The New Militant Press

Abstract

In the summer of 1829, the opposition press began transforming its character from that of a critic to an active and calculating antagonist. The first stirrings of this shift were provoked by the appointment of Polignac’s Cabinet and its first clear manifestation was seen in the widely disseminated propaganda for the Breton Association which advocated legal resistance by taxpayers, a program which will be described in the following chapter. The initial tirades of the liberal journals against the nomination of the Polignac Ministry, however, were merely an intensification of their old editorial role of critical opposition, a policy mainly of holding the line, maintaining the fervor of the liberal camp, and feeding its flames of partisan indignation. These had been the polices of that middle-class giant, the Constitutionnel, of the Courrier Français, and since Villèle’s rise to power, of the royalist Débats. The old journalism had included heavy doses of anticlerical propaganda and exaggerated warnings of a threat from the Jesuits. The older policy had attempted to educate the eighty thousand electors of France in their political rights and responsibilities, through publicity of the electoral society Aide-toi, but it had not attempted to mold political philosophies or direct strategies.