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TUNISIA
SAIS African Studies Library

General Editor
I. William Zartman
 TUNISIA
The Political Economy
of Reform

edited by
I. William Zartman

Lynne Rienner Publishers • Boulder & London

Published in the United States of America in 1991 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301

and in the United Kingdom by

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London W C 2 E 8LU

© 1991 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tunisia : the political economy of reform / edited by I. William
Zartman.
(SAIS African studies library)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55587-230-1
1. T u n i s i a — E c o n o m i c p o l i c y . 2 . T u n i s i a — E c o n o m i c
c o n d i t i o n s — 1 9 5 6 - 3. T u n i s i a — P o l i t i c s and government. 4 . T u n i s i a —
Social conditions. 5. T u n i s i a — F o r e i g n relations. I. Zartman,
I. W i l l i a m . II. Series.
HC820.T865 1990
338.9611—dc20 90-45574
CIP

British Cataloguing in Publication D a t a

A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
 To Jeanne Jeffers Mrad
for her untiring and enthusiastic efforts in building
Tunisian-U.S. academic cooperation and understanding
Contents

List of Tables and Figures IX

Acknowledgments XI
Map of Tunisia Xll

Introduction
I. William Zartman 1

PART 1 POLITICAL REFORM

1 The Conduct of Political Reform:

The Path Toward Democracy
I. William Zartman 9
2 Clientelism and Reform in ben Ali's Tunisia
Susan Waltz 29
3 Tunisian Industrialists and the State
Eva Bellin 45
4 Tunisian Banking: Politics of Adjustment and
the Adjustment of Politics
Clement Henry Moore 67

PART 2 ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING

5 The Social Pressure on Economic Development in Tunisia

Ridha Ferchiou 101
6 The Tunisian State Enterprises and Privatization Policy
Abdelsatar Grissa 109

vii
viii CONTENTS

7 Private Sector Development Through Public Sector

Restructuring? The Cases of the Gafsa Phosphate
Company and the Chemical Group
Pamela Day Pelletreau 129
8 Rural Development in Central Tunisia:
Constraints and Coping Strategies
Barbara K. Larson 143
9 The Desert Locust:
Agricultural and Environmental Impacts
Christopher S. Potter and Allan T. Showier 153

PART 3 SOCIAL RESISTANCE

10 Islamic Reform in Contemporary Tunisia:

Unity and Diversity
Douglas K. Magnuson 169
11 The Islamicist Movement and November 7
Elbaki Hermassi 193
12 The New Strategy of the Movement of the Islamic Way:
Manipulation or Expression of Political Culture?
Abdelkader Zghal 205

PART 4 REFORM AND FOREIGN RELATIONS

13 Tunisian Foreign Policy:

Continuity and Change Under Bourguiba and ben Ali
Mary-Jane Deeb and Ellen Laipson 221

Bibliography 243
About the Contributors 256
Index 258
About the Book 267
Tables and Figures

• Tables

3.1 Public and Private Participation in Gross Fixed

Capital Formation 50
3.2 Relative Share of Public and Private Sector Investment
in Gross Fixed Capital Formation in Industry 52
3.3 Private Sector Industrial Enterprises 53
4.1 Bank Branches by Region 87
4.2 Bank Branches by Govemorate 89
4.3 Credit Allocation 92
5.1 Food Subsidy Concentration 103
5.2 Labor Supply and Demand in Tunisia 106
5.3 Structure of the Social Direct and Indirect Costs Supported
by Tunisian Enterprises in the Construction Industry 107
6.1 Annual Growth Rates of the Value Added, Employment,
Productivity, and Real Wages in the Manufacturing Industries 113
6.2 Results of Some Important State Enterprises for 1984 117
6.3 Results of State Enterprises by Sector of Activity 117
6.4 Government Capital Transfers to State Enterprises 119
6.5 Government Capital Transfers to State Enterprises
by Percentage 119
6.6 Government Transfers to State Enterprises and Borrowing 120
7.1 Share of Public Enteiprises in Salary Payments,
Employment, and Value Added 130
7.2 World Supply/Demand for Phosphate Fertilizer 138
7.3 Principal Products Exported 13 8

ix
X TABLES A N D FIGURES

10.1 Comparative Categories of Islamic Groups, Individuals, and

Tendencies 185
10.2 The Da'wa, Islamic Way, and Progressive Islamicists
Considered as Reform Groups 190

• Figures

4.1 Market Shares of Deposits 76

4.2 Cumulative Treasury Surpluses/Deficits 79
4.3 Spreads by Total Assets 80
4.4 Cumulative Cash Flow by Total Assets 81
4.5 Interest Charged to Overdrafts 83
4.6 Shares of Branches by Year 87
4.7 Private Sector Branching by Governorate 88
4.8 The Democratic Constitutionalist Rally's Share of
Population of Voting Age 93
4.9 Oppositions' Share of Votes 94
10.1 Dimensions of Focus or Reform Orientation 190
Acknowledgments

T his study is the result of a conference on the political economy of

contemporary Tunisia, organized by the African Studies Program of the
Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
(SAIS) in Washington, April 1989. The conference was part of SAIS's
annual African Country Day Program, which each year features a collective
investigation of a selected African country. We are grateful to the Joint
Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research
Council for support for this project, to the Ford and Rockefeller foundations
for their support of this program, and to the Tunisian ambassador, Abdelaziz
Hamzaoui, for his gracious assistance. We are also grateful to SAIS and to
the Center for Maghrib Studies in Tunis (CEMAT) of the American Institute
for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) for their help. We are particularly thankful to
Theresa Taylor Simmons for her skillful administration of the program and
to Douglas Bayley for the processing of this volume.
I. William Zartman
Tunisia
MEDITERRANEAN

Jabarqah
Bàjah.

Isole
Pelagie
(ITALY)

MEDITERRANEAN

SEA

Juzur Qarqannah

Sfrattai Jand

LIBYA

100 KitattVMr« ;
Introduction
I. William Zartman

T unisia is typical of many countries in the late 1980s undergoing

intensive reform. Societies as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, South
Africa, Algeria, and Mexico—and many other countries struggling with
structural adjustment in combination with political change—are all going
through a similar experience in their own ways. Reform is a distinct process
with its own dynamics and its own literature (Huntington 1969, ch. 6;
Hirschman 1963; Coulton 1986). Clearly something short of revolution, it
is nonetheless not the only alternative and is different in its aims and
outcomes from stagnation, reaction, and simply muddling through. Reform
is a broad policy approach or project of accelerated and purposeful change in
social, economic, and political arenas within and through established state
institutions. New leaders dedicated to change use their positions to resolve—
rather than simply manage—past problems on the agenda and in the process
make some changes in the nature of the agenda itself and the social base of
power as well. This is the idea. Whether the individual case in history fits all
the defining characteristics of the phenomenon or not is part of the eternal
problem of fitting concepts to reality, or (for the politician) of turning
intentions into accomplishments.
Reform is a state response to a rising cry from the body politic for a
resolution of urgent issues. That cry is probably not universal, of course,
since there are likely to be many who benefit from the current state of affairs
or who fear changes that resolve. But it is loud enough to pose a crisis or
crises in state-society relations and to legitimize and support the efforts of
the reformers. As a particularly concentrated moment of both government
activity and social pressure (Bentley 1935), a time of reform is a time of
intensive interaction between state and society. Yet the body politic—or
segments of it—may not like the particular reforms enacted as a response, so
that the reformers often find themselves caught between pressures to do
something and opposition to what they do. Unless the reformers are able to

1
2 INTRODUCTION

build up a base of support for their reform measures that takes over the
legitimization and support functions of the original demand for change, the
crisis will return—often in renewed strength because of the disappointed
expectations. Thus, reformers are called by crisis, but they need both to
resolve the urgent issues of the agenda and to build an ongoing base of
societal support.
The crisis in Tunisia toward the end of the 1980s was manyfold (Camau
1987), its issues fitting nicely into the classical triple division of the public
agenda—political, economic, and social. The political crisis was most
apparent, although it, too, had multiple layers. Basically, it was a crisis in
the legitimacy of the Bourguibist state. The crisis was topped by the question
as to life president Habib Bourguiba himself, the founder of the state, who
had outlived his charisma, routinized his revolution, and handed over his
legal-rational order to cronies, thus destroying the three classic sources of his
legitimacy (Gerth and Mills 1958, ch. 4). But Bourguiba was only the most
visible part of the problem, just as he was only half of the legitimization of
the state. The other part was his party, the Socialist Destourian
(Constitutional) Party (PSD), Tunisia's nationalist-movement-tumed-single-
party. In its heyday (lasting into the early 1970s) it had been both a great
coalition of Tunisian social forces and a vanguard of the Tunisian polity
(Micaud, Brown, and Moore 1964; Moore 1965); but by the 1980s it had
become ingrown and ossified. Tunisians were increasingly alienated by the
single-party system and looked for its natural evolution into a multiparty
system with some choice. Without any consensus on the answer, Tunisians
questioned both the individuals who governed them and the system within
with they governed.
It would be satisfying to be able to present organizational or public
opinion evidence for this crisis, but crises usually elude such elegant data
even in the best organized and best polled societies. Evidence is clear,
nonetheless. It comes on the personal level from private expressions of
disaffection toward the personalized regime and its increasingly embarrassing
media portrayals. It comes, on the organizational level, negatively from the
absence of support for the PSD and for the state's directives (as in the
striking inability of the party to win support for the decision to eliminate
bread subsidies in January 1984) and positively from the rise in the following
of the Movement of the Islamic Way (MTI) with its alternative project for
governance and its outspoken challenge to Bourguiba's legitimacy.1
The economic crisis was also multidimensional. Its internationally
visible manifestation was the weakening position of Tunisia in the world
economic system after decades of impressive domestic economic growth,
putting the country among others requiring structural adjustment before they
could qualify for a standby agreement from the World Bank. But the recent
history of growth posed distributional questions that were even more pressing
INTRODUCTION 3

on the domestic level. The economic miracle of Prime Minister Hedi Nouira,
former governor of the Bank of Tunis, in the 1970s brought a greater span of
class divisions than Tunisia had ever seen. Conspicuous consumption among
nouveaux riches made them offensive to both lower classes recently promoted
to an improved but very vulnerable position and to middle-class youth
educated for unemployment. Socialism, in the party name and the Tunisian
practice, was discredited by its imperfect implementation; and private
enterprise was preferred above all because bureaucratic control was not.
The January 1984 bread riots were again the dramatic evidence of the
economic crisis on the domestic level, just as the World Bank reports were
evidence on the international level. Economics, unlike politics and society,
produces constant data by which performance can be judged; Tunisia's trade
balance, hard currency reserves, budgetary balance, and employment rates all
underscored the need for economic reform.
The social crisis was also highly visible but of a different order from the
other two. Arguably, Bourguiba, like Ataturk in Turkey, deserves most credit
for his secular modernization of society, with its centerpiece, the Code of
Personal Status of 1956 (Micaud, Brown, and Moore 1964, 147ff; Camau
1987, ch. 13), which radically changed women's social position. Along with
this came a personal attitude on the part of Bourguiba that could only be
qualified as antireligious, not just secularist, and could only be seen in
Tunisia as anti-Islamic. From the beginning, many Tunisians were offended
by this attitude, while supporting the secular modernization measures. Until
the late 1970s and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim world,
no one could or dared organize the feelings of opposition; but when social
offense was reinforced by political alienation and economic discontent,
mobilization of dissatisfaction became possible.
In this arena, however, the crisis came from the opposition, not from the
condition. Exacerbated residual protest against earlier secularizing reform, not
the disintegration of the original reform program, was the urgent issue. It,
too, raised its own ramifications. The Bourguibist state never was very
concerned about individual rights in the face of collective progress (Zartman
1963, 70); but the confrontation between state and Islamicists raised human
rights issues in the late 1980s, just when human rights in general were
receiving another surge of international attention. Like the Islamicists, the
human rights advocates became spokesmen for broader feelings of political
crisis and swung into action during the outbursts of economic discontent.
Thus, political, economic, and social agenda were linked together in many
ways at the end of the decade, often resulting in strange bedfellows but also
generating conflicting attitudes of loyalty and opposition toward the
regime.
A study made as late as mid-1987 would have highlighted these
contradictions and the incoherence of Tunisian polity, society, and economy
4 INTRODUCTION

(Camau 1987). But the sudden removal of Bourguiba on November 7 in a

situation supersaturated with oppositions crystallized support behind the new
president, General Zine Labidine ben Ali. The state and the president were
relegitimized, economic confidence and even performance were restored (with
a little help from the rain), and the silent majority behind the social
accomplishments of the old regime came to the fore. Seizing on the
momentary support, ben Ali swung into action as a reformer to deal in depth
with the crises of the times. His third anniversary provides a good
opportunity to take stock of that effort and evaluate the concerted reform
program.
Ben Ali's accession to the presidency did not clear the agenda, but it did
clarify the three crises. By lancing the abscess of succession, it showed the
political issue to be not simply personalism but an entire political project—
single-partyism versus multipartyism. By the same act, it showed the
Islamicists to be not simply an antipersonalist expression but the expression
of an entire counterproject for society—Islamicism versus secularism. Even
on the economic front, where the confrontation between two economic
projects—state socialism versus structural adjustment (private enterprise)—
was already posed and decided (with a little help from the World Bank) at the
end of the old regime, the debate and the need for implementing reforms
continued under the new.
Unlike the act of accession (which commanded a large majority of
support after the fact), the many acts of reform aroused different and
competing social pressures. Often these were for general change but against
specific change that disturbed vested interests, opened new risks, and enlisted
no organized support groups. Multiparty competition, free and fair elections,
civil liberties, and national consensus were all aspects of political reform that
aroused conflicting socioeconomic (as well as political) pressures. These
measures responded to a broad-based cry from society; but once enacted, they
left the reform regime with an emerging coalition of urban business and
intellectuals and rural notables and organizers as support, with urban and
potentially even rural underclasses as the basis of opposition (see Part 1).
Subsidies, parastatals, bank controls, and agricultural development projects
were all subjects of economic reform running between shifting sociopolitical
pressures (see Part 2). Although hard to enact, these reforms responded to
pressures from every segment of society except for the bureaucracy; yet the
insufficiency of their effects produced neither a new and coherent social base
for the regime nor an enthusiastic great coalition. Personal status, tourism
and holidays, Islamic symbols and values, and religious expression and
representation were the key ingredients of the social agenda also involving
political and economic pressures. After an initial government effort to steal
the agenda from the opposition, the antireformists have been able to throw
the government on the defensive, forcing it to chose between losing either its
INTRODUCTION 5

secularist supporters or its religious supporters (see Part 3). Similar pressures
and reforms are visible in foreign relations (see Part 4).
This book analyzes reform in Tunisia in the first two years of the ben
Ali regime as both a program of the new ruler and his team and as a focus of
social pressures. It seeks to explain the course of events, in terms of both
accomplishments and limitations and thus develop a fuller picture of both
state and society in motion.

