim to be a count ; one of 15,000 francs, or 6001., justified a baronet ; and 3,000 francs, or 1201. a year, a knighthood. According to the terms of the law the claimants to nobility were to institute fiefs of the value settled by the Im- perial decree ; but this arrangement was gradually overruled, and long before the fall of Napoleon a new noblesse had grown up in * Moan Complete de.la Noblesse de France dvsis17$9. Par N. Balj.n. Dais: E. peat% France with all but imaginary incomes. Meanwhile the statute of the Assemblee Nationale abolishing the ancient nobility had not been repealed by the Imperial Government ; but was upheld, on the contrary, in a very serious manner for the benefit of the new institution. The latter soon acquired large dimensions ; though the exact statistics of the new patrician body are not given by Monsieur Batjin, for the simple reason that there is silence on -the subject in the Moniteur Universel.
Louis XVIII. had no sooner returned to France than he pro- mulgated his ordinance :—" The ancient noblesse is restored, and the new noblesse retains its honours and dignities." Henceforth, then, there were two forms of nobility among the French, which kept on increasing in all directions, and the members of which had become so numerous at the end of another fifteen years as to leave the distinction almost without value. To take away the last remnant of social influence which still attached to aristocratic names, the Chamber of Deputies, in December, 1831, passed a law repealing the enactment of the Code Napoleon which prohibited•the use of unauthorized titles under high penalties. Not long after, in May, 1835, another vote of the deputies destroyed the right to form entails, limiting the already existing majorats to two genera- tions, and authorizing the owners of landed domains to remove all hindrances on the free disposition of their property. This law proved a heavy stroke for the ancient nobility, many families of which succumbed in consequence, while still more sank to penury and low estate. On the other hand, the removal of the penal- ties against the use of unauthorized titles brought into existence a vast number of pseudo counts, barons, and princes, not a few of whom succeeded in getting a formal acknowledgment of their titles by having them inserted in official documents, such as the registers of births and deaths. As a natural consequence, the value of noblesse sank lower and lower with every succeeding year, and had reached nearly its minimum point at the breaking out of the revolution of 1848. It seemed almost a superfluity when the Provisional Government of the Republic, by a decree published in the Moniteur of March 1, interdicted the use of all titles of nobility, inasmuch as the universal appropriation of these titles had led to very much the same result in respect to social equality. However, the stern republicans of 1848 thought it not only necessary to hurl their interdict against titular distinctions, but made the prohibition one of the fundamental laws of the new constitution. The tenth paragraph of the Great Charter of the second republic enacted that " all titles of nobility, and all distinctions of classes and castes, shall henceforth and for ever be abolished." This time the "for ever" lasted exactly three years and nine months.
Treading in the footsteps of his great uncle, Louis Napoleon naturally felt very unwilling to be "slapped on the back," and when only President of the Republic—long before becoming " prince president," and longer still before being wrapped in the Imperial purple—issued a decree restoring the noblesse, ancient as well as modern. This ordinance was inserted in the ever-obedient Moniteur on the 25th of January, 1852, and the immediate con- sequence of its promulgation was such a high tide of nobility as had never before been seen in France. The country absolutely swarmed with " aristocrats," till it was sneeringly said to be difficult to get a footman of lesser rank than a count, or a house-porter inferior to a baron. All the efforts of the Government to shut the floodgates of assumption proved fruitless for a while. What with the numerous descendants of the ancient aristocracy of birth, the bearers of Napoleonic titles of merit and money, and the countless dignitaries appointed by the Old as well as the New Bourbons, it almost seemed as if at least one moiety of the inhabitants of France had become ennobled, leaving titular claims more or less remote to the remaining half of the population. Seeing that this state of things did not at all fulfil the object intended in the creation and resurrection of an Imperial noblesse, the Government of Napoleon III. laid several propositions before the Chambers in 1855 and 1856, with a view of hedging in the " in- stitution." However, the legislative body, otherwise so docile in the hands of its Imperial master, openly mutinied against any re- strictions upon titular honours, the matter being personal to most of the honourable members. But if the Corps Llyislatif was obstinate, the