Charles de Rémusat

Formation

His father, Auguste Laurent, count de Rémusat, pertaining to a good family of Toulouse, was chamberlain of Napoleon i, but joined, with the Restauration, the Bourbons and became prefect of the Haute-Garonne, then Northern . His/her mother, Claire Elisabeth Jeanne Gravel of Vergennes, had been born in 1780. Married to sixteen years, it was attached to the empress Joséphine like rams palate. Talleyrand was with the number of its admirors and one generally regarded it as a woman of a great intelligence and a great charm. After its death (1824), its Essai on the education of the women was well accommodated in the cultivated mediums, but one returned justice to his literary talent only when its grandson, Paul de Rémusat, had published his Mémoires , that extracts of the correspondence with his/her son followed.

The memories of Claire made it possible to better include/understand not only the court of Napoleon, but as his Charles son and education as she had lavished itself to him in her youth, sticking to communicate the taste of the letters early to him. Charles was sent then to the Napoleon college, where it made brilliant studies. With leaving the college, it shared its time between the study of the right, philosophy and light poetry.

Under the Restoration

The Empire had just fallen, and the spectacle of a monarchy which tried to be raised gave him the taste of a parliamentary government, and made him adopt political ideas more liberal than those of his/her parents. The living room of his/her mother was then attended by men who professed these ideas: Mole, Pasquier, of Barante, Guizot. It was formed at their school and lined up soon in the group of the Doctrinaires, which had then as a chief Royer-Collard. In 1819, it was accepted lawyer, but, preferring the writing, it did not follow the career of the bar. It made appear, in 1820, a small work on the role of the jury in the lawsuits, heading Of the procedure by sworn out of criminal matter , which was followed by some other booklets, such On the responsibility for the ministers , On the amendments with the law of the elections .

Political side, it followed the direction of Guizot accurately, without to forget the letters. He collaborated in the French Lycée , for which he wrote articles on the theater, Jacopo Ortis and works of Mrs. de Staël, of which he was an enthusiastic admiror. He also translated the Théâtre of Goethe into collaboration with Louis de Guizard, and, only, the treaty Of legibus of Cicéron. Some time after the dismissal of his father by of Villèle, it entered in relation to a small lawyer of Aix, which came to seek fortune in Paris, and with which it bound friendship. It was Adolphe Thiers, of which it had since then sharing constantly the political ideas. As from this moment, it launched out resolutely in the opposition, towards which remainder its marriage attracted, celebrated on July 13rd 1825, with Grenoble, with Camille Octavie Joséphine Fanny Perier (1800 - 1826), girl of Augustin Perier and niece of Casimir Perier, which was to die prematurely of the Tuberculose.

In 1833, it became, with his friend Thiers, one of the writers of the Tablettes ; then the following year, at the time of the elections, it took an active share with the efforts of its party to make elect liberal candidates. As from 1824, it became one of the assiduous collaborators of the Globe , and it gave literary, political and philosophical articles, where one felt the influence of the eclecticism of Victor Cousin. It is claimed that it was not used little as model for the character of Balzac, Henri de Marsay. He wrote also tests (refutation of the Test on the indifference of Lamennais, a Essai on the nature of the capacity ), as well as light poetries and even of the songs, of which one, entitled Lise or the bottle , was inserted in 1824 in the Mercure of the XIXe century . He also wrote some dramas, which were not published, and collaborated in the encyclopedic Revue and in the French Courrier . When in 1830, the ministry Polignac gave its famous Ordonnances of July 1830, it signed the protest of the journalists against those. He wrote in the number of the Globe of July 27th remarkable and vigorous article, which started with: the crime is consumed , then proposed, three days later, in another article to call with the throne the duke of Orleans.

Under the Monarchy of July

After the revolution of July 1830, it entered the active political life definitively. Next in October, he was elected appointed Haute-Garonne by the electoral college of Muret, of which he did not cease being the representative until 1848. One then saw occurring in him the same evolution as at the majority of the men of his party that the events had just made pass from the rows of the opposition to those of the capacity. Like Casimir Perier and Thiers, he then forgot with which liveliness it had defended the liberal ideas, not to think more but of the means of resisting the invasion of the democratic ideas. Under the ministry Perier, without official functions, but belonging to the Doctrinary , it took share with work of the cabinet of its uncle. Then, like deputy, he voted all measurements suitable to stop the complete exercise of freedoms, whose new government was terrified, and who returned the Monarchie of unpopular July near the radical left. Thus he decided for the laws against the public criers, associations, against the press, known as laws of September.