• Note

l . T h i s b o o k w i l l u s e the n a m e " M o v e m e n t of the Islamic Way" as a

translation of "harakat al-ittajah al-islami" instead of the more usual Islamic
Tendency M o v e m e n t taken from the French, but will keep the initials MTI.
 PARTI
POLITICAL REFORM
1
The Conduct of Political Reform:
The Path Toward Democracy
I. William Zartman

T unisia at the end of the 1980s represents a striking case of transition

toward democracy. The opportunities, intentions, and decisions are

all clear and present. Observers had long predicted a multiparty evolution
for Tunisia; there was pluralism in its past from the early years of
Independence, and an attempt—eventually flawed—had been made to open up
the political system at the beginning of the decade. Pluralist, competitive
democracy was the major plank in the platform of the new president, Zine
Labidine ben Ali, from his first proclamation of November 7, 1987 onward.
His first eighteen months were punctuated by careful decisions establishing
the rules for the democratic opening, which finally occurred in the general
elections of April 1989, followed by the municipal elections of May 1990.
But other pressures and participants were also involved, working in the
opposite direction. Some, such as the Islamic movement, widely perceived as
a threat, restricted the process by threatening to overwhelm it. Others,
notably the leadership of the old single party, subverted the process by
utilizing it.
The following story is an analysis of how these competing and
cooperating forces shaped the drive to political reform, leaving its future
impact ambiguous. It is a structural analysis, because the structure of the
situation dominated the unfolding of events. But it did not determine them. It
only narrowed choices and established the context for decisions. The
evolution of politics—and the movement of the Tunisian polity along the
path of reform—was ultimately a matter of choice of more or less skilled,
more or less committed individuals. Human actions are not determined, either
by structure or by analysis. Within structures, choice is a matter of
perception and will.1

9
10 POLITICAL REFORM

• Criteria

Works on transitions from authoritarian rule toward democracy have identified

a certain number of elements in the process—not to be taken in any strict
sense of order but as progressing, overlapping, and reinforcing each other
until an end is achieved (Rustow 1970; O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986;
Binnendijk 1987). These are defined as the opening and undermining of the
authoritarian order, the establishment of new pacts and of the rules of the new
game, the restructuring of civil society and public space, and the organization
of participation and elections. The essential nature of the process is to turn
politics from a private to a public process and therefore to organize and
reconstitute the components of that shift. Included in that process must be
the establishment of safeguards that politics not be reprivatized, that is, that
public participation in politics not end with the selection of leaders, who
then proceed to do politics privately.
But what happens if politics is already public in ideology and
organization, although without competition—if participation and election are
already present, but within the framework of a monopolistic structure—if the
history of the polity itself has produced a belief system branding all
opposition treasonous and providing consensus around a past program—if the
people who are skilled and interested in doing politics are already doing it in
the old order, leaving those outside radical and inexperienced in democratic
competition?
This is the situation one meets in single-party regimes. Here the
problems are not the same as in military authoritarian regimes, and the
transition is more difficult. Single parties tend to come from (quasi-)
revolutionary origins with pretensions to ideological justification and purport
to incarnate the nation; as mass movements, they can often claim a broad
social basis and a glorious moment in the nation's history. Unlike the
military, the single party does not withdraw when it makes the democratic
transition; it remains in place and to take on the competition. Previously,
competition was viewed as subversive; and the party was highly experienced
in making sure that none appeared. If any dared appear, the party knew how
to ensure that it could not claim any victories. Now, opposition suddenly is
legitimate, although the limits to its exercise remain to be established and
tested. The opposition must distinguish itself from the single party—as
indeed must the new democratic result—but without destroying or denying
many of the accomplishments of the previous system. Yet neither new
parties nor old, neither government nor opposition, know what loyal
opposition is or how it is expected to act. The shift from single-party to
multiparty rule is a traumatic moment in a nation's history.
There are identifiable conditions that can focus the trauma on the old
party system and facilitate the transition to the new, although they are not
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 11

always unambiguous in their effects. A thoroughly discredited single party

can leave the field open to newcomers, but it may also undertake internal
reforms and combine a new image with old skills and expertise to block the
competition. A new leader may make it easier to open up the political
system, but he also has to worry about his own legitimacy and authority and
perhaps lack of experience. The old leader could make the transition more
easily; but, like an outgoing military dictator, he must look on the transition
as the crowning act of his regime. There are no perfect conditions, where all
the interests point in the same direction; and the tensions of conflicting
structural imperatives form the obstacles of the course.
It has sometimes been suggested that a single-party polity is so
unnatural that its persistence—rather than its collapse—is what needs to be
explained (Zartman 1967). Since politics is by definition conflict—optimally
operating nonviolently and within consensual rules—a single-party can
persist only if it contains pluralistic competition within its own rules and
organization or if it skillfully manages the sources of pluralism so as to tame
them within the single-party framework. In one case it becomes civil society,
in the other it stands between civil society and unusually wise central
leadership. Otherwise, it is merely the appendage of authoritarian rule—a
historic facade, a ministry of mobilization, or a club of cronies. Thus, it is
most likely that once a polity has passed through the "funnel phase" of
politics dominated by a single, overriding issue such as independence or
revolutionary restructuring, the single party will fall apart under the pressure
of ideological, personal, regional, social, or generational differences. Such
explanations are still accurate in analyzing the problems of the single party,
but they do not address the problem of effectuating a transition.
The more the single party—in whatever role it has operated—is
threatened by one or more of these sources of division, the more it will seek
to fight back and preserve its existence against the threat. In the process it
may well change its role, healthily or unhealthily for the polity; that is, it
may move from a ministry of mobilization to a democratically competing
party or from an effectively coopting body to an authoritarian facade. To pose
the problem in these terms is not to reify a collective entity; it is to
recognize a structural imperative operating on the entity's leaders and
followers. The point is that the single party does not simply fall apart or
retire. It continues to play during the transition and in playing continues to
defend its existence and its predominance in the polity. Its purposes, by its
nature and structural position, are almost never the purposes of transition to
democracy, so that the effectiveness of that transition to its announced goal
depends on the skills and resources of opposing forces. The single party has
long prevented democracy in its own name, and it can still undermine the
transition to democracy by playing by its rules. Hence, this particular case—
more than the more usual one of transition from authoritarian rule—poses
12 POLITICAL REFORM

the question of the sustainability of political reform: How long does it take
under what optimal conditions to reform a political system from monopoly
to meaningful competition?

• Background

The Socialist Destourian (Constitutional) Party (PSD) had long been a

textbook case of single-party rule, with all its strengths and weaknesses; and
Tunisia had been cited as a place where a functioning single party could—and
would—break up into a multiparty system as a normal stage of its evolution
(Micaud, Brown, and Moore 1964; Moore 1965; Rudebeck 1969). Indeed,
when the nationalist movement came to power at Independence in 1956, it
had to establish its monopoly of power over competing factions and,
especially, to undo an attempt by the General Union of Tunisian Workers
(UGTT) under Ahmed ben Salah to set up a separate Socialist party. But the
single-party system grew rigid along with its formerly charismatic leader,
Habib Bourguiba, who had frozen it in the mid-1970s at the same time as he
had himself made life president. In the early 1980s President Bourguiba,
through his prime minister Mohammed Mzali, tried both to revive the PSD
and to hold competitive multiparty elections. The liberal Democratic
Socialist movement (MDS) of Ahmed Mestiri, the Tunisian Communist
party (PCT) of Mohammed Harmel, and the socialist People's Unity
movement (MUP) of ben Salah participated alongside the PSD (Slim 1982).
But once the multiparty vote was cast, in 1981, Bourguiba, Mzali, and their
interior minister Driss Guiga could not bring themselves to announce the real
results and usher in the multiparty era; and the figures were falsified. The
bread price riots of January 1984 showed the incapacity both of the party to
mobilize popular support for policy and of the president to steer a firm
course. More and more sharply engaged in a battle over the social and
political program for Tunisian society with the Movement of the Islamic
Way (MTI), which benefited from the rising current of Islamic values and
also from the absence of any other means of expressing disillusionment with
the sclerotic regime, Bourguiba led his country toward a collapse of civil
order (Burgat 1988; Vatin 1982; Camau, Amrain, and Achour 1981;
Hermassi 1984; Souriau et al. 1981). On November 7, 1987 he was replaced
in a "constitutional coup" by his prime minister, ben Ali (cf. Vandewalle
1987, 1988).
There were three triggers to the accession of ben Ali. The first was
Bourguiba's deteriorating physical—and hence mental—condition, as
exemplified by the accelerating personnel shuffles. The same day he raised
ben Ali from interior minister to prime minister, October 2, 1987,
Bourguiba revoked the appointment of a party director made three days before;
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 13

the new director, Mahjoub ben Ali (no relation), then served only two weeks
before being replaced in turn by Hamed Karoui. Then again, at the end of the
month, Bourguiba reversed himself on the appointment of two secretaries of
state for planning and finance, accusing those around him of lying and
trickery. Personnel instability was becoming more and more frequent,
making governance impossible.
The second, and more proximate, cause grew out of the ongoing trial of
Islamic fundamentalists—members of the banned MTI and others. The state
security court had handed down its verdict—judged "clement" by the defense
and the opposition—on September 27. The appeals court rejected the appeal,
and Bourguiba refused clemency for the two Islamicists under death sentence,
who were then executed on October 8. A week later one of the accused
condemned to death in absentia was captured, and Bourguiba used the
occasion to demand a retrial of other fundamentalists who had received lesser
sentences. When ben Ali pointed out the illegality as well as the civic danger
of this course, he was ordered to reopen the trial by Monday, November 9 or
lose his position. Bourguiba had set his own date for succession.
The third trigger is still partially unclarified. At the beginning of
November, incidental arrests brought to light a plot by the militant wing of
the MTI to assassinate top political figures, including Bourguiba and
ben Ali, if the fundamentalists' trials were reopened. The assassinations were
to take place on November 8. Subsequently, seventy-three members of the
plot were arrested and remained in prison without trial in Tunis for two
years. (The plot is also discussed in Chapter 11.)
The accession to power of ben Ali occurred on the night of November 6 -
7, 1987, when he assembled seven doctors and received from the procurator-
general their statement of Bourguiba's "absolute incapacity" to govern. A
new government was named with Hedi Baccouche (former party director, who
drafted the declaration of November 7) as prime minister and Habib ben
Ammar (commander of the National Guard, who conducted the takeover of
the presidential palace) as interior minister. The "constitutional coup" was
announced with a stirring declaration of a reform program, known as the
Principles of November 7.
Ben Ali is in many ways the opposite of Bourguiba: an unassuming not
a galvanizing speaker; a listener, not an autocrat; a bureaucrat from military
intelligence, not a founding father of a party; and a man with a sense of the
separation of state and party and of civil liberties for citizens. He faced two
broad challenges: to assure his own position within the troubled political and
social context of Tunisia and to bring about a transition to democracy as his
program. The two are related but are not coincident. The new president had to
"regularize" the temporary legitimization conferred by his seizure of power
with an institutionalized legitimization by plebescite. He had to impose his
own political direction on both a system that though glad to be free of its
14 POLITICAL REFORM

senescent leader, was used to having a deux ex machina emerge from the
clouds at crucial moments to save it from itself and on a corrupt party
machine that even though skilled and experienced, was, with the former
president, the cause of political alienation within the body politic. Coming
to office the way he did, ben Ali had no rivals to contend with; nor was there
any agency that could remove him. At the same time, he had to get a
respectable vote in his plebescite and ongoing popular support and
bureaucratic cooperation for his reforms. The threat he faced was not a loss of
office but a loss of authority over groups and people around him, who might
run off with pieces of his power and hem in his ability to lead the program
he wanted.
His political reform program was transition to democracy, but the
competitive components were not readily at hand. The PSD needed to be
restructured and revitalized but at the same time was obliged to move over
and make room for others as well. The MTI had to be tamed, reduced, and
made to play by democratic rules while accepting the modernizing
accomplishments of the previous regime; licensing the hitherto subversive
fundamentalist movement posed the key question of the limits of democratic
pluralism and loyal opposition. Criteria had to be established for licensing
other parties as well. The appropriate time, level, and form of elections also
had to be decided; but before that, a new constitution with guarantees and
procedures was needed for multiparty democracy. But the new elections dare
not be merely the occasion to throw the rascals out, to mortgage the new
democracy to the old single party, or to set up the fundamentalists' revenge.
The wrong results could discredit the whole democratization process, but (as
every politician knows) "right results" are not easy to produce freely.
Ben Ali's dilemma has been that he has not been entirely free himself
from the forces that he has sought to tame. Although he is a popular figure
with a knack for not saying the wrong thing, he has never felt strong enough
to take on the party directly and never had any sure counterparties to balance
the Destourian machine. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, he could not bring
himself to make the "ultimate escape: jumping free of his place atop the . . .
Party before that institution falls of its own dying weight . . . by
neutralizing what remains of the old guard and modernizing its program, and
simultaneously build[ing] up the presidency and elected legislature as stable
power centers" (Keller 1990). "No presents!" party leaders kept on repeating
at every stage of their engagement in the democratization process. Because of
the interests of the party and the habits of the bureaucracy, ben Ali was not
in control of the credibility of his processes. But if he would play a stronger
role, relying on his decisiveness and popularity, he could easily fall into the
autocratic mold left by his predecessor. Observers were quick to identify
symptoms of the reappearance of the neo-Bourguibist personality cult, just as
they were ready to recognize the unchanging dominance of the single party.
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 15

Caught between the shadow of Bourguiba and the machine of the Destour,
ben Ali and his transition to democracy walked a narrow path.
Ben Ali's initial legitimacy derived entirely from the way he came to
power. The fact that he broke the inability of the political system to rid itself
of an eighty-five-year-old embarrassment was a mark of his decisiveness and
courage; the act of ousting the supreme combatant was a test of political
muscle equal to a coup or a campaign (Burling 1974, 258). The constitution
gave formal sanction to that act, but the prime minister had a chance to
succeed only because the man of action took the gamble of declaring and
enforcing the incapacity. Faced with an earlier temptation to do the same
thing, Mzali was to have said, "I didn't have the guts."
In addition, ben Ali came to power with a mixed reputation of firmness
and humanity. Although his initial appointment to the government as
interior minister earlier in 1987 brought public concern over the first entry of
a military man into the cabinet in a state where the military has been kept
under tight control, Ben Ali soon became known as the person who argued
for clemency and legality in dealing with the fundamentalists. From the
beginning, his entry was given a mixed welcome, and it is likely that he
mended his fences early with the liberal opposition (Gharbi 1987; cf.
Vandewalle 1987). Yet from the moment of his first radio announcement at 6
A.M. on November 7, ben Ali was most careful to preserve all that was
positive in the reputation of Bourguiba and to pay his deepest respects to
Bourguiba's primary role in building the state.

• Decisions Toward Democracy

The move toward democracy involved ongoing and overlapping decisions on

a number of aspects of the reform process. Not all of them were made by the
government, nor was the government a single and unified decisionmaking
agency. The president, (including his advisors) and the former single party
were two centers of decision; but crucial roles were also played by other
agencies (including the MDS and other opposition party leaderships) and also
by the more pluralistic leadership of the fundamentalists. There were twelve
steps toward competitive multiparty elections and the establishment of a new
political system in Tunisia—major decision points surrounded by lesser ones
at crucial junctures in defined areas of political activity where a choice among
alternatives was available and a fateful path chosen. In overlapping sequence,
they were the decisions to liberalize political activity, discourage a new
presidential party, conduct several by-elections, revive the PSD under
presidential direction, coopt opposition members, make the president of the
country the president of the revived PSD, schedule general and presidential
elections, authorize competing secular parties, formalize political consensus
16 POLITICAL REFORM

in a National Pact, maintain a winner-take-all electoral law, reject a common

front, and register a vote creating a hobbled two-party system. These
decisions generally cluster into five areas of activity: (1) the legal rules of
politics, (2) the institutions of pluralism, (3) the institutions of consensus,
(4) the relations between the reformer and the polity, and (5) the electoral
judgments of the polity.
The accession was accompanied by a number of immediate measures of
liberalization, which translated the spirit of the new regime but also relieved
the worst grievances of the Bourguiba regime. Despite the potential danger
that past and present opposition figures and forces might pose to the new
regime, the new prime minister announced on the morrow of the coup that
opponents abroad could return to Tunisia; the new interior minister added a
week later that they would nonetheless have to take care of judgments
outstanding against them. Various opposition leaders, including ben Salah,
Guiga, and Tahar Belkhodja, returned, most of them receiving presidential
clemency. In general, they were has-beens, too involved with the old
regime—despite their exiles and sentences—to pose any threat to the new
order. Ben Ali also expanded his contacts with the local opposition parties
from the beginning; both he and the prime minister met Secretary-General
Mestiri of the MDS, Secretary-General Harmel of the PCT, and Secretary-
General Mohammed Belhaj Amor of the Party of Popular Unity (PUP) at the
end of November and the beginning of December.
At the same time the president inaugurated a series of pardons and
amnesties that emptied the prisons of political prisoners. He began by freeing
all students conscripted in the army for having participated in the university
riots of the previous year and amnestied 2,487 political and criminal
prisoners, excepting only 90 fundamentalist agitators sentenced in September
and 73 fundamentalist plotters of the November countercoup. The death
sentences given in the September trials were commuted to life imprisonment,
the trials stopped, and the security court abolished by law at the end of the
year. In March another 2,044 prisoners were pardoned, and two capital
sentences were commuted to life at hard labor, in July another 32 prisoners
were pardoned; and in November the last 88 political prisoners were released
(as certified by the Tunisian Human Rights League) along with 2,031 others.
A general amnesty law signed in July 1989 restored civil rights to 5,416
former political prisoners. Liberalization measures also continued in other
domains, as in the revision of the 1975 press code and the reduction of
requirements for the authorization of associations, both passed in July 1988.
These liberalization decisions were not mere atmospherics; they were
evidence of a basic change in the nature of the political system, opening it up
to pluralism of opinion and debate without incrimination.
Presidential partnership was a major issue to be decided. As PSD
president, Bourguiba had combined the two sources of legitimacy in
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 17

