A TASTE for traveling has never been with me a fashion; I brought it with me into the world, and I began to gratify it in early youth. We are all vaguely tormented with a desire to know a world which appears to us a dungeon, because we have not ourselves chosen it for an abode. I should feel as if I could not depart in peace out of this narrow sphere unless I endeavored to explore my prison. The more I examine it, the more beautiful and extensive it becomes in my eyes. To see in order to know: such is the motto of the traveler; such is also mine: I have not adopted it; nature gave it to me.
To compare the different modes of existence in different nations, to study the manner of thinking and feeling peculiar to each, to perceive the relations which God has established between their history, their manners, and their physiognomy—in a word, to travel, is to procure for my curiosity an inexhaustible aliment, to supply my thoughts with an eternal impulse of activity: to prevent my surveying the world would be like robbing a literary man of the key of his library.
But if curiosity causes me to wander, an attachment which partakes of the nature of a domestic affection brings me back. I then take a review of my observations, and select from among the spoil the ideas which I imagine may be communicated with the greatest likelihood of being useful.
During my sojourn in Russia, as well as during all my other journeys, two thoughts, or rather sentiments, have never ceased to influence my heart,—a love of France, which renders me severe in my judgments upon foreigners, and upon the French themselves, for passionate affections are never indulgent,—and a love of mankind. To find the balancing point between these two opposing objects of our affections here below, between the love of country and the love of our fellow-men, is the vocation of every elevated mind. Religion alone can solve the problem: I do not flatter myself that it has enabled me to do so; but I can and ought to say that I have never ceased bending towards attaining this means of solution, all my efforts without regard to the variations of fashion. With my religious ideas, I have passed through an unsympathizing world; and now I see, not without a pleasurable surprise, these same ideas occupying the youthful minds of the new generation.
I should like to send into Russia all Christians who are not Catholic, to show them what our religion may be brought to when taught in a national church, when practiced under the direction of a national clergy.
The spectacle of abject servility into which the sacerdotal power can fall in a land where the church is only held of the state, would make every consistent Protestant recoil. A national church or a national clergy are words which ought never to have been joined; the church is, by its very essence, superior to all national distinctions, all human associations; to abandon the church universal in order to enter into any political church, is to do worse than to err in faith,—it is to abjure the faith, it is to fall back again from heaven to earth.
And yet how many sincere, how many excellent men believed, at the birth of Protestantism, that they should be purifying their creed by adopting the new doctrines which have only served to narrow their minds! Since then, indifference, masked and extolled under the attractive name of toleration, has perpetuated error.
The circumstance which renders Russia the most singular state now to be seen in the world is that extreme barbarism, favored by the enslavement of the church, and extreme civilization, imported by an eclectic government from foreign lands, are there to be seen united. To understand how tranquillity, or at least immobility, can spring from the shock of elements so opposed, it will be necessary to follow the traveler into the heart of this singular country.
The mode which I employ of describing places and defining characters, appears to me, if not the most favorable to the author, at least the most likely to inspire confidence in the reader, whom I oblige to follow me, and whom I render the judge of the development of those ideas that may be suggested to me.
I arrived in a new country without any other prejudices than those which no man can guard against; those which a conscientious study of its history imparts. I examined objects, I observed facts and individuals, while candidly permitting daily experience to modify my opinions. Very few exclusive political notions incommoded me in this spontaneous labor, in which religion alone was my unchanging rule; and even that rule may be rejected by the reader without the recital of facts and the moral consequences that flow from them being discarded, or confounded with the reprobation that I shall meet with from those whose creeds do not agree with mine.
I may be accused of having prejudices, but I shall never be reproached with intentionally disguising the truth.
The descriptions of what I saw were made upon the spot, the stories I heard each day were committed to paper on the same evening. Thus, my conversations with the Emperor, given word for word in the ensuing chapters, cannot fail to possess a species of interest: that of exactitude. They will also serve, I hope, to render this prince, so differently viewed among us and throughout Europe, better known.
The chapters that follow were not all destined for the public. Several of the early ones were written as purely confidential letters. Fatigued with writing, but not with traveling, I resolved, this time, to observe without any methodical plan, and to keep my descriptions for my friends. The reasons that decided me to publish the whole will be seen in the course of the work.
The principal one was the feeling that my views were daily modified by the examination to which I subjected a state of society absolutely new to me. It struck me that in speaking the truth of Russia, I should be doing something bold and novel: hitherto, fear and interest have dictated exaggerated eulogies; hatred has also published calumnies: I am not afraid of making shipwreck either on the one rock or the other.