In September 1836, it became for little time under-secretary of State to the Intérieur in the ministry Molé. Become the ally of Thiers, it was in 1840 Minister of Interior Department for a short period. From 1841 to 1848, it formed part, like his friend Thiers, of the opposition who sought to reverse Guizot and adopted a program of a mitigated liberalism. For this period, it was pointed out with the Chambre by its caustic and spiritual eloquence, and the speeches which it pronounced about the parliamentary incompatibilities were particularly noticed.

January 8th, 1846, it entered to the French Academy, to replace Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard. It was accepted by Emmanuel Dupaty on January 7th, 1847; its speech of reception was for him a triumph: “That be there one of these beautiful days when the talent, at the time when it receives it, justifies its crown magnificiently. ” (Holy-Beuve).

During the remainder of the reign of Louis-Philippe, it remained in the opposition before joining Thiers when this one tried to form a ministry in spring 1848. During this time, benefitting from the leisures which its distance of the capacity made him, it was devoted to the literature, and especially to the philosophy, which was, of the remainder, the particular object of its studies since several years. Initially in favor of Condillac, it had ended up adopting the eclectic ideas of Cousin, and it showed a very sharp taste for the Libre-pensée and a confidence in the Raison which were worth frequent attacks on behalf of the clerical ones to him.

Studies and articles published in the Re-examined of the two worlds and in the French Revue and joined together by him in 1842 pennies the title of philosophical Essais were worth to him to be named with the Academy of Science morals and political to replace Theodore Simon Jouffroy. Another of its most noticed work is its book on Abélard.

Under the Second Republic and the Second Empire

It was with a deep regret that he saw to crumble in 1848 the monarchy of 1830, to which it was attached. Appointed of the Haute-Garonne and re-elected elected official in 1849, it went to sit with the conservatives, and, while playing a rather unobtrusive part, it voted on all the questions with the representatives of the old hostile parties to the strengthening of the Republic. Thus he came to a conclusion for the law against the assemblies, for the decree about the closing of the clubs, for the re-establishment of the guarantee of the newspapers, for the continuations against Louis Blanc, for the maintenance of the state of siege, against the abolition of the Capital punishment, against the amendment Grévy.

He supported the policy reactionary of Louis Bonaparte, voted the law of May 31st which mutilated the Vote for all, that of June 16th which prolonged the implementation of the law against the meetings. But when the president of the Republic showed his ambitious sights clearly, it ceased bringing its support to him and belonged to the deputies who voted on the proposal of the questeurs. At the time of the Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851, he was deputies who signed a decree declaring that Louis Bonaparte was deposed presidency of the republic. He had to leave France and returned only in August 1852. During the Second Empire it did not return to the political life before 1869, date on which it founded with Toulouse the liberal Progrès , newspaper of moderate opposition.

During its withdrawal of the political life, Rémusat continued to write on the philosophical history, particularly English philosophy. In 1863, it was elected maintenor of the Académie of the floral Plays of Toulouse.

Under the Third Republic

In 1871, he refused the embassy of Vienna which Thiers offered to him, but in August was named Foreign Minister to succeed Jules Favre. Although minister, it was not appointed, and when, pushed by some, it was presented to Paris in September 1873, it was beaten by Désiré Barodet, collecting 130 000 votes against 185 000 with its adversary. This failure was one of the reasons of the fall of Thiers on May 24th, 1873. But in October, following a by-election, he was elected in Haute-Garonne with a vast majority. He joined the votes of the center left then, contributing to the fall of the ministry of Broglie, supporting the Perier proposal and approving the constitutional laws which organized the government of the Republic on February 25th, 1875. He sat until his death on June 6th, 1875.

In philosophy, Charles de Rémusat was a spiritualistic of the school of Victor Cousin; in policy, it was doctrinary, friend of Royer-Collard, Thiers and Guizot. The anglophone world knows it for only one quotation where he says that the unanimity is almost always the mark of the constraint.

Works

Of the procedure by sworn out of criminal matter (1820)
Of pauperism and legal charity (1840)
Tests of philosophy (1842)
Abailard (2 vol. 1845)
On German philosophy (1845)
Holy Anselme of Canterbury (1854). Table of the monastic life and the fight of the spiritual power in XIe century.
England at the XVIIIe century (1856)
Critical and studies (2 volumes, 1857)
Liberal policy or Fragments to be used for defense of the French revolution (1860)
Channing, its life and its works (1862)
religious Philosophy; natural theology in France and England (1864)
John Wesley and the methodism (1870)
Lord Herbert de Cherbury (1874). Exposure, with a great independence of mind, doctrines of Lord Herbert, who can be looked like the founder of the natural religion in England.
Casimir Perier (1874)
History of philosophy in England since Bacon until Locke (1875)

Sources

Pierre Larousse, Large universal Dictionary of the XIXe century (15 volumes, 1863-1890)
Adolphe Robert & Gaston Cougny: Dictionary of the French Members of Parliament (5 volumes, 1889)

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