independent Tunisia—charismatic leadership and nationalist movement. Ben

Ali wanted to be president of all Tunisians and was concerned that a too-close
party affiliation would be a drag on his popularity. In response, his party
advisors argued the case of the U.S. president, titular head of his party and
president of all citizens. At the time of his prime ministership, ben Ali had
felt uncomfortable with a party role, since he had had no past as a party man
and wanted to be relieved of the inherent concomitant of government
leadership, the secretary-generalship of the PSD. Bourguiba had refused his
request. From the moment that ben Ali took over the presidency he was torn
between his role as president of all Tunisians and president of the party.
During the budget debate in December 1987, he was pressed on this question
by PSD deputies, to whom he had delivered (through Baccouche) the message
that he was indeed president of the party as well as president of the country.
Yet the question was not resolved in any of the players' minds.
The most important decision on the subject was taken later in the same
month, when ben Ali agreed with his prime minister and other party advisors
not to encourage the formation of the November 7 Clubs that were springing
up around the country nor to unite those that were formed into a national
organization. This decision represents a major lost opportunity in ben Ali's
campaign to restructure the polity and was accompanied by a decision to
focus the reform efforts on the party instead. Crucial as it was, the decision
was natural, since ben Ali had no party experience and relied for advice in the
matter on the very people whose past and future- was associated with the
party.
Party renewal was a compelling topic of early attention. Although the
PSD was discredited by the end of Bourguiba's reign, after November 7 the
party rallied immediately to ben Ali's support, distanced itself from the old
order, and remained part of the ongoing legal order. The most natural but
crucial decision was made on November 9, when ben Ali assumed the
chairmanship of the party's Political Bureau and reduced it from twenty to
twelve members, only four of them carryovers. A contrary decision would
have left a center of power open to a potential competitor, although it would
also have demoted the importance of the summit itself. Instead, the president
took over the party, enabling the party to begin its takeover of the president.
At the end of December, the Political Bureau called a meeting of the Central
Committee for late February. On the agenda were measures to democratize
and strengthen the party for an extraordinary Party Congress in July, in
preparation for the democratization of the country through early general
elections. The ambiguity of the reform was symbolized by the new name that
the Central Committee adopted for the old PSD: the Democratic
Constitutionalist (Destourian) Rally (RCD). The historic word Destourian
was kept only in Arabic; party became the broader and looser rally, and
socialist was traded in for democratic.
18 POLITICAL REFORM

Organizationally, the Political Bureau was to reform party structures by

appointing federal committees, which in turn would propose a slate of new
names to the president, who would appoint section committees from among
them, which would in turn recruit new members into the party. The
operation was completed in April; 80 percent of the section committee
members were new to the committees, but only 20 percent of the members
(i.e., a quarter of the 80 percent) were new to the party. The cells, sections
and federations were then to elect their delegates to the Party Congress at the
end of July 1988. At that time, a new Central Committee was constituted,
with only 75 of its members elected from local cells and 125 (plus ben Ali)
appointed by the Political Bureau; 22 had been members of the 1986 Central
Committee. As early as May, presidential advisors were admitting that the
remaking, or democratization, of the party was not likely to be as complete
as hoped.
Reform, therefore, meant reviving the party by bringing in former party
men and civic personalities from other political organizations and from non-
political life. The process, though limited, was so successful that it left little
room for the revival of other parties, which alone would make it meaningful.
Although figures are not available, opposition and potential partner parties
indicated that they had real difficulties in swelling their ranks. Politically
minded Tunisians, encouraged to support the efforts of ben Ali to revive the
Tunisian polity, joined the RCD, following the example of the president.
Two sets of by-elections mandated by existing legislation set warning
lights on the channel leading to party reform and pluralization. The decisions
were in the hands of the voters, filtered through the local administrators'
decisions about their own role in elections on the threshold of the new
regime. On December 20, municipal elections in Ksar Hellal saw the PSD
defeated for the first time by an Independent slate composed of breakaway
Destourian members (Chaieb 1987). On January 24,1988, by-elections were
held for parliamentary seats vacated by Bourguiba's closest lieutenants in
Tunis, Zaghouan, and Gafsa and two seats in Monastir. The PSD learned the
previous month's lesson: it won all, but it took machine intervention in
Gafsa to assure that the Ksar Hellal experience was not repeated (al-Nasiri
1988); although ben Ali gave personal help and assurances to the Independent
candidate (who then got 31 percent of the vote), the president was obliged to
admit that "there were irregularities here and there." The experiences of
December and January confirmed the fears about the new broom and the old
machine in the minds of both the public and the party.
Once party revival—rather than renewal—was accomplished, the second
act of presidential partisanship could be played out. The 1988 Party Congress
at the end of July—named the Congress of Salvation in order to avoid the
choice between XIII and I (New Series)—culminated this reform of the
organization established by the former president. After some real hesitation as
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 19

to whether his desire to be president of all Tunisians allowed him to become

president of the party and with a lot of justifying reference to the U.S. party-
presidential system, ben Ali decided to accept the party presidency and thus,
automatically, its label as candidate for the national presidency. The Political
Bureau was reduced to seven men, consisting of ben Ali, Hedi Baccouche,
Abderrahim Zouari, Ahmed Kallal, Ammar, and, as new members, Habib
Echeikh, and Ismail Khelil—all ben Ali's men. All but Ammar and Echeikh
(the military men) and Khelil (the economic technician) were members of the
1986 Central Committee. Zouari was chosen as the new secretary-general, in
effect the party director. From the Central Committee, six new functional
committees under assistant secretaries-general were chosen to make functional
studies on policy as well as to run internal party activities. The president had
agreed to tie his personal legitimizing plebescite to his candidacy as party
leader.
Ben Ali's lingering notions of "president of all Tunisians" began to be
translated in the spring of 1988 into the notion of a "presidential majority"
into which he would coopt opposition figures to counterbalance his growing
attachment to the predominant party. While most of the members of his
close entourage were former PSD activists—or at least military or economic
technicians within Bourguiba's establishment—a few important recruits came
from opposition sources. Unfortunately for new recruiting, these were rare
under the pervasive Bourguibist regime. Since the subjection of the labor
movement, the only remaining source of independent political thought was
the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), whose leadership overlapped
with the MDS and also included nonpartisan faculty members from the
university.
The first notable addition from the LTDH-MDS was Hamouda ben
Slama, personally solicited by the president to run as a then-PSD candidate in
the January 1988 legislative by-elections, where he won handily. The next
round of cooptations came when ben Ali's new government was announced,
just before the extraordinary Party Congress (so as to prevent the congress
from being dominated by delegations' jockeying for new government posi-
tions). Dr. Sadok Zmerli, president of the LTDH, was appointed health min-
ister, and Habib Boulares, a former PSD minister who had followed the liber-
als into exile in the 1970s but then was serving as ambassador to Egypt, was
returned to the position of minister of culture. When the National Pact was
drawn up, Professor Mohammed Charfi, the new president of the LTDH, was
chosen to chair the drafting committee in September; and in November,
Professor Dali Jazi, another officer of the LTDH and also of the MDS, was
appointed ambassador to Vienna, a move that tore apart the leadership of the
MDS. In the second governmental revisions, immediately following the
April 1989 elections, both Charfi and Jazi received ministries—Education and
Health respectively (Zmerli not having proven to be an effective adminis-
20 POLITICAL REFORM

trator). These latter members remained outside the party but visible evidence
of a larger "presidential majority"; whereas ben Slama and Boulares became
members of the new party Political Bureau in April 1989. By that time, a
number of professors from the Law School and other parts of the university
were brought into the party apparatus; and the RCD prided itself in having
some eight hundred party members among the faculty, a figure unheard of in
Bourguiba's day. In addition, a few notable members of the president's en-
tourage remained close to ben Ali but outside the party, strengthening the
presidency but ultimately undermining the independence of the opposition.
The next important subject of decisions involved the type and date of
elections. "No power," said the president to the National Assembly in a
remarkably binding and sweeping statement, "which does not rest on the
sovereignty of the people, concretized by the free and direct election of its
leaders, can claim legitimacy" (La Presse, July 26, 1988). Three levels of
elections were involved: presidential, parliamentary, and municipal. The latter
were normally scheduled for May 1990, and the parliamentary elections for
November 1991; early parliamentary elections could not be held later than a
year before their regularly scheduled date. Party and presidential advisors
argued for another round of by-elections after January 1988 to test the
nation's pulse in the absence of public opinion polls. For reasons difficult to
understand, ben Ali was hesitant to set an early date for the presidential
election that he needed for his legitimization; and party leaders were torn
between fears of sweeping the general elections because of the habits and
effectiveness of the party machine and being roundly trounced by a public
vigorously seizing the opportunity to wield a new broom and sweep clean.
Since, despite ben Ali's fears, there was no one who could lead a credible
campaign against the president, the presidential election should best be paired
with the parliamentary elections, where competition and campaigning would
be possible, rather than left to stand alone. In the summer of 1988 there was
some discussion among presidential advisors in favor of advancing the
municipal elections and using them to test the nation's pulse.
The president's entourage was very troubled about the lack of
information about the state of mind of the Tunisian electorate, since political
polling had never been permitted. The December-January by-elections had
only confirmed their fears, but the turn of the year marked the nadir of the
PSD's fortunes; things had presumably changed since then, but no one was
sure in which direction. Only the PCT took part in the earlier by-elections
and then not under its party label; the other parties, MDS in the lead, refused
to participate in any partial elections and called for early general elections
instead. The PSD—now renamed RCD—did not want elections until it had
got its own house in order in its extraordinary Party Congress. Up to that
point, it was still most likely that the presidential elections would be paired
with partial parliamentary elections and scheduled for November 7, 1988, as
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 21

announced by the president at the end of July. At the same time as the
Congress of Salvation, a new constitutional law was promulgated providing
for early dissolution and election of the assembly sometime in 1988 or 1989.
Part of the liberalization measures was the law authorizing political
parties, passed by the National Assembly at the end of April 1988. Reversing
the former procedures, authorization was now to be granted unless the
government objected (with reasons given) within a period of two months. A
number of parties, old and new, lined up to be recognized—not only the PCT
and MDS but also the PUP and then some new bodies of uncertain
importance, such as the small Progressive Socialist Rally (RSP) of Nejib
Chebbi (aspiring to be a labor party), the Arab socialist Democratic Unity
Union (UDU) of Abderrahim Tlili, and the personal following of liberal
lawyer Mounir Beji, called the Social Party of Progress (PSP) (see Réalités,
March 31, 1989). The real problem (which remained unresolved, however)
was the matter of the MTI, now reorganizing as the Renaissance party (Hizb
al-Nahda). The presidency had maintained a dialogue with the fundamentalist
leaders ever since November 7, carried out by Dr. ben Slama and then Moncer
Rouissi, leading to the movement's reorganization and to increasingly
moderate statements by Rachid Ghannouchi (Mezoughi 1988). Officially
pardoned by the president in mid-May 1988, Ghannouchi immediately
declared the support of the Islamicists for ben Ali's "program of national
salvation" and two months later declared his willingness to participate in
national politics within the confines of legality. But the government was
still unsure that the movement was willing and able to play by democratic
rules, and the movement did not apply for recognition as a party throughout
1988.
In addition to the more procedural questions of types and dates of
elections, there was also the substantive question of programmatic
consensus, or the acceptable extent of pluralism and the limits of the
political system—the same question that had plagued the previous regime as
it faced the prospect of pluralism in 1981. To avoid calling into question the
accomplishments of the first quarter-century of Independence, parties running
in the 1981 elections were to subscribe to a National Charter drawn up by the
PSD; but Bourguiba was still frightened by the prospect of a programmatic
opposition, and the election results were falsified. The new 1988 law
authorizing political parties prohibited parties based on "religion, language,
race or region" and required acceptance of the principles of "human rights and
the accomplishments of the nation." On the anniversary of Independence in
March 1988, ben Ali stressed the irrevocability of the Personal Status Code
and other modernizing reforms of the previous regime. Still, that was not
enough.
Attracted by the experience with national charters in Algeria and Spain
and especially Nasser's Egypt, ben Ali in April decided to establish a
22 POLITICAL REFORM

National Pact that would serve as the instrument of consensus for the
forthcoming elections. Its main target was the MTI, with which there were
ongoing discussions about the conditions under which the party might be
authorized. In September, representatives of business, labor, national
organizations, and political parties, including an unofficial representative of
the unrecognized MTI, met to debate ben Ali's proposed document and then
make editorial changes in the National Pact in a drafting committee
dominated by the RCD (Anderson 1990). At the signing ceremony of the
National Pact on the first anniversary of November 7, the president
announced elections for April, at first on the ninth, then, because of
Ramadan, moved up to the second. Only then was it decided to submit the
entire assembly to reelection (as the opposition was demanding), without
benefit of any preliminary "public opinion polls." In the interim, other
important procedural questions—notably the revisions of the voters' rolls and
the preparation of candidatures—needed to be handled. Extending the legal
provisions, ben Ali decreed two voters' registration periods and held them
open longer than the prescribed time. In their turn, the parties scoured their
membership for candidatures, testing particularly the renewed structures of the
RCD.
The electoral system was the subject of a major debate in the National
Assembly and the media at the year's end. Opposition parties pressed for a
system of proportional representation, against the RCD insistence on the
maintenance of the list system with the possibility of cross-voting. In fact,
the provision for cross-voting is generally agreed to be unworkable, reducing
the system to a winner-take-all vote for competing party lists. With electoral
districts the size of provinces (except for Tunis and Gabes, where the
provinces [gouvernorats] were split in two by the districting finally
announced at the end of February), there was no way for minor parties to win
seats in the assembly. But French political figures visiting Tunisia at the
time emphasized the role of proportional representation in favoring
"extremist parties"; and since the government's fears were in fact focused on
the danger of fundamentalist extremists (and perhaps communists as well) at
the time, it opted for maintenance of the current system, with elaborate
justifications solicited from as many quarters as possible.
The dilemma of the old machine versus the new broom still hung over
the proceedings, compounded by the question whether there would be a
fundamentalist party or not. The MTI registered its request for authorization
of the Renaissance (al-Nahda) party on February 7, too late to require a
response before the elections but early enough to place the issue squarely
before the government and the public. A way of squaring the procedural and
substantive questions would be to run a common list of candidates from all
the parties of the National Pact, a tactic reminiscent of the early days of
Independence under Bourguiba. The advantages were clear: a presidential
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 23

