redolent of liberty. The French are, essentially and above all, a military people. Now, unreasoning obedience to a non-elected and non-deposable chief, an utter abnegation of the individual will, which are the soul of success in war, are direct contradictions to the ideas on which democracies are founded. The passion for external luxury and splendour is incongruous and fatal in a democracy, unless that splendour can be shared by all the people; yet in no civilised nations is that passion stronger than in France, and in few is the contrast so great between the palaces of their monarchs (which they still take pride in and adorn), and the habitations of the other classes of the community. In England, where the democratic element is so powerful and so spreading, there is little difference either in comfort or magnificence between Windsor Castle and Chatsworth, between St James' Palace and the noble mansion of Longleat. palaces of our sovereigns, the castles of our nobility, the halls of our wealthy and ancient commoners, are connected by imperceptible gradations; our Queen might take up her abode at the houses of some of our country gentlemen, and scarcely discover any diminution in the comfort of her accommodations, or the splendour of her furniture. But in France this is not so. Her royal palaces may rival or eclipse ours -certainly we have nothing so immense or gorgeous as Versailles-but the chateaux and hotels of her nobles belong to an entirely different and much lower class than ours. She has nothing to represent that

The

class of mansions, which we count by hundreds, of which Devonshire House, Northumberland House, Belvoir Castle, Drayton Manor, Chatsworth, and Longleat, are the type with us. The character of her social hierarchy as depicted in her dwellings is essentially monarchical: ours is essentially aristocratic. Versailles and a republic would be a standing contradiction a perpetual incongruity and mutual reproach. They represent, and suggest, wholly opposite ideas.

If this article had not already extended to so great a length, we should have dwelt on other difficulties which beset the task of reorganising government and society in France; on those arising from the material condition of her people; from the degree of poverty, incompatible with contentment, in which so large a portion of her population live; from the want of a "career," so painfully felt by many thousands of her most active spirits, and so dangerous to internal peace; from the inadequacy of her protected manufactures, her imperfect agriculture, and her undeveloped commerce, to support in comfort the actual numbers on her soil; from the law of equal inheritance, with all its fatal and unforeseen consequences to peace, to freedom, to wealth, to social interests, and intellectual culture; and last, not least, from the fatal necessity, which each new government that has sprung from a popular insurrection finds itself under, of turning instantly round upon the parties, the ideas, and the principles which have elevated it to power. A government created by a revolution finds that almost its first

task must be to repress revolutionary tendencies; nay more, that it must repress these tendencies far more promptly, more severely, more incessantly, than would be necessary to a government strong in the loyalty of the nation, in the traditions of the past, in the deliberate judgment of the influential classes, and which was not harassed by the spectre of anarchy daily knocking at its gates. Yet such a government -casting down the ladder by which it climbed to office-shutting the door in the faces of undeniable claims-rebuking and punishing the enthusiastic soldiers who had fought for it-imprisoning the friends to whom it owed its existence-fettering and fining the press which had paved the way for its inauguration-has, it cannot be disguised, prima facie, an ugly aspect.

To conclude. The basis of the governments which owed their origin to the first Revolution was reaction against old anomalies; the basis of the Empire was military power; the basis of the Restoration was legitimacy, prejudice, and prestige; the basis of Louis Philippe's government was the material interests of the nation, and the supremacy of the bourgeoisie as the depositaries and guardians of those interests. The Revolution, of February-being (as it were) an aggressive negation, not a positive effort, having no clear idea at its root, but being simply the product of discontent and disgust-furnishes no foundation for a government. Loyalty to a legitimate monarch; deference to an ancient aristocracy; faith in a loved and venerated creed; devotion to a military leader; sober

schemes for well-understood material prosperity;—all these may form, and have formed, the foundation of stable and powerful governments: mere reaction, mere denial, mere dissatisfaction, mere vague desires, mere aggression on existing things-never.

To construct a firm and abiding commonwealth out of such materials, and in the face of such obstacles as we have attempted to delineate, such is the problem the French people are called upon to conduct to a successful issue. Without a positive and earnest creed; without a social hierarchy; without municipal institutions and the political education they bestow; without a spirit of reverence for rights and of obedience to authority, penetrating all ranks,—we greatly doubt whether the very instruments for the creation of a republic are not wanting. A republic does not create these-it supposes and postulates their existence. They are inheritances from the past, not possessions to be called into being by a fiat. They are the slow growth of a settled political and social system, acting with justice founded on authority and tradition, and consolidated by long years of unshaken continuance.

II.

FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852.1

WHEN we wrote of France in May 1851-of the difficulty of its task, the instability of its government, and the perplexity of its path-hopeless as we then were of a successful issue, we could scarcely have anticipated that in seven short months that government would be overthrown once more, that task abandoned in despair, that path more dark and intricate than ever. Within three years from the expulsion of the Orleanist dynasty by a knot of fanatical republicans, both victors and vanquished in that sudden struggle have been suppressed by a military despotism; the polity they had. joined in constructing has been violently swept away, and France has again become a tabula rasa for constitutional experimentalists. We wrote thus in May,

"The Revolution of February-being (as it were) an aggressive negation, not a positive effort, having no clear idea at its root, but being simply the product of discontent and disgust -furnishes no foundation for a government. Loyalty to a legitimate monarch; deference to an ancient aristocracy; faith in a loved and venerated creed; devotion to a military leader; sober schemes for well understood material prosperity ;-all these may form, and have formed, the foundation of stable and

1 From the "North British Review, Feb. 1852."

1. Euvres de Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. Paris. 3 tom. 8vo. 2. Des Idées Napoléoniennes. Par L. N. BONAPARTE. Paris.