I went to Russia to seek for arguments against representative government, I return a partisan of constitutions. A mixed government is not the most favorable to action; but in their old age, nations have less need of acting: this government is the one which most aids production, and which procures for man the greatest amount of prosperity; it is, above all, the one which imparts the highest activity to mind within the sphere of practical ideas: in short, it renders the citizen independent, not by the elevation of sentiments, but by the operation of laws; assuredly these are great compensations for great disadvantages.
As I gradually grew acquainted with the tremendous and singular government, regulated, or I might say founded, by Peter I, I became aware of the importance of the mission which chance had entrusted to me.
The extreme curiosity with which my work inspired the Russians, who were evidently rendered unquiet by the reserve of my language, first led me to think that I had more power than I previously attributed to myself; I therefore became attentive and prudent, for I was not long in discovering the danger to which my sincerity might expose me. Not daring to send my letters by post, I preserved them all, and kept them concealed with extreme care; so that on my return to France, my journey was written, and in my own hands. Nevertheless, I have hesitated to publish it for three years: this is the time which I have needed to reconcile, in the secret of my conscience, what I believed to be the conflicting claims of gratitude and of truth! The latter at last prevails, because it appears to me to be truth of a nature that will interest my country. I cannot forget that, above all else, I write for France, and I hold it my duty to reveal to her useful and important facts.
I consider myself competent and authorized to judge, even severely, if my conscience urges me, a country where I have friends, to analyze, without descending into offensive personalities, the character of public men, to quote the words of political persons, to commence with those of the highest personage in the state, to recount their actions, and to carry out to the last stage of inquiry the reflections which these examinations may suggest; provided, however, that in capriciously pursuing the course of my ideas, I do not give them to others except for just the worth that they have in my own eyes: this, it appears to me, is all that constitutes the probity of an author.
But in thus yielding to duty, I have respected, at least I hope so, all the rules of social propriety; for I maintain that there is a proper manner of expressing severe truths: this manner consists in speaking only upon conviction, whilst repelling the suggestions of vanity.
Besides, having seen much to admire in Russia, I have been able to mingle many praises in my descriptions.
The Russians will not be satisfied; when was self-love ever known to be? And yet, no one has ever been struck more than I, by the greatness and political importance of their nation. The high destinies of these people, these last comers upon the old theater of the world, engaged my mind during the whole time of my stay among them. The Russians, viewed as a body, appeared to me as being great, even in their most shocking vices; viewed as individuals, I considered them amiable. In the character of the common people I found much to interest: these flattering truths ought, I think, to compensate for others less agreeable. But, hitherto, the Russians have been treated as spoiled children by the greater number of travelers.
If the discordances that one cannot help remarking in their social state, if the spirit of their government, essentially opposed to my ideas and habits, have drawn from me reproaches, and even cries of indignation, my praises, equally voluntary, must have the greater weight.
But these Orientals, habituated as they are to breathe and dispense the most direct incense of flattery, will be sensible to nothing but blame. All disapprobation appears to them as treachery; they call every severe truth a falsehood; they will not perceive the delicate admiration that may sometimes lurk under my apparent criticisms—the regret and, on some occasions, the sympathy that accompany my most severe remarks.
If they have not converted me to their religions (they have several, and among these, political religion is not the least intolerant), if, on the contrary, they have modified my monarchical ideas in a way that is opposed to despotism and favorable to representative government, they will be offended simply because I am not of their opinion. I regret that such is the case, but I prefer regret to remorse.
If I were not resigned to their injustice, I should not print these chapters. Besides, though they may complain of me in words, they will absolve me in their consciences: this testimony will be sufficient for me. Every honest Russian will admit that if I have committed errors of detail for want of time to rectify my impressions, I have described Russia in general, as it really is. They will make allowance for the difficulties which I have had to conquer, and will give me credit for the quickness with which I have discerned the advantageous traits of their primitive character under the political mask that has disfigured it for so many ages.
The facts of which I have been witness are recorded precisely as they passed before my eyes; those which were related to me, are given as I received them; I have not endeavored to deceive the reader by substituting myself for the persons whom I consulted. If I have abstained from naming, or in any way indicating these persons, my discretion will undoubtedly be appreciated; it is one proof more of the degree of confidence which the enlightened individuals deserve, to whom I thus ventured to address myself for information respecting certain facts that it was impossible for me to observe personally. It is superfluous to add that I have only cited those to which the character and position of the men from whom I had them, gave, in my eyes, an unquestionable stamp of authority.
Aided by my scrupulous exactitude, the reader may judge for himself of the degree of authority that should be ascribed to these secondary facts, which, it may be further observed, occupy but a very small place in my narrations.