majority, a gentlemanly consensus, an absence of bitter campaigning, and

above all freedom from the surprises that stem from the absence of opinion
polls—no new brooms and the machine working for all. The disadvantages
were equally clear: no tests and no choice and a need to decide on a
distribution of seats (and hence of potential losses) acceptable to all.
The notion of the common list, proposed by the president, was discussed
in the RCD politburo meetings of January 31 and February 7 and presented
to the Central Committee meeting on February 10-11 for its acceptance. The
representatives of the National Pact parties were then convoked on February
13; in a cleverly worded proposition by Prime Minister Baccouche, they were
offered the principle of a common list, leaving it to them to work out the
proportions of an unannounced number of seats among themselves. The
representatives of the Renaissance group accepted immediately; the others
asked to consult their national organs and return with an answer in a week.
During the period, the smaller parties—the PUP, RSP, PSP, and PCT—all
pronounced in favor, for a common list would guarantee them a seat that they
would find unlikely to win otherwise.
The key player in the crucial decision on the common list was Mestiri's
MDS. The party was favored by ben Ali as the cornerstone of the loyal
opposition, and he took measures to reinforce its position and that of
Mestiri. Despite the contrary opinion of the ten members of his political
bureau, Mestiri swung the decision against acceptance of a common list—
even threatening resignation—for a complicated array of reasons.
Fundamentally, the common list was antithetical to choice; and democracy
means choice, with all its consequences. Beyond that, Mestiri was still
thinking in 1981 terms of the 30 percent of the vote that had been taken
away from him and in mid-1980s terms of his position as intermediary
between the government and the Islamicists. He expected special
consideration as a result. Instead, he could not even run or vote because of his
previous sentence under Bourguiba; and his civic rights were not restored by
ben Ali until the end of the candidacy period. Believing his party could run
alone and win, Mestiri refused the common list and entered the contest on an
electoral system through which he could not possibly win.
The presidential and parliamentary elections of April 2, 1989 were the
culmination of the first round of Tunisian democratic reform. The
government announced its entry into the democratic era with understandable
pride and enthusiasm, since Tunisia had its first free and fair, nonviolent,
competitive multiparty elections. But the claims were somewhat premature
and the results ambiguous. The elections gave Tunisia a de facto two-party
system without a second party formally constituted and with an opposition of
uncertain loyalty. The reinvigorated dominant party, the RCD, won all the
seats by the winner-take-all electoral system retained from the old regime.
The largest opposition force was the Independents, who stood for the still-
24 POLITICAL REFORM

unauthorized MTI, or Renaissance party. The election was characterized by

normal and inevitable pressures and practices by both the RCD and the MTI
such as are often found in machine politics, but it was also criticized by the
MDS and MTI for outright falsification of results. As a result of these
complications, Tunisia hobbled into the democratic era with less clarity than
would have been desirable.
In the vote of April 2, the results were a cause of general suiprise. The
RCD's total vote of 80 percent was an embarrassing success. The 3.76
percent of the MDS (roughly the same as the falsified figure of 1981) was
surprisingly small, although observers reminded themselves afterward that the
party was viewed as a younger brother of the RCD and not a real alternative
for those who wanted a meaningful protest vote. The overall 14.5 percent of
the various Independent lists was surprisingly high, and was even higher (19
percent) when calculated for those districts alone where the Independents ran
candidates or (up to 60 percent) for certain lower-class urban voting districts
where they did best. Yet to the Independents themselves it was
disappointingly low. The only nonsurprise was the nearly unanimous vote of
support (99.27 percent) for ben Ali as the only presidential candidate, larger
than any vote Bourguiba ever received. However, even behind that figure was
the larger sign of dissatisfaction or at least lethargy: of the 4 million
potential voters, only 2.7 million registered and 2.1 million voted. The
president was plebescited, and the RCD won; but there remains also a
tremendous potential for dissatisfaction and challenge, either against or
within the new democracy.
The other result of the election was only a disquieting side. The MDS
and the Independents launched vigorous challenges against the announced
results, in the face of a repeated claim by the government that the elections
were "fair and transparent." Already in the registration of candidatures, the
Constitutional Court ruled in favor of two challenges by Independents over
invalidated lists. The government has maintained that the Interior Ministry is
distinct from the ruling party and that the commission will not hesitate to
rule justly; and ben Ali has attached his prestige to this pledge. The MDS
withdrew its poll watchers from the polling places in the middle of the
afternoon on charges that voter intimidation was so strong that continued
presence would only lead to violence. Yet when tne violations cited are
examined against the MDS results, they would only have raised the total by a
percentage point or so. The Independents' claims are more serious.
Independents were as active in pressuring and organizing voters as were RCD
militants. Unlike the MDS, Independent poll watchers stayed at their posts
throughout election day; and when the count was completed, they passed the
totals to waiting motorcyclists who sped the figures to collection points on
the federation and then to provincial level. Their figures differ widely from
the official ones, with allegedly supporting information. In this matter—and
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 25

against an experienced party machine—proof is hard to come by. Yet the

Renaissance party people felt robbed of a rightful outcome, and they
threatened drastic measures when their complaint was rejected by the
Constitutional Commission in May. Similar threats accompanied the
government's rejection of the party's application at the beginning of June on
a technicality, even though it left the way open for further prolongation of
the tractations that had marked government-fundamentalist relations since
1987 (see Ghannouchi 1989).

• Conclusions

President ben Ali's political reforms had their effect. Enhanced civil liberties,
a pluralized political system, and competitive, nonviolent elections were their
undeniable result. To say that these accomplishments were only the
beginning or that the transition has moved only from a single party to a
dominant party rule without reaching its goal of a fully competitive
multiparty system is not to deny the progress of the first round of reforms.
Nor is it to say that that progress guarantees the success of subsequent steps.
Of the elements identified earlier as comprising the process of transition from
authoritarian to democratic regimes, significant, if incomplete, progress has
been made on all four counts. The authoritarian order has been undermined
and opened to a far greater liberty of political expression and action than ever
before. New pacts and rules of the game have been carefully established,
supported by a broad consensus and enforced by public authority. Public
space, always large in Tunisia, has been expanded, as much by the action of
the Islamicists and the civil libertarians as by the new government and also
by the restoration of professional organizations to their client groups.
Participation and elections have been openly organized.
On the other hand, the temptation to return to closed politics increases
when hard choices are imposed on government by socioeconomic stagnation
and when—as in 1990—public opinion feels that the political honeymoon of
the new regime is over. The new pacts and rules of the game are threatening
to become their own undoing, as a significant segment of opinion,
aggressively organized, clamors for legalization but is suspected of seeking to
undermine the open society that would give it voice. Public space and
participation still have much room for expansion; the labor union needs to
find its political and professional feet, and the nonvoting half of the
population needs to be brought into the political system. These are the
challenges of the coming rounds of political reform, needed to complete the
first step.
Reforms do not leave the reformer unchanged. The agents of reform in
the coming rounds have been profoundly affected by the results of the first
26 POLITICAL REFORM

step—probably the greatest testimony to their success. Four characteristics

are noteworthy: the legal dominant party system, the potential open space,
the still-unauthorized opposition, and the uncontested presidency.
The legal dominant party system has given new life to the Destourian
movement by providing it with an occasion to revive and relegitimize itself.
Around it gravitate a number of tiny parties whose weakness is recognized in
their own self-characterization as "parties of support, not parties of
opposition." Little in their programs or their clienteles promises growth in
their future, and they are likely to remain small satellites of the RCD, their
continued existence protected only by their position as guarantors of the
multiparty quality of the system. Change in this constellation depends not on
the growth of one of these tiny parties but on the breakup of the unity of the
dominant party. Ben Ali's accession and the RCD revival unnaturally
prolonged its existence as a great coalition, but there are presently visible and
theoretically identifiable strains on its broad unity.
As in the 1970s, there are inchoate divisions between liberals and
conservatives, identified in terms of the organization of politics, often
opposing presidential advisors in the Palace at Carthage to party leaders in
the party headquarters overlooking the Casbah of Tunisia. Some of this
division was found in the split between ben Ali and Baccouche, resulting in
the dismissal of the prime minister in September 1989; but another
dimension of the same dispute was ideological, over the extent of
privatization (Jeune Afrique, October 9, 1989, 20). A third source of internal
stress lies in the nature of the RCD as Uncle Sasha's Store, expected to
provide all things to all people but in reality under considerable strain to act
at the same time as the party of business, the party of labor, and the party of
farmers. When the demands of its diverse social base break out in direct
contradiction with each other, reinforcing the organization and ideological
divisions, the RCD will be ready for political mitosis and Tunisia will have
a real multiparty system.
There still is unoccupied political space in Tunisia, which potentially
can provide the other source of multipartyism besides an RCD split. Since
Independence, the Tunisian political system has been straining to give birth
to a labor party with a socialist program, an eventuality that has been
carefully foreclosed by PSD (and then RCD) strategists, who fear that a labor
party would run off with the bulk of their voters and operate against their
economic, as well as political, interests. At the end of the 1980s socialism
was a discredited programmatic option, and all hope seemed to lie in
privatization; in the 1990s the limitations of privatization are certain to
appear clear, and the degree of balance within a mixed economy will be the
subject of intense debate. A huge nonvoting segment of the population plus
some of those already activated by the Islamicists is the prize to be captured.
How such a party will come into being is less clear, especially since its
CONDUCT OF POLITICAL REFORM 27

natural parent, the UGTT, is only finding its own way. But the opportunity
is so clear that politics is likely to find a way of taking it up. For it to do so,
however, new individuals will have to emerge as leaders; and the current
RCD leadership will have to remain true to its own pacts and rules of the
game under real challenge.
The natural evolution of this system has been hijacked by the
unauthorized Islamicist opposition, in part because the establishment is
uncertain about the extent of its own reforms for a pluralistic polity. The
MTI, or al-Nahda, picked up the new pacts and rules of the game and pledged
to play by them. But they also provoked a crisis in one of the three areas of
governance in Tunisia by calling into question the entire social program of
the Bourguibist state. The ben Ali regime was fearful of the challenge they
posed, and the president spent as much time after the elections as before
emphasizing his notion of democracy based on an exclusive, not an
inclusive, consensus (Jeune Afrique, July 12, 34—35; October 23, 40-41;
November 20-23; December 4, 38-39—all 1989). Within his entourage, a
small group argued for recognition, which would help the Islamicists
moderate by forcing them to compete openly for the political middle, pull
them away from their extremist fringe, and keep them under public scrutiny.
Another group, including the "conservatives" associated with the RCD and
the parliament, feared that authorization would legitimize the Islamicist
option, felt embarrassed to take stands on issues that Renaissance party
members might raise, and suspected that the extremists were powerful and the
moderates wily in the movement. Aggressive attacks by Islamicist leaders
against the minister of education, Charfi in October (Jeune Afrique, October
16, 1989, 16-17) and the strong showing of the Islamicist student
organization, the General Tunisian Union of Students (UGTE), reinforced the
conservatives' argument in early 1990, as the country headed toward
municipal elections. Many scenarios are possible: heightened confrontation
bom of poor economic conditions, leading the country back to the civil strife
and defensive government response of 1987 (the Bourguibist option);
continued indecision in which the Renaissance party functions as a group of
Independents, with the elections of 1989 and 1990 as their high watermark
(the Egyptian option); legalization of a Renaissance party weakened by the
doctrinaire rifts and cleavages that riddle any religious movement (the
Algerian option); or legalization of the party that goes on to destroy the
political system (the Sudanese option). The two middle options appear the
most likely, in part because of the general awareness of the dangers of the
other extremes. Eventually, all opposition parties boycotted the municipal
elections of 1990, hiding their weakness behind a weak complaint of not
being consulted; the Islamicists ran a few independents, since their party was
still unrecognized; and the RCD won another false victory over an absent
opposition.
28 POLITICAL REFORM

Political reform in Tunisia, as in much of the Arab and African world

(Senegal aside), reached from the second level of elites on downward but does
not countenance competitive pluralism at the very top. Democracy will not
come to Tunisia until there is open competition and choice for the
presidency, not because the current incumbent is defective but because
nothing desacralizes a human being and personalizes public accountability
like a good political campaign. Nothing guarantees that a political campaign
remain "good," focusing on accountability rather than on the seamier sides of
desacralization (as the U.S. public knows); but the ultimate maturity of the
political system can only be achieved and maintained by exercise. By the
constitutional amendment adopted in July 1988, ben Ali is limited to three
terms, ending in 2004, unless another constitutional amendment is passed;
opposition could come from either another party's candidate or from an
Independent, provided that sufficient nominating signatures are available.
Such eventualities are a long way off.
Political reform has been the program of the new ben Ali regime and has
been carried out to the point where it must above all face its own challenges.
Reform has both reinvigorated the country's dominant and historic political
movement and provided the opening for an unexpectedly serious challenge
from outside the reformist consensus. It is to the credit of the country that
some of the important decisions of the reformist movement have come from
the body politic (society), not from its decisionmakers (state). Now the
polity must take up the opportunity offered to it and grow larger than the
RCD, fill up the unused political space, contribute supportive participation
to the task of governance, and impose ongoing accountability on the
governors. The success of state reform comes when society itself takes up the
movement.

• Note

1.1 am grateful to the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the
Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies
for its support for the research for this project and to the Center for Maghrib
Studies In Tunis (CEMAT) of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS)—
and particularly to its director, Jeanne Mrad—for assistance. I am thankful to my
many friends and contacts in Tunis for their time and help in my research,
including Moncer Rouissi, Abderrahim Zouari, Ahmed Mestiri, Frej Chaieb,
Azzouz Larbi, Azzouz Rebai, Abdelqader Zghal, Habib Slim, al-Baki Hermassi,
Amor Chadli, Mohammed Sayah, Hamouda ben Slama, Dali Jazi, and Mohammed
Charfi, among others.
2
Clientelism and Reform in
ben Ali's Tunisia
Susan Waltz

T here has been no shortage of adulation for Zine Labidine ben Ali and

Tunisia's second republic, within and without the country. "An Opening
in Tunisia," a "State of Grace"—so the Western press continues to sing a
year and a half after ben Ali's 1987 bloodless coup. At home, references
abound to the Miracle of November 7. The "miracle" is a twofold one: first,
the Tunisian polity not only survived intact but survived without scars the
presidential succession it had both dreamed of and dreaded for so many years;
second, Tunisia has taken important steps toward instituting its version of a
liberal democratic, pluralistic rule, and the wonder is audible: "Only under
ben Ali "
Changes, indeed, have been impressive. Besides measures of judicial
clemency, extended by mid-1989 to more than three thousand individuals
jailed for politically related crimes and bans lifted on numerous long-term
political exiles, the ben Ali government has undertaken a number of
structural reforms. The presidential tenn of office has been limited; and so, to
some degree, have been presidential powers with the abolition of both the
State Security Court and the post of general prosecutor (Laws 87-79 and 87-
80). Opposition forces, too, have been allowed new freedoms. Parties, now
legalized with relative ease, have proliferated, as has the independent press.
And in April 1989 Tunisians—many for the first time—faced a choice in
their selection of deputies to Parliament.
I shall argue, however, that the half-filled cup being celebrated with such
enthusiasm may also be seen as half-empty; and in the Tunisian case there is
much to suggest that even as pluralistic form is introduced, old patterns of
personal rule are reestablishing themselves. To put the current period in
historical perspective, it is useful to consider two central and enduring
dynamics in Tunisian political culture: rational reform and particularism. Of
the two, the particularistic strand is the older; but rational reformism, too,
has a long pedigree.

