Royer-Collard and the 1814 Charte

Abstract

The period from 1814 to 1848, long considered to be “a gloomy political time” (Pierre Rosanvallon) is nowadays rousing renewed interest. The liberal thought of the time (Tocqueville’s, Guizot’s, etc.) has notably been revisited in depth over the past thirty years. Royer-Collard is one of the least well-known among the Liberals, though he was the principle leader of the Doctrinaires and the first inventor of governmental liberalism. The reasons of such a relative obscurity are probably to be found in the fact that he never was in power and that his work is reduced, for the main part, to speeches always hard to do a close examination. His political career during the Restoration, however, comes rather as a surprise: although he was the theoretician behind the Charte, he took a part in the drafting of the Adresse des 221 and presented it to the king in 1830. Is it legitimate to think that he was a man reasoning overcome by the circumstances or must we rather consider that, despite appearances, he remained faithful to his convictions? While trying to elucidate those questions, we are led to think that, if the juste milieu policy definitely was an insufficient response to the development of social democracy, it has recovered, albeit rather paradoxically, with the advent of universal suffrage, a certain pertinence when the matter will be to put down roots of the Republic and even more after, when we shall have the idea of the necessary submission of national will to legal principles.

Fecha de envío / Submission date: 6/01/2014
Fecha de aceptación / Acceptance date : 11/04/2014