Emperor was still more so, and finally, after long discussions and negotiations, the Chamber, on the 28th of May, 1858, adopted a law imposing moderate penalties on the use of unauthorized titles of nobility. According to the terms of this law, which is still in force, every bearer of "honorary distinctions not justified by proof " is to be mulcted in a fine varying from 201. to 4001., be- sides publishing the ease, at his own expense, in the leading nelits- papers. The statute, thus worded, was sufficiently vague to re- main without any effect whatever, and the Government therefore hastened to interpret and expand it by a series of new ordi- nances, the cycle of which is scarcely completed at the present moment. Besides the repressive measures, however, Napoleon III. had recourse also to active organization, the chief feature of which was the creation of a " council of the seal of titles "—Conseil du Sceau des Titres—appointed on the 8th of January, 1859, and modelled after the similar institution of the first empire. To this council—a Heralds' College—is left the verification of all existing titles of noblesse, and their inscription in the Golden Book of France. But this supreme authority and court of appeal can only act "on de- mand ;" and the machinery is at a standstill unless put in move- ment either by the bearer of a title or a disputer of the same. So that the position and limit of French "aristocracy" is in reality now as unsettled as it has been for the last half a century.
It seems certain, however, that at this moment no value what- ever attaches to aristocratic titles—including the oldest form, the simple de—among the upper classes in France. Adventurers are as fond as ever of sticking a high-sounding epithet to their names, and not unfrequently manage, too, to send it down to posterity by getting it affixed to some official document, such as a certificate of being baptized, or having had the small-pox, which at once stamps it as bond fide for all future generations. But while titles are thus gaining way in the lower, they lose ground in the upper classes. Scarce any of the leading statesmen of France for the last thirty years have sought or accepted a title ; and even most of the present leaders of the Imperial regime disdain to be anything but simple untitled senators. Of all the ministers now in office the Secretary of State for War is the only one whom the Emperor has been able to persuade to accept the title of count, while the rest are content to bear the infliction of the inevitable Legion of Honour, the aristocratic lustre of which is softened by the addition of quarterly payments. Even the ancient nobles of France evidently do not take much pride in patrician blood, but value the jingling guinea infinitely higher. A Polignac marries, without scruple, the daughter of a Mires, and everywhere genealogical parchments are exchanged with great eagerness for the coupons of the Bourse. On the other hand, a pseudo noblesse is notably multiplying among the lower classes, a miscellaneous mob in silks and rags. No statistics on the subject have come out of Monsieur Batjin's paste-pot, but it is certain that the number of modern French " nobles " has reached an almost fabulous amount. There was never lack of noblesse in France—on the list of patrician emigres published by the French Government in October, 1800, there were no less than 145,000 names, but at this moment the tide has become quite overwhelming; and in some respects the social position of the French noblesse seems to have sunk lower even than that of the wretched German Adel or the superabundant hidalgoship of Spain. Only the other day there was a well authenticated story in Galignani of a French count, one Monsieur le Comte de Rouil, who had taken to show his wife in exhibitions at village fairs. The noble countess happened to be above the French average size—being probably five feet six, or thereabout—and the ingenious count took advantage thereof for exhibiting his illustrious better-half as a " giantess" in a caravan, at the moderate charge of two sous, or a penny a head. The idea of thus turning an honest penny, instead of organizing swindling companies and rigging the Bourse, as many of his noble brethren do, redounds to the honour of Monsieur le Comte de Rouil, and proves, besides, that the members of the French noblesse have not lost their esprit together with their fortunes. But that their numbers are fatally large seems to admit of no dispute ; and it is highly probable that this state of things will not remain without influence on the history of the third empire. The " wall " which Caesar the First wished to build around his sacred person has now become so large as to leave personal protection out of the question. A thousand nobles may be made serviceable ; but half a million must needs be worse than useless. The mighty, clamouring, poverty- stricken host of modern French noblesse can scarcely prevent the ignominy of a new Caesar being "slapped on the back."
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