29
30 POLITICAL REFORM

Kheireddine, prime minister from 1873 to 1877, sets the prototype of

reformer, but he is followed by a long list of others, including the Jeunes
Tunisiens of the early twentieth century, the Vieux Destour, Habib
Bourguiba, and groups (like, at various times, the General Union of Tunisian
Workers) who called for liberal reform under Bourguiba's thirty-year rule.
From the beginning of the 1980s the MDS has been prominent in this role,
its leaders persistently and publicly advocating competitive elections. Most
recently, the LTDH has been the standard-bearer of reform, through the
upheavals of 1987 denouncing arrests and calling for measures to protect the
rights of regime opponents (Waltz 1988).
The reformist tradition in Tunisia is the graft of a European tree. Ahmad
Bey (1835-1855) prepared the way by introducing ruling elites (of Turkish
origin) to European ideals (Brown 1974). French advisors then saw to it that
successor Muhammad Bey (1855-1859) promulgated a security covenant, the
Ahd al-aman. The covenant protected French interests by assuring civil and
religious equality for all Tunisian residents, as well as by assuring access to
courts of law. Muhammad Bey's own successor, Muhammad al-Sadiq (1859-
1882) was put under further duress by the French and prodded to issue a full-
fledged constitution in 1861. This short-lived document was disdained by the
reigning prime minister, Mustapha Khaznadar, but it did impress his son-in-
law Kheireddine, who in his own brief term of office implemented many of
its provisions. Kheireddine had lived in Europe from 1862 to 1869 and in
office sought to apply political ideas that had taken shape during his years
abroad. Notably, he sought to enhance state legitimacy by installing an
administration strong in competence and integrity and by creating a citizenry
that would be treated fairly and equally before the law (Krieken 1976).
Consistently, Tunisian rationalists—in and out of power—have
emphasized equity in the rule of law, equal access to seats of power, and the
predominance of reason in establishing first secular knowledge and then
policy. The 1861 Constitution, for example, established equality before the
law with respect to taxation and military duty and created a Grand Council
whereby the Bey's ability to legislate would be constrained (Anderson 1986,
82-83). One of Kheireddine's lasting contributions was the foundation of the
Sadiqi College, priding itself on a secular curriculum emphasizing rational
thought (Green 1978, 113-142).
Tunisian reformism—in spirit as in practice—has never reached the
extreme of U.S. liberalism, holding the people sovereign and viewing the
state as the creation of the governed, there to perform limited and necessary
tasks. Tunisians, historically, viewed the emerging state with suspicion and
in the post-Independence period learned to mitigate their fears with
expectations that unwelcome state intervention in their lives could be offset
by state-sponsored benefits in the form of housing, food, medical care,
employment, and other welfare goods (Waltz 1982). It is against this
CLIENTELISM AND REFORM 31

admixture of supplication and distancing that reformist efforts must be

seen.
Unlike their compatriots in the Tunisian bled al-siba, reformists have
not actually challenged the right of the state to govern and shape society; but
neither have they questioned the state's responsibility to provide welfare in
addition to security. They have sought to contain arbitrary application of the
state's power rather than limit that power itself. Reformists outside the
government, from the Jeunes Tunisiens of the French Protectorate to the
contemporary League of Human Rights, have sought fair and equitable
application of the law and have denounced personalism as favoritism within
government (Anderson 1976, 158-162; Waltz 1988). Reformists in power
have more frequently used rational reforms to consolidate their own power
bases and simultaneously constrain the power of politically fractious
elements. The Constitution of 1861, for example, while extending the rule of
law also very deftly cut into the power of local leaders and occasioned a
widespread revolt, whose slogan was "No more capitation taxes, no more
mamluks, no more Constitution" (Moore 1970, 25).
Particularism, for its part, is traced to times when the Tunisian state was
not so strong and effective social groupings—whether tribes, peasant
villages, or rare urban settlements—were much smaller. Particularism is a
general label for practices by which public policy serves private purposes. It
encompasses both patron-client exchange relationships, or clientelism, and
contemporary forms of what Weber called patrimonialism—or government as
the ruler's private domain. Weber suggests that coercion is the essential
dynamism undergirding patrimonialism, or personal rule—though coercion
may be tempered by, or supplemented with, patronage (Bendix 1977, 334-
360). Exchange, however asymmetric, underlies clientelism (Scott 1977). In
nearly all governmental systems, some forms of particularism are tolerated—
as, for example, certain pork barrel practices in U.S. politics or "special
member bills" allowed by the British parliament—whereas others, viewed as
corruption, are not. Tunisia, especially over the past decade, has not been
immune to corruption; but the particularism that receives attention here
remains within the bounds of law.
The form of particularism most conventionally discussed in the Tunisian
context is clientelism, an unequal dyadic relationship wherein some form of
fealty is exchanged for some form of protection (Schmidt, et al. 1977;
Gellner and Waterbury 1973). Strictly speaking, the dyadic patron-client
relationship is a personal one. Such personal relationships of political
control persist in contemporary Tunisia, especially in rural areas; but the
patron's power base today lies with his connections to the government and its
vast store of patronage rather than his own accrued wealth or kinship ties
(Anderson 1976, 227, 249). A story circulating widely in Tunisia over the
past two years illustrates the practice. In 1956 ben Ali was selected as one of
32 POLITICAL REFORM

about twenty Tunisians to be trained at the St. Cyr Military Academy in

France, an arrangement negotiated at the time of Independence to provide an
officer corps for the new Tunisian army. Ben Ali's candidacy, however, was
opposed by local leaders in his hometown of Hammam Sousse, who claimed
that the ben Ali family had collaborated with the French during the fight for
Independence. Hedi Baccouche, at the time a regional leader of the Neo-
Destour party, established himself as a patron by defending young ben Ali
and seeing his nomination through (Huxley 1989). Years later, as prime
minister under ben Ali, Baccouche would assert the privileges of patronage
by acting even at cross-purposes to the program of reform designed by ben
Ali and followed by the remainder of this cabinet.1
Clientelism as a political practice is generally seen as a demand function,
that is, as a means by which those relatively deprived of power and
political voice make their wants known. In Tunisia such demands are
often brokered. A village omda cultivates relations with the regional party
délégué (Tekeri 1981, 41) and at the appropriate moment passes up the
request for a new schoolroom or dispensary or bus service. Or, prior to recent
reforms, an organization seeking legal authorization used a mutually friendly
contact to intercede with the authorities. In the absence of an active
associative tradition, such brokered clientelism helps maintain links between
people and polity in a way dyadic connections could not on any significant
scale.
The argument in the remainder of this chapter is that the most
significant expression of particularism in contemporary Tunisia is actually
personal rule and that the motor for personal rule appears stationed at the top.
But patrons, however attractive, cannot be separated from willing clients; and
more must be said about Tunisian society. The majority of Tunisians—
shopkeepers, chauffeurs, small farmers, factory workers—look to the
government to supply jobs, provide health and welfare needs, and keep prices
down; they are otherwise grateful for its nonintervention in their daily lives
(cf. Zghal 1967, 32-56, 151-170; Rudebeck 1967, 134-138). For thirty
years the political role of most Tunisians has been confined to that of
listener, the bulk of Tunisians are only marginally engaged in their country's
governance.2 There are times in every Tunisian's life, however, that business
must be done with authorities. In those times the rules may work,
technically; or it may even happen that they do not work in an equitable
fashion. Regardless, from the perspective of the peasant or urban dispossessed
lost in bureaucratic routine and perhaps illiterate as well, an intercessor is
always useful and often necessary (cf. Tekeri 1981). In 1977, 34 percent of
391 respondents in a survey of twelve Tunisian villages indicated they would
find someone else in their village to present their case to authorities in an
important matter (Waltz 1982). Basic attitudes of suspicion and feelings of
vulnerability are tenacious, and one must conclude that the strategy appears
CLIENTELISM AND REFORM 33

rational for individuals unlikely to argue their cases persuasively before those
holding the reins of power. The Tunisian masses thus hold themselves aloof
from the rules and remain cautiously available to patrons who indicate a
personal interest in their lot.
Behind whatever enthusiastic gestures of support they might offer the
state or its leaders on occasion, Tunisians in the current period more
commonly express sentiments of passive loyalty, approval of a wait-and-see
sort. Remembering failed promises and arbitrary requirements of the past and
skeptical about current reforms, they are happy to claim what comes their
way now and protect themselves against privations of the morrow (cf. Zghal
1967, 51-56). Their attitude of distance and standoffish loyalty contributes to
particularistic tendencies and simultaneously detracts from the impersonal
rule of law.
Particularism may characterize the political behavior of society's favored
as well as those it has forgotten. In addition to providing an outlet for
otherwise inexpressible political demands, particularism may appear as a
style of governance, aptly described as personalism or personal rule. Robert
H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg define it in opposition to institutionalized
government. Personal rule is a system of governance where

persons take precedence over rules, where the officeholder is not

effectively bound by his office and is able to change its authority and
powers to suit his own personal or political needs. In such a system of
personal rule, the rulers and other leaders take precedence over the
formal rules of the political game: the rules do not effectively regulate
political behavior, and we therefore cannot predict or anticipate conduct
from a knowledge of the rules. (1982, 10)

The ease with which rulers—Turkish, French, and Tunisian—have changed

the rules to suit their own purposes is testimony to the tradition of personal
rule in Tunisia. The colonial power, wanting to encourage settlement and
reduce its own domestic unemployment in the aftermath of World War I,
simply changed employment requirements to restrict Tunisian access to the
bureaucracy (Anderson 1976, 148-149). If not an entirely personalistic
measure from the French procedural perspective, it was so perceived by the
Tunisian subjects. Bourguiba's own rule bore a heavy personal imprint, from
the declaration of lifelong presidency to the whimsical change of ministers
during his final year of tenure (Hahn 1972; Vandevalle 1988).3
The paradoxical nature of the coexistence and vitality of rational
reformism and particularism in Tunisian political culture has led a number of
analysts to assume a conflictual and evolutionary dynamic between them.
Clement Henry Moore for example, predicted the triumph of rationality in
the spread of democratic pluralism and accountability—a paper plan that
never translated into reality (1970, 286). More recently, Lisa Anderson's
34 POLITICAL REFORM

liberal use of "transition" language suggests an evolutionary path over the

past century from clientelism to bureaucratic rationalism (1986, 26).
Alternatively, one of these facets may be seen as a mask, or as lacking
any substantive importance in the political culture. Michel Camau, for
example, notes the same two dimensions of Tunisian political culture and
differentiates them as l'Etat idéal and l'Etat réel. The term ideal refers to the
language and symbols of political discourse, wherein civic values and
rationalism are stressed. In idealist rhetoric, the people are considered
"citizens"; but political reality, for Camau, lies elsewhere. In the struggle for
power that constitutes political reality, only a narrow group of elites have
been allowed access to controls. Elites, rather than addressing the people
directly, have sought their support through societal brokers. The people are
pacified by idealist rhetoric; but in "real" terms, they are simply clients
(Camau 1987).
Neither of these approaches accounts well for Tunisia's political
dynamics. In the contemporary period, the rational has not replaced
particularism. Likewise, the implication that the ideal is only a rhetorical
facade for real politics is unsatisfactory, inasmuch as the ideal, or rational,
strand of politics has also had substantive impact on Tunisia's sociopolitical
system. Tunisia stands in marked contrast to countries such as Nigeria and
Zaire, inextricably mired in personal rule and clientelist politics; and
successful bureaucratic containment of clientelism has been responsible for
much of Tunisia's success in statebuilding (cf. Anderson 1986). A faithful
portrayal of Tunisian political culture over the past century has quite simply
to admit both rationalism and particularism, like two dominant threads in a
tapestry that periodically rise and recede but never quite disappear.
Accordingly, there is truth to Camau's assertion that there exists a
private system in Tunisian state governance that transcends specialization of
structures and officially instituted procedures. If reformism has had
substantive impact, so, too, has particularism. Ben Ali's rise to power has
come on a wave of rational reforms, but that should not be understood as a
simultaneous disappearance of particularistic politics. In the current period, as
in the historical past, personalism finds expression.
"Private rule" in Tunisia has typically been pursued both positively, in
the sense of an active advance of personal interests, and negatively, as
impediments to political rivals (cf. Moore 1973). Personalistic interests are
pursued negatively when limitations are imposed directly on the rule of law
or when personalistic use or interpretations of the law interfere with equitable
application. As James Scott notes, the universalistic language of legislation
does not easily lend itself to the articulation of particularistic interests.
Consequently, such interests are more often expressed at the enforcement
level (1972, 19). Political threats to the personal leader may be contained or
eliminated through arrests and political imprisonment (as with a variety of
CLIENTELISM AND REFORM 35

Tunisian socialists in the 1960s, labor activists in the 1970s, and Islamicists
in the 1980s); exile, either official or self-imposed (of the sort chosen by
former government ministers Ahmed ben Salah and Driss Guiga, who
otherwise faced penalties for treason); or more finally, through execution
(with which Islamicist leaders were threatened in 1987) or assassination (as
appears to have been the fate of Bourguiba's early rival Salah ben Youssef).
Personal interests are pursued more directly when elected officials and
bureaucrats extend their roles as executives and administrators to become
patrons. Through political brokerage, enticements are extended to sizable
constituent groups in exchange for present, and possibly future, loyalty. Two
major political strategies of the ben Ali era can be seen from this angle—the
National Pact and the proposed common list, discussed in Chapter 1. Because
these efforts at coalitionbuilding are rather ordinary political moves—if
extraordinary in the contemporary Tunisian setting—particularistic aspects
are not so readily apparent. More obvious are other examples from the same
period: a dramatic reduction in import duties on taxicabs (whose drivers in the
final years of Bourguiba's rule were notorious political critics); a three-day
holiday for "tired" lycéens (who subsequently proclaimed ben Ali the
candidate of the young); and significant real estate discounts for residents of
one densely populated and erstwhile low-income area of Tunis (a potential
Islamicist voting area). The last incident illustrates the process of
contemporary personal governance and so bears elaboration. In the early part
of 1989 it became apparent that as a result of rising costs associated with a
government upgrading program in the Bab Souika area of Tunis, a
substantial number of residents and businesses would be forced out of their
locales. The country's president and his cabinet met to discuss the impending
crisis, and an executive decision was taken to reduce prices by as much as 75
percent. Newspaper headlines proclaimed "Bab Souika Delivered," and
residents were duly quoted: "God Bless ben Ali" (La Presse, March 4,1989).
Unlike his predecessor, who depended on informal advisors to the near-
exclusion of his cabinet, ben Ali appears to make decisions in consultation
with his formally appointed cabinet, who have the merit of technical
expertise, in addition to a circle of personally appointed advisors. Yet the
process is remarkably the same: governance is largely by fiat; and
appreciation, in this extended honeymoon phase, accrues to the personage of
the president.
A ruler's personal ambitions, of course, may actually further the cause of
reform, depending on personal commitments and political circumstances.
Bourguiba, for example, used the 1957 Constitution to consolidate his
regime and legitimize his rule (Vandevalle 1988). Through a program of
political reform, a ruler may effectively contain forces in competition not
only with himself as a leader but with a rational state as well and out of a
personal goal of survival build a legacy of rational rule. The relationship
36 POLITICAL REFORM

between personalism and reform is a tangled one: situations frequently arise

where the difference between personal interests and public ones is difficult to
discern.
The difficulties for a society torn between patterns of rational reform and
particularism appear not when public and private interests converge but when
they diverge in serious measure. A leader securing a hold on power through a
program of reform may find that power limited by the very reforms that have
been sought; but there is likewise a risk that reform engendered by
particularist means and serving apparent particularist interests will finally be
lost.

• Human Rights and Personal Rule

Recent attention to the area of human rights reform and performance presents
an opportunity to examine these aspects of personal rule as they operate in
the current regime. As early as November 1987, key legal measures
introduced by ben Ali abolished the State Security Court and limited the
practice of pretrial incommunicado detention known as garde-d-vue, both of
which had been used repeatedly to abridge legal protection for the Bourguiba
government's opponents. During 1988 several presidential commissions were
put to work studying the penal code and considering changes in laws
concerning association, press freedoms, and election procedures. A reformed
press code encouraging pluralistic expression by preventing monopoly and
reducing penalties for code infractions was adopted in July 1988. Laws of
association were similarly revamped in July to facilitate the proliferation of
civic and political organizations. Since November 1987, Tunisia has ratified
the UN Torture Convention and has also imposed a de facto moratorium on
capital punishment. These reforms, the hallmark of the ben Ali presidency,
have narrowed the gap between ideal and real political activity. In January
1989 ben Ali was awarded an international human rights prize; and, in
conjunction with the United Nations, the Arab Organization for Human
Rights named Tunis as the site for a new Arab-African Institute for Human
Rights.
For the most part, the ben Ali government actually increased its power,
prestige, and legitimacy as it extended civil and political rights through 1988.
Under Bourguiba, personal rule had too-long dominated, its excesses readily
apparent; and even for those not heavily involved in political activities, 1987
approached a reign of terror. A counterstrategy of restoring the rule of law
proved effective in gaining political legitimacy for the new government. In
many ways, personal and public interests converged: reform has certainly
enhanced ben Ali's hold on power, but personal gestures also paved the way
for reform. Personal power embedded in Article 28 of the Tunisian
CLIENTELISM A N D REFORM 37

Constitution allowed ben Ali to initiate legal reforms. In practice,

parliamentary deputies may debate proposed laws, as they have done over the
past year on a range of issues from press code to amnesty laws; but the legal
initiative remains closely linked to the personage of the president. The vast
majority of political amnesties over the past year have also resulted from
personal decisions, arriving as presidential measures of clemency rather than
as judicial acquittals.
In other areas, the convergence of public and private interests is less
clear—or, at least, it is not clear where the greater benefit is reaped. If it has
been in the interest of the new government's legitimacy to extend civil and
political liberties, it has also been an astute political strategy to make allies
of erstwhile critics. As minister of interior and the person administratively
responsible for security forces engaged in torture and custodial ill-treatment,
ben Ali was frequently a target of criticism by Tunisian human rights
activists. As president, ben Ali appointed two founding members of the
independent and respected League of Human Rights to his new cabinet in
July 1988; and a cabinet reshuffle in April 1989 put three LTDH members
on the Carthage team. These presidential moves can with legitimacy be
interpreted as statements of intent to reform the polity, but they are just as
surely attempts to coopt potential opponents and critics and secure power.
Several points are relevant. The various portfolios accorded league members
and other liberals are largely inconsequential ones politically: Health, Youth
and Sports, Culture and Information, Education, and Social Affairs. They
involve little or no real power. Through such symbolic gestures, ben Ali's
political strength is enhanced on two counts. On the one hand he has quieted
potential regime opponents, and on the other he has gained legitimacy by
bringing the league and its own credibility into his political fold. It is,
undoubtedly, a mutually beneficial arrangement; but it would appear that the
largest gains fall to ben Ali.
Similar limitations appear in the area of electoral reform. In its March
1989 Congress, for example, even as Tunisia was receiving positive
publicity about its first truly democratic elections, the LTDH expressed
concerns about changes in electoral laws that made candidacy more difficult to
establish. A new electoral code approved in July 1988 required all candidates
to appear on a slate and obtain exclusive support of seventy-five voters
within the district of contest. Small parties like the PUP, the Socialist
Liberal Party (PSP), and the RSP found it difficult, if not impossible, to
compete even at the level of fielding a slate of candidates. Election results of
April 1989 demonstrated how effectively opposition qua opposition had been
shut out of the political process. An early appeal by ben Ali to form a
national unity ticket had been rejected by MDS leader Ahmed Mestiri, who
clung religiously to the notion of a pluralistic contest. Difficulties of
establishing candidacy and arbitrary application of campaign rules (see
38 POLITICAL REFORM

Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1989) combined with the single-
ballot, winner-take-all electoral system, resulted once again in a monopoly of
the National Assembly by the RCD. The electoral process, in fact, worked so
embarrassingly well for the RCD and ben Ali as its leader that to dilute its
influence and maintain credibility in his commitment to pluralism, ben Ali
was moved to include, in April 1989, two erstwhile RCD opponents in the
Political Bureau of the RCD itself.
There has also been an underside to reforms in the penal code concerning
garde-d-vue, for decades a focal point of human rights abuses in Tunisia.
Tunisian law previously imposed no limit on judicial investigations,
allowing political prisoners to be held indefinitely without formal charge.
Garde-d-vue essentially denies the right of habeas corpus and is widely linked
to the practice of torture and ill-treatment (Amnesty International 1984). Ben
Ali's government has received many accolades for establishing legal limits to
the practice, one of its first reforms; but the terms of the new law (Law 87-
70 of November 1987) require scrutiny: Article 85 does impose limits to the
period prisoners may now be held without charge but sets them at six
months, twice-renewable to a maximum of eighteen months. More than
thirty members of a disparate group of Islamicists, customs officers, and
military and security personnel were in fact detained nearly the full eighteen
months without charge or trial before their release in March 1989. Garde-d-
vue is now technically restricted, but the state has nonetheless effectively
secured for itself powers of preventive detention. Such capabilities enhance
the arbitrary powers of a ruler, not the impersonal and institutionalized rule
of law.
The rule of law, not least of which is civil rights law, requires fair and
equitable application of laws and legal procedures. Personalism in the area of
human rights is most rigorously judged in how rules and procedures deemed
fair as they exist on paper are actually applied; and it is in this light that any
divergence between public and private interest is best detected. In any society
there will be contests between public and private interest; and the telling
evidence about predominant structures, particularly for newly implemented
liberalizing measures, comes not in routine, noncontroversial dealings
between state and citizen but in situations where the state must exercise
restraint in order to allow the citizen free exercise of rights or where the state
may at the least have nothing to gain in extending rights to the citizen.
In the ben Ali era, toleration in widely publicized cases of press and
associational freedoms is in some measure offset by less well publicized but
no less significant instances where the new freedoms have been abridged. An
account of the seizure of two news magazines in successive weeks of
December 1988 is instructive. One of the first signs of the new liberties was
the restoration, late in 1987, of an independent press. New dailies and
weeklies literally mushroomed. Both journalists and their readers were
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father's instance. His letters to Sophie from Vincennes, written in
a style of exalted sentiment, were published in 1792 in 4 vols.
8vo. The lady herself was locked up in a convent until the death
of her husband, a man very much her senior. She eventually
committed suicide because of the infidelity of one of her lovers.—
T.
[370] Riquetti, not Riquet, instead of Mirabeau. It was in the
account of the sitting in which titles of nobility were abolished
that the journalist, in conformity with that abolition, dropped
Mirabeau's territorial title, and wrote of him by his patronymic of
Riquetti.—B.
[371] André Boniface Louis Riquetti, Vicomte de Mirabeau (1754-
1792), the Comte de Mirabeau's younger brother, nicknamed
Mirabeau-Tonneau, because of his stoutness, to distinguish him
from his brother, Mirabeau-Tonnerre.—T.
[372] M. de Lautrec de Saint-Simon was not a member of the
Constituent Assembly, but acted as one of Mirabeau-Tonneau's
seconds in his duel with the Duc de Liancourt.—B.
[373] Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre (1759-1794), the
leader of the Terror.—T.
[374] The Château de Montaigne stood on a hill near the village
of Saint-Michel, five leagues from Bergerac, in Guyenne.
Montaigne was on one occasion captured by marauders and likely
to be shot. His good-humour won not only his release but the
restoration of the property of which he had been robbed (Cf.
MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. 12: Of Physiognomy).—T.
[375] Laurent Marshal Marquis Gouvion-Saint-Cyr (1764-1830),
later a distinguished officer in the armies of the Republic and the
Empire. He would appear to have achieved no great success as
either an amateur or professional actor.—T.
[376] L'Autre Tartufe, ou, la Mère Coupable, a prose drama in five
acts, produced 6 June 1792.—B.
[377] The four leading and accomplished singers in the Italian
Opera Buffa company which first played in the Salle des Machines
at the Tuileries and later, when the Royal Family came to occupy
the palace, at the Théâtre de Monsieur, renamed Théâtre de la
Rue Feydeau.—B.
[378] Louise Rosalie Lefèvre (1755-1821), wife of the actor
Dugazon, a brilliant performer of amoureuses or leading ladies at
the Théâtre Italien, later Opéra Comique, in the Rue Favart.—T.
[379] Jeanne Charlotte Dame d'Herbey (1764-1850), née
Schrœder, known as Madame Saint-Aubin, a player of ingénues'
parts at the Opéra Comique.—B.
[380] Marie Gabrielle Malagrida (1763-1818), known as Carline,
and married to Nivelon, the dancer at the Opera. She played
soubrettes charmingly at the Théâtre Italien, but her acting was
better than her singing: she had a very small voice.—B.
[381] Chateaubriand is mistaken here. He is writing of the
theatres in 1789 and 1790, whereas Mademoiselle Olivier died in
1787.—B.
[382] André Ernest Modeste Gréry (1741-1813), the famous
composer.—T.
[383] Marguerite Françoise Comtesse de Buffon (1767-1808), née
de Bouvier de Cépoy, and wife of Georges Louis Marie Leclerc,
Comte de Buffon, son of the great writer. She was the mistress of
Philippe Égalité, to whom she bore a son who was killed when
fighting in the English army in the Peninsula. The Comte de
Buffon was guillotined 10 July 1794. In 1798 his widow married
M. Renouard de Bussières, a Strasburg banker.—B.
[384] The town-house of Louis Alexandre Duc de La
Rochefoucauld (1735-1792).—T.
[385] Pauline Marie Michelle Frédérique Ulrique Comtesse de
Beaumont (1768-1803), née de Montmorin-Saint-Hérem, wife of
the Comte Christophe François de Beaumont.—B.
[386] Anne Louise Dame de Shrilly, née Thomas, wife of Antoine
Jean François de Megret de Sérilly. Her husband and brother-in-
law were guillotined in 1794. Her own death-sentence was
commuted owing to the fact that she was pregnant In 1795 she
married François de Pange, who died in September 1796.—B.
[387] "Arras' candle so sacred and bright,
The torch that from far Provence came,
Although they afford us no light,
Are setting our fair France aflame;
We cannot touch them, no doubt.
But hope to snuff both of them out."
Robespierre was deputy for Arras, Mirabeau for Aix, the old capital
of Provence.—T.
[388] Pierre de L'Éstoile (1540-1611) Grand-Crier to the French
Chancery, and author of a valuable diary of the times of Henry III.
and Henry IV.—T.
[389] The Actes des Apôtres was published from November 1789
to October 1791; 311 numbers were issued in all. Its principal
contributors were Peltier, Rivarol, Champcenetz, Mirabeau the
younger, the Marquis de Bonnay, François Suleau, Montlosier,
Bergasse, &c.—B.
[390] The Journal de la Ville et des Provinces, ou, le Modérateur,
edited by M. de Fontanes, first appeared 1 October 1789.—B.
[391] Jacques Mallet-Dupan (1749-1800), political editor of the
Mercure de France. He left France in 1792, returned first to his
native city, Geneva, and then settled in London, where he
founded the Mercure britannique (1799).—T.
[392] The Chevalier de Champcenetz (1759-1794), one of the
wittiest Royalist partisans under the Revolution; arrested and
murdered in 1794.—T.
[393] Antoine Comte de Rivarol (1753-1801), a brilliant and
caustic wit.—T.
[394] The wife of Le Jay the bookseller, Mirabeau's publisher.—B.
[395] Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803),
author of Les Liaisons dangereuses, editor of the Journal des amis
de la Constitution, and secretary to the Duc d'Orléans. He served
as an artillery-general in the Army of Italy.—T.
[396] Armand Louis de Gontaut-Biron, Duc de Lauzun (1747-
1793), son of the Duc de Biron, to whose title he succeeded in
1788. He fought on the American side in the War of
Independence, and served as a general in the republican armies
until his arrest and execution, 31 December 1793.—T.
[397] The two brothers Arthur Comte de Dillon and Theobald de
Dillon, both fought in the republican campaigns. Arthur was
executed in 1794, Theobald killed in 1792 by his soldiers, who
believed that he was betraying them.—T.
[398] Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), Bishop
of Autun, created Prince de Bénévent by Bonaparte m 1806, Duc
de Talleyrand and Duc de Dino by Louis XVIII. in 1817.—T.
[399] Pierre Victor Baron de Besenval (1722-1791), whose
Memoirs were published in 1805-1807 by the Vicomte de Ségur,
but were disowned by the baron's family.—T.
[400] Jeanne Vaubernier, Comtesse Du Barry (1744-1794), the
last mistress of Louis XV., was guillotined 30 June 1794, having
ventured to return to France from England in order to rescue her
personal belongings.—T.
[401] Considérations sur les principaux événements de la
Revolution française, II. 16: De la Federation du 14 juillet 1790.—
B.
[402] Joseph Dominique Baron Louis (1755-1837). He had taken
minor orders and served as deacon at Talleyrand's Mass in the
Champ de Mars. He was several times Minister of Finance under
the Restoration and under Louis-Philippe.—T.
[403] 4 September 1790.—B.
[404] 20 February 1791.—B.
[405] Charles Michel Marquis de Villette (1736-1793). At the trial
of Louis XVI., he voted for imprisonment and for banishment at
the conclusion of the war.—B.
[406] I omit a poetical quotation from Parny.—T.
[407] Bordier was a comedian well known in Paris for his
performances of the character of Harlequin. He and Jourdain, an
advocate from Lisieux, placed themselves at the head of a riot on
the night of 3 August 1789 and were eventually taken and
hanged.—B.
[408] Jean Racine (1639-1699), the greatest of the French tragic
poets.—T.
[409] Antoine Marie Gaspard Sacchini (1735-1786), the "Racine of
music," composer of a number of brilliant operas. His merits were
never fully appreciated, owing to the disputes between the
adherents of Gluck and Piccini, which absorbed public attention at
the time.—T.
[410] A comedy in three acts, interspersed with songs; words by
Michel Jean Sedaine (1719-1797).—B.
[411] A comic opera in one act, words and the greater part of the
music by Jean Cazotte (1720-1792).—B.
[412] "Fall rain, or fell snow, or blow wind,
To shorten long nights we've a mind." —T.
[413] Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), author of an early
classification of botanical genera and species.—T.
[414] Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782), Inspector-
General of the Navy, and an eminent agricultural and
arboricultural expert.—T.
[415] Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), the most learned member
of a family comprising no less than four distinguished botanists.—
T.
[416] Nehemiah Grew (circa 1628-1711), author of the Anatomy
of Plants, and an early Fellow of the Royal Society (1673).—T.
[417] Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): the work referred to
is his Dictionnaire botanique.—T.
[418] Charles Linnæus (1707-1778), the great Swedish botanist.
—T.
[419] George Washington (1732-1799), first President of the
United States (1789-1793 and 1793-1797).—T.
[420] Angélique Françoise Dame de La Fonchais (1769-1793),
sister to André Desilles, the hero of Nancy, was guillotined 13
June 1793, the same time as her brother-in-law, Michel Julien
Picot de Limoëlan, displaying admirable courage on the scaffold.—
B.
[421] Major Chafner, vide supra, p. 66.—B.
[422] Captain Dujardin Pinte-de-Vin of the brig Saint-Pierre,
bound for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miguelon, whence she
was to make for Baltimore.—B.
[423] François Charles Nagot (d. 1816), not Nagault, was the
superior, not of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, but of the
community of Robertines in Paris, one of the annexes of the
seminary of Saint-Sulpice. He left for Baltimore in order to
become the superior of a Sulpician seminary in that city,
accompanied by three young priests of the Company. The Abbé
Nagot arrived at Baltimore in July 1791, and in the September
following established St Mary's Seminary, the first and best-known
seminary in the United States. In 1822 Pope Pius VII. erected St
Mary's College into a Catholic university.—B.
[424] Esprit fort, a free-thinker or latitudinarian.—T.
[425] 2 April 1791.—T.
 [426] 8 April 1791.—B.

BOOK VI[427]

In London as Ambassador—I cross the ocean—François Tulloch—

Christopher Columbus—Camoëns—The Azores—The isle of Graciosa
—Sports on board ship—The isle of Saint-Pierre—The shores of
Virginia—Sunset—Danger and escape—I land in America—Baltimore
—The passengers separate—Tulloch—Philadelphia—General
Washington—Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte—Journey
from Philadelphia to New York and Boston—Mackenzie—The Hudson
River—Song of the lady passenger—Mr. Swift—I set out for the Falls
of Niagara with a Dutch guide—M. Violet—My savage outfit—Hunting
—Wolverine and Canadian Fox—Musk-rat—Fishing dogs—Insects—
Montcalm and Wolfe—Encampment on the shore of the Onondaga
Lake—Arabs—The Indian woman and her cow—An Iroquois—The
Onondaga chief—Velly and the Franks—Ceremonies of hospitality—
The ancient Greeks—Journey from the Onondaga Lake to the
Genesee River—Clearings—Hospitality—My bed—The enchanted
rattle-snake—Niagara Falls—The rattle-snake—I fall to the edge of
the abyss—Twelve days in a hut—Change of manners among the
savages—Birth and death—Montaigne-Song of the adder—The little
Indian girl, the original of Mila—Incidents—Old Canada—True
civilisation spread by religion—False civilisation introduced by
commerce—Traders—Agents—Hunts—Half-breeds or Burnt-woods—
Wars of the companies—The Indian languages dying out—The old
French possessions in America—Regrets—A note from Lord François
Conyngham—The Canadian lakes—A fleet of Indian canoes—The
American rivers—Legends—Muscogulges and Siminoles—Our camp—
Two Floridan beauties—Ruins on the Ohio—What the Muscogulge
damsels were—Arrest of the King at Varennes—I interrupt my
journey to go back to Europe—Dangers for the United States—
Return to Europe—Shipwreck.
One-and-thirty years after embarking, as a simple sub-lieutenant, for
America, I embarked for London with a passport conceived in these
terms:
"Pass His Lordship the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Peer of France,
Ambassador of the King to His Britannic Majesty," and so on.
No description: my greatness was such as to make my face known
wherever I went. A steamboat chartered for my sole use conveyed
me from Calais to Dover. On setting foot upon English soil, on the
5th of April 1822[428], I was saluted by the guns of the fort. An
officer came on behalf of the commandant to offer me a guard of
honour. On alighting at the Shipwright Inn[429], the landlord and
waiters received me with hanging arms and bareheaded. The
Mayoress invited me to an evening party in the name of the fairest
ladies of the town. M. Billing[430], who was attached to my embassy,
awaited me. A dinner of huge fishes and enormous pieces of beef
restored Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, who had no appetite and was not
at all fatigued. The crowd gathered beneath my windows rent the air
with hurrahs. The officer returned and, despite my wishes, posted
sentries at my door. The next morning, after lavishly distributing the
money of the King my master, I set out for London, to the roar of
artillery, in a light carriage drawn by four fine horses driven at full
trot by two smart postillions. My staff followed in other coaches;
couriers wearing my livery accompanied the cavalcade. We passed
through Canterbury, attracting the eyes of John Bull and of the
occupants of the vehicles we passed. At Blackheath, a common
formerly haunted by highwaymen, I found a newly-built village. Soon
there loomed before me the immense cap of smoke which covers
the city of London.
Plunging into the gulf of black mist, as though into
one of the jaws of Tartarus, and crossing the entire In London as
Ambassador.
town, whose streets I recognized, I reached the
Embassy in Portland Place. The chargé d'affaires, M. le Comte
Georges de Caraman[431], the secretaries of embassy, M. le Vicomte
de Marcellus[432], M. le Baron E. de Cazes, M. de Bourqueney[433],
and the attachés of the embassy received me with dignified
politeness. All the ushers, doorkeepers, footmen, and flunkeys of the
house stood gathered upon the pavement. I was handed the cards
of the English ministers and of the foreign ambassadors, who had
been informed beforehand of my coming.
On the 17th of May in the year of grace 1793, I disembarked at
Southampton for London, an obscure and humble traveller from
Jersey. No mayoress took note of my passage; the mayor of the
town, William Smith, handed me on the 18th a way-bill for London
to which was added an extract from the Alien Bill. My description ran
in English:
"François de Chateaubriand, French officer in the emigrant army, five
feet four inches high, thin shape, brown hair and whiskers."
I modestly shared the cheapest conveyance with some sailors on
leave; I changed horses at the meanest inns; poor, sick, and
unknown, I entered a wealthy and famous city in which Mr. Pitt held
sway; I took a lodging at six shillings a month under the laths of a
garret which a cousin from Brittany had prepared for me at the end
of a little street off the Tottenham Court Road.
Ah! Monseigneur, que votre vie,
D'honneurs aujourd'hui si remplie,
Diffère de ces heureux temps[434].
Still an obscurity of another kind envelopes me in London. My
political position casts into shade my literary fame: not a fool in the
three kingdoms but prefers the ambassador of Louis XVIII. to the
author of the Génie du Christianisme. I shall see how the matter
turns after my death, or when I shall have ceased to fill M. le Duc
Decazes'[435] place at the Court of George IV.[436], a succession as
incongruous as the rest of my life.
Now that I have arrived in London as French Ambassador, one of my
chief pleasures is to leave my carriage at the corner of some square,
and on foot to traverse the back-streets which I frequented in former
days, the cheap popular suburbs, where misfortune takes refuge
under the protection of a kindred suffering, the nameless shelters
which I haunted with my companions in distress, not knowing
whether I should have bread to eat on the morrow, I whose table
today is covered with three or four courses. At all those narrow and
necessitous doors which were once open to me, I see none but
strange faces. I no longer meet my fellow-countrymen roaming,
recognizable by their gestures, their gait, the shape and age of their
clothes. I no longer perceive those martyred priests, wearing the
clerical collar, the big three-cornered hat, the long, black, threadbare
frock, whom the English used to salute as they passed. Wide streets,
lined with palaces, have been cut, bridges built, walks planted with
trees: Regent's Park, near Portland Place, occupies the space of the
old meadows filled with herds of cows. A cemetery which formed the
prospect from the dormer-window of one of my attics has
disappeared within the circumference of a factory. When I call upon
Lord Liverpool[437], I find it difficult to pick out the spot where stood
the scaffold of Charles I.; new buildings, closing in upon the statue
of Charles II.[438], have come forward, with forgetfulness, to cover
up memorable events.
How much do I regret, in the midst of my insipid
grandeur, that world of tribulations and tears, those And as an
emigrant.
times in which I mingled my sorrows with those of
a colony of unfortunates! It is true, then, that all changes, that
misfortune itself comes to an end, like prosperity! What has become
of my brothers in emigration? Some are dead, others have
undergone various destinies: they have, like me, beheld the loss of
their kinsmen and friends; they are less happy in the land of their
birth than they were on foreign soil. Had we not on that soil our
meetings, our amusements, our merry-makings, and, above all, our
youth? Mothers of families and young girls commencing life in
adversity brought the weekly fruit of their toil, to revel in some
dance of their country. Attachments were formed in the course of
the evening chit-chat after work, on the grass at Hampstead or
Primrose Hill. In chapels adorned with our own hands, in old tumble-
down buildings, we prayed on the 21st of January and on the
anniversary of the Queen's death[439], and were much moved by a
funeral oration pronounced by the emigrant curate of our village. We
strolled beside the Thames, now to see the vessels laden with the
world's riches entering dock, and again to admire the country-
houses at Richmond, we so poor, we who had lost the shelter of the
paternal roof-tree: all these things constitute true happiness!
When I come home in 1822, instead of being received by my friend,
shivering with cold, who opens the door of our garret to me, calls
me "thee" and "thou," sleeps on a pallet beside mine, covering
himself with his thin coat and having the moonlight for a lamp, I
pass by the light of candles between two rows of lackeys, ending in
half-a-dozen respectful secretaries. Overwhelmed along my road
with the words, "Monseigneur, my Lord, your Excellency, Monsieur
l'Ambassadeur," I come to a drawing-room upholstered in silk and
gold.
"I beg you, gentlemen, to leave me! A truce to these my lords! What
use do you think I have for you? Go and laugh in the chancelleries
as though I were not here. Do you imagine you will make me take
this masquerade seriously? Do you think me fool enough to believe
that I have changed my nature by changing my coat? The Marquess
of Londonderry is coming, you say[440]; the Duke of Wellington[441]
has asked for me; Mr. Canning[442] is looking for me; Lady
Jersey[443] expects me to dinner, to meet Mr. Brougham[444]; Lady
Gwydyr[445] hopes to see me at ten o'clock in her box at the Opera;
Lady Mansfield[446] at midnight at Almack's[447]?"
Mercy! Where can I hide? Who will deliver me? Who will save me
from this persecution? Return to me, fair days of misery and
loneliness! Come back to life, companions of my exile! Come, old
comrades of the pallet and the camp-bed, let us go into the country,
into the little garden of some despised tavern, and drink a cup of
bad tea on a wooden bench, while we talk of our mad hopes and
our ungrateful country, discuss our troubles, and seek means to
assist each other or to succour one of our kinsmen in yet worse
plight than ourselves!
That is how I feel, that is how I speak to myself in
these first days of my embassy in London. I escape Kensington
Gardens.
from the melancholy which besets me beneath my
roof only by saturating myself with a less weighty melancholy in
Kensington Gardens. These gardens, at least, have not changed; the
trees alone have grown taller; in them, ever solitary, the birds build
their nests in peace. It is no longer even the fashion to meet there,
as in the days when the loveliest of Frenchwomen, Madame
Récamier[448], used to walk there followed by the crowd. From the
edge of the deserted lawns of Kensington, I love to watch, across
Hyde Park, the crowd of horses, the carriages of the fashionable
world, among which figures my empty tilbury; while I, once more a
poor little emigrant noble, walk along the path in which the exiled
confessor was wont to say his breviary.
It was in Kensington Gardens that I projected the Essai historique;
that, on reading over the diary of my travels beyond sea, I drew
from it the loves of Atala; it was there too, after wandering far away
in the fields beneath a lowering sky, which assumed a golden hue
and became, as it were pervaded with polar light, that I jotted down
in pencil the first sketch of the passions of René. At night I deposited
in the Essai historique and the Natchez the harvest of my dreams of
the day. The two manuscripts marched abreast, although I often
wanted money to buy paper for them, and was obliged, for lack of
thread, to fasten the sheets together with splinters torn from the
mantel-boards of my garret.
These spots where I received my first inspirations impress me with a
sense of their power; they reflect upon my present the gentle light
of my recollections; I feel in the mood to resume my pen. So many
hours are wasted in embassies! I have as much spare time here as
in Berlin to continue my Memoirs, the edifice which I am building up
out of ruins and dead bones. My secretaries in London ask leave to
go to picnics in the morning, to balls at night: by all means! The
men in their turn, Peter, Valentine, Lewis, go to the ale-house, and
the maids, Rose, Peggy, Mary, for a walk through the streets: I am
delighted. They leave me the key of the hall-door: monsieur
l'ambassadeur is left in charge of his own house; if any one knocks,
he will open the door. Everybody has gone out; I am alone: let us
get to work.
Twenty-two years ago, as I said, I was sketching, in London, the
outlines of the Natchez and of Atala; I have now, in my Memoirs,
come to just the period of my travels in America: that fits in
perfectly. Let us wipe out those two-and-twenty years, as they are,
in fact, wiped out from my life, and start for the forests of the New
World: the story of my embassy shall come at its own date when
God pleases; but provided I remain here a few months, I shall have
the pleasure of coming from the Falls of Niagara to the army of the
Princes in Germany, and from the army of the Princes to my
retirement in England. The Ambassador of the King of France will be
able to tell the story of the French Emigrant in the very spot where
the latter spent his exile.
*
The last book ended with my embarkation at Saint-Malo. Soon we
left the Channel, and the immense swell from the west told us that
we had reached the Atlantic.
It is difficult for people who have never been to sea to imagine the
feelings which one experiences when looking over the side of a ship
and seeing nothing but the grave face of the deep on every hand.
The dangerous life of the sailor has about it an independence which
comes from the absence of land: the passions of mankind are left
behind on shore; between the world which one is quitting and that
for which one is making, one has no love and no country save the
element upon which one is borne. No more duties to fulfill, no more
visits to pay, no more newspapers, no more politics. The very
language of the sailors is not the ordinary language: it is the
language spoken by the ocean and the sky, the calm and the
tempest. You inhabit a watery universe among creatures whose
garments, tastes, manners, and faces are different from those of the
auto-chthonic peoples; they combine the rudeness of the sea-wolf
with the lightness of the bird. The cares of society are not seen upon
their brow; the wrinkles which cross it resemble the folds of the
lowered sail and are hollowed out less by age than by the north
wind, as in the waves. The skin of these creatures, impregnated with
salt, is red and hard, like the surface of the surge-swept rock.
The sailors become enamoured of their ship; they
weep with regret on leaving her, with affection on Nautical talk.
rejoining her. They are unable to stay at home with
their families; after swearing a hundred times that they will not
again expose themselves to the sea, they find it impossible to live
without it, like a youth who is unable to tear himself from the arms
of a moody and faithless mistress.
In the docks of London and Plymouth, it is not unusual to find sailors
born on board ship: from their childhood to their old age they have
never set foot on shore; spectators of the world which they have
never entered, they have seen the land only from the side of their
floating cradle. In this life reduced to so small a space, beneath the
clouds and upon the depths, all things become life-like to the
mariner: an anchor, a sail, a mast, a gun are persons that excite his
attachment and that have each their history.
The sail was torn off the coast of Labrador; the master sail-maker
put in that patch which you see there.
The anchor saved the ship when she had dragged her other anchors
among the coral-reefs of the Sandwich Islands.
The mast was broken in a squall off the Cape of Good Hope; it was
all in one piece; it is much stronger since it has consisted of two
pieces.
The gun is the only one which was not dismounted in the fight of
the Chesapeake.
The news on board is most interesting: they have just heaved the
log; the ship is making ten knots.
The sky is clear at mid-day: they have taken the altitude; we are at
latitude so-and-so.
We have taken our reckoning: we have made so many miles in our
course.
The variation of the compass is so many degrees: we have gone up
north.
The sand is running badly through the hour-glass: we shall have
rain.
They have seen stormy petrels in the wake of the vessel: we must
look out for a squall.
Flying-fish have been showing in the south: the weather will settle
down.
A clear spot has formed in the clouds in the west: that's a sign of
wind; the wind will blow from that side tomorrow.
The water has changed colour; pieces of wood and wrack have been
seen floating by; there were ducks and gulls in sight; a small bird
came and perched on the yards: we must heave to sea, for we are
approaching land, and it is not good to come alongside at night.
In the hen-coop is a favourite and, so to speak, sacred cock, which
has survived all the others; he is famous for having crowed during a
fight, as though he were in a farm-yard in the midst of his hens.
Below decks lives a cat: a greenish tabby, with a hairless tail and
bushy whiskers, firm on his paws, able to bring a back-balance and
side-balance to play against the pitching and the rolling of the ship;
he has been twice round the world and has saved himself from
shipwreck by climbing on a barrel. The ship-boys give the cock
biscuits soaked in wine, and Tom has the privilege of sleeping, when
he pleases, in the second mate's fur-coat.
The old sailor is like the old plough-man. True, their manner of
harvesting is different: the sailor has led a wandering life, the
plough-man has never left his fields; but they both know the stars
and foretell the future while ploughing their furrows. Both have their
prophets: one, the lark, the redbreast, the nightingale; the other, the
petrel, the curlew, the halcyon. They retire to rest at night, one in
his cabin, the other in his hut: frail dwelling-houses in which the
hurricane which shakes them does not disturb peaceful consciences.
If the wind a tempest's blowing,
Still no danger they descry;
The guiltless heart, its boon bestowing,
Soothes them with its lullaby.
The sailor does not know where Death will overtake him, upon what
shore he will leave his life: perhaps, when he has mingled his last
breath with the wind, he will be cast into the bosom of the waves,
fastened to two oars, to continue his voyage; perhaps he will be
buried on a desert island, which none shall ever see again, and sleep
as he slept in mid-ocean, in his lonely hammock.
The vessel is a sight in herself: sensible to the smallest movement of
the helm, winged horse or hippogriff that she is, she obeys the hand
of the pilot as a horse does that of its rider. The grace of the masts
and rigging, the nimbleness of the sailors laying out on the yards,
the various aspects under which the ship displays herself, whether
listing, borne down by a contrary blast, or scudding before a
favourable wind, cause this intelligent machine to become one of the
marvels of human genius. At one time the swell and its foam break
and burst against the keel; at another the peaceful waves separate
submissively before the stem. The flags, the pennants, the sails
complete the beauty of this palace of Neptune: the courses, spread
in their width, swell out like huge cylinders; the topsails, confined at
their waist, resemble a siren's breasts. Driven by a stiff breeze, the
ship noisily ploughs the seas with her keel as with a plough-share.
On this ocean highway, along which one sees no trees,
nor villages, nor towns, nor towers, nor steeples nor Life at sea.
tombstones; on this road without posts or milestones,
which has no boundaries save the waves, no relays save the winds, no
lights save the stars, the finest adventure, when one is not travelling in
search of unknown lands and seas, is the meeting of two vessels. They are
mutually discovered on the horizon through the spy-glass; they turn each in
the direction of the other. The crew and the passengers hasten on deck.
The two ships approach each other, hoist their ensigns, clew up some of
their sails, heave-to. When all is silence, the two captains take their stand
upon the quarter-deck and hail each other through the speaking-trumpet:
"The ship's name? From what port? Name of the captain? Where is he
from? How many days out? What is the latitude and longitude? Good-bye,
let go!"
They let go the reefs; the sails fall down again. The sailors and passengers
of the two ships watch each other flee from sight, without a word: one
crew goes to seek the sun of Asia, the other the sun of Europe, both of
which will see them die. Time carries off and separates travellers on earth
even more rapidly than the wind carries them off and separates them on
the ocean; they make a sign to each other at a distance:
"God speed you, and a prosperous journey!"
The common port is Eternity.
And what if the vessel encountered were that of Cook[449] or La Pérouse?
*
The boatswain of my Saint-Malo ship was an old super-cargo called Pierre
Villeneuve, whose very name pleased me, because of the good Villeneuve
of my childhood. He had served in India, under the Bailli de Suffren, and in
America under the Comte d'Estaing; he had been present at a number of
engagements. Leaning against the bow of the ship, near the bowsprit, like
a veteran seated under the vine-arbour of his little garden in the moat of
the Invalides, Pierre, chewing a plug of tobacco which filled out his cheek
like a swelling, described to me the clearing of the decks, the effect of the
gun-fire below decks, the damage done by the cannon-balls in ricochetting
against the gun-carriages, the guns, the timber-work. I made him talk of
the Indians, the negroes, the planters. I asked him how the people were
dressed, how the trees were shaped, what was the colour of the earth and
sky, the taste of the fruits; whether pine-apples were better than peaches,
palm-trees finer than oaks. He explained all this by means of comparisons
taken from things I knew: the palm-tree was a large cabbage; the robe
worn by a Hindoo was like my grandmother's; the camels were like a
humpbacked donkey; all the peoples of the East, and notably the Chinese,
were cowards and robbers. Villeneuve came from Brittany, and we never
failed to end with praises of the incomparable beauty of our native country.
The bell interrupted our conversations; it struck the watches, the time for
dressing, for the roll-call, for meals. In the morning, at a signal, the crew
mustered on deck, stripped off their blue shirts, and put on others which
were drying in the shrouds. The discarded shirts were forthwith washed in
tubs in which this school of seals also soaped their brown faces and tarred
paws. At the mid-day and evening meals, the sailors, seated in a circle
around the mess-platters, one after the other, regularly and without any
attempt at fraud, dipped their tin spoons into the soup which splashed to
the roll of the ship. Those who were not hungry sold their ration of biscuit
or salt junk to their messmates for a screw of tobacco. The passengers took
their meals in the captain's room. In fine weather, a sail was spread over
the stern of the vessel, and we dined in sight of a blue sea, flecked here
and there with white marks where it had been struck by the breeze.
Wrapped in my cloak, I stretched myself at night upon deck. My eyes
contemplated the stars above my head. The inflated sail threw back upon
me the coolness of the breeze which rocked me beneath the dome of
heaven: half dozing and pushed on by the wind, I was wafted towards new
skies and new dreams.
The passengers on board ship afford a different sort of society from that of
the crew: they belong to another element; their destinies are of the land.
Some travel in search of fortune, others of rest; these are returning home,
those leaving it; others cross the seas in order to become acquainted with
the manners of nations, to study science and art. People have time to know
one another in this wandering hostelry which travels with the traveller, to
have many adventures, to breed antipathies, to contract friendships. When
those young women come and go, born of mixed English and Indian blood,
who add to the beauty of Clarissa the delicacy of Sacontala, then are
formed chains which are bound and unbound by the fragrant breezes of
Ceylon, sweet and light as themselves.
 *
Among my fellow-passengers was an Englishman.
Francis Tulloch.
François Tulloch[450] had served in the artillery: he was a
painter, a musician, a mathematician; he spoke several languages. The
Abbé Nagault, Superior of the Sulpicians, had met the Anglican officer and
made him a Catholic: he was taking his neophyte to Baltimore.
I became intimate with Tulloch: as I was at that time a profound
"Philosopher," I invited him to return to his parents. The spectacle that lay
before our eyes transported him with admiration. We used to rise at night,
when the deck was given up to the officer of the watch and a few sailors
who smoked their pipes in silence: Tuta æquora silent.[451] The vessel
rolled at the will of the slow and silent waves, while gleams of fire ran with
a white foam along her sides. Thousands of stars shining in the sombre
azure of the celestial dome, a boundless sea, infinity in the sky and on the
waves! Never has God confused me with His greatness more than during
those nights when I had immensity over my head and immensity beneath
my feet.
Westerly winds, interspersed with calms, delayed our progress. On the 4th
of May, we had reached only the level of the Azores. On the 6th, at about
eight o'clock in the morning, we came in sight of the Isle of the Peak; this
volcano long commanded unnavigated seas[452]: a useless beacon by night,
an unseen landmark by day.
There is something magical in seeing the land rise from the depths of the
sea. Christopher Columbus, surrounded by a mutinous crew, preparing to
return to Europe without having attained the object of his voyage, perceives
a small light upon a beach which the darkness had hidden from him. The
flight of the birds had guided him to America; the gleam from the hut of a
savage reveals to him the presence of a new world. Columbus must have
experienced the sort of feeling which the Scriptures attribute to the Creator
when, having out of nothing brought forth the world, He saw that His work
was good: "And God saw that it was good[453]." Columbus created a world.
One of the first lives of the Genoese pilot is that which Giustiniani[454],
when editing a Hebrew psalter, placed in the form of a "note" at the foot of
the psalm, Cœli enarrant gloriam Dei.[455]
Vasco da Gama must have marvelled no less when, in 1498, he approached
the coast of Malabar. Thereupon all things change on the face of the globe:
a new revelation of nature is given; the curtain which for thousands of ages
has concealed one part of the earth is raised, discovering the birthplace of
the sun, the spot whence he issues each morning "as a bridegroom, as a
giant[456];" we see in all its nudity the wise and brilliant East, whose
mysterious history was intermixed with the journeys of Pythagoras, the
conquests of Alexander, the memory of the Crusades, and whose perfumes
came to us across the plains of Arabia and the seas of Greece. Europe sent
to the East a poet to salute it: the Swan of Tagus made his sad and
beautiful voice heard upon the shores of India; Camoëns[457] borrowed
their lustre, their fame and their misfortune; he left them only their riches.
When Gonzalo Villo, Camoëns' maternal grandfather, discovered a portion of
the Archipelago of the Azores, he ought, had he foreseen the future, to
have reserved for himself a concession of six feet of ground to cover the
bones of his grandson.
We anchored in a bad roadstead, with a rocky bottom, in five-and-forty
fathoms of water. The island of Graciosa, before which we were moored,
displayed its hills a little swollen in outline like the ellipses of an Etruscan
amphora; they were draped in the green of their cornfields and emitted an
agreeable odour of wheat peculiar to the harvests of the Azores. In the
midst of these carpets, one saw the dividing lines of the fields, formed of
volcanic stones, half black and half white, piled one upon the other. On the
summit of a mound stood an abbey, the monument of an old world upon
new soil; at the foot of this mound, the red roofs of the town of Santa-Cruz
were mirrored in a pebbly creek. The whole island, with its indentations of
bays, capes, bights and promontories, reflected its inverted landscape in
the sea. For outer girdle it had a belt of rocks jutting from the surface of
the waves. In the background of the picture, the cone of the volcano of the
Peak, planted upon a cupola of clouds, pierced the perspective of the air
beyond Graciosa.
Tulloch, the second mate and I decided to go on land;
the long-boat was lowered and rowed towards the shore, The isle of Graciosa.
which lay about two miles away. We saw some
movement on the beach; a pram put out in our direction. So soon as she
had come within speaking distance, we distinguished a number of monks.
They hailed us in Portuguese, in Italian, in English, in French, and we
replied in all four languages. Alarm prevailed, our vessel was the first ship
of large tonnage that had ventured to anchor in the dangerous roadstead
where we were going with the tide. On the other hand, the islanders now
saw the tricolour flag for the first time; they did not know whether we
hailed from Tunis or Algiers: Neptune had not recognized the standard so
gloriously borne by Cybele. When they saw that we had human shapes and
that we understood what was said to us, their delight was extreme. The
monks took us up in their boat, and we rowed merrily towards Santa-Cruz,
where we landed with some difficulty because of a rather violent surf.
The whole island came running up. Four or five alguazils, armed with rusty
pikes, took possession of us. His Majesty's uniform attracted the honours in
my direction, and I was taken for the leading member of the deputation.
We were led to the Governor's house, or hovel, where His Excellency,
dressed in a worn green uniform, which had once been gold-laced, received
us in solemn audience: he gave us leave to replenish our stores of
provisions.
Our monks took us to their convent, a roomy and well-lighted building,
surrounded with balconies. Tulloch had discovered a fellow-countryman: the
principal brother, who did all the bustling about for us, was a sailor from
Jersey whose ship had gone down with all hands off Graciosa. The solitary
survivor of the shipwreck, and not lacking in intelligence, he had become an
apt pupil of the catechists; he learnt Portuguese and a few words of Latin;
the fact of his being an Englishman militated in his favour, and they
converted him and made a monk of him. The Jersey sailor found it much
pleasanter to be lodged, boarded, and clothed at the altar than to take in
the top-gallant sail in a storm. He had not forgotten his old trade: it was
long since he had heard his language spoken, and he was delighted to
meet some one who knew it; he laughed and swore like a true pilot's
apprentice. He showed us over the island.
The houses in the villages, built of wood and stone, were adorned with
outer galleries which gave an air of neatness to these cottages, because of
the quantity of light that prevailed. The peasants, almost all vine-dressers,
were half-naked and bronzed by the sun; the women, short, yellow as
mulattoes, but sprightly, were frank coquettes, with their posies of syringa-
blossoms and their beads worn by way of crowns or chains.
The hill-slopes glowed with vine-stocks, the wine from which resembled
that of Fayal. Water was scarce, but wherever a spring welled, there grew a
fig-tree, there rose an oratory with a frescoed portico. The ogives of the
portico framed views of the island and portions of the sea. On one of these
fig-trees, I saw a flock of blue teal settle, not of the web-footed variety. The
tree had no leaves, but bore red fruit set like crystals. When adorned with
the cerulean birds, which let fall their wings, its fruits appeared to be of a
brilliant purple, while the tree seemed suddenly to have shot forth an azure
foliage.
It is probable that the Azores were known to the Carthaginians; it is certain
that Phœnician coins have been dug up in the island of Corvo. The modern
navigators who first landed at this island are said to have found an
equestrian statue pointing with outstretched arm to the west, provided
always that this statue is not the imaginary engraving which adorns the old
books of seaports.
In the manuscript of the Natchez, I have made Chactas, returning from
Europe, land at the island of Corvo, where he comes across the mysterious
statue. He thus expresses the feelings which filled my mind at Graciosa,
when I recalled the legend:
"I approached that extraordinary monument. On its base, bathed by the
foam of the ocean, were carved unknown characters: the moss and the
saltpetre of the sea corroded the surface of the time-honoured bronze; the
halcyon, perched upon the helmet of the colossus, uttered at intervals its
plaintive note; shell-fish clung to the courser's flanks and mane of brass,
and one's ear, when approached to its open nostrils, seemed to hear
confused murmurs."
*
We were served with a good supper by the monks after
our excursion, and we spent the night in drinking with Supper with the
monks.
our hosts. The next day, at noon, our provisions having
been taken on board, we returned to the ship. The monks took charge of
our letters for Europe. The vessel had been in danger through the rising of
a stiff south-easterly wind. We heaved the anchor; but it was caught in the
rocks, and we lost it, as we expected. We set sail: the wind continued to
freshen, and we had soon passed the Azores.

Fac pelagus me scire probes, quo carbasa laxo.

"Muse, help me to show that I know the sea over which I spread
my sails."
Thus, six hundred years ago, wrote Guillaume-le-Breton[458], my fellow-
countryman. Restored to the sea, I began anew the contemplation of my
solitude; but across the ideal world of my dreams, stern monitors appeared
to me: France and the events of reality. My lurking-place during the day,
when I wished to avoid my fellow-passengers, was the main-top, to which I
climbed nimbly amid the applause of the sailors. I there sat and
commanded the waves.
The vast expanse, doubly hung with azure, had the appearance of a canvas
prepared to receive the future creations of a mighty painter. The colour of
the water was like that of liquid glass. Long and steep undulations opened
within their hollows vistas of the ocean deserts: those wavering landscapes
made clear to my eyes the comparison drawn in the Scriptures of the earth
reeling before the Lord, like a drunken man[459]. Sometimes one might
have pronounced the space narrow and restricted, for want of a vanishing
point; but if a wave happened to raise its crest, a billow to curve in
imitation of a distant coast, a shoal of dog-fish to pass along the horizon,
then one had a scale to measure by. The expanse was revealed still more
when a mist, creeping to the ocean's surface, seemed to enlarge the very
immensity.
On descending from the eyrie of the mast, as when, in former days, ever
reduced to a solitary existence, I climbed down from my nest in the willow-
tree, I supped on a ship-biscuit, a little sugar, and a lemon; I then lay
down, either wrapped in my cloak on deck, or in my cot below: I had but to
stretch my arm to reach from my bed to my coffin.
The wind compelled us to bear to the North, and we came alongside of the
bank of Newfoundland. Floating icebergs roamed in the midst of a pale,
cold mist.
The men of the trident have sports which are handed down to them from
their ancestors: when you cross the Line, you must make up your mind to
receive "baptism;" the same ceremony occurs beneath the Tropics, the
same ceremony on the bank of Newfoundland, and whatever the spot, the
leader of the masquerade is always "the Old Man of the Tropics." To the
sailors, tropical and hydropical are interchangeable terms: the Old Man of
the Tropics therefore has an enormous paunch; he is dressed, even when
beneath his native Tropics, in all the sheepskins and all the furred jackets
that the crew can supply. He sits squatting in the main-top and roaring from
time to time. Every one looks at him from below: he begins to climb down
the shrouds, moving heavily like a bear, and stumbling like Silenus. As he
sets foot on deck, he utters fresh roars, gives a bound, seizes a pail, fills it
with sea-water, and empties it over the chief of those who have not crossed
the Equator or who have not reached the line of ice. You fly beneath the
decks, you spring upon the hatches, you clamber up the masts: Old Father
Tropics is after you; all this ends in a generous gift of drink-money: games
of Amphitrite which Homer would have celebrated, even as he sang
Proteus, if old Oceanus had been known in his entirety in the time of
Ulysses; but, in those days, only his head was visible at the Pillars of
Hercules: his body lay hidden and covered the world.
We steered for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, in search of a new
port. When we came in sight of the former, one morning between ten and
twelve o'clock, we were almost upon it; its coast showed like a black hump
through the fog.
We anchored in front of the capital of the island: we could not see it, but
we heard the sounds on land. The passengers hastened to disembark; the
Superior of Saint-Sulpice, who had been constantly racked with sea-
sickness, was so weak that he had to be carried on shore. I took a separate
lodging; I waited until a gust of wind tore the mist asunder and showed me
the place in which I was living and, so to speak, the faces of my hosts in
this land of shadows.
The port and roadstead of Saint-Pierre are situated
between the east coast of the island and a long-shaped The Isle of Saint-
Pierre.
islet called the Île aux Chiens, or Isle of Dogs. The port,
known as the Barachois, or Little Inlet, cuts into the land and ends in a
brackish pool. Small, barren mountains crowd together in the centre of the
island; some are detached and overhang the coast; others have at their
feet a skirt of flat and turfy moorland. The look-out hill is visible from the
market-town.
The Governor's house faces the wharf. The church, the vicarage, the
provision warehouse are situated at the same spot; next come the houses
of the naval commissary and the harbour-master. From there, the one
street of the town runs over the shingles along the beach.
I dined two or three times with the Governor, a very polite and obliging
officer. On a sloping bank he grew a few European vegetables. After dinner
he showed me what he called his garden. A delicate and fragrant odour of
heliotrope was exhaled from a small patch of flowering beans; it was not
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